What did the heroine do on Clean Monday? The role of the mysterious Russian heroine I

Composition

Let us turn to “Clean Monday,” written on May 12, 1944, when Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was in exile. It was there, abroad, already in old age, that he created the cycle " Dark alleys", which includes the mentioned story. All the works in this collection are about love, therefore, main topic"Clean Monday" - love. This can be confirmed by the words of M. Roshchin: “Dark Alleys” are like a diary, they are so personal, in every “adventure” the author is visible. Love is most beautiful in its first, initial stage; what has been achieved turns out to be sad, mundane, perishable - death overtakes it almost instantly, in its very prime, and with the concentration of life that Bunin manages to create, love, along with life, is brought to cosmic density."

You can’t just talk about love, you need to think deeper about the name, understand why Bunin used these particular words. The dictionary explains Clean Monday as the first day of Lent, which comes after the riotous Maslenitsa. This interpretation also indicates a certain purification. From dusk to dawn.

Bunin's love stories have long become classics of the genre; in sterile Soviet times their discreet, but extremely intense eroticism turned the heads of many young ladies of both sexes. Meanwhile, if you think about it, Bunin’s stories are surprisingly monotonous in plot and composition. He (and occasionally she), encountering a sudden reminder of the past, begins to reopen a long-lingering wound, restoring in his memory all the details of his youthful happy (unhappy, failed) love. Emerging from the pool of memories, he (she) realizes that life has not been a success. That's all, actually. There are relatively few deviations from this scheme.

Heroes of the story" Clean Monday"are rich, and love arises between them. They relax, visit restaurants, theaters, that is, they have a good time...

At the very beginning of the work, the author uses words meaning dark shades eight times in describing a winter Moscow evening. Note that from the first lines I.A. Bunin prepares us for the tragedy of two loving people. But in describing the main character, the writer also continues to use the color black: “And she had some kind of Indian, Persian beauty: a dark-amber face, magnificent and somewhat ominous hair in its thick blackness, softly shining like black sable fur, eyebrows, eyes black as velvet coal; captivating mouth with velvety crimson lips was shaded with dark down.

Perhaps this description of the girl indicates her sinfulness. The features of her appearance are very similar to the features of some kind of devilish creature. The description of the clothes is similar to her appearance in terms of color scheme: “She stood straight and somewhat theatrically near the piano in a black velvet dress, making her thinner, shining with its elegance...” It is this description that makes us think of the main character as a mysterious creature , mysterious, devilish.

In the article by E.Yu. Poltavets and N.V. Nedzvitsky “The Cryptography of Love. The story of I. Bunin “Clean Monday” this assumption is confirmed: “The emphasized detail in the description of the rooms and outfit of the heroine contains motifs of a magical action: “the black devilish color of the dress and the ominous coal velvet of the eyes,” “shiny braids” and “powdered cheeks" - a hint of the magic ointment of witches, the sounds of the somnambulist-blissful "Moonlight Sonata" echoing in the apartment, an analogue of the moon hypnotizing the witch."

Also in the story the author uses Moonlight, the meaning of which is explained in the same article: “Moonlight is a sign of unhappy love. The moon illuminating lovers foreshadows separation or even death. But in the story “Clean Monday,” moonlight, of course, also symbolizes the devil’s temptation. The heroine takes part in Sabbath, and this is on Clean Monday, the day of fasting, repentance and atonement for sins! Truly against Christ the Savior!

The heroine thinks not only about entertainment, the thought of God, of the church slips into her head. It is not for nothing that Bunin mentions the Cathedrals of St. Basil and the Savior on Bor, the Novodevichy Convent, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. This detail in the text indicates the moral purity of the soul, speaking of the climax of the story, that is, the girl’s departure to the monastery.

The text traces the heroine’s vacillation between purification and the fall. We can see this in the description of lips and cheeks; "Black fluff above the lip and pink amber cheeks." At first it seems that the heroine is just thinking about joining a monastery, visits restaurants, drinks, smokes, but then abruptly changes her views and unexpectedly goes to serve God. The monastery is associated with spiritual purity, renunciation of the sinful world, the world of cruelty and immorality. It is known that White color symbolizes purity. Therefore, after the heroine leaves for the monastery, the writer gives preference to this particular color shade, indicating the purification and rebirth of the soul. In the last paragraph, the word “white” is used four times, indicating the idea of ​​the story, that is, the rebirth of the soul, the transition from sin, the blackness of life to spirituality, moral purity. This is how the movement from “black” to “white” is traced - from sin to purity.

Folklorists have long known that there are, in principle, very few stories in the world. No writer has yet received the honor of entering the history of world literature thanks to plot mastery and diversity alone. Bunin managed to create an image with an unexpected combination of words, silence, hint, to convey the atmosphere of instability, fragility and doom of feeling with the help of all the power accumulated over several centuries native language. It is not for nothing that Nabokov was so partial and unkind to his prose: Bunin came as close as possible to the plot into which the author of “Spring in Fialta” did not want to let anyone in.

Bunin's world in "Dark Alleys" is clearly divided into male and female. The male is imbued with deception, insincerity, hypocrisy, self-interest, weakness of will and cowardice. Female is full strong feelings, passions, devotion, naturalness. Only in a fairy tale are the main contradictions of Bunin’s world in the Hegelian sense “removed”: good fellow receives an undefiled bride, the vice is punished, and the villain also repents.

In the world that Bunin offers the reader as real, everything happens completely the opposite.

In the theme of love, Bunin reveals himself as a man of amazing talent, a subtle psychologist who knows how to convey the state of the soul wounded by love. The writer does not avoid complex, frank topics, depicting the most intimate human experiences in his stories. Over the centuries, many literary artists have dedicated their works to the great feeling of love, and each of them found something unique and individual about this theme. It seems to me that the peculiarity of Bunin the artist is that he considers love to be a tragedy, a catastrophe, madness, a great feeling, capable of both infinitely elevating and destroying a person.
Love is a mysterious element that transforms a person’s life, giving his destiny uniqueness against the background of ordinary everyday stories, filling his earthly existence with special meaning.

