Ivan Shmelev - biography, information, personal life. Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev What is the most important thing in the work of a writer?

Belova Polina

V Cyril and Methodius Readings Section “Language of National Culture”.

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V Cyril and Methodius readings

Section “Language of National Culture”.

The artistic originality of I.S. Shmelev’s story “The Summer of the Lord.”

Abstract prepared by:

9b grade student

Belova Polina

GBOU secondary school s. Krasnoarmeyskoe

Krasnoarmeysky district

Samara region

Scientific adviser:

Zhdanova O.A.,

teacher of Russian language and literature,

GBOU secondary school s. Krasnoarmeyskoe

With. Krasnoarmeyskoye, 2013

I. Introduction. Justification of the topic. Objectives and ways of researching the problem………………………………………………………………………. 3

II. Life and work of I.S. Shmelev………………………………………… 4-5

Sh. Artistic originality of I.S. Shmelev’s story “The Summer of the Lord”… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………6-9

1. Problematics of the story.

2. Genre and composition of the story.

3. Style of I.S. Shmelev

IV. Conclusion. Conclusions………………………………………………………10

V. References……………………………………………………….11

I. Introduction. Justification of the topic. Objectives and ways to study the problem.

Russian literature is our great spiritual heritage, our national pride. After the October Revolution, many poets and writers were not published and were persecuted. Many of them emigrated from the country. One of these writers is Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev, a prose writer who masterfully masters the riches of folk speech, continuing the traditions of Dostoevsky and Lesky.

A special place in the work of I.S. Shmelev is occupied by the story “The Summer of the Lord” (1927-1948), “a reverent and prayerful book, singing and fragrant” . This work not only sheds light on the theme of childhood in a new way, but also opens up new narrative forms for this genre.

The purpose of my work is to draw attention to the work of I.S. Shmelev, to interest him in his work, to convince others that “Shmelev... is the last... of Russian writers from whom you can still learn the wealth, power and freedom of the Russian language” (A.I. .Kuprin).

The task of my work is to consider the originality of I.S. Shmelev’s story “The Summer of the Lord.”

I see the relevance of my work in the fact that in the work of I.S. Shmelev

“The Summer of the Lord” reveals the spiritual life of the individual in its inextricable connection with the fate of Russia, poetically describes folk culture, and reveals the riches of the Russian language.

The research method is descriptive, partially exploratory.

The material for the study was collected from publications:

1.Ivan Shmelev “The Summer of the Lord”, Moscow, “Children’s Literature”, 1997.

II. Life and work of I.S. Shmelev

A Muscovite, coming from a commercial and industrial environment, he knew this city perfectly and loved it - tenderly, devotedly, passionately. It was the earliest impressions of childhood that forever sown in his soul the March drops, Palm Week, “standing” in the church, and the journey through old Moscow.

Moscow lived for Shmelev a living and original life, which to this day reminds of itself in the names of streets and alleys, squares, driveways, embankments, and dead ends. But Moscow remained closest to Shmelev in that triangle called Zamoskvorechye, where the merchants, philistines and many factory workers lived. The most poetic books are “Pilgrim” (1931) and “The Summer of the Lord” - about Moscow, about Zamoskvorechye.

His father occupies a special place in his childhood impressions and in Shmelev’s grateful memory. Sergei Ivanovich, to whom the writer dedicates the most heartfelt poetic lines. Shmelev mentions his own mother in autobiographical books occasionally and as if reluctantly. Only in reflection, from other sources, do we learn about the drama associated with it, about childhood suffering that left an unhealed wound in the soul.

The February 1917 revolution was greeted by Shmelev with enthusiasm, but after the events of October his attitude towards the new government became deeply critical. In the fall of 1918, he left for Alushta, where he had a small estate. There Shmelev survived all the horrors of the Civil War, which ended for him with the arrest and execution of his only son, a white officer who became a victim of extrajudicial executions. The events of this time were reflected in the story “The Sun of the Dead” (1923), written on autobiographical material.

The writer had a hard time experiencing the tragic events associated with the revolution and military events, and upon arriving in Moscow, he seriously thought about emigrating. In January 1923, Shmelev finally left Russia for Paris, where he lived for 27 years.

Ivan Sergeevich learned with pain about the destruction of Moscow shrines, about the renaming of Moscow streets and squares. But all the more vividly and carefully did he strive to preserve in his works what he remembered and loved more than anything in the world. With this he accomplished a literary and human feat.

Despite all the hardships, the emigrant life of the Shmelevs in Paris still resembled the life of old Russia with the annual cycle of Orthodox holidays, with many fasts, rituals, with all the beauty and harmony of the way of Russian life.

When the Nazis bombed Paris at the end of World War II, four bombs fell at once near Shmelev’s house, turning two buildings opposite into ruins.

Ivan Sergeevich usually got up early, but that morning he lay in bed due to illness. This saved his life. The glass in the windows was shattered. Sharp fragments riddled the back of his work chair. Empty frames slammed, the wind blew from corner to corner.

Suddenly a small piece of paper flew into the disfigured room and, circling slightly over the desk, landed right under Ivan Sergeevich’s feet. He picked up the picture. It was a reproduction of “Our Lady with Jesus” by the Italian artist Baldovinetti. How did she get here?

Apparently, the Queen of Heaven wanted to save the life of a sick and lonely Russian writer - an emigrant.

The next day, Shmelev served a thanksgiving prayer service in the Sergievsky courtyard.

In order to more fully penetrate the atmosphere of monastic life, Ivan Sergeevich moved to the monastery of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos, 140 kilometers from Paris. On the same day, a heart attack ended his life.

The nun Mother Theodosia, who was present at the death of the writer, said:

“The mysticism of this death struck me - a man came to die at the feet of the Queen of Heaven under her protection.”

Shmelev passionately dreamed of returning to Russia, at least posthumously. This happened on May 30, 2000, when the ashes of Ivan Sergeevich and Olga Aleksandrovna Shmelev, on the initiative of the Russian public and with the assistance of the Russian Government, were transferred from France to the necropolis of the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow.

III. The artistic originality of I.S. Shmelev’s story “The Summer of the Lord.”

1. Problematics of the story.

The main theme of the novel “The Summer of the Lord” is the theme of historical and tribal memory. Shmelev believed that the world would be unshakable as long as people remember the past and build the present according to its laws. This makes the world spiritualized, “deified,” and therefore meaningful. Compliance with the ancient order helps a person to be moral. With this understanding, daily activities turn into a ritual full of meaning.

“The Summer of the Lord” is a kind of encyclopedia of customs associated with church and folk holidays. These holidays are described “from the depths of the heart of a believing child”: from an emotional assessment of the name of the holiday through acquaintance with its everyday side, the little hero comes to comprehend its essence. The story “Pokrov” is indicative in this regard: in its beginning, the name of the holiday beloved in Rus' is introduced as a “foreign” word and combined with the pronoun “unknown”, then the polysemy of the word is revealed, the words are brought closer together cover and cover (“he will cover the earth with snow”), the Intercession is associated with the idea of ​​the completion of affairs (“When the Intercession approaches, the denouement for everything”). Finally, Gorkin’s story gives a folk interpretation of the holiday and introduces the image of the overshadowing and saving Intercession of the Mother of God. At the end of the story, the image of the Intercession, a symbol of mercy, forgiveness and intercession, correlates with the motives of radiance, height, gaining freedom and overcoming fear.

The narrative is structured according to the laws of grateful memory, which preserves memories of the lost material world, the spiritual component of life. In “The Summer of the Lord” the theme is religious, the theme of the aspiration of the soul of the Russian person to the Kingdom of Heaven is connected with the family life of the Zamoskvoretsky courtyard of the “middle-class” merchants Shmelevs, the life of Moscow in the 80s of the 19th century. The boy Vanya and his mentor Gorkin not only live earthly life with its Annunciation, Easter, the feast of the icon of the Iveron Mother of God, Trinity, the Transfiguration of the Lord, the Nativity of Christ, Christmastide, Epiphany, Maslenitsa, but they believe in the Lord and the infinity of life.

We can say that the world of “The Summer of the Lord” - the world of Gorkin, Martyn and Kinga, the sheep-maker Fedya and the religious Domna Panferovna, the old coachman Antipushka and the clerk Vasil Vasilich - both existed and never existed. Returning to the past in his memories, Shmelev depicts the child’s soul’s comprehension of the spirit of the Orthodox faith. The text of the story includes numerous quotes from prayers, church hymns, Holy Scripture and lives. But the hero himself, Shmelev the child, appears before the readers with all the experience of the path traveled by Shmelev the writer. The perception of the world in this book is the perception of both a child and an adult, assessing what is happening through the prism of time. The writer creates his own special world, a small universe from which the light of the highest morality emanates.

It seems that this work shows the whole of Rus', although we are only talking about the Moscow childhood of the boy Vanya Shmelev. For Shmelev the emigrant, this is “paradise lost.” The writer’s ideal was Holy Rus', he lovingly resurrects its images. The writer’s organic connection with his homeland is manifested in the poeticization of folk culture, in the preservation and transformation of the riches of the Russian language.

