Image-symbol of “Atlantis”
The remarkable writer I. A. Bunin, having left a rich legacy of poems and stories in the treasury of Russian literature, always had a sharply negative attitude towards symbolism. Remaining a realist writer, he often did not build private observations to a holistic concept of seeing the world,
leaving the reader the opportunity to independently reflect on what they have read, to draw conclusions. And yet, occasionally in Bunin's works, eternal and ambiguous symbols appear, giving his stories an inner mystery, a sense of belonging to the great mysteries of being. Such is the image-symbol of the steamer "Atlantis", which turns the story "The Gentleman from San Francisco" into a kind of parable.
It is not for nothing that such a name was given to the ship, which chose to start its journey a nameless gentleman - a rich man, a bag of money, who feels himself the “master of life” only on the grounds that money gave him power over people. Many such “gentlemen” took pleasure in the comfortable cabins of the ship, because “the steamer - the famous “Atlantis” - looked like a huge hotel with all conveniences - with a night bar, with oriental baths, with its own newspaper - and life flowed on it very measuredly ... "Luxury, coziness, comfort, confidence in
rich travelers' own well-being gives them the illusion of life, despite the fact that everything around is more like a masquerade. These people are mannequins, trying to lead their usual way of life away from the earth, not wanting to see the raging elements of the ocean below them, a formidable abyss, at the sight of which they cowardly disperse to their cabins, creating the illusion of safety. Millionaires firmly believe in the captain - a man who, as it seems to them, knows how to manage this ship, magically leading it in the right direction. But a steamboat is, after all, a small grain of sand for the vastness of the ocean, and therefore anxiety, a premonition of tragedy settles in our hearts. However, the wealthy passengers are calm, they are watching with interest a couple of lovers who are hired by the captain to attract the attention of the rich. And here the mirage is the appearance of love and passion.
How does the illusory well-being and happiness in the cabins and on the decks of the Atlantis contrast with the description of the “underwater womb of the steamer”, which is likened here to the “gloomy and sultry bowels of the underworld, its last, ninth circle”, where “gigantic fireboxes chuckled deafly, devouring piles of coal, with a roar plunged into them covered with acrid, dirty sweat and waist-deep naked people, purple from the flames. It was here, in this hell, that it was destined to make the return trip, but not to the respected and noble gentleman from San Francisco, but to the “body of a dead old man”, into which he turned so unexpectedly. His return trip in a tarred coffin in the black hold of the ship, hidden from the eyes of the “masters of life” on the decks, symbolizes the sinking of his personal “Atlantis”, which threatens other standards of visible well-being that are not yet aware of it.
But life goes on, and therefore the story does not end with the death of a millionaire. The Eternal has undeniable power over the transient, and therefore “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 .... 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.”
Questions for the lesson
2. Find the characters in the story. Think about what specific and general meaning they have in the story.
3. For what purpose did Bunin give his ship the name "Atlantis"?
From December 1913, Bunin spent six months in Capri. Prior to that, he traveled to France and other European cities, visited Egypt, Algeria, Ceylon. The impressions of these travels were reflected in the stories and short stories that made up the collections Sukhodol (1912), John the Rydalets (1913), The Cup of Life (1915), and The Gentleman from San Francisco (1916).
The story "The Gentleman from San Francisco" continued the tradition of L.N. Tolstoy, who portrayed illness and death as the most important events that reveal the true value of a person. Along with the philosophical line in Bunin's story, social problems were developed, associated with a critical attitude towards lack of spirituality, to the rise of technical progress to the detriment of internal improvement.
The creative impetus for writing this work was given by the news of the death of a millionaire who arrived in Capri and stayed at a local hotel. Therefore, the story was originally called "Death on Capri." The change in the title emphasizes that the author focuses on the figure of a fifty-eight-year-old anonymous millionaire sailing from America on vacation to blessed Italy.
He devoted his whole life to the unbridled accumulation of wealth, never allowing himself to relax and rest. And only now, a person who neglects nature and despises people, having become “decrepit”, “dry”, unhealthy, decides to spend time among his own kind, surrounded by the sea and pine trees.
