DEGREES OF COMPARISON OF ADJECTIVES In English, as in Russian, ...
The writing
Bunin considered the book "Dark Alleys" - a cycle of stories about love - to be his most perfect creation. The book was written during the Second World War, when the Bunin family found itself in an extremely difficult situation (conflicts with the authorities, the virtual lack of food, cold, etc.). The writer made in this book an attempt unprecedented in artistic courage: he wrote thirty-eight times (such is the number of stories in the book) "about the same thing." However, the result of this amazing constancy is striking: every time a sensitive reader experiences the recreated picture (seemingly known to him) as absolutely new, and the sharpness of the “feeling details” communicated to him is not only not dulled, but, it seems, only intensifies. In terms of themes and stylistic features, the collection "Dark Alleys" adjoins the story "Sunstroke" created back in 1927.
The narrative technique of Bunin's later works is distinguished by a striking combination of noble simplicity and sophistication. "Sunstroke" begins - without any pre-emptive explanation - with a vaguely personal sentence: "After dinner, we left the bright and hotly lit dining room on deck ...". The reader still does not know anything about the upcoming event or about its participants: the very first impressions of the reader are associated with sensations of light and heat. Images of fire, stuffiness, sunshine will support throughout this six-page story " high temperature» Narratives. The heroine's hand will smell like a tan; in a “pink” kosovorotka a hotel footman will meet a young couple, and a hotel room will turn out to be “terribly stuffy, hotly heated”; the “unfamiliar town” will be saturated with heat, in which you will have to burn yourself from touching the buttons of your clothes and squint from the unbearable light.
Who is “she”, where and when does the action take place? Perhaps the reader, like main character, will not have time to realize this: in Bunin's story, all this will be pushed to the periphery of the only important event - "too much love", "too much happiness". The story, devoid of exposition, will end with a laconic epilogue - a short sentence, in which the lieutenant, who feels like he has aged ten years, will forever freeze.
The transience of the incident that served as the basis for the plot is emphasized in "Sunstroke", as in other late works of Bunin, by the fragmentation, dottedness of the story about love rapprochement: separate details, gestures, fragments of dialogue are selected and as if hastily assembled. The tongue twister says about the parting of the lieutenant with the “beautiful stranger”: “easily agreed”, “drew to the pier”, “kissed on deck”, “returned to the hotel”. In general, the description of the meeting of lovers takes a little more than one page of text. This compositional feature of Bunin's works about love - the selection of the most significant, critical episodes, the high plot "speed" in the transfer of the love story - allows many literary historians to talk about the "novelistic" nature of Bunin's late prose. Very often (and quite reasonably) researchers directly call these his works short stories. However, Bunin's works are not limited to a dynamic story about the ups and downs of love.
The repetitive "formula" of the plot - a meeting, a quick rapprochement, a blinding flash of feelings and an inevitable parting, sometimes accompanied by the death of one of the lovers - precisely because of its repetition ceases to be "news" (the literal meaning of the Italian word "novella"). Moreover, as a rule, already the initial fragments of the text contain the author's indications not only of the transience of the upcoming event, but also of the future memories of the characters. In Sunstroke, a similar indication follows immediately after the mention of the first kiss: "... Both ... for many years then remembered this moment: neither one nor the other had ever experienced anything like this in their entire lives." Noteworthy is the “grammatical inaccuracy”, possibly deliberately made by Bunin in this sentence: the verb “experienced” should have been used in plural. A possible explanation is the author's desire for the ultimate generalization: regardless of social, psychological, and even gender differences, the characters in Bunin's stories embody one consciousness and one worldview.
Let us pay attention to how, within the framework of one sentence, “wonderful moment” and “whole life” are conjugated and turn out to be values of the same order. Bunin writes not only about love, the scale of all earthly human existence is important for him, he is attracted by the mysterious fusion of “terrible” and “beautiful”, “miracle” and “horror” of this life. That is why the love plot often turns out to be only a part of the work, coexisting with fragments of a meditative nature.
Almost five of the total six pages of the text of "Sunstroke" describe the state of the lieutenant after parting with a stranger. Actually, the novelistic plot is only a preamble to the hero's lyrically rich reflections on the mystery of life. The intonation of these reflections is given by a dotted line of recurring relentless questions that do not require an answer: “Why prove it?”, “What to do now?”, “Where to go?”. As we can see, the series of events of the story is subordinated to the universal problems of eternal "joys and sorrows". The growing feeling of immensity and - at the same time - the tragic irreversibility of the experienced happiness is the compositional core of the story in "Sunstroke".