The book “The Summer of the Lord” is a book-memory and a book-reminder. It serves a deep knowledge of Russia, awakening love for its ancient way of life. It is necessary to look back into the past to discover the origins of the tragedy of Russia and the ways to overcome it, which, according to Shmelev, are associated only with Christianity.

The title of the book is ambiguous and quotative in nature. It goes back to the Gospel of Luke, where it is mentioned that Jesus came “to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” Summer is a designation of the church year and at the same time a sign of the manifestation of Divine grace. In relation to the text of Shmelev’s story, created in emigration, this name takes on an additional meaning: a “favorable” period in the life of Orthodox Rus', which, from the author’s point of view, preserved faith, the spirit of love, wise patience and the beauty of the patriarchal period, which coincided with the childhood of the narrator, which he, being separated from his homeland, resurrects with the power of grateful memory in the hope of “letting go of the tormented” and healing the “broken-hearted.”

2. Genre and composition of the story.

“The Summer of the Lord” is constructed as a combination of a number of stories dedicated to the writer’s childhood, and consists of three parts: “Holidays” - “Joys” - “Sorrows”. This book implements the principle of a circular composition: it consists of forty-one chapter-essays. I.A. Ilyin said that “each essay is closed in itself,..., like an island, stable and independent. And everyone is connected together by some continuous circumstance - the life of Russian national religiosity..." .

The action in the story moves in a circle, following the annual cycle of Russian Orthodoxy. The space is also organized according to a circular principle. The center of little Vanya’s universe is his home, which is based on his father - an example of living “according to conscience.” This is the first circle of the story. The second circle consists of the “yard”, the world of Kaluga Street, inhabited by ordinary Russian people. The third circle is Moscow, which Shmelev loved and considered the soul of Russia. Moscow in “The Summer of the Lord” is a living, animated being. And the main, fourth circle is Russia. All these circles are placed in the internal memory space of the hero-narrator.

Each chapter can be considered as a separate work, connected ideologically and thematically with the work as a whole. In most cases, the narrative is constructed according to a single principle: first, the events in the house or in the yard are described. Then Gorkin explains to Vanya the essence of what is happening, after which - a story about how the holiday is celebrated at home, in the temple and throughout Moscow. Each day described is a model of existence.

The narration in “The Summer of the Lord” is told in the first person, which is typical for most autobiographical works of the 19th-20th centuries. The author cares about a clear child’s voice, revealing a whole soul in free and joyful love and faith. But the narrative is heterogeneous: with the overall dominant point of view of the little hero, a number of contexts are organized by the “voice” of the adult narrator. These are, first of all, the beginnings of chapters, lyrical digressions in the center, endings, that is, strong positions of the text.

The contexts organized by the point of view of the little hero and the memories of the adult narrator are separated in time. Their alternation, juxtaposition or overlap creates lyrical tension in the text and determines the combination of speech means.

Memories of childhood are memories of the life of old patriarchal Moscow and, more broadly, Russia, which have the power of generalization. At the same time, a “children’s” tale conveys the child’s impressions of each new moment of existence, perceived in sound, color, and smell. The world surrounding the hero is depicted as a world that carries within itself all the fullness and beauty of earthly existence, a world of bright colors, pure sounds, exciting smells: “The overgrown nettles and burdocks are still thickening juicily, and only under them is gloomy; and the tattered currant bushes shine in the light.”

Shmelev's book was given a variety of genre definitions: a fairy tale novel, a myth novel, a legend novel, a free epic. This emphasized the power of transformation of reality in a work, the genre definition of which was not given by the writer himself. But there is no doubt that “The Summer of the Lord” is a spiritual book, since its internal plot is the formation of the soul of the boy Vanya under the influence of the surrounding reality.

3.Style I.S.Shmelev.

The magnificent Russian language in which “The Summer of the Lord” is written was noted by everyone who wrote about this story. “And language, language... Without exaggeration, there was no such language in Russian literature before Shmelev. ... The writer spreads out huge carpets, embroidered with rough patterns of strongly and boldly placed words, little words, little words... Now on each word there is, as it were, gilding, now Shmelev does not remember, but restores the words. From afar, from the outside, he restores them in a new, already magical splendor” (O.N. Mikhailov).

The wealth of speech means that convey a variety of sensory sensations interacts with the wealth of everyday details that recreate the image of old Moscow. Detailed descriptions of the market, dinners and Moscow feasts with a detailed listing of dishes show not only the abundance, but also the beauty of the way of Russian life: “We look - and we can’t get enough of it - such and such ruddy beauty! ... And all sorts of sausages, and different cheeses, and pressed, and granular caviar...”

Admiring Shmelev’s artistic mastery, I.A. Ilyin, one of the first researchers of his work, wrote: “A great master of word and image, Shmelev creates here in the greatest simplicity a refined and unforgettable fabric of Russian life; you don’t have time to marvel at these words and images, sometimes you quietly clasp your hands in your soul when a very precise, very rich word comes out: here is the “rambling” of a “merry March drop”: here in the sun’s ray “golden flakes are scurrying”; the axes “grunt”; watermelons “with a crack”; "a black mess of jackdaws in the sky" .

The writer’s visual skill was especially clearly demonstrated in the depiction of complex, undifferentiated, “combined” images in words. For this purpose, speech means are used that give a multidimensional characteristic of reality:

Complex epithets:joyfully blue, pale fiery, pinkish-wheat, lush-tight, cool-fragrant;

Metonymic adverbs that simultaneously indicate both the attribute of the object and the attribute of the attribute:the snacks shine juicily, the chamomile turns yellow, the sacred smell of cypress smells, the icy edges shine;

Synonymous and antonymous associations and associative convergences:creaking-crunching, surprise-unexpectedness, pouring-hissing, cutting-grinding, fresh-white and etc.

The noted combinations inherent in the language of folklore are complemented by equally regular repetitions that perform an intensifying-excretory function in the text: “You can hear the dripping, gurgling, boring, boring; And silver priests come out, many, many; And I see...green, green light!

Against the background of extremely accurate descriptions of nature and everyday realities, demonstrative and indefinite pronominal words stand out, replacing direct names. They are associated with a comparison of two worlds: the earthly and the heavenly. The first is recreated in the text in all the diversity of the world. The second is inexpressible for the narrator: “And I will die someday, and that’s it... We will all meet there.”

Detailed characteristics of everyday realities, which serve as a means of depicting the national way of life, are combined in the test with a description of Moscow, which is invariably depicted in the unity of past and present. The story “Lenten Market” is indicative in this regard: here the gradual expansion of space is correlated with an appeal to historical time: the boundary between past and present is destroyed, and the narrator’s personal memory merges with historical memory: “I know everything. There, behind the walls, is a church under a hillock - I know. And I know the cracks in the walls. I looked from behind the walls...When?... And the smoke of the fires, and the screams, and the alarm... - I remember everything! Everything seems like reality, my reality... - as if forgotten in a dream.”

The writer’s favorite sign is the ellipsis, indicating the incompleteness of the statement, the lack of an exact nomination, the search for the only right word, and finally, the emotional state of the narrator.

“It seems that in Russian literature no one has used a pause the way Shmelev does,” noted I.A. Ilyin. “For Shmelev, a pause signifies either a semantic break (contrast) or an emotional break that arises from the intensity of the experience...” .

The story “Christmas,” for example, is constructed like a fairy tale with missing lines and questions from an imaginary interlocutor. They are partially reproduced in quotes in the narrator’s speech and dialogize it: “Volsvi? ... So, the sages, the wise men. And little I thought wolves. Are you funny?"

The world depicted by Shmelev combines the momentary and the eternal. He is portrayed as a gift from God. The entire text of the story is permeated by the cross-cutting semantic series “light”. It is formed by the words “brilliance”, “light”, “radiance”, “gold”, which are used both literally and figuratively. Everyday realities are depicted illuminated (often in brilliance and radiance), Moscow is permeated with light, light reigns in the descriptions of nature and the characteristics of the characters: “Joyful things beat in my soul to the point of tears and shine from these words. And I see, behind the string of days of Lent, Holy Sunday, in the lights. Joyful prayer! She shines with a gentle light in these sad days of Lent;... and. smoothly swaying, the Queen of Heaven is coming above all the people... Her face is turned to the people, and all of Her shines, pinkly illuminated by the early spring sun...”

The cross-cutting image of light unites the stories that make up “The Summer of the Lord.” The motif of transformation is also connected with the motif of light: everyday life is depicted as transformed twice – by the gaze of a child, lovingly and nobly discovering the world, and by the Divine Light. The motif of transformation in the story finds expression in the use of the semantic series “new” and in repeated descriptions of the same reality: first direct, then metamorphic, based on the technique of personification: “Little white beauty birch tree.” She stood on a hillock alone... - The birch trees look into the windows, as if they want to pray... - The birch tree by the shrine is barely visible, its branches have drooped. And above me there is a birch tree rustling its leaves. They are holy, God's. The Lord walked across the earth and blessed them and everyone.”

The repetition of end-to-end series (“holidays”, “memory”, “light”, “transformation”) forms the basis of the semantic composition of the test. In the last part of the story (“Sorrow”), a series of repeating images are deployed, symbolizing evil, misfortune, having a folklore and mythological basis (“snake color”, etc.). Death in the finale is interpreted as a multi-valued image, associated not only with memories of the past, but also with the death of the world beloved since childhood, the loss of the Motherland: “I know: this is the last farewell, farewell to my home, to everything that happened...”.