It seemed to him, the author remarks sarcastically and caustically, that he "had just begun to live." The rich man does not suspect that all that vain, meaningless time of his existence, which he took out of the brackets of life, should suddenly break off, end in nothing, so that life itself in its true sense is never given to him to know.
Question
What is the main setting of the story?
Answer
The main action of the story takes place on the huge steamship Atlantis. This is a kind of model of a bourgeois society, in which there are upper "floors" and "basements". Upstairs, life goes on, as in a "hotel with all amenities", measured, calm and idle. "Passengers" living "safely", "many", but much more - "a great many" - those who work for them.
Question
What technique does Bunin use to portray the division of society?
Answer
The division has the character of an antithesis: rest, carelessness, dancing and work, "unbearable tension" are opposed; "radiance ... of the chamber" and the gloomy and sultry bowels of the underworld"; "gentlemen" in tailcoats and tuxedos, ladies in "rich" "charming" "toilets" and people covered in caustic, dirty sweat and waist-deep naked people, purple from the flames. Gradually, a picture of heaven and hell is built.
Question
How do "tops" and "bottoms" relate to each other?
Answer
They are strangely related to each other. “Good money” helps to get to the top, and those who, like the “gentleman from San Francisco”, were “rather generous” to people from the “underworld”, they “fed and watered ... from morning to evening served him, warning him of the slightest desire, guarded his purity and peace, dragged his things ... ".
Question
Drawing a peculiar model of bourgeois society, Bunin operates with a number of magnificent symbols. What images in the story are symbolic?
Answer
Firstly, an ocean steamer with a significant name is perceived as a symbol of society. "Atlantis", on which an unnamed millionaire sails to Europe. Atlantis is a sunken legendary, mythical continent, a symbol of a lost civilization that could not resist the onslaught of the elements. There are also associations with the Titanic that died in 1912.
« Ocean, who walked behind the walls "of the steamer, is a symbol of the elements, nature, opposing civilization.
It is also symbolic image of the captain, "a red-haired man of monstrous size and weight, similar ... to a huge idol and very rarely appeared on people from his mysterious chambers."
symbolic main character image(the title character is the one whose name is placed in the title of the work, he may not be the main character). The gentleman from San Francisco is the personification of a man of bourgeois civilization.
He uses the underwater “womb” of the ship to the “ninth circle”, speaks of the “hot mouths” of gigantic furnaces, makes the captain appear, “a red-haired worm of monstrous size”, similar to “a huge idol”, and then the Devil on the rocks of Gibraltar; the author reproduces the "shuttle", meaningless cruising of the ship, the formidable ocean and storms on it. The epigraph of the story, given in one of the editions, is also artistically capacious: “Woe to you, Babylon, strong city!”
The richest symbolism, the rhythm of repetitions, the system of hints, the ring composition, the thickening of paths, the most complex syntax with numerous periods - everything speaks of the possibility, of the approach, finally, of inevitable death. Even the familiar name Gibraltar acquires its sinister meaning in this context.
Question
Why is the main character without a name?
Answer
The hero is called simply "master" because that is his essence. At least he considers himself a master and revels in his position. He can afford to go “to the Old World for two whole years only for the sake of entertainment”, he can enjoy all the benefits guaranteed by his status, he believes “in the care of all those who fed and watered him, served him from morning to evening, warning his slightest desire, ”may contemptuously throw ragamuffins through his teeth: “Get out!”
Question
Answer
Describing the appearance of the gentleman, Bunin uses epithets that emphasize his wealth and his unnaturalness: “silver mustache”, “golden fillings” of teeth, “strong bald head” is compared with “old ivory”. There is nothing spiritual in the master, his goal - to become rich and reap the fruits of this wealth - was realized, but he did not become happier from this. The description of the gentleman from San Francisco is constantly accompanied by the author's irony.