This mystery of existence becomes the theme of Bunin's story "The Grammar of Love" (1915). The hero of the work, a certain Ivlev, having stopped on the way to the house of the recently deceased landowner Khvoshchinsky, reflects on “an incomprehensible love that has turned an entire human life into some kind of ecstatic life, which, perhaps, should have been the most ordinary life,” if not for the strange charm of the maid Lushki. It seems to me that the mystery lies not in the appearance of Lushka, who “was not at all good-looking,” but in the character of the landowner himself, who idolized his beloved. "But what kind of person was this Khvoshchinsky? Crazy or just some kind of stunned soul, all focused on one thing?" According to neighboring landowners. Khvoshchinsky “was known in the district as a rare clever man. And suddenly this love, this Lushka, fell upon him, then her unexpected death - and everything went to dust: he shut himself up in the house, in the room where Lushka lived and died, and for more than twenty years sat on her bed. "What can you call this twenty-year seclusion? Insanity? For Bunin, the answer to this question is not at all clear.
The fate of Khvoshchinsky strangely fascinates and worries Ivlev. He understands that Lushka has entered his life forever, awakening in him “a complex feeling, similar to what he once experienced in an Italian town when looking at the relics of a saint.” What made Ivlev buy from Khvoshchinsky’s heir “at an expensive price” a small book “The Grammar of Love”, which the old landowner never parted with, cherishing memories of Lushka? Ivlev would like to understand what the life of a madman in love was filled with, what he ate long years his orphaned soul. And following the hero of the story, the “grandchildren and great-grandsons” who have heard “the voluptuous legend about the hearts of those who loved,” and along with them the reader of Bunin’s work, will try to reveal the secret of this inexplicable feeling.

An attempt to understand the nature of love feelings by the author in the story “Sunstroke” (1925). “A strange adventure” shakes the lieutenant’s soul. Having parted with a beautiful stranger, he cannot find peace. At the thought of the impossibility of meeting this woman again, “he felt such pain and the uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was overcome by horror and despair.” The author convinces the reader of the seriousness of the feelings experienced by the hero of the story. The lieutenant feels “terribly unhappy in this city.” "Where to go? What to do?" - he thinks lost. The depth of the hero’s spiritual insight is clearly expressed in the final phrase of the story: “The lieutenant was sitting under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older.” How to explain what happened to him? Maybe the hero came into contact with that great feeling that people call love, and the feeling of the impossibility of loss led him to realize the tragedy of existence?

Torment loving soul, the bitterness of loss, the sweet pain of memories - such unhealed wounds are left in the destinies of Bunin’s heroes by love, and time has no power over it.

The story "Dark Alleys" (1935) depicts a chance meeting of people who loved each other thirty years ago. The situation is quite ordinary: a young nobleman easily parted with the serf girl Nadezhda who was in love with him and married a woman of his circle. And Nadezhda, having received her freedom from the masters, became the mistress of an inn and never got married, had no family, no children, and did not know ordinary everyday happiness. “No matter how much time passed, I still lived alone,” she admits to Nikolai Alekseevich. “Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten. I could never forgive you. Just as I had nothing more precious than you in the world at that time, so it will be later.” did not have". She could not change herself, her feelings. And Nikolai Alekseevich realized that in Nadezhda he had lost “the most precious thing he had in life.” But this is a momentary epiphany. Leaving inn, he "remembered with shame his last words and that he kissed her hand, and was immediately ashamed of his shame." And yet it is difficult for him to imagine Nadezhda as his wife, the mistress of the Petegbug house, the mother of his children. This gentleman attaches too much great importance class prejudices in order to prefer genuine feelings to them. But he paid for his cowardice with a lack of personal happiness.
How differently the characters in the story interpret what happened to them! For Nikolai Alekseevich this is “a vulgar, ordinary story,” but for Nadezhda it is not dying memories, many years of devotion to love.

Yes, love has many faces and is often inexplicable. This is an eternal mystery, and every reader of Bunin’s works seeks his own answers, reflecting on the mysteries of love. The perception of this feeling is very personal, and therefore someone will relate to what is depicted in the book as " vulgar story", and someone will be shocked by the great gift of love, which, like the talent of a poet or musician, is not given to everyone. But one thing is certain: Bunin’s stories telling about the most intimate things will not leave readers of the late 20th century indifferent. Everyone young man will find in Bunin’s works something consonant with his own thoughts and experiences, will touch the great mystery of love. This is what makes the author of "Sunstroke" always modern writer, arousing deep reader interest.

The story was written in 1944. I. A. Bunin was 74 years old, the Second World War was raging in the world World War, the time of great trials continued for Russia, the fate of the nation and the country was being decided. It was at this time that the writer faced the most acute question about the origins and essence of the Russian national character, about the mystery of the Russian soul, about the secrets of national psychology - about everything that gave hope for salvation, instilled confidence in victory, in the power and triumph of the Russian spirit.

“It’s one o’clock in the morning. I got up from the table - I just had to finish writing a few lines of “Clean Monday”. I turned off the light, opened the window to ventilate the room - not the slightest movement of air; full moon, dim night, the whole valley in the thinnest fog, the soft freshness of young tree greenery, far on the horizon the vague pinkish shine of the sea, silence, here and there the clicking of the first nightingales. Lord, extend my strength for my lonely, poor life in this beauty and work! "

IN diary entry, left by I. Bunin on the night of May 8-9, 1944, everything: the tragedy of his later years of life, and the youthful freshness of the feeling of beauty, charm, and the delight of creativity that he preserved.

“Clean Monday” is one of the central stories in the book “Dark Alleys,” on which I. Bunin worked from 1937 to 1945. This book is the final book in the work of I. A. Bunin; it was as if she had absorbed everything he had written about while thinking about love earlier.

Love makes life Bunin's stories more significant. But not only because it fills her with joy and happiness, but, first of all, because of the inevitability of her own death, which gives tragic significance and value to her experiences.

The story “Clean Monday,” as many researchers rightly noted, stands apart in the “Dark Alleys” cycle, dedicated to love and passion that “incinerates the soul” of a person. In his mastery of everyday details and sensual descriptions of love, Bunin remains equally true to himself in all the stories of the cycle, but still something allows “Clean Monday” to stand out. “We immediately feel the hidden significance behind its simple plot,” wrote L. K. Dolgopolov about the story.