Lyrical memories of childhood are thus transformed into a narrative about the spiritual foundations of existence.

IV. Conclusion. Conclusions.

“Summer of the Lord” by J.S. Shmeleva is in many ways a work of a new form. It is characterized by a special spatio-temporal organization and a complex, contaminated narrative structure, based on the interaction of different narrative types.

For the first time in autobiographical prose, a tale is used to depict the past, creating the illusion of sounding, spoken speech. Drawing images of a bright, happy childhood and the image of Holy Rus', interacting in the narrative, the writer uses both the richness of folk speech and new visual means discovered by him.

The poetics of “The Summer of the Lord” enriches Russian prose and reveals new trends in the development of artistic speech of the 20th century.

V. List of references.

1. Esaulov I.A. Holidays.Joys.Sorrows. M.: New World, 1992

2.I.A.Ilyin “Lonely artist. Articles. Speeches. Lectures." Moscow, 1993.

3.I.A.Ilyin “On darkness and enlightenment”, Moscow, 1991.

4.Ivan Shmelev “The Summer of the Lord”, Moscow, “Children’s Literature”, 1997

5. Popular science universal encyclopedia “Around the World”, 1997

6..Kuzicheva A. “...The Lord’s Favorable Summer”//Book of Reviews - 1986.

Shmelev is perhaps the most profound writer of the Russian post-revolutionary emigration, and not only of emigration... a writer of enormous spiritual power, Christian purity and lightness of soul. His “Summer of the Lord”, “Politics”, “The Inexhaustible Chalice” and other creations are not even just Russian literary classics, they seem to be themselves marked and illuminated by God’s spirit.

V. Rasputin

Different stages of Shmelev’s biography coincide with different stages of his spiritual life. It is customary to divide the life of a writer into two radically different halves- life in Russia and in exile. Indeed, Shmelev’s life, his state of mind, and his style of writing changed most dramatically after the revolution and the events that the writer experienced during the civil war: the shooting of his son, hunger and poverty in Crimea, leaving abroad. However, both before leaving Russia and in Shmelev’s emigrant life, several other similar sharp turns can be identified, which primarily concerned his spiritual path.

Shmelev's great-grandfather was a peasant, his grandfather and father were engaged in contracting in Moscow. The scope of the events that the writer’s father organized in his time can be imagined from the descriptions in “The Year of the Lord.”

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev was born on September 21 (October 3), 1873. When Shmelev was seven years old, his father, the man who played the main role in the life of little Ivan, died. Shmelev's mother Evlampia Gavrilovna was not a close person to him. As much as he willingly remembered his father throughout his life, talked about him, wrote about him, just as unpleasant were the memories of his mother - an irritable, domineering woman who flogged a playful child for the slightest violation of order.

We all have the clearest idea about Shmelev’s childhood from “The Summer of the Lord” and “Politics”... Two foundations laid in childhood- love for Orthodoxy and love for the Russian people- in fact, they shaped his worldview for the rest of his life.

Shmelev began writing while still studying at the gymnasium, and his first publication came at the beginning of his stay at the Faculty of Law of Moscow University. However, no matter how happy the young man was to see his name on the pages of the magazine, “... a number of events - university, marriage - somehow overshadowed my endeavor. And I didn’t attach much importance to what I wrote.” .

As often happened with young people in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, during his high school and student years Shmelev moved away from the Church, being carried away by fashionable positivist teachings. A new turn in his life was associated with marriage and paradoxically with a honeymoon:

“And so we decided to go on a honeymoon. But - where? Crimea, the Caucasus?.. The forests of the Trans-Volga region beckoned, I remembered “In the Woods” by Pechersky. I looked at the map of Russia, and my gaze stopped at the North. Petersburg? There was a chill from St. Petersburg. Ladoga, Valaam Monastery?.. should I go there? I had already staggered from the Church; I was, if not an atheist, then nothing at all. I read with enthusiasm Buckle, Darwin, Sechenov, Letourneau... stacks of brochures... where students demanded “the latest achievements of science.” I had an insatiable thirst to “know.” And I learned a lot, and this knowledge led me away from the most important knowledge - from the source of Knowledge, from the Church. And in some kind of semi-godless mood, and even on a joyful journey, on a honeymoon, I was drawn... to the monasteries! .

Before leaving for their honeymoon, Shmelev and his wife are heading to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra - get blessing from Elder Barnabas of Gethsemane. However, it was not only the upcoming journey that Elder Shmelyov blessed. The Monk Barnabas miraculously foresaw Shmelev's future literary work; something that would become his life's work:

“Looks inside, blesses. A pale hand, like the one in distant childhood that gave a cross. /.../ He puts his hand on my head and says thoughtfully: “You will be exalted by your talent.” All. A timid thought passes through me: “what kind of talent... this, writing?”

The trip to Valaam took place in August 1895 and became the impetus for Shmelev’s return to church life. Shmeleva played a significant role in this re-churching wife Olga Alexandrovna , daughter of a general Alexandra Auchterlony , participant in the defense of Sevastopol.

When they met, Shmelev was 18 years old, and his future wife was 16. Over the next 50-plus years, until Olga Alexandrovna’s death in 1946, they almost never parted with each other. Thanks to her piety, he remembered his sincere childhood faith and returned to it on a conscious, adult level, for which he was grateful to his wife all his life.

The feelings of a person turning from lack of faith and skepticism to knowledge of the Church, monastic life, asceticism are reflected in a series of essays, which were written by Shmelev immediately upon returning from his honeymoon (later, in the 30s in exile, they were rewritten again). The very title of the book - “Old Valaam” - implies that Shmelev is writing about something that has already been lost, about a world that existed only before the revolution, but, nevertheless, the whole story is very joyful and lively. The reader not only sees vivid pictures of the nature of Ladoga and monastic life, but is imbued with the very spirit of monasticism. Thus, the Jesus Prayer is described in a few words:

“This prayer has great power,” one of the monks tells the author, “but you must be able to let your heart gurgle like a stream... only a few ascetics are worthy of this. And we, spiritual simplicity, so far, casually, absorb it into ourselves, get used to it. Even from a single sound there can be salvation.”.

The fact that Shmelev’s book contains not just a list of the author’s superficial impressions, but rich material introducing the reader to all aspects of Valaam life - from the rules of Elder Nazarius to the technical structure of the monastery water supply - is explained by his approach to creativity as a whole. During the writing of “Old Valaam”, and “Phytis”, and his last novel “Heavenly Paths”, Shmelev read piles of special literature, using the library of the Theological Academy, constantly studying the Book of Hours, Octoechos, Chetii-Minea, so that ultimately ease and the elegance of the style of his books is combined with their enormous information content.

Shmelev's first literary experiments were interrupted for ten years everyday life, worries about daily bread, the need to support a family. However, one should not think that they passed completely without a trace for the writer. In his Autobiography he characterizes this time as follows:

“...entered service in the treasury chamber. Served in Vladimir. Seven and a half years of service and traveling around the province confronted me with a lot of people and situations in life. /.../ My service was a huge addition to what I knew from books. It was a vivid illustration and spiritualization of previously accumulated material. I knew the capital, the small craft people, the way of life of the merchants. Now I recognized the village, the provincial bureaucracy, the factory districts, the landed nobility.” .

In addition, the gift of writing, the spark of God, was always felt by Shmelev, even when he did not go to his desk for years: “It sometimes seems to me that I did not become a writer, but as if I had always been one”. That is why Shmelev’s entry into the literary life of Russia in the pre-revolutionary era happened so organically.

Having published in 1905-1906, after a long break, a number of stories “On a Urgent Business,” “The Sergeant,” and “The Crook,” the witty and ingenuous Ivan Sergeevich quickly became an authoritative person among writers, whose opinion was taken into account even by the most fastidious critics.

The period before 1917 was quite fruitful: a huge number of stories were published, including the story “The Man from the Restaurant,” which brought the writer world fame.

Shmelev and his wife felt the drama of events in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century with the beginning of the First World War, and in 1915 they took their only beloved son, Sergei, to the front. Shmelev took this hard, but, naturally, he never doubted that his family, like everyone else, must fulfill its duty to Russia. Perhaps even then he had terrible premonitions about the fate of his son. The deterioration in Shmelev’s state of mind was observed by his friends, in particular Serafimovich, who noted in one of his letters in 1916: “Shmelev was extremely depressed by his son’s departure for military service, he was unwell”. Almost immediately after the revolution, the Shmelevs moved to Crimea, to Alushta - the place with which the most tragic events in the writer’s life were connected.

The son, who returned sick from Denikin’s Volunteer Army and was being treated for tuberculosis in a hospital in Feodosia, was arrested in November 1920 by the security officers of Bela Kun, who was then in charge of Crimea. The sick young man spent almost three months in overcrowded and stinking prison cellars, and in January 1921 he, like forty thousand other participants in the White Movement, was shot without trial- despite the fact that they were officially declared an amnesty! The citizens of the “country of Soviets” never learned the details of this execution.