Bunin's focus on the "eternal" questions of human existence, on the existential problems of being, does not make love stories philosophical: the writer does not like logical abstractions, does not allow philosophical terminology into his texts. The foundation of Bunin's style is not a logically consistent development of thought, but an artistic intuition of life, which finds expression in almost physiologically perceptible descriptions, in complex "patterns" of light and rhythmic contrasts.
The experience of life is the material of Bunin's stories. What is the subject of this experience? At first glance, the narrative in his stories is oriented towards the point of view of the character (this is especially noticeable in "Clean Monday", the story in which is told from the perspective of a wealthy Muscovite, outwardly distant from the author). However, the characters, even if they are endowed with signs of individuality, appear in both analyzed stories as a kind of mediums of some higher consciousness. These characters are characterized by "ghostliness": they are like the shadows of the author, and therefore the descriptions of their appearance are extremely concise. The portrait of the lieutenant in "Sunstroke" is made in a deliberately "depersonalizing" manner: "He ... looked at himself in the mirror: his face is an ordinary officer's face, gray from sunburn, with a whitish, sun-bleached mustache and bluish white eyes. ..". We only learn about the narrator of Pure Monday that he “was handsome at that time for some reason, southern, hot beauty ...”
Bunin's characters were given exceptional sharpness of sensual reactions, which was characteristic of the author himself. That is why the writer almost never resorts to the form of an internal monologue (this would make sense if the character's mental organization were significantly different from the author's). The author and the characters (and after them the readers) of Bunin's stories see and hear in the same way, they are equally amazed at the infinity of the day and the transience of life. Bunin's manner is far from Tolstoy's methods of "dialectics of the soul"; it is also unlike Turgenev's "secret psychologism" (when the writer avoids direct assessments, but allows one to judge the state of the hero's soul by skillfully selected external manifestations of feeling). The movements of the soul of Bunin's heroes defy logical explanation. The characters seem to have no power over themselves, as if they are deprived of the ability to control their feelings.
In this regard, Bunin's predilection for impersonal verbal constructions in descriptions of the character's states is interesting. “We had to escape, to occupy ourselves with something, to distract ourselves, to go somewhere ...” - he conveys the state of the hero of “Sunstroke”. “... For some reason, I definitely wanted to go there,” the narrator of Pure Monday testifies about visiting the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent, where he will see his beloved for the last time. The life of the soul in the image of Bunin is beyond the control of reason, inexplicable, it languishes with the mystery of the meaning hidden from mortals. The most important role in the transfer of "emotional whirlwinds" experienced by the characters is played by the methods of lyrical "infection" (associative parallels, rhythmic and sound organization of the text).
Vision, hearing, taste and temperature sensations of the lieutenant in "Sunstroke" are extremely sharpened. That is why the whole symphony of smells is so organic in the story (from the smells of hay and tar to the smells of “her good English cologne ..., her suntan and canvas dress”), and the details of the sound background (“soft knock” of the steamer hitting the pier ; the sound of bowls and pots sold at the market; the noise of “water boiling and running forward”), and gastronomic details (botvinya with ice, lightly salted cucumbers with dill, tea with lemon). But the most expressive states of the character described in the story are connected with the acute perception of the luminous and radiant sun. It is precisely from the details of light and temperature, again and again presented in close-up and giving distinctness to the inner rhythm of the story, that the “brocade” verbal fabric of “Sunstroke” is woven. Bringing together, focusing these energetic verbal threads, Bunin, without any explanation, without appealing to the consciousness of the character, conveys the ecstasy of the moments he experiences. However, psychological condition the lieutenant turns out to be not only a fact of his inner life. The inseparability of beauty and horror; joy, from which “the heart was simply torn to pieces,” turn out to be objectively existing characteristics of being.
The writer turns in his late prose not to the rationally comprehended facets of life, but to those areas of experience that allow at least for a moment to touch the mysterious, metaphysical depths of being (metaphysical - that which is beyond the limits of natural phenomena perceived by man; that which is impossible rationally comprehend). This is precisely the sphere of love for Bunin - the sphere of unsolved mystery, unspokenness, opaque semantic depth. The love experience in the depiction of the writer is associated with an unprecedented rise in all the emotional abilities of a person, with his exit into a special dimension, contrasting with the everyday flow of life. This is the true dimension of being, in which far from everyone is involved, but only those who are given a happy (and always the only) opportunity to experience the painful joy of love.