The content of the work, at first glance, does not give rise to such broad generalizations. It seems that Bunin’s story is only about love, or rather about the “oddities” of love. There are only two main characters in Clean Monday: he and she, both nameless. Moreover, the image of the hero, a man, is devoid of that psychological depth, those unique features that Bunin endows with a woman. All that is known about the hero is that he is rich, “handsome for some reason, southern, hot beauty, even “indecently handsome,” and most importantly, he is in love. It is love that motivates all his actions. Blinded by his love, the hero does not understand and does not try to understand what inner work takes place in the soul of his beloved: he “tried not to think, not to think about it.” (“It’s you who don’t know me,” the heroine remarks). But it is precisely falling in love that gives the hero exceptional acuteness of sensory perception, through the prism of which the portrait of the heroine is presented in the story.

She probably doesn’t even need a name, her spiritual appearance is so complex and elusive, she is a mystery, an enigma. He narrates and does it in the form of a story - a memory, therefore his anonymity is motivated. But both are “inscribed” in completely real time (the events take place in December 1911 - March 1912) and space (Russia of the 1910s) and are surrounded by real historical figures, contemporaries of Bunin, who became a kind of “symbols” of the era. Symbolist Andrei Bely is giving a lecture on the stage, the famous Kachalov calls the heroine “the Tsar Maiden,” and Sulerzhitsky, a famous theater figure, invites her to the floor.

System artistic images"centripetal". The heroine is at the center of the story, he is with her. She makes up the meaning of his life: “I was incredibly happy every hour I spent near her.” She is wiser: “Who knows what love is?” He is trying to unravel what is the secret of her feminine charm: appearance? gestures? demeanor? What is the source of her inner restlessness, her spiritual wandering? Socio-historical circumstances of life, moral and religious quests, or something else?

In the depiction of the heroine, the impressions characteristic of Bunin’s style are reflected in unity with the olfactory, and the recurring detail - velvet - is addressed to mysterious perception. Details of appearance that are repeated in portrait sketches, the epithets “black”, “velvet”, “amber” do not clarify the psychological state of the heroine; on the contrary, they emphasize her mystery. “She was mysterious, strange to me,” the hero admits. The heroine’s whole life is woven from inexplicable contradictions and tossing: “It looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no lunches, no theaters, no dinners outside the city,” the narrator notes, but then adds: “ Although he had favorite and least favorite flowers, she always read all the books, ate a whole box of chocolate a day, and ate as much as me at lunches and dinners.” She, it would seem, visits ancient temples, monasteries, restaurants and skits with equal interest, and most often he does not know where he will go next minute. So, after she visited the Rogozhsky cemetery, “for some reason they went to Ordynka, there she remembers the nearby Marfo-Mariinsky monastery, but suddenly goes to Egorov’s tavern, and after talking about monasticism, she unexpectedly goes to a skit party. How can we find an explanation for this? The story tells about her origin (her father, “an enlightened man of a noble merchant family, lived in retirement in Tver, collecting something, like all merchants”), about her current activities (“for some reason she was studying at courses” ). Moreover, Bunin, always so precise in details, uses vague adverbs in describing the heroine (for some reason there was a portrait of a barefoot Tolstoy hanging above her sofa).

Bunin does not try to give her actions the impression of logical motivation. Her entire existence is a continuous tossing between flesh and spirit, momentary and eternal. All her actions are spontaneous, irrational and at the same time as if planned. On the night of Clean Monday, she gives herself to the hero, knowing that the next morning she will go to the monastery, but whether this departure is final is also unclear.

Bunin’s “strange” heroine combines opposite principles, her soul is simply woven from contradictions. The habit of luxury social life gets along with an internal craving for something different, significant (passion for Russian history, etc.). Interest in Western European fashion writers is combined with a love for ancient Russian literature, which she knows well and quotes by heart: “I love Russian chronicles, I love Russian legends so much that I keep re-reading what I especially like until I know it by heart. “There was a city in the Russian land called Murom, and a noble prince named Paul reigned in it.” Behind the visible European gloss hides the original Russian (the spirit of antiquity lives in the heroine: with quiet delight she talks about Old Believer funerals, enjoys the sound Old Russian name). A sense of the originality and complexity of her spiritual life - casually thrown remarks, wise and original.

Refined experiences are incomprehensible to the narrator: she accepts his impudent caresses and refuses a serious conversation with him, the “Tsar-Maiden” of Moscow society is a regular at the Rogozh Old Believer Church, Novodevichy Convent, Cathedral of Christ the Savior. He is deprived of the ability to penetrate into the mystery of existence, he does not feel the metaphysical forces that control destinies. But the events of the story are given in double light. What the hero did not notice “then” is reproduced by the memory “now”. Bunin introduces ambiguous details into the narrative, hinting at what is about to happen, and prepares them. The hero, for example, does not think about the meaning of the phrase: “In any case, you are my first and last”; he does not attach importance to the heroine’s words: “No, I’m not fit to be a wife. I’m not suitable, I’m not suitable”; does not pay attention to the topic of monasticism appearing twice in one conversation; does not realize the prophetic meaning of the words of the old woman met in the Iveron Chapel: “Oh, don’t kill yourself, don’t kill yourself like that! Sin, sin!

But the soul of the heroine is in another life, and here she painfully seeks the meaning of existence, seeks justification for her earthly existence, seeks herself in this world and, not finding it, refuses it and leaves. And he remains. But memory, which erases entire months from consciousness (“so January and February passed, Maslenitsa came and went”) and even years (“almost two years have passed”), helpfully reproduces precisely these details, which are now perceived as signs of fate.

Is it possible to imagine the heroine in a situation of earthly happiness, a settled and measured life? She simply doesn’t look for it, because she realizes in advance the impossibility. “Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing,” she quotes Platon Karataev. Unlike Tolstoy’s heroes, whose life, despite all the delusions and mistakes, is nevertheless governed by the presence of a goal or moral and religious quest, Bunin’s heroine is at the mercy of irrational forces, the action of which defies logic and rational comprehension. She is one of those Russians in whom there lives a need for eternal spiritual purity, a thirst for faith and sacrificial deeds. It is no coincidence that the heroine’s decision to change her life comes precisely on Clean Monday, the first day of Lent.