For a long time, Shmelev had the most contradictory information about the fate of his son, and when he arrived in Berlin at the end of 1922 (as he believed, for a while), he wrote to I.A. Bunin: “1/4% of hope remains that our boy was saved by some miracle”. But in Paris he was found by a man who sat with Sergei in the Vilna barracks in Feodosia and witnessed his death. Shmelev did not have the strength to return to his homeland; he remained abroad, moving from Berlin to Paris.

The tragedy of emigration has almost been forgotten by us, the losses of Russia, on the one hand, and the torment of those left without a homeland and means of livelihood, on the other, rarely appear now on the pages of the press or historical works. Exactly Shmelev's works remind us of how much Russia has lost. It is important how clearly Shmelev realizes that many people who remained in Russia accepted the crown of martyrdom. He feels the life of emigrants as flawed primarily because in emigration the emphasis is on everyone’s personal survival: “Why now... peace?- exclaims the heroine of one of his stories, - It is clear that then those victims, millions of tortured and fallen, are not justified./.../ We shed blood in battles, those in basements! And they continue. The martyrs are crying out to us." .

Nevertheless, Shmelev did not remain aloof from the pressing problems of Russian emigration, which is reflected in numerous journalistic works of the writer. First of all, among them there are calls for help for disabled people of the White Army, who lived in exile in almost complete poverty and oblivion. In addition, Shmelev actively collaborated with the Russian Bell magazine, published by Ivan Ilyin . It was one of the few magazines in the Russian emigration with a patriotic and Orthodox slant.

Ilyin’s support and help were indeed very significant for Shmelev. He didn’t just write encouraging letters to him and promoted Shmelev’s works in his articles and speeches. Ilyin took on the hardest work - searching for publishers, corresponding with them, discussing possible conditions. When the Shmelevs were going on vacation to Latvia in 1936 (the trip did not take place due to the sudden illness and death of Olga Alexandrovna), Ilyin dealt with almost all organizational issues, agreed on a series of evenings that Shmelev was supposed to give while passing through Berlin. His concern extended to the point that he stipulated the dietary menu for Shmelev in the boarding house where the writer was going to stay! Therefore, it is not for nothing that Ilyin comically altered the famous Pushkin lines:

Listen, brother Shmelini,

How black thoughts come to you,

Open a bottle of champagne

Or re-read Ilyin’s articles about you...

However, the severity of emigrant life for the Shmelev family was intensified by constant grief: “Nothing can take away our pain, we are beyond life, having lost the closest thing, the only thing, our son” .

At the same time, a huge amount of Shmelev’s energy and time was taken up by worries about the most pressing needs: what to eat, where to live! Of all the emigrant writers, Shmelev lived the poorest, first of all, because less than others he knew how (and wanted) to curry favor with rich publishers, look for patrons, preach ideas alien to him for the sake of a piece of bread. Without exaggeration, its existence in Paris can be called close to poverty- there was not enough money for heating, for new clothes, for rest in the summer.

The search for an inexpensive and decent apartment took a long time and was extremely tedious:

“I was recalled by hunting for an apartment. Tired dogs - nothing to do. It is too expensive. Where are we going?! /.../ Looked at my, eternal... /i.e. Olga Alexandrovna, wife of I. Shmelev - E.K./ how exhausted she is! Both sick - we wander around, paying visits to the concierges./.../ We returned, broken. Bitterly cold, +6 C in the bedroom! I spent the whole evening putting on the stove, but the cat cried for coal.” .

However, ultimately the French emigrant life of the Shmelevs still resembled the life of old Russia, with the annual cycle of Orthodox holidays, with many rituals, dishes, with all the beauty and harmony of the way of Russian life. Orthodox life, preserved in their family, not only served as a great consolation for the Shmelevs themselves, but also brought joy to those around them. All the details of this life made an indelible impression on the Shmelevs’ nephew Iva Zhantiyoma-Kutyrina , who, being the writer’s godson, partly began to replace his lost son.

“Uncle Vanya took the role of godfather very seriously... - writes Zhantilom-Kutyrin, - Church holidays were celebrated according to all the rules. The fast was strictly observed. We went to church on Daryu Street, but especially often to the Sergievskoye Metochion.” “Aunt Olya was the writer’s guardian angel, she took care of him like a mother hen... She never complained... Her kindness and dedication were known to everyone.<...>Aunt Olya was not only an excellent housewife, but also her husband’s first listener and adviser. He read aloud the pages he had just written, presenting them to his wife for criticism. He trusted her taste and listened to her comments.” .

For example, the Shmelev family prepared for Christmas long before it arrived. And the writer himself, and, of course, Olga Alexandrovna, and little Yves made various decorations: chains made of gold paper, all sorts of baskets, stars, dolls, houses, gold or silver nuts. Many families decorated the Christmas tree in exile. Each family's Christmas tree was very different from the others. Every family had its own traditions, its own secret of making Christmas tree decorations. There was a kind of rivalry: who had the most beautiful tree, who managed to come up with the most interesting decorations. Yes, and Having lost their homeland, Russian emigrants found it in keeping rituals dear to their hearts.

The next colossal loss occurred in Shmelev’s life in 1936 when Olga Alexandrovna died of a heart attack. Shmelev blamed himself for his wife’s death, convinced that, forgetting herself in caring for him, Olga Alexandrovna had shortened her own life. On the eve of his wife’s death, Shmelev was planning to go to the Baltic states, in particular, to the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery, where emigrants at that time went not only on pilgrimage, but also to feel the Russian spirit and remember their homeland.

The trip took place six months later. The calm and gracious atmosphere of the monastery helped Shmelev survive this new test, and with renewed energy he turned to writing “The Summer of the Lord” and “Phytis,” which at that time were still far from completion. They were completed only in 1948 - two years before the writer’s death.

The sorrows he experienced gave him not despair and bitterness, but almost apostolic joy for writing this work, that book about which contemporaries said that it was kept in the house next to the Holy Gospel. In his life, Shmelev often felt that special joy that is given by the grace of the Holy Spirit. So, amid a serious illness, he almost miraculously managed to find himself in church for the Easter service:

“And so, Holy Saturday approached... The pain that had stopped, rose...Weakness, neither arm nor leg.../.../ The pain was pestering me, I sat hunched over in the metro... At ten we reached the Sergius Compound . Holy silence enveloped the soul. The pain is gone. And so, joy began to flow and emerge! Steadfastly, without feeling either weakness or pain, in extraordinary joy I listened to Matins, confessed, stood through the entire mass, participated... - and such a wonderful inner light shone, such peace, such closeness to the indescribable, God, I felt that I don’t remember - when I felt like that!”

Shmelev considered his recovery in 1934 truly miraculous. He had a severe form of gastric disease, the writer was facing surgery, and both he and the doctors feared the most tragic outcome. Shmelev could not decide to undergo surgery for a long time. On the day when his doctor came to the final conclusion that it was possible to do without surgical intervention, the writer saw in a dream his x-rays with the inscription “St. Seraphim." Shmelev believed that it was the intercession of Rev. Seraphim of Sarov saved him from surgery and helped him recover.

The experience of a miracle was reflected in many of Shmelev’s works, including the latest novel “Heavenly Paths,” which expounds in artistic form the patristic teachings and describes the practice of everyday struggle with temptation, prayer and repentance. Shmelev himself called this novel a story in which “The earthly merges with the heavenly”. The novel was not over. Shmelev’s plans were to create several more books “Heavenly Paths”, which would describe the history and life of Optina Pustyn (since one of the heroes, according to the author’s plan, was to become an inhabitant of this monastery).

In order to more fully penetrate the atmosphere of monastic life, on June 24, 1950, Shmelev moved to the monastery of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin in Bussy-en-Otte, 140 kilometers from Paris. On the same day, a heart attack ended his life. The nun Mother Theodosia, who was present at the death of Ivan Sergeevich, wrote: “The mysticism of this death struck me - a man came to die at the feet of the Queen of Heaven under her protection” .

Almost all Russian emigrants, literally until the end of their lives, could not come to terms with the fact that they had left Russia forever. They believed that they would definitely return to their homeland, and, surprisingly, one way or another, this dream of Ivan Shmelev has come true in our days. This return began for Shmelev with the publication of his complete works: Shmelev I.S. Collection cit.: In 5 vols. - M.: Russian Book, 1999-2001.

This was followed by two other events, no less important. In April 2000, Shmelev's nephew Yves Zhantilom-Kutyrin donated the archive of Ivan Shmelev to the Russian Cultural Foundation; Thus, the writer’s manuscripts, letters and library ended up in his homeland, and in May 2001, with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Rus', the ashes of Shmelev and his wife were transferred to Russia, to the necropolis of the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow, where the Shmelev family grave was preserved . So, more than half a century after his death, Shmelev returned from emigration.

___________________________

Ilyin I.A. Collected works: Correspondence of two Ivans (1927-1934). - M.: Russian book, 2001 - P. 371.

Ilyin I.A. Collected works: Correspondence of two Ivans (1927-1934). - M.: Russian book, 2001 - P. 429.

Shmelev I.S. Collected works: In 5 volumes. T. 6 (extra). - M.: Russian Book, 1999. - P. 281.