Love in Bunin's works allows a person to accept life as the greatest gift, to acutely feel the joy of earthly existence, but this joy for the writer is not a blissful and serene state, but a tragic feeling, colored by anxiety. The emotional atmosphere of the stories is created by the interaction of the motifs of love, beauty and inevitable finiteness, the short duration of happiness, which are stable in Bunin's late prose. Joy and torment, sadness and jubilation are fused in Bunin's later works into an indissoluble whole. “Tragic major” - this is how the pathos of Bunin’s stories about love was defined by the critic of the Russian diaspora Georgy Adamovich: “In Bunin, in his very language, in the warehouse of each of his phrases, one feels spiritual harmony, as if by itself reflecting a certain higher order and order: he still rests on his own places, the sun is the sun, love is love, good is good.
... the title of a poetic work is always important, because it always points them to the main of its characters, in which the thought of the composition is embodied, or directly to this thought.
V. G. Belinsky
The theme of "Sunstroke" (1925) is an image of love that suddenly seizes a person and remains in his soul the brightest memory for life. The idea of the story is in that peculiar understanding of love, which is connected with the writer's philosophical views on a person and his life. Love, from the point of view of Bunin, is the moment when all the emotional abilities of a person become aggravated and he breaks away from the gray, unsettled, unhappy reality and comprehends a “wonderful moment”. This moment quickly passes, leaving in the soul of the hero regret about the irretrievability of happiness and gratitude that it still happened. That is why the short-term, piercing and delightful feeling of two young people who accidentally met on a steamer and parted forever in a day is compared in the story with a sunstroke. This is what the heroine says: "We both got something like a sunstroke ...".
It is interesting that this figurative expression is confirmed by the real suffocating heat of the described day. The author gradually builds up the impression of heat: the steamer smells hot of the kitchen; the “beautiful stranger” is going home from Anapa, where she sunbathed under the southern sun on the hot sand; the night when the heroes got off the ship was very warm; the footman in the hotel is dressed in a pink kosovorotka; in a hotel room heated during the day, it is terribly stuffy, etc. The day following the night was also sunny and so hot that it was painful to touch the metal buttons on the lieutenant's tunic. The town irritatingly smells of various bazaar food.
All the experiences of the lieutenant after a fleeting adventure really resemble a painful condition after a sunstroke, when (according to medical indications) a person, as a result of dehydration of the body, feels headache, dizziness, irritability. However, this excited state of the hero is not the result of overheating of the body, but a consequence of the realization of the significance and value of the empty adventure that he has just experienced. It was the brightest event in the life of the lieutenant and the “beautiful stranger”: “both of them remembered this moment for many years: neither one nor the other had ever experienced anything like this in their entire lives.” So for Bunin, a moment of happiness and a whole life become values of the same order. The writer is attracted by the "mystery of being" - a combination of joy and sadness, miracle and horror.
The story "Sunstroke" is short, and five of the six pages are devoted to the description of the lieutenant's experiences after parting with the "beautiful stranger". In other words, it is not interesting for Bunin to draw various vicissitudes of love (they have already been drawn in Russian and world literature thousands of times) - the writer comprehends the meaning of love in human life, without exchanging for enticing little trinkets. Therefore, it is interesting to compare the image of love in Bunin's story "Sunstroke" and in Chekhov's story "The Lady with the Dog", especially since literary critics note the similarity of the plots of these works.
Both Chekhov and Bunin show a gray, ordinary life that stifles human feelings, but they show it in different ways. Chekhov shows the nightmare of the surrounding life, drawing its vulgarity; Bunin - depicting a moment of true passion, that is, real life, according to the writer, which is so unlike the gray routine. Chekhovsky Gurov, returning to Moscow, cannot tell anyone about his acquaintance with Anna Sergeevna. Once, however, he admits to his partner on the cards that he met a charming woman in the Crimea, but in response he hears: “But just now you were right: sturgeon is something with a smell!” (III). The above phrase made Gurov horrified by his usual life, because he realized that even "in an educated society" few people care about high feelings. And Bunin's heroes are seized by the same fear and despair as Gurov. At the moment of happiness, they deliberately fence themselves off from everyday life, and Bunin, as it were, says to readers: “Now think for yourself what your usual existence is worth compared to wonderful moments of love.”