“Clean Monday” stands out from the stories of the “Dark Alleys” series due to the special intellectuality of the characters and richness literary details. This gives some more generalized meaning, unlike other stories that contain allegory, even compared to such a psychological masterpiece as "Natalie". It seems that in “Natalie” Bunin achieved perfection in describing the feeling of love, and in “Clean Monday” he moved on to comprehend the history of mankind, the relationship between East and West through the “tormenting beauty of adoration” (“Natalie”).

The accuracy and abundance of details in the story are not just signs of the times or nostalgic admiration of Moscow forever lost for the author, but a consistently drawn contrast between the eastern and western features of the life and appearance of the heroine of the story and Moscow, and through the latter, all of Russia. In this regard, even detailed description dishes in the tavern become significant: Russian pagan Maslenitsa pancakes as the ancient cult food of sun worshipers (East) and Western champagne Granular caviar (by no means overseas), associated with ancient Russia or Siberia, and wines from Spanish cellars (sherry) Even writers and their heroes line up in similar opposition: on the one hand, L. Tolstoy with his Platon Karataev - the Russian of the Russians, Griboedov with his house on Ordynka (the very name of the street recalls the eastern conquest of Rus'), and on the other - the Austrians, Poles (Schnitzler, Przybyshevsky, etc. ). Even music! The “somnambulistically beautiful” beginning of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” which the heroine kept learning, and her passion church singing not even by notes, but by “hooks.” So, the combination of such different features of both Moscow and the heroine suggests a “symbolic allegory.” “The appearance of the heroine and the appearance of the country seem to be synthesized, almost merging, mutually explaining and complementing each other. A single symbol is formed, in which personal, individual, and “general” features, national and even more broadly, national-historical, are firmly fused.” This is how it deciphers mysterious text researcher of Bunin's creativity L.K. Dolgopolov. Then the drama of the heroine’s fate is the drama of the fate of Russia, which succumbed to the temptation of the West. sinned carnally (meaning the bloody events of the revolution and civil war) and distracted from “solving moral problems.” The monastery appears in the story, according to Dolgopolov, as “an antithesis, not directly shown, but foreshadowed by the revolution.” Indeed, after being seduced by Western revolutionary ideas, Russia must come to humility and repentance. It is the hero of the story, “some kind of Sicilian” in appearance (that is, still associated with the West, and not with the East), who appears as a seducer with all his humility and subordination to the whims of the heroine (Moscow-Russia). He loves to cheerfully exclaim “Ol right!”, and in the guise of Moscow and his beloved he feels especially keenly oriental features(Moscow, Astrakhan, Persia, India!”, “ Strange town"). One gets the impression that the hero, like Griboyedov’s Chatsky, either lived abroad for a long time, or is more connected biographically with St. Petersburg.

With this symbolic reading of the story, the rapprochement of the hero and heroine becomes an amazingly accurate and capacious image of the relations between the European West and Russia. What does the West think about Russia? We find in Bunin: “She was mysterious, incomprehensible to me. Our relationship was also strange - we were not yet very close; and all this endlessly kept me in unresolved tension.” The narrator, who is also the West, offers Russia his hand and heart, that is, complete fusion and cooperation, to which he receives the answer: “No, I’m not fit to be a wife, I’m not fit.” The West still agrees to wait - “what could I do but hope for time? But two centuries have passed since the rapprochement between Russia and Europe, begun by Peter the First. The theme of Ancient Rus' and its opposition to the era of Peter is heard in the story and in references to ancient Russian literature, and in the heroine’s story about the schismatic cemetery, and in her admiration for the heroic deacons (Peresvet and Oslyabya). Then the words of Platon Karataev, quoted by the heroine, addressed to Pierre, are the key to unraveling the hero’s name: he is apparently Peter (an allusion to Peter the First and the rapprochement of Russia with the West). It is not for nothing that the hero, in response to the heroine’s words about happiness, bursts out with a characteristic remark: “Oh, God be with her, with this eastern wisdom!” Karataev’s passivity and contemplation, non-resistance are, from the narrator’s point of view, purely oriental traits.

However, not only a hint of eastern passivity, almost foolishness, is contained in Bunin’s mention of the portrait of the barefoot Tolstoy and Platon Karataev. This can also mean the Buddhist renunciation of desires, the desire for nirvana and the dissolution of the individual in the world. And the main obstacle to improvement is earthly attachment to a woman. Napoleon is shown in War and Peace as the West enjoying its power over the eastern, feminine Moscow. Moscow is the object of desire of Napoleon the conqueror. Thus, Bunin develops and continues the comparison of Tolstoy as an allegory that reveals the relationship of Russia (and above all the beautiful Moscow) with the West - the conqueror - the enemy - the groom. Hopelessly in love with an incomprehensible neighbor - a beauty and a smart girl - the West, since Peter's reforms, has cherished hopes, if not for reciprocity, then at least for the creation of a lasting marriage-cooperation, but every time receives the answer: “No, I’m not fit to be a wife, I’m not fit " There were other relationships: violence (wars and intervention) from the West, due rebuff that Russia gave. But the worst thing, according to Bunin, is temptation. The temptation of fame, brilliance, rationalism, pride.

It is on the topic of temptation that I would like to dwell in more detail. It remains not entirely clear why Bunin chooses to tell the story about the fate of Russia love story. Of course, it is important that it is love (and especially happy love) that makes a person think more deeply about life in general. Other stories, with the exception of “Rus”, do not carry such a symbolic load.

Vladislav Khodasevich noted that “the path to Bunin’s philosophy lies through his philology.” Indeed, Bunin in his stories creates a generalized picture of the world, never resorting to scientific abstractions; the very artistic fabric of the work reveals it philosophical concept. In the very first sentence of the story, a multi-layered opposition is given: “the day was getting dark” - “the shop windows were illuminated”, “cold” - “warm”, “cheerful” - “heavier”. At the same time, the rhythm of the phrase, built on syntactic parallelism, and skillful alliteration (“earthly stars fell with a hiss”) help to depict the picture. The world in Bunin's stories is internally contradictory and at the same time harmonious. It is no coincidence that the human condition is most often depicted by Bunin using an antithesis or oxymoron: “in ecstatic despair”, “the same torment and the same happiness”, “somnambulistically blissful sadness”, “beauty and horror”. “The polar states of the world and the human soul reflected in these oxymorons,” notes researcher O. V. Slivitskaya, “are not in conflict with each other. If Bunin writes, for example, “sorrowfully - happy Days“This means one inseparable feeling, in which, however, both bitterness and sweetness not only do not lose, but also mutually enhance their taste.”