Shmelev I.S. Collected works: In 5 volumes. T. 1. - M.: Russian Book, 2001. - P. 18.

Shmelev I.S. Collected works: In 5 volumes. Volume 6 (additional). - M.: Russian Book, 1999. - P. 282.

Shmelev I.S. Collected works: In 5 volumes. Volume 6 (additional). - M.: Russian Book, 1999. - P. 284.

Shmelev I.S. Collected works: In 5 volumes. T. 2. - M.: Russian Book, 2001. - P. 358.

Shmelev I.S. Collected works: In 5 volumes. T. 1. - M.: Russian Book, 2001. - P.19-20.

Shmelev I.S. Collected works: In 5 volumes. T. 2. - M.: Russian Book, 2001. - P. 296.

From a letter to A.A. Kipen dated March 21, 1916//Shmelev I.S. The Inexhaustible Chalice: Novels. Stories. Articles. - M.: Shkola-Press, 1996. - P. 26.

Letter from I.A. Bunin dated November 23, 1923, cit. According to the edition: Ustami Bunin. - T. II. - Frankfurt am Main // Sowing. - 1981. - P. 100.

Shmelev I.S. Collected works: In 5 volumes. T. 6 (extra). - M.: Russian Book, 1999. - P. 502.

Letter from I.A. Ilyin dated January 18, 1932//Ilyin I.A. Collected works: Correspondence of two Ivans (1927-1934). - M.: Russian book, 2001 - P. 253.

Letter from I.A. Ilyin dated November 27, 1933//Ilyin I.A. Collected works: Correspondence of two Ivans (1927-1934). - M.: Russian book, 2001 - P. 419.

Zhantiyom-Kutyriin I. My Uncle Vanya. - Moscow: Russian Cultural Foundation-Sretensky Monastery Publishing House, 2001. - P. 12.

Zhantiyom-Kutyriin I. My Uncle Vanya. - Moscow: Russian Cultural Foundation - Sretensky Monastery Publishing House, 2001. - P. 14.

Letter to Ilyin dated April 18, 1933//Ilyin I.A. Collected works: Correspondence of two Ivans (1927-1934). - M.: Russian Book, 2001 - P. 379.

Quote according to the editor: Kutyrina Yu.A. The bright death of I.S. Shmeleva//Shmelev I.S. Eternal light. - Paris, 1968. - P. 375.

Ekaterina Kulikova

Also on this topic:

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev is an outstanding Russian writer, whose entire work is permeated with love for Orthodoxy and his people.

Different stages of Shmelev’s biography coincide with different stages of his spiritual life. It is customary to divide a writer’s life path into two radically different halves - life in Russia and in exile. Indeed, Shmelev’s life, his state of mind, and his writing style changed most dramatically after the revolution and the events that the writer experienced during the civil war: the execution of his son, hunger and poverty in Crimea, leaving abroad. However, even before leaving Russia and in Shmelev’s emigrant life, several other similar sharp turns can be identified, which primarily concerned his spiritual path.

Shmelev’s great-grandfather was a peasant, his grandfather and father were engaged in contracting in Moscow. The scope of the events that the writer’s father organized in his time can be imagined from the descriptions in “The Year of the Lord.”

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev was born on September 21 (October 3), 1873. When Shmelev was seven years old, his father, the man who played the main role in the life of little Ivan, died. Shmelev's mother Evlampia Gavrilovna was not a close person to him. As much as he willingly remembered his father throughout his life, talked about him, wrote about him, just as unpleasant were the memories of his mother - an irritable, domineering woman who flogged a playful child for the slightest violation of order.

We all have the clearest idea of ​​Shmelev’s childhood from “The Summer of the Lord” and “Phytis”... The two foundations laid in childhood - love for Orthodoxy and love for the Russian people - actually shaped his worldview for the rest of his life.

Shmelev began writing while still studying at the gymnasium, and his first publication came at the beginning of his stay at the Faculty of Law of Moscow University. However, no matter how happy the young man was to see his name on the pages of the magazine, “... a number of events - university, marriage - somehow overshadowed my endeavor. And I did not attach special importance to what I wrote.”

As often happened with young people in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, during his gymnasium and student years Shmelev moved away from the Church, carried away by fashionable positivist teachings. A new turn in his life was associated with marriage and a honeymoon: “And so we decided to go on a honeymoon. But - where? Crimea, the Caucasus?.. The forests of the Volga region beckoned, I remembered “In the Woods” by Pechersky. I looked at the map of Russia, and my gaze stopped at the North. Petersburg? There was a chill from St. Petersburg, the Valaam Monastery?.. To go there? I was already staggering from the Church, if not an atheist, I was reading Buckle, Darwin, Sechenov, Letourneau with enthusiasm. .. Stacks of brochures where students demanded information “about the latest achievements of science.” I had an insatiable thirst to “know.” And I learned a lot, and this knowledge led me away from the most important knowledge - from the source of Knowledge, from the Church. In some kind of semi-godless mood, and even on a joyful journey, on a honeymoon, I was drawn... to the monasteries!

Before leaving for their honeymoon, Shmelev and his wife go to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra to receive a blessing from Elder Barnabas of Gethsemane. However, it was not only the upcoming journey that Elder Shmelev blessed. The Monk Barnabas miraculously foresaw Shmelev's future literary work; what will become the work of his whole life: “Looks inside, blesses. A pale hand, like the one in distant childhood that gave a cross... He puts his hand on my head, thoughtfully says: “You will be exalted by your talent.” Everything. In me passes with a timid thought: “What talent... this, writing?”

The trip to Valaam took place in August 1895 and became the impetus for Shmelev’s return to church life. A significant role in this re-churching of Shmelev was played by his wife Olga Alexandrovna, the daughter of General A. Ochterlon, a participant in the defense of Sevastopol. When they met, Shmelev was 18 years old, and his future wife was 16. Over the next 50-plus years, until Olga Alexandrovna’s death in 1936, they almost never parted with each other. Thanks to her piety, he remembered his sincere childhood faith and returned to it on a conscious, adult level, for which he was grateful to his wife all his life.

The feelings of a person turning from lack of faith and skepticism to knowledge of the Church, monastic life, asceticism are reflected in a series of essays that were written by Shmelev immediately after returning from his honeymoon (later, already in the 30s, they were rewritten in emigration). The very title of the book - “Old Valaam” - implies that Shmelev is writing about something that has already been lost, about a world that existed only before the revolution, but nevertheless the whole narrative is very joyful and lively. The reader not only sees vivid pictures of the nature of Ladoga and monastic life, but is imbued with the very spirit of monasticism. Thus, the Jesus Prayer is described in a few words: “This prayer has great power,” one of the monks tells the author, “but you must be able to let a stream gurgle in your heart... Only a few ascetics are worthy of this. And we, spiritual simplicity, are so , while walking around, we absorb it, get used to it. Even from a single sound, even that can be salvation.”

The fact that Shmelev’s book contains not just a list of the author’s superficial impressions, but rich material introducing the reader to all aspects of Valaam life - from the rules of Elder Nazarius to the technical structure of the monastery water supply - is explained by his approach to creativity as a whole. While writing “Old Valaam”, and “Phytis”, and his last novel “Heavenly Paths”, Shmelev read piles of specialized literature, using the library of the Theological Academy, constantly studying the Book of Hours, Octoechos, Chetii-Minea, so that ultimately ease and the elegance of the style of his books is combined with their enormous information content.

Shmelev's first literary experiments were interrupted for ten years by everyday life, worries about his daily bread, and the need to support his family. However, one should not think that they passed completely without a trace for the writer. In his “Autobiography” he characterizes this time as follows: “...I entered service in the treasury chamber. I served in Vladimir. Seven and a half years of service, traveling around the province confronted me with a lot of people and situations in life. ...My service came a huge addition to what I knew from books. It was a vivid illustration and spiritualization of previously accumulated material. I knew the capital, the small craft people, the way of merchant life. Now I knew the village, the provincial bureaucracy, the factory districts, and the small nobility."

In addition, the gift of writing, the spark of God, was always felt by Shmelev, even when he did not go to his desk for years: “It sometimes seems to me that I did not become a writer, but as if I had always been one.” That is why Shmelev’s entry into the literary life of Russia in the pre-revolutionary era happened so organically. Having published in 1905-1906, after a long break, a number of stories “On a Urgent Business,” “The Sergeant,” and “The Crook,” the witty and ingenuous Ivan Sergeevich quickly became an authoritative person among writers, whose opinion was taken into account by even the most fastidious critics.

The period before 1917 was quite fruitful: a huge number of stories were published, including the story “The Man from the Restaurant,” which brought the writer world fame.

* * *
Shmelev and his wife felt the drama of events in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century with the outbreak of the First World War, and in 1915 they sent their only beloved son, Sergei, to the front. Shmelev took this hard, but, naturally, he never doubted that his family, like everyone else, must fulfill its duty to Russia. Perhaps even then he had terrible premonitions about the fate of his son. The deterioration in Shmelev’s state of mind was observed by his friends, in particular Serafimovich, who noted in one of his letters in 1916: “Shmelev was extremely depressed by his son’s departure for military service, he was unwell.” Almost immediately after the revolution, the Shmelevs moved to Crimea, to Alushta - the place with which the most tragic events in the writer’s life were connected.