In describing his hero, the author skillfully uses the ability to notice details(the episode with the cufflink is especially memorable) and reception of contrast, contrasting the external respectability and significance of the master with his internal emptiness and squalor. The writer emphasizes the deadness of the hero, the likeness of a thing (his bald head shone like “old ivory”), a mechanical doll, a robot. That is why he fiddles with the notorious cufflink for so long, awkwardly and slowly. That is why he does not utter a single monologue, and two or three of his brief thoughtless remarks rather resemble the creak and crackle of a wind-up toy.
Question
When does the hero begin to change, lose his self-confidence?
Answer
The “master” changes only in the face of death, the human begins to appear in him: “It was no longer the gentleman from San Francisco who was wheezing, he was no more, but someone else.” Death makes him a man: his features began to thin, brighten ... ". “Dead”, “deceased”, “dead” - this is how the author of the hero now calls.
The attitude of those around him changes dramatically: the corpse must be removed from the hotel so as not to spoil the mood of other guests, they cannot provide a coffin - only a soda box (“soda” is also one of the signs of civilization), the servant, who servility to the living, mockingly laughs over the dead. At the end of the story, "the body of a dead old man from San Francisco" is mentioned, which is returning home to the grave, on the shores of the New World, "in a black hold. The power of the "master" turned out to be illusory.
Question
How are the other characters in the story described?
Answer
Just as silent, nameless, mechanized are those who surround the master on the ship. In their characteristics, Bunin also conveys lack of spirituality: tourists are only busy eating, drinking cognacs and liquors, and swimming "in waves of spicy smoke." The author again resorts to contrast, comparing their carefree, measured, regulated, carefree and festive life with the hellishly hard work of watchmen and workers. And in order to reveal the falsity of an allegedly beautiful holiday, the writer depicts a hired young couple who imitate love and tenderness for the joyful contemplation of her idle public. In this pair there was a "sinfully modest girl" and "a young man with black, as if glued hair, pale from powder", "resembling a huge leech."
Question
Why are such episodic characters such as Lorenzo and the Abruzzo mountaineers introduced into the story?
Answer
These characters appear at the end of the story and outwardly have nothing to do with its action. Lorenzo is "a tall old boatman, a carefree reveler and a handsome man", probably the same age as the gentleman from San Francisco. Only a few lines are devoted to him, but a sonorous name is given, in contrast to the title character. He is famous throughout Italy, more than once served as a model for many painters.
"With a royal habit" he looks around, feeling truly "royal", enjoying life, "drawing with his tatters, a clay pipe and a red woolen beret lowered over one ear." A picturesque poor man, old Lorenzo will live forever on the canvases of artists, and a rich old man from San Francisco was deleted from life and forgotten before he could die.
The Abruzzi highlanders, like Lorenzo, personify the naturalness and joy of being. They live in harmony, in harmony with the world, with nature. The highlanders give praise to the sun, to the morning with their lively, artless music. These are the true values of life, in contrast to the brilliant, expensive, but artificial imaginary values of "masters".
Question
What image summarizes the insignificance and perishability of earthly wealth and glory?
Answer
This is also a nameless image, which recognizes the once powerful Roman emperor Tiberius, who lived the last years of his life in Capri. Many "come to look at the remains of the stone house where he lived." “Humanity will remember him forever,” but this is the glory of Herostratus: “a man inexpressibly vile in satisfying his lust and for some reason having power over millions of people, having done cruelty to them beyond measure.” In the word "for some reason" - exposure of fictitious power, pride; time puts everything in its place: it gives immortality to the true and plunges the false into oblivion.
In the story, the theme of the end of the existing world order, the inevitability of the death of a soulless and soulless civilization gradually grows. It is embedded in the epigraph, which was removed by Bunin only in the last edition of 1951: “Woe to you, Babylon, strong city!”. This biblical phrase, reminiscent of the feast of Belshazzar before the fall of the Chaldean kingdom, sounds like a harbinger of future great catastrophes. The mention in the text of Vesuvius, the eruption of which killed Pompeii, reinforces the formidable prediction. A keen sense of the crisis of civilization, doomed to non-existence, is associated with philosophical reflections on life, man, death and immortality.
