What is love? “Strong attachment to whom, ranging from inclination to passion; strong desire, desire; the election and preference of someone or something at will, by will (not by reason), sometimes completely unconsciously and recklessly, ”V. I. Dahl’s dictionary tells us. However, every person who has experienced this feeling at least once will be able to supplement this definition with something of his own. "All pain, tenderness Come to your senses, come to your senses!" - I. A. Bunin would add.

The great Russian émigré writer, prose poet has a very special love. It is not the same as it was described by his great predecessors: N. I. Karamzin, V. A. Zhukovsky, I. A. Goncharov, I. S. Turgenev. According to I. A. Bunin, love is not an idealized feeling, and his heroines are not “Turgenev young ladies” with their naivety and romanticism. However, Bunin's understanding of love does not coincide with today's interpretation of this feeling. The writer does not consider only the physical side of love, as the media do for the most part today, and with them many writers, considering it to be in demand. He (I. A. Bunin) writes about love, which is a fusion of "earth" and "heaven", the harmony of two opposite principles. And it is this understanding of love that seems to me (as, I think, to many who are familiar with the writer's love lyrics) the most truthful, true and necessary for modern society.

In his narration, the second does not hide anything from the reader, does not keep silent about anything, but at the same time does not stoop to vulgarity. Speaking about intimate human relationships, I. A. Bunin, thanks to his highest skill, the ability to choose the only right, right words, never crosses the line that separates high art from naturalism.

Before I. A. Bunin, in Russian literature, so much about love "has never been written by anyone." He not only decided to show the sides of the relationship between a man and a woman that have always remained secret. His works about love have also become masterpieces of the classical, strict, but at the same time expressive and capacious Russian language.

Love in the works of I. A. Bunin is like a flash, insight, "sunstroke". Most often, it does not bring happiness, followed by separation or even the death of heroes. But, despite this, Bunin's prose is a glorification of love: each story makes you feel how wonderful and important this feeling is for a person.

The cycle of stories "Dark Alleys" is the pinnacle of the writer's love lyrics. “She speaks of the tragic and of many tender and beautiful things - I think that this is the best and most original thing that I have written in my life,” said I. A. Bunin about his book. And, indeed, the collection, written in 1937-1944 (when I. A. Bunin was about seventy), can be considered an expression of the writer’s formed talent, a reflection of his life experience, thoughts, feelings, personal perception of life and love.

In this research work I set myself the goal of tracing how Bunin's philosophy of love was born, considering its evolution and, at the end of my research, formulating the concept of love according to I. A. Bunin, highlighting its main points. To achieve this goal, I needed to solve the following tasks.

First, to consider the writer’s early stories, such as “At the Dacha” (1895), “Velga” (1895), “Without a clan-tribe” (1897), “Autumn” (1901), and, identifying them characteristics and finding common features with more late work I. A. Bunin, to answer the questions: “How did the theme of love originate in the writer’s work? What are they, these thin trees, from which “Dark Alleys” will grow forty years later?

Secondly, my task was to analyze the stories of the writer of the 1920s, paying attention to which features of I. A. Bunin’s work, acquired during this period, were reflected in the writer’s main book about love, and which were not. In addition, in my work I tried to show how in the works of Ivan Alekseevich, relating to this period of time, two main motives intertwine, which became fundamental in the later stories of the writer. These are the motives of love and death, which in their combination give rise to the idea of ​​the immortality of love.

I took the method of systematic and structural reading of Bunin's prose as the basis of my research, considering the formation of the author's philosophy of love from early works to later ones. Factor analysis was also used in the work.

Literature review

I. A. Bunin was called “a poet in prose and a prose writer in poetry”, therefore, in order to show his perception of love from different sides, and somewhere in order to confirm my assumptions, in my work I turned not only to collections of short stories writer, but also to his poems, in particular to those published in the first volume of the collected works of I. A. Bunin.

The work of I. A. Bunin, like any other writer, is in undoubted connection with his life, fate. Therefore, in my work, I also used the facts of the writer's biography. They were suggested to me by the books of Oleg Mikhailov “The Life of Bunin. Life is given only to the word "and Mikhail Roshchin" Ivan Bunin.

“Everything is known in comparison,” these wise words prompted me to turn to the positions of others in a study on the philosophy of love in the works of I. A. Bunin famous people: writers and philosophers. “Russian Eros or the Philosophy of Love in Russia”, compiled by V.P. Shestakov, helped me to do this.

To find out the opinion of literary critics on issues of interest to me, I turned to the criticism of various authors, for example, the articles of the journal "Russian Literature", the book of Doctor of Philology I. N. Sukhikh "Twenty Books of the 20th Century" and others.