The son, who returned sick from Denikin’s Volunteer Army and was being treated for tuberculosis in a hospital in Feodosia, was arrested in November 1920 by the security officers of Bela Kun, who was then in charge of Crimea. The sick young man spent almost three months in overcrowded and stinking prison cellars, and in January 1921 he, like forty thousand other participants in the White Movement, was shot without trial - despite the fact that an amnesty was officially declared to them! The citizens of the “country of Soviets” never learned the details of this execution.

For a long time, Shmelev had the most contradictory information about the fate of his son, and when he arrived in Berlin at the end of 1922 (as he believed, temporarily), he wrote to I.A. Bunin: “1/4% of the hope remains that our boy was saved by some miracle.” But in Paris he was found by a man who sat with Sergei in the Vilna barracks in Feodosia and witnessed his death. Shmelev did not have the strength to return to his homeland; he remained abroad, moving from Berlin to Paris.

* * *

The tragedy of emigration has almost been forgotten by us; the losses of Russia, on the one hand, and the suffering of those left without a homeland and means of livelihood, on the other, rarely appear on the pages of the press or historical works. It is Shmelev’s works that remind us of how much Russia has lost. It is important how clearly Shmelev realizes that many people who remained in Russia accepted the crown of martyrdom. He feels the life of emigrants as flawed primarily because in emigration the emphasis is on everyone’s personal survival: “Why now... peace?” exclaims the heroine of one of his stories, “It is clear that then those victims, millions of tortured and fallen , - are not justified... We shed blood in battles, they are in the basements! And the martyrs continue to cry out to us.”

Nevertheless, Shmelev did not remain aloof from the pressing problems of Russian emigration, which is reflected in the writer’s numerous journalistic works. First of all, among them there are calls for help for disabled people of the White Army, who lived in exile in almost complete poverty and oblivion. In addition, Shmelev actively collaborated in the Russian Bell magazine, published by Ivan Ilyin. It was one of the few magazines in the Russian emigration with a patriotic and Orthodox slant.

Ilyin’s support and help were indeed very significant for Shmelev. He did not just write encouraging letters to him and promoted Shmelev’s works in his articles and speeches. Ilyin took on the hardest work - searching for publishers, corresponding with them, discussing possible conditions. When the Shmelevs were going on vacation to Latvia in 1936 (the trip did not take place due to the sudden illness and death of Olga Alexandrovna), Ilyin dealt with almost all organizational issues, agreed on a series of evenings that Shmelev was supposed to give while passing through Berlin. His concern extended to the point that he negotiated a dietary menu for Shmelev in the boarding house where the writer was going to stay! Therefore, it is not for nothing that Ilyin comically altered the famous Pushkin lines:

Listen, brother Shmelini,
How black thoughts come to you,
Open a bottle of champagne
Or re-read Ilyin’s articles about you...

However, the severity of emigrant life for the Shmelev family was intensified by constant grief: “Nothing can take away our pain, we are beyond life, having lost the closest thing, the only thing, our son.”

At the same time, a huge amount of Shmelev’s energy and time was taken up by worries about the most pressing needs: what to eat, where to live! Of all the emigrant writers, Shmelev lived the poorest, primarily because he was less able (and willing) than others to curry favor with rich publishers, look for patrons, and preach ideas alien to him for the sake of a piece of bread. Without exaggeration, his existence in Paris can be called close to poverty - there was not enough money for heating, for new clothes, or for vacation in the summer.

The search for an inexpensive and decent apartment took a long time and was extremely tiring: “I was called off hunting for an apartment. Dog tired - nothing. Can’t afford it. Where can we go?! I looked at my eternal... /i.e. Olga Alexandrovna, wife And . Shmeleva / how exhausted! Both sick - we wander around, paying visits to the concierges... We returned, overwhelmed. It was dog cold, in the bedroom +6 C. I spent the whole evening putting on the stove, and the cat cried for coals.”

Nevertheless, in the end, the French emigrant life of the Shmelevs still resembled the life of old Russia, with the annual cycle of Orthodox holidays, with many rituals, dishes, with all the beauty and harmony of the way of Russian life. The Orthodox way of life that was preserved in their family not only served as a great consolation for the Shmelevs themselves, but also brought joy to those around them. All the details of this life made an indelible impression on the Shmelevs’ nephew Yves Zhantiyom-Kutyrin, who, being the writer’s godson, partly began to replace his lost son.

“Uncle Vanya took the role of godfather very seriously...” writes Zhantiyom-Kutyrin. “Church holidays were celebrated according to all the rules. Fasting was strictly observed. We went to church on Daru Street, but especially often to the Sergius Compound.” “Aunt Olya was the writer’s guardian angel, she took care of him like a mother hen... She never complained... Her kindness and dedication were known to everyone....Aunt Olya was not only a wonderful housewife, but also her first listener and adviser husband. He read the pages he had just written aloud, presenting them to his wife for criticism. He trusted her taste and listened to her comments."

For example, the Shmelev family prepared for Christmas long before it arrived. And the writer himself, and, of course, Olga Alexandrovna, and little Yves made various decorations: chains made of gold paper, all sorts of baskets, stars, dolls, houses, gold or silver nuts. Many families decorated the Christmas tree in exile. Each family's Christmas tree was very different from the others. Every family had its own traditions, its own secret of making Christmas tree decorations. There was a kind of rivalry: who had the most beautiful tree, who managed to come up with the most interesting decorations. Thus, even having lost their homeland, Russian emigrants found it in the preservation of rituals dear to their hearts.

The next colossal loss occurred in Shmelev’s life in 1936, when Olga Alexandrovna died of a heart attack. Shmelev blamed himself for his wife’s death, convinced that by forgetting herself in caring for him, Olga Alexandrovna had shortened her own life. On the eve of his wife’s death, Shmelev was planning to go to the Baltic states, in particular, to the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery, where emigrants at that time went not only on pilgrimage, but also to feel the Russian spirit and remember their homeland.

The trip took place six months later. The calm and gracious atmosphere of the monastery helped Shmelev survive this new test, and with renewed energy he turned to writing “The Summer of the Lord” and “Phytis,” which at that time were still far from completion. They were completed only in 1948 - two years before the writer’s death.

The sorrows he experienced gave him not despair and embitterment, but an almost apostolic joy for writing this work, that book about which his contemporaries said that it was kept in the house next to the Holy Gospel. In his life, Shmelev often felt that special joy that is given by the grace of the Holy Spirit. So, in the midst of a serious illness, he almost miraculously managed to find himself in church for the Easter service: “And so, Holy Saturday approached... The pains that had stopped, rose up... Weakness, neither in the arm nor in the leg... The pain was tormenting, hunched over, I was sitting in the metro... At ten we reached Sergiev Podvorye. Holy silence enveloped the soul. And then the pain began to flow... joy! Steadily, feeling neither weakness nor pain, listened to the Matins in extraordinary joy, confessed. They stood through the entire mass, joined in... - and such a wonderful inner light shone, such peace, such closeness to the unspeakable, to God, I felt that I don’t remember when I felt like that!

Shmelev considered his recovery in 1934 truly miraculous. He had a severe form of gastric disease, the writer was facing surgery, and he and the doctors feared the most tragic outcome. Shmelev could not decide on the operation for a long time. On the day when his doctor came to the final conclusion that it was possible to do without surgical intervention, the writer saw in a dream his x-rays with the inscription “St. Seraphim”. Shmelev believed that it was the intercession of Rev. Seraphim of Sarov saved him from surgery and helped him recover.

The experience of the miracle was reflected in many of Shmelev’s works, including his last novel, “Heavenly Paths,” which expounds in artistic form the patristic teachings and describes the practice of everyday struggle with temptation, prayer and repentance. Shmelev himself called this novel a story in which “the earthly merges with the heavenly.” The novel was not over. Shmelev’s plans were to create several more books of “Heavenly Paths”, which would describe the history and life of Optina Pustyn (since one of the heroes, according to the author’s plan, was to become an inhabitant of this monastery).

In order to more fully penetrate the atmosphere of monastic life, on June 24, 1950, Shmelev moved to the monastery of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Bussy-en-Otte, 140 kilometers from Paris. On the same day, a heart attack ended his life. The nun Mother Theodosia, who was present at the death of Ivan Sergeevich, wrote: “The mysticism of this death struck me - a man came to die at the feet of the Queen of Heaven, under her cover.”

Almost all Russian emigrants, literally until the end of their lives, could not come to terms with the fact that they had left Russia forever. They believed that they would definitely return to their homeland, and surprisingly, one way or another, this dream of Ivan Shmelev has come true in our days. This return began for Shmelev with the publication of his complete works: Shmelev I.S. Collection cit.: In 5 vols. - M.: Russian Book, 1999-2001.

This was followed by two other events, no less important. In April 2000, Shmelev's nephew Yves Zhantilom-Kutyrin donated the archive of Ivan Shmelev to the Russian Cultural Foundation; Thus, the writer’s manuscripts, letters and library ended up in his homeland, and in May 2001, with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Rus', the ashes of Shmelev and his wife were transferred to Russia, to the necropolis of the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow, where the Shmelev family grave was preserved . So, more than half a century after his death, Shmelev returned from emigration.