Bunin's story does not evoke a sense of hopelessness. In contrast to the world of the ugly, alien to beauty (Neapolitan museums and songs dedicated to Capri's nature and life itself), the writer conveys the world of beauty. The author's ideal is embodied in the images of the cheerful Abruzzo highlanders, in the beauty of Mount Solaro, it is reflected in the Madonna that adorned the grotto, in the sunniest, fabulously beautiful Italy, which has torn away the gentleman from San Francisco.
And here it is, this expected, inevitable death. On Capri, a gentleman from San Francisco dies suddenly. Our premonition and the epigraph of the story come true. The story of placing the gentleman in a soda box and then in a coffin shows all the futility and senselessness of those accumulations, lusts, self-delusions with which the main character existed up to this point.
There is a new reference point of time and events. The death of the master, as it were, cuts the narrative into two parts, and this determines the originality of the composition. The attitude towards the deceased and his wife changes dramatically. Before our eyes, the owner of the hotel and the bellboy Luigi become indifferent and callous. The pity and absolute uselessness of the one who considered himself the center of the universe is revealed.
Bunin raises questions about the meaning and essence of being, about life and death, about the value of human existence, about sin and guilt, about God's judgment for the criminality of acts. The hero of the story does not receive justification and forgiveness from the author, and the ocean roars angrily as the steamer with the coffin of the deceased moves back.
Final word of the teacher
Once upon a time, Pushkin, in a poem from the period of southern exile, romantically glorified the free sea and, changing its name, called it "ocean". He also painted two deaths at sea, turning his gaze to the rock, the "tomb of glory", and ended the poems with reflections on the good and the tyrant. In essence, Bunin also proposed a similar structure: the ocean is a ship “stored by a whim”, “a feast during the plague” - two deaths (of a millionaire and Tiberius), a rock with the ruins of a palace - a reflection on the good and the tyrant. But how everything is rethought by the writer of the "iron" twentieth century!
With epic thoroughness accessible to prose, Bunin draws the sea not as a free, beautiful and wayward, but as a formidable, ferocious and disastrous element. Pushkin's "feast during the plague" loses its tragic quality and acquires a parodic and grotesque character. The death of the hero of the story is not mourned by people. And the rock on the island, the emperor’s haven, this time becomes not a “tomb of glory”, but a parody monument, an object of tourism: people trudged across the ocean here, Bunin writes with bitter irony, climbed a steep rock, on which a vile and depraved monster lived, doomed people to countless deaths. Such a rethinking conveys the disastrous and catastrophic nature of the world, which, like the ship, is on the edge of the abyss.
Literature
Dmitry Bykov. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin. // Encyclopedia for children "Avanta +". Volume 9. Russian literature. Part two. XX century. M., 1999
Vera Muromtseva-Bunina. Bunin's life. Conversations with memory. M.: Vagrius, 2007
Galina Kuznetsova. Grasse diary. M.: Moscow worker, 1995
N.V. Egorova. Lesson developments in Russian literature. Grade 11. I semester. M.: VAKO, 2005
D.N. Murin, E.D. Kononova, E.V. Minenko. Russian literature of the XX century. Grade 11 program. Thematic lesson planning. St. Petersburg: SMIO Press, 2001
E.S. Rogover. Russian literature of the XX century. SP.: Parity, 2002
Forever only the sea, the boundless sea and the sky,
Only the sun, the earth and its beauty are eternal.
Only that which binds with an invisible bond is eternal
The soul and heart of those living with a dark soul of the graves.
I. Bunin
The remarkable writer I. A. Bunin, having left a rich legacy of poems and stories in the treasury of Russian literature, always had a sharply negative attitude towards symbolism. Remaining a realist writer, he often did not build private observations to a holistic concept of seeing the world, leaving the reader the opportunity to independently reflect on what they read and draw conclusions. And yet, occasionally in Bunin's works, eternal and ambiguous symbols appear, giving his stories an inner mystery, a feeling of belonging to the great mysteries of being. Such is the image-symbol of the steamship "Atlantis", which turns the story "The Gentleman from San Francisco" into a kind of parable.