Summing up, it should be recognized that in Bunin's story, sunstroke became an allegory of high love, which a person can only dream of. Sunstroke demonstrates both the artistic principles and the philosophical views of the writer.
Bunin's philosophy of life is such that for him the moment when a person immediately knows the happiness of love (as in "Sunstroke") or the meaning of being is revealed to him (as in "Silence"), a moment of happiness strikes Bunin's heroes, as sunstroke, and the rest of life is held only by deliciously sad memories of him.
However, it seems that such a philosophy devalues the rest of a person's life, which becomes just a vegetation between rare moments of happiness. Gurov in "The Lady with the Dog" knows no worse than Bunin's "beautiful stranger" that after a few happy days of love everything will end (II), the prose of life will return, but he beat Anna Sergeevna and therefore does not leave her. Chekhov's heroes do not run away from love, and thanks to this, Gurov was able to feel that "now that his head has turned gray, he fell in love properly, for the first time in his life" (IV). In other words, "The Lady with the Dog" only begins where "Sunstroke" ends. Bunin's heroes have enough passionate feelings for one brightly emotional scene in a hotel, while Chekhov's heroes try to overcome the vulgarity of life, and this desire changes them, makes them nobler. Second life position seems more correct, although rarely does anyone succeed.
Bunin's artistic principles, which are reflected in the story, include, firstly, an uncomplicated plot, interesting not with exciting twists and turns, but with inner depth, and secondly, a special subject depiction, which gives the story credibility and persuasiveness. Thirdly, Bunin's critical attitude to the surrounding reality is expressed indirectly: he draws an extraordinary love adventure in the ordinary life of the heroes, which shows their entire habitual existence in an unsightly form.
What is the peculiarity of the plot of the story?
(The story begins without an introduction, as if it were a continuation of some kind of story. The writer seems to snatch out a piece of life - the brightest piece, like a "sunstroke." The heroes do not have names, it's just she and a woman and a man. The writer does not name the heroes - he it is important to show the feeling itself and what it does to a person.)
Why does Bunin not mention the reasons for the sudden love of the characters?
(The story is very short, it omits long descriptions, omits the reasons that pushed the characters to each other. This remains a mystery that cannot be solved.)
What is the peculiarity of the portrait of the heroine?
(Bunin does not describe the appearance of the heroine, but highlights the main thing in her - a simple, charming laugh speaks of how "everything was lovely in this little woman.")
Which Bunin describes a stranger after a night in a room?
("She was fresh, as at seventeen she was embarrassed very little; she was still simple, cheerful and - already reasonable.")
How does she explain what happened to them?
(“It’s like an eclipse came over me ... Or, rather, we both got something like a sunstroke.” The woman was the first to understand the acuteness of what had happened and the impossibility of continuing this too strong feeling.)
What has changed in the room since she left that reminds you of her?
(“The room without her seemed somehow completely different than it was with her. It was still full of her - and let it be. Only the smell of good English cologne and an unfinished cup remained, but she was already gone ...”)
What impression did this make on the lieutenant?
(The lieutenant's heart suddenly contracted with such tenderness that he hurried to light a cigarette and walked up and down the room several times. The lieutenant laughs at his "strange adventure", and at the same time "tears well up in his eyes".)
What is the role of the detail in this story?
(At the beginning of the story, the details of the portrait of the heroine: “A small strong hand smelled of sunburn in a light canvas dress” - emphasize the naturalness, simplicity and charm of a woman. The word “small” is found several times - evidence of defenselessness, weakness (but at the same time strength - “a small strong hand "), tenderness.
Other details (the smell of cologne, a cup, a screen moved aside, an unmade bed, a hairpin forgotten by her) reinforce the impression of the reality of what happened, deepen the drama: “He felt such pain and such uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was seized by horror, despair.” The steamboat is a symbol of separation.)
What does such a seemingly small detail mean - a hairpin forgotten by the heroine?
(This is the last trace of the “little woman”, visible, real. It is important for Bunin to show that the feeling that flared up after a fleeting meeting will not leave the hero.)
What new feelings did the lieutenant have?
(All the lieutenant's feelings seem to be sharpened. He "remembered her all, with all her slightest features, remembered the smell of her suntan and linen dress, her strong body, the lively, simple and cheerful sound of her voice." And another new feeling, previously not experienced, torments the lieutenant: this is a strange, incomprehensible feeling... He does not know "how to live the whole next day without her", he feels unhappy.
This feeling is gradually transformed: “Everything was fine, there was immense happiness in everything, great joy ... and at the same time, the heart was simply torn to pieces.”)