The confidence that he would return to his homeland did not leave him throughout the long years—read 30 years—of exile, and even when many emigrants resigned themselves to the fact that they would have to die in a foreign land, this confidence did not leave Shmelev. “...I know: the time will come - Russia will accept me!” - Shmelev wrote at a time when even the name of Russia was erased from the map of the earth. Several years before his death, he drew up a spiritual will, in which he expressed his last will in a separate paragraph: “I ask, when this becomes possible, to transport my ashes and the ashes of my wife to Moscow.” The writer asked to be buried next to his father in the Donskoy Monastery. The Lord, by his faith, fulfilled his cherished desire.

On May 26, 2000, a plane from France with the coffin of Ivan Sergeevich and Olga Aleksandrovna Shmelev landed in Moscow. It was transferred and installed in the Small Cathedral of the Donskoy Monastery and for four days it was in the temple in which the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' every year prepares - boils - Holy Myrrh, which is then sent to all churches of the Russian Church for the celebration of the sacrament of Confirmation. There is always an incomparable, inexplicable, unearthly aroma of the Holy World here, as if the fragrance of Holy Rus'.

Early in the morning there was no one in the temple yet. A young monk lit candles at the writer’s coffin, which stood in the middle under the ancient arches of the temple. Ivan Sergeevich visited this church more than once; funeral services were held here for his father and other Shmelevs, who were buried here in the family plot of the monastery cemetery.

Shmelev's coffin stood covered with gold brocade, unexpectedly small - as if for a child, about twenty meters - no more. Ivan Sergeevich and his wife Olga Alexandrovna were laid together in one coffin.

On May 25, in France, at the cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois, the remains of Shmelev were “discovered”. The idea belongs to Elena Nikolaevna Chavchavadze, deputy chairman of the Russian Cultural Foundation. It took two years for appeals, approvals, paperwork and financial matters. Permission from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs was received in the year of the 50th anniversary of Shmelev’s death. In the presence of police officials, the godson and heir of the writer and television reporters, the grave of the great writer was opened. Under a large slab at a depth of almost two meters, the remains of Ivan Sergeevich and Olga Alexandrovna were discovered. The coffins had rotted away from the dampness of the soil, but the bones remained intact. They were carefully collected in this small coffin, which the Parisian police authorities immediately sealed and sent to Russia.

To be buried side by side is considered a special blessing from God for spouses who have lived together all their lives. John and Olga were honored with more: they were buried in the same coffin.

In Moscow on May 30 there was some amazing bright weather, a special “Shmelevsky” day - the sun shone like a golden Easter egg.

Using the example of Ivan Shmelev, we see how difficult it is for a Russian person to stay in a foreign land, to die in a foreign land. The Lord fulfilled the writer’s last will, or rather, his last cherished prayer. He eventually lay down in his native land, next to his father. From this alone we can say that he was a righteous writer whose prayers were heard by the Lord.

The last handful of soil, Russian, Moscow, father's, thrown into the grave is the main reward for a Russian writer. The Lord granted Shmelev one more consolation on this day. During the burial, a man pushed his way to the grave and handed over a plastic bag of soil: “You can pour it into Shmelev’s grave. This is from the Crimea, from the grave of his son, the murdered warrior Sergius. On May 18, a week and a half ago, the burial of 18 white officers killed in 1918 was found year". It was Valery Lvovich Lavrov, chairman of the Society of Crimean Culture at Taurida University, who specially came to Shmelev’s reburial with this land. Shmelev did not have a deeper unhealed wound than the murder of his son Sergius by the Bolsheviks in Crimea. Shmelev even refused royalties for his books published in the Soviet Union, not wanting to accept anything from the authorities that killed his son.

The day after the burial, a new temple of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God was consecrated in Moscow, erected on the site of the very temple that the boy Vanya once visited, in which the famous Gorkin, who was sung in “The Year of the Lord,” stood behind the candle box. That temple no longer exists, but in its place (in other forms) a new one arose. Whoever, in this apparently random coincidence, which neither the builders of the temple nor the organizers of the reburial knew about, will see the sign of God! This is a kind of symbol: the old “Shmelevsky” Rus' no longer exists, but there is a new rising Orthodox Rus', despite any temptations of our time.

Shmelev Ivan Sergeevich is a famous Russian writer. In his work, he reflected the life of various strata of society, but he especially sympathetically depicted the life of the “little man.” A photo of Ivan Shmelev is presented below.

Origin of Shmelev

Ivan Sergeevich 1873. He was from a family of Zamoskvoretsk merchants. However, his father's trade was of little interest to him. It contained numerous baths and a team of carpenters. Shmelev's family was an Old Believers, their way of life was unique and democratic. The Old Believers, both owners and ordinary workers, lived in a friendly community. They adhered to rules, spiritual and moral principles common to all. Ivan Shmelev grew up in an atmosphere of universal harmony and friendliness. He absorbed all the best in relationships between people. Years later, these childhood impressions were reflected in his works.

Acquaintance with the works of classics

Ivan Sergeevich’s home education was mainly done by his mother. It was she who taught her son to read a lot. Therefore, from childhood, Ivan was familiar with the works of such writers as Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Turgenev and others. Their study continued throughout his life. Later Ivan Shmelev studied at the gymnasium. His biography is marked by deepening literary knowledge. Ivan Sergeevich enjoyed reading books by Leskov, Korolenko, Uspensky, Melnikov-Pechensky. In a sense, they became his literary idols. Of course, the influence of the works of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin on the formation of the future writer did not cease. This is evidenced by Shmelev’s later works: “The Eternal Ideal”, “The Treasured Meeting”, “The Mystery of Pushkin”.

Literary debut

Ivan Shmelev, whose biography interests us, made his debut as an author in 1895. His story “At the Mill” was published in the magazine “Russian Review”. This work talks about the formation of personality, about a person’s path to creativity through overcoming life’s difficulties, comprehending the destinies and characters of ordinary people.

A disappointing book

After his marriage, Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev went with his young wife to the island of Valaam, where ancient monasteries and monasteries are located.

The biography of many writers is reflected in their work, and Shmelev is no exception. The result of this journey was the book “On the Rocks of Valaam...”. Its publication brought many disappointments to the novice author. The fact is that Pobedonostsev, the chief prosecutor through whom this book was supposed to go through, found seditious reasoning in the work. As a result, Shmelev was forced to shorten the text and redo the work, depriving his creation of the author’s zest. This is Ivan Sergeevich. He decided that the literary field was not his path. After that, Ivan Sergeevich did not write for almost 10 years. However, he needed to somehow support his family. Therefore, Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev decided to find a new source of income. The biography of the subsequent years of his life will still be connected with literature. But for now, he decided that he needed to do something else.

Ivan Shmelev becomes a lawyer

Ivan Sergeevich decided to enter Moscow University in order to become a lawyer. Much has changed since that moment, and most importantly - the writer’s environment. A generation of new intelligentsia studied in this educational institution. Ivan Sergeevich communicated with educated, intelligent people, which enriched and developed his personality, as well as his creative potential. He graduated from the university in 1898. Ivan Shmelev served for some time as an attorney (minor position). Then he moved to Vladimir. Here Ivan Sergeevich began to work. Even in this routine work, Shmelev, being a creative person, was able to find his advantages. He gained life experience and impressions during numerous travels around the province, visiting crowded inns. Thus, ideas for his future books gradually accumulated.

Return to literary creativity

Shmelev decided to return to writing in 1905. His works began to appear in the magazines "Russian Thought" and "Children's Reading". They were small, rather timid tests, a kind of test of Shmelev himself in the writing field. The doubts finally disappeared. Ivan Sergeevich was finally confirmed in his choice. He decided to leave the service. Ivan Shmelev arrived in the capital. In 1907, a new stage of his literary activity began.

It was then that the experience of communicating with people, acquired during travels around the world, came in handy. Writer Ivan Shmelev already understood that some new force was maturing among the people, protest sentiments were emerging, and there was a readiness for change, including through revolution. All these observations were reflected in Ivan Sergeevich’s short prose.

"Disintegration"

In 1906, his story entitled “Disintegration” appeared. It describes the story of the relationship between a father and his son. The father does not want any changes, he is used to doing everything the old fashioned way. This is the owner of a brick factory. His son, on the contrary, longs for change. He is overwhelmed with new ideas. Thus, a generational conflict arises within the same family. Circumstances lead to the death of both heroes. The tragic ending, however, does not inspire pessimism and a sense of hopelessness.

"The Man from the Restaurant"

“The Man from the Restaurant” is Shmelev’s next story. It is often called the calling card of this writer. The story appeared in 1910. It also touched on the topic of fathers and sons. However, this time events are unfolding against the backdrop of revolutionary sentiment raging in society. The focus of Ivan Sergeevich’s attention, however, is not social problems, but human relationships, the problem of life choice.