It is not for nothing that such a name was given to the ship, which was chosen to start its journey by an unnamed gentleman - a rich man, a bag of money, who feels himself the "master of life" only on the grounds that money gave him power over people. Many such "gentlemen" took pleasure in the comfortable cabins of the ship, because "the steamer - the famous Atlantis - looked like a huge hotel with all the conveniences - with a night bar, with oriental baths, with its own newspaper - and life on it was very measured ... ”Luxury, coziness, comfort, confidence in their own well-being of wealthy travelers create the illusion of life for them, despite the fact that everything around is more like a masquerade. These people are mannequins, trying to lead their usual way of life off the ground, not wanting to see the raging elements of the ocean below them, the formidable abyss, at the sight of which they cowardly disperse to their cabins, creating the illusion of safety. Millionaires firmly believe in the captain - a person who, as it seems to them, knows how to manage this ship, magically leading it in the right direction. But a steamboat is, after all, a small grain of sand for the vastness of the ocean, and therefore anxiety settles in our hearts, a premonition of tragedy. However, the wealthy passengers are calm, they are watching with interest a couple of lovers who are hired by the captain to attract the attention of the rich. And here the mirage is the appearance of love and passion. material from the site
How does the illusory well-being and happiness in the cabins and on the decks of the Atlantis contrast with the description of the “underwater womb of the steamer”, which is likened here to “the gloomy and sultry bowels of the underworld, its last, ninth circle”, where “giant fireboxes rumbled muffledly, devouring with red-hot throats piles of coal, with a roar thrown into them by people covered in acrid, dirty sweat and waist-deep naked people, purple from the flame. It was here, in this hell, that it was destined to make the return trip, but not to the respected and noble gentleman from San Francisco, but to the “body of a dead old man”, into which he turned so unexpectedly. His return journey in a tarred coffin in the black hold of the ship, hidden from the eyes of the "masters of life" on the decks, symbolizes the sinking of his personal "Atlantis", which threatens other standards of visible well-being that are not yet aware of it.
But life goes on, and therefore the story does not end with the death of a millionaire. The Eternal has undeniable power over the transient, and therefore “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 .... The Devil was huge, like a cliff, but the ship was huge, many-tiered, many-trumpeted, created by the pride of a New Man with an old heart.
I. I. Bunin: realism or impressionism? (They write about I. Bunin’s creative method in different ways: some consider him a realist, others note the features of impressionism in his work. The story “The Gentleman from San Francisco” describes recognizable types. But the description itself, plot construction, image techniques, including including the use of symbolic images, indicate the features of impressionism.)
II. "Atlantis" is the main image-symbol of the story.
1.Atlantis is a model of the world. (Steamboat "Atlantis" is a multi-valued symbol. The very possibility of sailing on it is an indication of the social status and material possibilities of the main character. In addition, "Atlantis" is an image-symbol of the world, divided into poor and rich, as ship, where there is an upper deck, a lower deck, a hold. "A great many servants in the cooks, scullery, and wine cellars" serve those who managed to get settled on the upper deck of life. And although they do not see each other, do not enter into any relations, all float together "in the icy haze", "among a storm with sleet".)
2."Atlantis" is a symbol of a lost civilization, a symbol of illusory nature. (It is Atlantis that is called the disappeared civilization. Material evidence of its existence is sometimes given out by the ocean. But it is swallowed up by the abyss of the ocean.
The world of "Atlantis" is as fragile as the ghostly world of the real Atlantis. This is evidenced by the return of the hero in the hold of the same ship, in a box from under the water. The distance between decks is so small, and no one knows where he will be tomorrow.)