Perhaps this “contradictory unity” is the most important mystery, embodied in the heroine of the work - at the same time sublime and sensual, amazingly beautiful and inexplicable. Love is like highest manifestation human essence extremely aggravates a person’s feelings, therefore in Bunin’s stories it is always “happiness and torment.” The moment of the highest harmony of contradictory principles is incompatible with the state of earthly bliss, which is why love in Bunin’s stories turns into a disaster. But Bunin’s sensual love, like death, serves as a bridge to other worlds. The heroine, having sacrificed herself to the hero, giving him a moment of pleasure, dies to earthly, carnal life and goes into the world of pure spirit.

Two years later, on the same evening, he will repeat the route of that long-ago trip (Ordynka, Griboyedovsky Lane) and “for some reason” he will want to go to the Church of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. Perhaps unknown forces are leading him towards his beloved, or perhaps in his soul there arises an as yet unconscious desire for that spiritual world, into which she goes. Anyway, last meeting does not evoke in him a desire to return what was lost, does not awaken former passions, but ends with his humble departure.

But the conflict in the souls of the heroes remains unresolved. The future of the heroes is still unclear. The uncertainty is already felt in the fact that, while depicting the hero’s arrival at the church, the writer does not directly indicate anywhere that the nun he meets is his former lover. Only one detail - dark eyes - resembles the appearance of the heroine. But in these eyes there is still the same mystery, perhaps the same unextinguished passion. It is also noteworthy that the heroine goes to the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. This monastery is not a monastery, but the Church of the Intercession of Our Lady on Ordynka, which had a community of secular ladies who took care of the orphans who lived at the church and those wounded in the First World War.

The past in the story is presented with maximum clarity; the ancient churches and monasteries exude enlightenment and peace; the present, on the contrary, is vague, filled with some kind of fussy flickering of faces, creating a feeling of the immediacy of everything that is happening. As for the future, it is absolutely unclear to the heroes, since man, according to Bunin, has no control over his destiny.

Motives of Bryusov's novel " Fire Angel" are found in the story. The plot of the novel, which Bunin’s heroine was “ashamed to read,” is as follows. The heroine of Bryusov's story, Renata, from time to time appears to a fiery angel, causing her to fall into prayerful ecstasy, giving her the gift of healing and even predicting that she will be a saint. When the girl confessed to the beautiful angel that she loved him as a person, he left her indignantly, promising, however, to return to human form. After some time, Renata meets a young handsome count, whose name is Heinrich. The Count outwardly resembles a fiery angel, but assures that this is the first time he has heard about some kind of angel. After two years of heavenly happiness with Renata, the count completely unexpectedly left his beloved - he simply disappeared from his castle. Since then, Renata has been looking for him everywhere, indulging either in frantic prayers or practicing black magic. Renata's story ends with her death from the torture of the inquisitors, and Renata appears at the end of the novel as a nun who took monastic vows under the name of Sister Mary in the monastery where Martha is the abbess. It also turns out to be a kind of Marfo-Mariinsky monastery. It is precisely the contradictory combination of the features of the evangelical economic Martha with the features of the spiritualized Mary that we find in both (Bunin’s and Bryusov’s) heroines. Both bizarrely combine asceticism, craving for luxury, selfishness and selflessness, love of life and concentration on thoughts of death, sinfulness and righteousness. A common feature They also have a passion for ancient books, reading hagiographic literature and a penchant for quoting passages. Renata, like Bunin’s heroine, restrains the love impulses of her devoted knight (in Bryusov’s novel, the real medieval knight Ruprecht, who accompanies her all the time, is in love with Renata). Then, after a brief love affair, Renata suddenly leaves Ruprecht. This whole plot seems to emerge through the episodes of Bunin’s story. In the novel “Fire Angel,” Ruprecht, having lost Renata, takes an oath that he will no longer try to “cross the sacred line that separates our world from the dark region where spirits and demons hover,” that is, he renounces the temptation of love and black magic. The motif of light and darkness, dark and light areas completes Bunin’s story. From the illuminated space of the church, the heroine directs her gaze into the darkness where the hero remains.

So, the plot of “Fire Angel” is a prediction difficult fate heroes of "Clean Monday". Perhaps the fatal decision of Bunin’s heroine arose in her on a subconscious level even when she “watched” her fate to the end in Bryusov’s novel, which is why she was “ashamed to read.” After all, in Bryusov’s novel she saw something that she would like to hide from herself.

Another model of the heroine’s fate is both contrasting and surprisingly consonant with the first. This is “The Tale of Peter and Fevronia,” written in the 16th century by the ancient Russian writer Ermolai-Erasmus. Researchers call the heroes of the story Russian Tristan and Isolde. This is truly a hymn of love and fidelity, which after the first reading is remembered for the rest of your life precisely as a model by which to build your life. Bunin's heroine claims to have memorized the story and quotes the passage about the "flying snake" and the touching ending about the simultaneous death of the prince and princess. However, the heroine (most likely deliberately) retells the story completely incorrectly. The flying kite that flew to Prince Paul's wife was killed by his brother Peter. Only he could cope with the snake, since the snake was predicted that his death would come “from Peter’s shoulder, from Agrikov’s sword.” The story is called “The Tale of Peter and Fevronia”, because it further tells that Peter, who was cruelly injured in a duel with a snake, could only be healed by the wise maiden Fevronia, whom he married and with whom he lived a life full of difficult trials. It was Peter and Fevronia who remained faithful to each other in death; they died on the same day and miraculously found themselves buried in the same coffin, although their evil homeowners buried them on different cemeteries. Bunin's heroine retells the story in her own way, emphasizing in it the motive of devilish temptation, on the one hand, and fidelity to her lover, a blessed death, on the other.