"Revolution of Life"

Shmelev and his wife moved to the Kaluga estate after the outbreak of World War I. At this time he made a new discovery for himself. It turns out that war not only disfigures a person physically, but also morally. The hero of Shmelev's new story "The Turn of Life" is a carpenter. During the war years, his business improved significantly due to orders for crosses and coffins. At first, the influx of money consoled the master, but over time he realized that money earned from people’s grief did not bring happiness.

Shooting of son

Sergei Shmelev, the son of Ivan Sergeevich, soon went to the front. He served in the Alushta commandant's office, in Wrangel's army. The latter had already fled when the Red Army took Alushta. This is how Sergei Shmelev ended up in captivity. The father tried in vain to do everything to save his son. Sergei Shmelev was shot. This was a heavy blow for his parents.

Emigration

Ivan Sergeevich, having survived the famine in 1921, decided to emigrate. First, he and his wife moved to Berlin (in 1922), and then, at the invitation of Bunin, he went to Paris (in 1923). Here he lived until the end of his life. The years of emigration are a new stage not only in Shmelev’s life, but also in his work.

"Sun of the Dead"

The Sun of the Dead, the famous epic novel, was written during this time. This work has been translated into English, German, French and other languages. Shmelev's book became a real discovery not only in domestic but also in world literature. In the work of Ivan Sergeevich, an attempt was made to honestly look at the very essence of the tragedy that befell Russian society.

"Summer of the Lord" (Ivan Shmelev)

The works of Ivan Sergeevich were created at a difficult time for our country. The impressions of the last years spent in Russia formed the basis for Shmelev’s next novel, “The Summer of the Lord.” The writer, painting pictures of Orthodox holidays, reveals the soul of the Russian people. Turning to his childhood years, Ivan Sergeevich captured the perception of the world by a believing child who trustingly accepted God into his heart. The merchant and peasant environment in the book appears not as a “dark kingdom”, but as an organic and holistic world, full of internal culture, moral health, humanity and love. Shmelev is far from sentimentality or romantic stylization. He depicts the true way of life, without obscuring its cruel and rude sides, its “sorrows”. For the pure soul of a child, existence reveals itself mainly with its joyful, bright side. The existence of heroes is closely connected with worship and church life. For the first time in Russian fiction, an important layer of people's life - the church-religious one - was so fully and deeply recreated. The spiritual life of a Christian is revealed in the prayerful states of the heroes and their psychological experiences.

"Nanny from Moscow"

Ivan Sergeevich’s novel “Nanny from Moscow” talks about the fate of a simple woman who found herself, by force of circumstances, in Paris. The writer tells his story using sympathetic soft tones with hints of light irony. At the same time, the reader feels pain and great sorrow in the author’s attitude to what is happening. The work is written in the form of a tale, Shmelev’s favorite. It should be noted that the writer has achieved unsurpassed skill in it. Nanny Daria Stepanovna is characterized by inner peace, deep faith, spiritual health and boundless kindness. The nanny's pupil is a wayward, careless, capricious girl. The author shows her character with good humor.

"Paths of Heaven"

Shmelev Ivan Sergeevich, whose works we are describing, began working on his next novel called “Heavenly Paths” and practically finished it. However, at this time Olga, his beloved wife, passed away after illness. This happened in 1933. Shmelev Ivan Sergeevich could not imagine his existence without this woman. The writer had to go through a lot after her death. He was about to continue his romance, but his life was stopped by a sudden heart attack.

I. S. Shmelev is a Russian writer who reflected in his work the life of all layers of society, but especially sympathetically the life of the “little man.”

Childhood

The future writer Ivan Shmelev was born on September 21. 1873 in a family of Zamoskvoretsky merchants. Trade, however, was of little interest to his father; he maintained an artel of carpenters and numerous baths, and was content with that. The family was Old Believer with a peculiar democratic way of life. The Old Believers, both owners and workers, lived in a friendly community, observing the same rules, moral and spiritual principles for everyone. The boy grew up in an atmosphere of friendliness and universal harmony, absorbing the best in human relationships. This life was reflected years later in the works of the writer Shmelev.

Education

Ivan was educated at home mainly by his mother; she taught him to read a lot, so from childhood he became acquainted with the works of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol, Turgenev and other outstanding Russian writers, the study of which continued throughout his subsequent life. Later, Shmelev studied at the gymnasium, where he continued to deepen his literary knowledge, enthusiastically reading the books of Korolenko, Melnikov-Pechesky, Uspensky, who became, in a certain sense, his literary idols. But at the same time, of course, Pushkin’s influence on the formation of the future writer did not stop. This is evidenced by his later works: “The Mystery of Pushkin”, “The Treasured Meeting”, “The Eternal Ideal”.

The beginning of creativity

Shmelev made his debut in the magazine "Russian Review" in 1895 with the story "At the Mill", which touches on the theme of personality formation, the path to creativity through life's overcomings and comprehension of the characters and destinies of ordinary people.

"Unsuccessful" book

After his marriage, Shmelev and his young wife went to the island of Valaam, the land of ancient hermitages and monasteries. The result of an exciting journey was a book entitled “On the Rocks of Valaam. Beyond the world. Travel Stories". The publication of the book brought a lot of disappointment to the novice author. The fact is that the chief prosecutor of His Holiness Pobedonostsev, through whom the book about holy places was supposed to pass, found seditious reasoning in it.

As a result, Shmelev was forced to redo and shorten the text of the work, depriving it of the author’s “zest.” Such violence simply unsettled the young writer, and he decided that literary creativity was not his path. In fact, he had not written for almost ten years. But he was obliged to support his family. This means we need to look for another source of income.

Legal profession

Shmelev entered Moscow University to master the profession of lawyer. From that moment on, a lot has changed, and the main thing is his environment. The generation of the new intelligentsia grew up here. Communication with smart, educated people developed and enriched personality and creative potential. After graduating from university (1898), he worked for some time in Moscow in a minor position as an assistant attorney, then moved to Moscow and worked there as a tax inspector. As a creative person, he found his advantages in this routine work: during endless travels around the province, overnight stays in crowded inns, and often anywhere else, he drew impressions and life experience, accumulating ideas for his future books.

Return to creativity

In 1905, Shmelev returned to writing again. He was published in the magazines “Children’s Reading”, “Russian Thought2. These were small works, timid attempts, testing oneself in the writing field. Finally, the doubts disappeared. Shmelev finally confirmed his choice and left the service. He came to the capital again, deciding to begin a new stage of his literary activity (1907).

Short prose

This is where my past experience of communicating with people while traveling around the cities and villages of the Vladimir province came in handy. Even then, he understood that some new force was maturing among the people, protest moods and readiness for revolutionary changes were emerging. These observations were reflected in Shmelev’s short prose.

In 1906, his story “Disintegration” was published, which tells the story of the relationship between father and son. The father is the owner of a brick factory, accustomed to working the old fashioned way and not wanting any changes. The son, on the contrary, strives for changes and is full of new ideas. As a result, a conflict between two generations arises within the family. Circumstances lead to the death of both. And yet, the tragic ending does not inspire feelings of hopelessness and pessimism.

The next story, “The Man from the Restaurant,” became, as it were, Shmelev’s calling card as a writer (1910). It also raised the topic of fathers and sons, and events develop against the backdrop of stormy revolutionary sentiments in society. But it was not social problems that became the focus of the writer’s attention, but the eternal problem of human relationships and life choices.

During this time, Shmelev and his wife moved to the Kaluga estate. Here he made a new discovery for himself. It turns out that war disfigures a person not only physically, but also morally. The hero of the story “The Turn of Life” is a carpenter, and during the war his business improved noticeably due to orders for coffins and crosses.

At first, the influx of profits pleased the master, but over time he came to understand that money earned from people’s grief does not bring happiness. Soon Shmelev’s son Sergei went to the front. He served in Wrangel's army, in the Alushta commandant's office. When the Reds took Alushta, he had already fled. This is how Sergei Shmelev ended up in captivity. The father made every effort to save his son, but in vain. He was shot. For parents this was a hard blow.

Emigration

Having survived the famine of 1921, Shmelev decided to emigrate. First, he and his wife settled in Berlin (1922), and then, at the invitation of I.A. Bunin, they moved to Paris (1923), where they lived until the end of their lives. The years of emigration are a new stage not only in Shmelev’s life history, but also in his creative biography. It was there that the epic novel “The Sun of the Dead” was written, which was translated into French, German, English and other languages.

This book became a discovery not only in Russian, but also in world literature. It was an attempt to take an honest look at the essence of the tragedy that befell our society. The next novel, “The Summer of the Lord,” was written by Shmelev based on the impressions of his last years spent in Russia. In pictures of Orthodox holidays, the writer reveals the soul of the common people.

The novel “Nanny from Moscow” tells about the fate of an ordinary woman who, by force of circumstances, finds herself in Paris. The style of the book is in soft, sympathetic tones with hints of light irony. And at the same time, the reader feels great sorrow and pain in the author’s attitude towards what is happening. Shmelev was working on the novel “Heavenly Paths” and almost finished it when his beloved wife Olga passed away after illness (1933). He couldn't imagine his existence without her.

Death

He still had to go through a lot. He was going to write a sequel to the novel “Heavenly Paths,” but a sudden heart attack stopped the life of Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev. This happened on June 24, 1950.