Why is the hero trying to free himself from the feeling of love?
(“The sunstroke” that hit the lieutenant was too strong, unbearable. Both the happiness and the pain that accompanied it turned out to be unbearable.)
(“Sunstroke” is accompanied by natural heat, which exacerbates the feeling of loss. Hot streets cannot dispel the pain of separation and longing. Nature in the story emphasizes the power of a sudden flash of feeling and the inevitability of parting.)
Too much love - why is it dramatic and even tragic?
(It is impossible to return a loved one, but it is also impossible to live without it. The hero cannot get rid of sudden, unexpected love, “sunstroke” leaves an indelible mark on the soul.)
How experiences affected the hero last day?
(The hero feels ten years older. The instantaneousness of the experienced impression made him so sharp that it seems that almost a whole life was contained in him.)
Final questions about the story:
1. How should the title of the story be understood? What meaning does the writer put into the epithet "sunny"? How does this meaning change throughout the story?
2. Explain how Bunin draws the inner world of a person. With which of the Russian writers of the 19th century can you compare the methods of psychological analysis used by him?
3. Give examples of the ring composition of the work. Is it possible to speak about the absolute identity of "beginnings" and "ends"?
Conclusion:
Love in Bunin's works is dramatic, even tragic, it is something elusive and natural, blinding a person, acting on him like a sunstroke. Love is a great abyss, mysterious and inexplicable, strong and painful.
Tasks:
1. What is the difference between the interpretation of love in the stories "Light Breath", "Grammar of Love" and "Sunstroke"?
2. What cross-cutting images-motives are present in Bunin's stories about love?
Russian literature has always been distinguished by extraordinary chastity. Love, in the view of a Russian person and a Russian writer, is primarily a spiritual feeling. The attraction of souls, mutual understanding, spiritual community, similarity of interests have always been more important than the attraction of bodies, the desire for physical intimacy. The latter, in accordance with Christian dogmas, was even condemned. L. Tolstoy administers a strict trial over Anna Karenina, no matter what various critics say. In the traditions of Russian literature, there was also an image of women of easy virtue (remember Sonechka Marmeladova) as pure and immaculate creatures, whose soul is in no way affected by the “costs of the profession”. And in no way could a short-term connection, a spontaneous rapprochement, a carnal impulse of a man and a woman to each other be welcomed and not justified. A woman who embarked on this path was perceived as a creature either frivolous or desperate. In order to justify Katerina Kabanova in her actions and see in her betrayal of her husband an impulse for freedom and a protest against oppression in general, N.A. Dobrolyubov in his article “A Ray of Light in a Dark Kingdom” had to involve the entire system of social relations in Russia! And of course, such a relationship has never been called love. Passion, attraction at its best. Ho not love.
Bunin fundamentally rethinks this "scheme". For him, the feeling that suddenly arises between random fellow travelers on the ship turns out to be as priceless as love. Moreover, it is love that is this heady, selfless, suddenly arising feeling, causing association with a sunstroke. He is convinced of this. “Soon it will be released,” he wrote to his friend, “the story “Sunstroke”, where I again, as in the novel“ Mitina Love ”, in“ The Case of Cornet Elagin ”, in“ Ida ”,“ I talk about love.
Bunin's interpretation of the theme of love is connected with his idea of Eros as a powerful elemental force - the main form of manifestation of cosmic life. It is tragic in its essence, as it turns a person upside down, dramatically changes the course of his life. Much in this respect brings Bunin closer to Tyutchev, who also believed that love does not so much bring harmony into human existence as it reveals the "chaos" lurking in it. But if Tyutchev was nevertheless attracted by the “union of the soul with the soul of his own”, which ultimately resulted in a fatal duel, if in his poems we see unique individuals who initially, even striving for this, are not able to bring happiness to each other, then Bunina is not concerned about the union of souls. Rather, he is shocked by the union of bodies, which in turn gives rise to a special understanding of life and another person, a feeling of indestructible memory, which makes life meaningful, and in a person shows his natural beginnings.