Thus, temptation, and then repentance and monastic seclusion become some kind of obsession of the heroine. She is implementing this idea. At first, quite in the spirit of demonic revelry, he gives himself over to the narrator, like “a serpent in human nature, extremely beautiful,” and then goes to the monastery. It seems that this is the implementation of a pre-thought-out model of behavior, largely read from a medieval story and a modern novel, presented in the form of a manuscript of a warlock knight (in Bryusov’s novel the narrator is the knight Ruprecht). This is what the author suggests by introducing into the story the mention of the “Fire Angel” and the Old Russian story as text signals.

What is love? Serving an angel or a demon? Maybe in love there should be some kind of balance between the spiritual and the physical, but how and when? The thoughtful Bunin heroine “mentally delved into all this,” looking questioningly ahead. She tried to explain all this to the hero, quoting the lives of saints and stories about temptation. Perhaps Tolstoy’s Platon Karataev is for her not only a preacher of Eastern fatalism, but also a new symbol of Platonic wisdom and even platonic love? In a word, the heroine rejects the happiness of love, exclusively carnal, in the spirit of the “exceedingly beautiful serpent,” because she is not able to be both a harlot and a nun.

The book “Dark Alleys” is the clearest proof of this.

Handing over this book to journalist Andrei Serykh for publication in the USA, I. A. Bunin said:

This is a book about love with some bold parts. In general, she talks about the tragic and many tender and beautiful things. I think this is the best and most original thing I have written in my life.

And the title of the story is, of course, symbolic. The central events of the story take place on Forgiveness Sunday and Clean Monday. On Forgiveness Sunday, people ask for forgiveness and forgive insults and injustices; For the heroine, this is not only a day of forgiveness, but also a day of farewell to worldly life, where she could not find the highest meaning, the highest harmony. On Clean Monday, the first day of fasting, a person begins to cleanse himself of filth; the joy of Maslenitsa is replaced by self-absorption and introspection. The very title of the story evokes the category of a threshold, a certain border beyond which new life: Clean Monday is the beginning of the spring renewal of the world. This day became a turning point in the lives of the heroes. Having given her lover a moment of carnal love, the heroine opened the way to other worlds for him. Having gone through the suffering associated with the loss of his beloved, the hero begins to experience the influence of those forces that he did not notice behind his love.

I. A. Bunin hopes that such a Clean Monday will come for all of Russia and that his suffering Motherland, having cleansed itself and repented, will enter into a different existence: “I thank God that he gave me the opportunity to write “Clean Monday,” said the writer, finishing work on the story.

The story “Clean Monday” is part of the “Dark Alleys” series. This is a story about love, only about strange love, which the heroine refuses. Bunin here is not only trying to unravel great secret love, but also to tell about the secret human destiny, about the complex nature of the Russian national character, about the spirit of Russian history itself, about faith in God and the incomprehensibility of the paths to him. The title of the story suggests that the events described take place on the eve of the most important Orthodox holiday, Clean Monday, which comes after Forgiveness Sunday and is the first day of Lent and the end of Maslenitsa. The title of the story is symbolic. Thus, the author emphasizes the sharp change in the heroine’s fate: the transition from a secular, worldly life to a life associated with the Marfo-Mariinsky monastery.

The narration is given in the form of a story from the perspective of the main character. It is interesting to note that again the main characters are not named; the author calls them “he” and “she”. This is necessary in order to show that the feelings experienced by the heroes are quite typical, experienced by many people and thus serve as a sign of a huge generalizing, universal meaning. The landscape described at the beginning of the story “Clean Monday” already prepares us for the perception of some event, joyful and special.

The center of the composition of the work is the heroine, she. Main character talks in detail about how they met by chance in December, at a lecture by Andrei Bely. She is rich, the daughter of an enlightened man of a noble merchant family, lives alone in well-furnished, spacious rooms with elegant flowers, an expensive piano, and a Turkish sofa. There is something dual in her nature: on the one hand, luxury, the symbols of which in the story are a garnet-colored velvet dress, a Turkish sofa, mahogany furniture, on the other, a clear interest in an ascetic life (a portrait of a barefoot Leo Tolstoy on the wall) . Her daily life takes place in a series of social entertainments and pleasures. However, the narrator notices that she doesn’t seem to need all this. The main character unexpectedly notices her interest in Russian history and knowledge (for some reason she was taking courses).

Hero of Clean Monday. - an open, kind, but frankly frivolous person, subject to the power of chance. He is unable to understand his girlfriend. ‘The refined skill of the writer was reflected here in the fact that in the language of an ordinary person he was able to express all the complex, serious, contradictory nature of the heroine. It is thanks to the story of an ordinary hero about extraordinary personality we feel the amazing exclusivity of this female character.

The heroine combines the seemingly incompatible: keen interest to modern life in Moscow (here are the skits Art Theater, and concerts of Chaliapin; and numerous restaurants) and at the same time an active rejection of this life; reading the most modern books and a deep interest in ancient Russian history, familiarity with church rituals. Here the writer reflects not just on the character of the heroine, but on the Russian one. national character in general, in which, as in the architecture of the Moscow Kremlin, Russian cathedrals built by Italian masters coexist; Western and Eastern features are combined, the memory of many Generations lives on. Particularly bright oriental is highlighted by Bunin in the portrait of the heroine, in the image of her unique beauty: “And she had some kind of Indian, Persian beauty...”

She goes to the Rogozhskoe (Old Believer) cemetery where the flavor of pre-Petrine Rus' is so strong, to the Kremlin cathedrals, to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, reads ancient Russian monuments literature. Thus, by the will of the author, the image of the heroine of the story is connected with something fundamental - with the soul of Russia, with its history.

The climax of the story - the heroine's only closeness with her beloved - occurs on the last night of Maslenitsa, and the decision to change her life and enter a monastery falls on Clean Monday. The denouement is the epilogue, when the hero remembers what happened two years later. And on a quiet, sunny evening like that unforgettable one, he took a cab and went to the Martha and Mary Convent, where by chance he recognized his own in one of the nuns. last love: and then one of those walking in the middle suddenly raised her head, covered with a white scarf, blocking the candle with her hand, and fixed her eyes on the darkness, as if right at me. What could she See in the dark, how could she feel my presence?