3. "In love" parana "Atlantis". (The pair of dancing young people on the Atlantis, who pretended to be in love, arousing the tenderness of the public, turned out to be just a couple of hired actors. They had played this role for a long time and were dead tired of each other. The reader will learn about this later. Thus, this "couple" also takes on the meaning of a symbol, it is a symbol of the deception, the illusory nature of the surrounding world.)
III. Gentleman from San Francisco. (No one remembered the name of the master, because it doesn’t matter. He himself is the embodiment of a certain attitude to life. He spent all the time allotted to him on earth to earn money. Did he live, did his relatives live? And that’s all for the sake of a cruise on the prestigious Atlantis. Thus, through the image of the main character, the author leads the reader to another meaning of Atlantis - this is a dream, the goal of life, which in fact turns out to be also an illusion.)
IV. Atlantis and time. (The general mood of the story is anxiety. Is it the death of a person? In part, Bunin, as it were, prepares the reader for a sad end. And yet this anxiety is born from a sense of the inexorable movement of time. Time judges. Time absorbs civilizations. Time counts the minutes of everyone's life. "Atlantis "It seems to float through time. Time is inevitable. "Atlantis" is a reminder to mankind of how illusory and fragile the world is, how insignificant a person is in this world, where he has so little time.)
"THEM,
I. A. Bunin is a realist writer. According to Bunin's stories, one can easily imagine the life of pre-revolutionary Russia in all its details: the estates of the nobility, the life and culture of the class carried away by time, the clay huts of the peasants and the greasy black soil on the roads. The writer seeks to comprehend the human soul, to see the "signs" of the Russian national character.
As a sensitive artist, Bunin feels the approach of great social catastrophes, and the catastrophic nature of life becomes the main theme of his stories in 1913-1914. How can a writer in prose convey his premonitions, sensations, depict what is visible only to the prophetic look of a thinker?
Realist writers often used symbolic images that expand the possibilities of a realistic depiction.
Thus, the steamship Atlantis becomes a symbol in the story "The Gentleman from San Francisco", written in 1915. On it, the hero of the story goes to the Old World to "reward himself for years of work." “There were many passengers, the steamer - the famous Atlantis - looked like a huge hotel with all the amenities - with a night bar, with oriental baths, with its own newspaper ...” Bunin’s “Atlantis” is not only a scene in the story. She is a model of the world in which the writer's characters and himself live. This is a model of the bourgeois world, divided into a snow-white deck and the underwater womb of a steamship like the ninth circle of hell,
with gigantic furnaces and sweat-drenched people. It is they who set this “floating world” in motion. “A great multitude of servants in the cooks’, scullery and wine cellars” ensures a calm and well-fed life for those who are upstairs, those who in the bar carelessly throw their legs on the armchairs, sip cognac and liquors, floating in waves of spicy smoke. The inhabitants of the "upper" and "lower" worlds of "Atlantis" do not see each other, do not enter into any relationship, but both float "in the icy haze", "in the midst of a storm with wet snow." And overboard, with a rumble and a roar, the ocean walks, and the steamer trembles, overcoming the black mountains of waves. How not to recall here the very name of the ship: Atlantis is an entire civilization that has disappeared into the abyss of the ocean.
But so far, only the prophet-writer can hear the disturbing rumble of the "ocean", the inexorable passage of time, approaching its "peak" hour.
In the story, time will stop for only one passenger - a gentleman from San Francisco, whose name no one remembers. But the reader is left with a sense of anxiety, a sense of the inevitability of terrible events, the death of the whole world with its established order.
Bunin, seeing around him an abundance of social evil, ignorance, cruelty, having witnessed the bloody massacre on the fields of the world war, with grief and fear expected the imminent collapse of the "great Russian power". This determined his attitude to the revolution and further thirty years of "self-exile".
But even after the revolution, after two world wars and after the death of the author himself, the “Atlantis” created by him reminds us of how illusory and fragile the world is, how small and sometimes helpless a person is in this world, where the ocean is constantly buzzing, raging and “calling from furious malice" siren "Atlantis".