It can be said that the whole story “Sunstroke”, which, as the writer himself admitted, grew out of one mental “idea of going on deck ... from the light into the darkness of a summer night on the Volga”, is devoted to a description of this immersion in darkness, which the lieutenant is experiencing who lost his random lover. This immersion in darkness, almost “insanity” takes place against the backdrop of an unbearably stuffy sunny day, filling everything around with penetrating heat. All descriptions are literally overflowing with burning sensations: the room where random fellow travelers spend the night is “hotly hot during the day by the sun”. And the next day begins with a "sunny, hot morning." And later, “everything around was flooded with a hot, fiery ... sun.” And even in the evening heat spreads in the rooms from heated iron roofs, the wind raises thick white dust, a huge river glistens under the sun, the distance of water and sky shines dazzlingly. And after the forced wanderings around the city, the shoulder straps and buttons of the lieutenant's tunic “burned so much that they could not be touched. The band of the cap was wet with sweat inside, his face was on fire...”.
The sunshine, the blinding whiteness of these pages should remind readers of the “sunstroke” that overtook the heroes of the story. This is at the same time immeasurable, sharpest happiness, but it is still a blow, albeit a “sunny”, i.e. painful, twilight state, loss of reason. Therefore, if at first the epithet solar is adjacent to the epithet happy, then later on the pages of the story there will appear “a joyful, but here it seems to be an aimless sun.”
Bunin very carefully reveals the ambiguous meaning of his work. He does not allow the participants in a short-term romance to immediately understand what happened to them. The heroine pronounces the first words about some kind of “eclipse”, “sunstroke”. Later, he will repeat them in bewilderment: “Indeed, it’s like some kind of “sunstroke”. But she still talks about it without thinking, more concerned about ending the relationship right away, because it may be “unpleasant” for her to continue it: if they go together again, “everything will be spoiled”. At the same time, the heroine repeatedly repeats that this has never happened to her, that what happened on her own day is incomprehensible, incomprehensible, unique. But the lieutenant, as it were, passes her words past her ears (later, however, with tears in his eyes, perhaps only in order to revive her intonation, he repeats them), he easily agrees with her, easily takes her to the pier, easily and Carelessly returns to the room where they had just been together.
And now the main action begins, because the whole story of the rapprochement of two people was only an exposition, only preparation for the shock that happened in the soul of the lieutenant and which he immediately cannot believe. First we are talking about the strange sensation of the emptiness of the room, which struck him when he returned. Bunin boldly collides antonyms in sentences to sharpen this impression: “The number without her seemed somehow completely different than it was with her. He was still full of her - and empty ... She still smelled of her good English cologne, her unfinished cup was still standing on the tray, but she was already gone. And in the future, this contrast - the presence of a person in the soul, in memory and his real absence in the surrounding space - will intensify with every moment. In the soul of the lieutenant, a feeling of wildness, unnaturalness, implausibility of what happened, intolerable pain from loss is growing. The pain is such that it must be saved at all costs. There is no salvation in anything. And every action only brings him closer to the thought that he cannot “get rid of this sudden, unexpected love” in any way, that his memories of what he experienced, “about the smell of her suntan and canvas dress”, about “a lively, simple and cheerful sound” will forever haunt him. her voices." Once F. Tyutchev begged:
Oh Lord, give me burning suffering
And dispel the deadness of my soul:
You took it, but the flour of remembrance,
Leave living flour to me for her.
The heroes of Bunin do not need to conjure - the “torment of remembering” is always with them. The writer perfectly depicts that terrible feeling of loneliness, rejection from other people, which the lieutenant experienced, pierced by love. Dostoevsky believed that such a feeling can be experienced by a person who has committed a terrible crime. Such is his Raskolnikov. What crime did the lieutenant commit? Only that he was overwhelmed by “too much love, too much happiness”!? However, this is what immediately set him apart from the masses. ordinary people living an ordinary, unremarkable life. Bunin deliberately picks out individual human figures from this mass in order to clarify this idea. Here, at the entrance of the hotel, a cab stopped and simply, carelessly, indifferently, calmly sitting on the box, smokes a cigarette, and another cab driver, taking the lieutenant to the pier, says something cheerfully. Here the women and men at the bazaar are energetically inviting buyers, praising their goods, and satisfied newlyweds look at the lieutenant from photographs, a pretty girl in a wrinkled cap and some military man with magnificent sideburns, in a uniform decorated with orders. And in the cathedral the church choir sings “loudly, cheerfully, resolutely.”