In this story, Bunin’s thought about the subconscious or conscious, but Hidden CONNECTIONS of each person with the past, the idea that in every person the memory of centuries is alive, the memory of generations, which moves, along with
the influence of modernity, his bad and good deeds, determines his complex emotions, motivations, inclinations, memory. It is with this yardstick of the great historical past that the heroine measures modern life, precisely from a moral standpoint,
developed over centuries in Russian people, the author approaches the love of his heroes.

"Clean Monday" was written on May 12, 1944, when Bunin was in exile in France. It was there, already in old age, that he created the cycle “Dark Alleys,” which includes the story.

"Clean Monday" I.A. Bunin considered one of best stories: "I thank God for giving me the opportunity to write Clean Monday."

The dictionary explains Clean Monday as the first day of Lent, which comes after the riotous Maslenitsa and Forgiveness Sunday. Based on the adjective “pure,” it can be assumed that the story is about cleansing, perhaps from sin, or about the cleansing of the soul.

Composition

2. Climax: Clean Monday (the first day of Lent), love union on the first day of Lent - a great sin (motive of sin), the meaning of the title.

3. Time:

– focus on the future (“change”, “hope for time”);

– repetition (“all the same”, “and again”);

– past (“like then”, “like that one”) and “proto-memory”:

" What an ancient sound, something tin and cast iron. And just like that, with the same sound, three o’clock in the morning struck in the fifteenth century "

– incompleteness (only the beginning of the “Moonlight Sonata”),

– originality, novelty (new flowers, new books, new clothes).

Main motives

– darkness and light (twilight, evening; cathedral, cemetery – light); frost and warmth:

“The Moscow gray winter day was darkening, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the store windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening life of Moscow, freed from daytime affairs, flared up...”

2. Theme of fire, heat – h u v s t v o (“hot dope”):

– the meaning of sensual, physical;

– he is the embodiment of the sensory world; excessive expression of feelings is a sin ( "Oh, don't kill yourself, don't kill yourself like that! Sin, sin!");

– love: torment and happiness, beauty and horror: "Still the same torment and the same happiness...";

– transience of love (deception: Karataev’s words); impossibility of marriage.

3. Physical world :

– wealth, youth;

4. Moscow realities:

– the unification of the West and the East (southern, eastern in the heroes; South and East are equated: "...something Kyrgyz in the tips of the towers on Kremlin walls" , about the striking of the clock on the Spasskaya Tower: “And in Florence there is exactly the same battle, it reminds me of Moscow there...”, “Moscow, Astrakhan, Persia, India!”);

– realities of that time: “cabbage makers”, Andrei Bely, modern literature, etc.;

– movement – ​​taverns and “cabbage shops”: “flying”, “and swinging sleigh”; cemetery, Ordynka - calm, leisurely: “entered”, “walked”, “But not too much”;

– he is in a hurry, she is leisurely.

5. The unattractiveness of the surrounding world:

– theatricality, affectation;

– the vulgarity of the world (literature: the opposition of “new books” to Tolstoy, Karataev – “eastern wisdom”, the predominance of the West: “All Right”, “yellow-haired Rus'”, “a nasty mixture of leafy Russian style and the Art Theater”);

– impending historical tragedy, motive of death: “brick and bloody walls of the monastery”, “luminous skull”.

6. The main characters of the story:

– lack of names (typing);

– Beloved in “Clean Monday” - absolutely different people .

HE: despite his attractiveness and education, he is an ordinary person, not distinguished by any special strength of character.

SHE: the heroine is nameless. Bunin calls the heroine - she.

a) mystery, mystery;

b) desire for solitude;

c) a question to the world, surprise: “why”, “I don’t understand”, “she looked questioningly”, “who knows”, “bewilderment”; final – gaining knowledge (knowledge = feeling): “see in the dark”, “feel”;

d) strangeness "odd love";

d) she seems to be from another world: he doesn’t understand her, he’s a stranger to her (she talks about him in the third person, love intimacy is a sacrifice, she doesn’t need it: “It looked like she didn’t need anything.”);

f) a feeling of the homeland, its antiquity; Rus' survived only in life; leaving for a monastery meant a transition to the outside world.

“I kept thinking about something, I always seemed to be delving into something mentally; lying on the sofa with a book in my hands, I often lowered it and looked questioningly in front of me.”

This is an integral, rare “chosen” nature. And she is concerned about serious moral questions, the problem of choosing her future life. She renounces worldly life, entertainment, social society and, most importantly, her love, and goes to the monastery on “Clean Monday”.

She walked towards her goal for a very long time. Only in contact with the eternal, spiritual did she feel in her place. It may seem strange that she combined these activities with going to theaters, restaurants, reading fashionable books, and communicating with bohemian society. This can be explained by her youth, which is characterized by the search for herself, her place in life. Her consciousness is torn, the harmony of her soul is disrupted. She is intensely looking for something of her own, whole, heroic, selfless, and finds her ideal in serving God. The present seems to her pitiful, untenable, and even love for young man cannot keep her in worldly life.

In the last days of her worldly life, she drank her cup to the bottom, forgave everyone on Forgiveness Sunday and cleansed herself of the ashes of this life on “Clean Monday”: she went to a monastery. "No, I'm not fit to be a wife". She knew from the very beginning that she could not be a wife. She is destined to be an eternal bride, the bride of Christ. She found her love, she chose her path. You might think that she left home, but in fact she went home. And even her earthly lover forgave her for this. I forgave, although I did not understand. He couldn't understand what now "she can see in the dark", And "came out of the gate" someone else's monastery.

The hero wanted her bodily female beauty. His gaze captured her lips, “dark fluff above them”, “a body amazing in its smoothness”. But her thoughts and feelings were inaccessible to him. Incomprehensible to her lover, incomprehensible to herself, she “for some reason I took a course”. “Do we understand anything in our actions? - she said. She liked"the smell of winter air""inexplicably"; for some reason she was learning“the slow, somnambulist-beautiful beginning of the “Moonlight Sonata” - only one beginning...”

In the text, everything takes on a certain symbolic meaning. So, Beethoven’s “ Moonlight Sonata" She symbolizes the beginning of a different path for the heroine, a different path for Russia; something that is not yet conscious, but what the soul strives for, and the sound of a “sublimely prayerful, imbued with deep lyricism” of the work fills Bunin’s text with a premonition of this.