Of course, the fun, carelessness and happiness of others are seen through the eyes of the hero, and, probably, this is not entirely true. But the fact of the matter is that from now on he sees the world just like that, imbued with people who are not “hit” by love, “torturously envy”. After all, they really do not experience that unbearable torment, that incredible suffering that does not give him a moment of peace. Hence his sharp, some kind of convulsive movements, gestures, impetuous actions: “quickly got up”, “hurriedly walked”, “stopped in horror”, “began to stare intently”. The writer pays special attention to the character's gestures, his facial expressions, his views (for example, an unmade bed repeatedly falls into his field of vision, possibly still keeping the warmth of their bodies). Also important are his impressions of being, the sensations uttered aloud by the most elementary, but therefore striking phrases. Only occasionally does the reader get the opportunity to learn about his thoughts. This is how Bunin's psychological analysis is built, at the same time both secret and explicit, some kind of "super-obvious".
The culmination of the story can be considered the phrase: “Everything was fine, there was immense happiness in everything, great joy; even in this heat and in all the smells of the marketplace, in all this unfamiliar town and in this old county hotel, there was this joy, and at the same time, the heart was simply torn to pieces. It is even known that in one of the editions of the story it was said that the lieutenant "had a persistent thought of suicide." Thus, a dividing line is drawn between the past and the present. From now on, he exists, “deeply unhappy”, and some of them, others, happy and contented. And Bunin agrees that “everything everyday, ordinary is wild, scary” to the heart, which was visited by great love - that “new ... strange, incomprehensible feeling”, which this unremarkable person “could not even imagine in himself”. And mentally the hero dooms his chosen one to a “lonely life” in the future, although he knows perfectly well that she has a husband and daughter. Ho husband and daughter are present in the dimension “ ordinary life”, as in “ordinary life” simple, unpretentious joys remained. Therefore, for him, after parting, the whole world around turns into a desert (not without reason in one of the phrases of the story - on a completely different occasion - the Sahara is mentioned). “The street was completely empty. The houses were all the same, white, two-story, merchants ... and it seemed that there was not a soul in them. The room breathes with the heat of “light-bearing (and therefore colorless, blinding! - M.M.) and now completely empty, silent ... world”. This “silent Volga world” comes to replace the “immeasurable Volga expanse”, in which she, beloved, the only one, disappeared, disappeared forever. This motif of the disappearance and at the same time the presence in the world of a human being living in human memory is very reminiscent of the intonation of Bunin's story "Light Breath" -
about the chaotic and unrighteous life of the young schoolgirl Olya Meshcherskaya, who possessed this most inexplicable “light breath” and died at the hands of her lover. It ends with these lines: "Now this light breath has again dissipated in the world, in this cloudy sky, in this cold spring wind."
In full accordance with the contrast between the individual existence of a grain of sand (such a definition suggests itself!) And the boundless world, a collision of times so significant for Bunin's concept of life arises - the present, present, even momentary time and eternity, into which time grows without it. The word never begins to sound like a refrain: “he will never see her again”, “never tell” her about his feelings. I would like to write: “From now on, my whole life is forever, until your grave ...” - but you cannot send a telegram to her, since the name and surname are unknown; I’m ready to die even tomorrow in order to spend a day together today, to prove my love, but it’s impossible to return my beloved ... At first, it seems unbearable for the lieutenant to live without her only an endless, but a single day in a dusty town forgotten by God. Then this day will turn into flour "the uselessness of all future life without her."
The story has, in fact, a circular composition. At the very beginning of it, a blow is heard on the pier of the moored steamer, and at the end the same sounds are heard. Days passed between them. One day. Ho, in the view of the hero and the author, they are separated from each other by at least ten years (this figure is repeated twice in the story - after everything that happened, after realizing his loss, the lieutenant feels “ten years older”!), but in fact, by eternity. Another person is riding on the ship again, having comprehended some of the most important things on earth, having joined her secrets.
What is striking in this story is the sense of the materiality of what is happening. Indeed, it seems that such a story could be written by a person who only really experienced something similar, remembered both the lonely hairpin forgotten by his beloved on the night table, and the sweetness of the first kiss, which took his breath away. Ho Bunin sharply objected to identifying him with his heroes. “I have never told my own novels ... and“ Mitina Love ”and“ Sunstroke ”are all fruits of the imagination,” he was indignant. Rather, in the Maritime Alps, in 1925, when this story was written, he imagined the shining Volga, its yellow shoals, oncoming rafts and a pink steamer sailing along it. All the things he was never meant to see. And the only words that the author of the story utters “on his own behalf” are the words that they “remembered this moment for many years afterwards: neither one nor the other had ever experienced anything like this in their entire lives.” The heroes, who are no longer destined to see each other, cannot know what will happen to them in that “life” that will arise outside the narrative, what they will feel afterwards.
In a purely “dense”, material manner of narration (it was not for nothing that one of the critics called what came out from under his pen “brocade prose”) it was precisely the worldview of the writer who thirsted through memory, through touching the subject, through the trace left by someone (when Having visited the Middle East, he was glad that he saw in some dungeon a “living and clear footprint” left five thousand years ago) to resist the destructive action of time, to triumph over oblivion, and therefore over death. It is the memory in the view of the writer that makes a person like God. Bunin proudly said: "I am a man: like a god, I am doomed / To know the longing of all countries and all times." So a person who has recognized love, in the artistic world of Bunin, can consider himself a deity, to whom new, unknown feelings are revealed - kindness, spiritual generosity, nobility. The writer speaks of the mystery of the currents that run between people, binding them into an indissoluble whole, but at the same time he persistently reminds us of the unpredictability of the results of our actions, of the “chaos” that hides under a decent existence, of the trembling caution that such a fragile organization requires, like human life.
Bunin's work, especially on the eve of the cataclysm of 1917 and emigration, is imbued with a sense of catastrophism, which awaits both the passengers of the Atlantis and selflessly devoted lovers, who are nevertheless bred by life circumstances. But the anthem of love and joy of life will sound no less loudly in it, which can be available to people whose heart has not grown old, whose soul is open to creativity. But in this joy, and in this love, and in the self-forgetfulness of creativity, Bunin saw the danger of a passionate attachment to life, which can sometimes be so strong that his heroes choose death, preferring eternal oblivion to the acute pain of pleasure.
They meet in the summer, on one of the Volga steamers. He is a lieutenant, She is a lovely, small, tanned woman returning home from Anapa.
I'm completely drunk, she laughed. - Actually, I'm completely crazy. Three hours ago, I didn't even know you existed.
The lieutenant kisses her hand, and his heart beats blissfully and terribly.
The ship approaches the pier, the lieutenant begs her to get off. A minute later they go to the hotel and rent a large but stuffy room. As soon as the footman closes the door behind him, both of them merge in a kiss so frenziedly that they later remember this moment for many years: none of them has ever experienced anything like this.
And in the morning this little nameless woman, jokingly calling herself "a beautiful stranger" and "Tsarist Marya Morevna", leaves. Despite the almost sleepless night, she is fresh, as at seventeen, a little embarrassed, still simple, cheerful, and already reasonable: she asks the lieutenant to stay until the next ship.
There has never been anything even similar to what happened to me, and there will never be again. It's like an eclipse hit me ... Or, rather, we both got something like a sunstroke ...
And the lieutenant somehow easily agrees with her, takes her to the pier, puts her on the steamer and kisses her on deck in front of everyone.
Easily and carefree, he returns to the hotel, but the room seems to the lieutenant somehow different. He is still full of it - and empty. The lieutenant's heart suddenly shrinks with such tenderness that he has no strength to look at the unmade bed - and he closes it with a screen. He thinks this cute "road adventure" is over. He can't "come to this city, where her husband, her three-year-old girl, in general, her whole ordinary life."
This thought shocks him. He feels such pain and the uselessness of his entire future life without her that he is seized by horror and despair. The lieutenant begins to believe that this is really a "sunstroke", and does not know "how to live this endless day, with these memories, with this insoluble torment."
The lieutenant goes to the bazaar, to the cathedral, then circles around the abandoned garden for a long time, but nowhere does he find peace and deliverance from this unwelcome feeling.
How wild, how absurd everything is everyday, ordinary, when the heart is struck by this terrible “sunstroke”, too much love, too much happiness.
Returning to the hotel, the lieutenant orders dinner. Everything is fine, but he knows that without hesitation he would die tomorrow if it were possible by some miracle to return the “beautiful stranger” and prove how painfully and enthusiastically he loves her. He does not know why, but it is more necessary for him than life.
Realizing that it is impossible to get rid of this unexpected love, the lieutenant resolutely goes to the post office with a telegram already written, but he stops in horror at the post office - he does not know either her last name or first name! The lieutenant returns to the hotel completely broken, lies down on the bed, closes his eyes, feeling the tears rolling down his cheeks, and finally falls asleep.
The lieutenant wakes up in the evening. Yesterday and this morning he remembers as a distant past. He gets up, washes, drinks tea with lemon for a long time, pays for the room and goes to the pier.
The ship leaves at night. The lieutenant sits under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older.