8. Color:

– red, purple and gold (her dress, evening dawn, domes);

– black and white (twilight, night, lights, lamps, white clothes of the singers, her black clothes);

The story traces transition from dark to light tones. At the very beginning of the work, the author uses words meaning dark shades eight times in describing a winter Moscow evening. From the first lines, I.A. Bunin prepares us for the tragedy of two loving people. But in describing the main character, the writer also continues to use the color black:

“And she had some kind of Indian, Persian beauty: a dark-amber face, magnificent and somewhat ominous hair in its thick blackness, eyebrows softly shining like black sable fur, eyes black like velvet coal; captivating with velvety crimson lips the mouth was shaded with dark fluff..."

The text traces the heroine’s vacillation between purification and the fall. We can see this in the description of lips and cheeks: "Black fluff above the lip and pink amber cheeks". At first it seems that the heroine is just thinking about joining a monastery, visits restaurants, drinks, smokes, but then abruptly changes her views and unexpectedly goes to serve God. The monastery is associated with spiritual purity, renunciation of the sinful world, the world of immorality. It is known that white color symbolizes purity. Therefore, after the heroine leaves for the monastery, the writer gives preference to this particular color shade, indicating the purification and rebirth of the soul. In the last paragraph, the word “white” is used four times, indicating the idea of ​​the story, that is, the rebirth of the soul, the transition from sin, the blackness of life to spiritual, moral purity. The movement from “black” to “white” is a movement from sin to purity.

I.A. Bunin color shades conveys the concept, the idea of ​​the story. Using light and dark shades, their alternation and combination, the writer depicts the rebirth of the soul of the main character of "Clean Monday".

9. Final:

– letter – destruction of hopes ( traditional motif);

- predestination, fate ( "for some reason I wanted to");

– I. Turgenev, “The Noble Nest.”

CONCLUSIONS:

Like most of Bunin’s works, “Clean Monday” is the author’s attempt to describe and convey to the reader his understanding of love. For Bunin, any true, sincere love is great happiness, even if it ends in death or separation.

But the story “Clean Monday” is not only a story about love, but also about morality, necessity life choice, honesty with yourself. Bunin portrays young people as beautiful, self-confident: “We were both rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants and at concerts people looked at us.” However, the author emphasizes that material and physical well-being is by no means a guarantee of happiness. Happiness is in a person’s soul, in his self-awareness and attitude. “Our happiness, my friend,” the heroine quotes Platon Karataev’s words, “is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing.”

The narration in the story, for all its apparent emphasis on objectivity, materiality, and objective perception, is still not hero-centric. The author in “Clean Monday”, as a bearer of culture, through the cultural and verbal existence of the hero-storyteller orients the reader to his own worldview, which is “nuanced” by the hero’s monologues and inner speech. Therefore, it is often it is difficult to isolate where the hero’s speech is and where the author’s, as, for example, in this reflection of the hero, which can equally be attributed to the author:

“Strange city! - I said to myself, thinking about Okhotny Ryad, about Iverskaya, about St. Basil the Blessed. – “Basily the Blessed and Spas-on-Boru, Italian cathedrals – and something Kyrgyz in the tips of the towers on the Kremlin walls...”

In his story Clean Monday, Bunin writes about the relationship between two young people, rich and beautiful. Even now we can imagine approximately what such people are like. After all, social communication still exists today, although entertainment has become a little different.

Perhaps, these days, the hero could be some kind of creator of a profitable startup from the family of an official. Although such details are not significant, and the author himself does not concentrate attention on this, he mostly draws out the characters. They are specific and not even personalities, because the main characters are given without names.

He is just him, a kind of “Sicilian,” as another character describes him, pointing to his characteristic southern appearance and inherent activity. Bunin really builds some contrast between the main characters and indicates the main character with warm tones, southern accents, makes him mobile and active. The heroine, in turn, is calmer and in many ways the opposite; if he talks a lot, then she is silent, he is active, she is calm.

In addition, the author points out quite significant detail. The hero achieves his chosen one, who does not allow him to get closer, so to speak, to the fullest. Perhaps in some ways this impatience is decisive for his behavior, and at the same time he always doubts the love of the main character and doubts whether such a relationship is love at all.

It seems to me that he is somehow youthfully stupid and impatient, and this fact can be seen in the story. He measures love through physical intimacy, wants to assent when the heroine talks about the monastery, but absolutely does not understand the seriousness of her intentions. Moreover, more often than not he considers the heroine simpler than himself, but the heroine is simply not particularly proud and boasts of her own education and religiosity.

Did he have real feelings? Probably there were, but not as deep as the heroine had. Still, for the most part, he is obsessed with passion and emotions, wants bodily reciprocity, shows his attitude purely externally, but forgets about the internal.

However, this hero should not belittled, since he is still very cultured and interesting. It’s just that his character is different from the character of the heroine and, in fact, they complement each other. In his composition, Bunin, through his characters, draws out something like lunar-solar symbolism or generalized symbolism of male and female.

Several interesting essays

• Levontius in the story The Horse with a Pink Mane Astafiev's image, characterization, essay

  Uncle Levontiy is a minor character in the story, the father of Vitya’s friends. Arriving from another place in the village, he, an experienced sailor, works at logging: he saws, chops and delivers it to a factory near the village.

• Characteristics and image of Anna Odintsova in the novel Fathers and Sons essay

  Anna Sergeevna Odintsova, wife of the wealthy elderly landowner Odintsov. She got married quite early in order to free herself from the snares of poverty. Soon Anna became a widow and took possession of the wealth of her deceased husband.

• Genre of the poem The Bronze Horseman by Pushkin, features and originality of style

  IN general literature a work by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin called “ Bronze Horseman"is considered to be a poem. But many many writers disagree.

• Essay Description Paintings Alexander Nevsky Korina

  Before us is a painting by the artist Pavel Korin entitled Alexander Nevsky. The painting depicts Prince Alexander Nevsky. He left a big mark on the history of medieval Rus'

• Analysis of the fairy tale Wild Landowner by Saltykov-Shchedrin essay

  This one lives fairy tale character on everything ready, proud of himself and indulging his own whims. Only he has no idea what a blissful existence consists of. Peasants to whom I actually owe everything