Undoubtedly, the most important part of the source material for my research, its basis and inspiration were the very works of I. A. Bunin about love. I found them in such books as "I. A. Bunin. Tales, Stories”, published in the series “Russian Classics about Love”, “Dark Alleys. Diaries 1918-1919 ”(World Classics series”), and collected works edited by various authors (A. S. Myasnikov, B. S. Ryurikov, A. T. Tvardovsky and Yu. V. Bondarev, O. N. Mikhailov , V.P. Rynkevich).

The philosophy of love in the works of I. A. Bunin

Chapter 1

“The problem of love has not yet been developed in my works. And I feel an urgent need to write about it,” says I. A. Bunin in the fall of 1912 to the correspondent of Moskovskaya Gazeta. 1912 - the writer is already 42 years old. Is it until this time love theme didn't interest him? Or perhaps he himself did not experience this feeling? Not at all. By this time (1912), Ivan Alekseevich had experienced a lot, both happy and full of disappointment and suffering from unrequited love days.

We then - you were sixteen,

I'm seventeen years old,

But do you remember how you opened

door on Moonlight? - this is how I. A. Bunin writes in a poem of 1916 “On a quiet night, the late month came out.” It is a reflection of one of those hobbies that I. A. Bunin experienced while still very young. There were many such hobbies, but only one of them grew into a really strong, all-consuming love, became the sadness and joy of the young poet for four whole years. It was love for the doctor's daughter Varvara Pashchenko.

He met her in the editorial office of the Oryol Herald in 1890. At first he took her hostilely, considered her “proud and foppish”, but they soon became friends, and a year later the young writer realized that he was in love with Varvara Vladimirovna. But their love was not cloudless. I. A. Bunin adored her frantically, passionately, but she was changeable towards him. Everything was further complicated by the fact that Varvara Pashchenko's father was much richer than Ivan Alekseevich. In the autumn of 1894, their painful relationship ended - Pashchenko married a friend of I. A. Bunin, Arseny Bibikov. After the break with Varya, I. A. Bunin was in such a state that his relatives feared for his life.

If only it were possible

Love yourself alone

If we forget the past,

Everything that you already forgot

I wouldn't embarrass, I wouldn't scare

Eternal dusk of eternal night:

Quenched eyes

I would love to close! - I. A. Bunin will write in 1894. However, despite all the suffering associated with her, this love and this woman will forever remain in the soul of the writer as something tragic, but still beautiful.

On September 23, 1898, I. A. Bunin hastily marries Anna Nikolaevna Tsakni. Two days before the wedding, he ironically writes to his friend N. D. Teleshov: “I am still single, but - alas! “I will soon be married.” The family of I. A. Bunin and A. N. Tsakni lasted only a year and a half. At the beginning of March 1900, their final break took place, which I. A. Bunin experienced very hard. “Don’t be angry at the silence – in my soul the devil will break his leg,” he wrote at that time to a friend.

Several years have passed. The bachelor life of I. A. Bunin has exhausted itself. He needed a person who could support him, an understanding partner who shared his interests. Such a woman in the life of the writer was Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, the daughter of a professor at Moscow University. The date of the beginning of their union can be considered April 10, 1907, when Vera Nikolaevna decided to go with I. A. Bunin on a trip to the Holy Land. “I changed my life drastically: from a settled life I turned it into a nomadic one for almost twenty whole years,” V. N. Muromtseva wrote about this day in her Conversations with Memory.

So, we see that by the age of forty, I. A. Bunin managed to experience a passionate love for V. Pashchenko to oblivion, and an unsuccessful marriage with Anya Tsakni, many other novels, and, finally, a meeting with V. N. Muromtseva. How could these events, which, it seems, should have brought the writer so many experiences related to love, not be reflected in his work? They were reflected - the theme of love began to sound in Bunin's works. But why, then, did he state that it was “not developed”? To answer this question, let us consider in more detail the stories written by I. A. Bunin before 1912.

Almost all the works written by Ivan Alekseevich during this period are of a social nature. The writer tells the stories of those who live in the countryside: small landowners, peasants - he compares the village and the city and the people living in them (the story "News from the Motherland" (1893)). However, these works are not without love themes. Only the feelings experienced by the hero for a woman disappear almost immediately after they appear, and are not the main ones in the plots of the stories. The author does not seem to allow these feelings to develop. “In the spring, he noticed that his wife, a cheeky-beautiful young woman, began to start some special conversations with the teacher,” writes I. A. Bunin in his story “Teacher” (1894). However, literally two paragraphs later on the pages of this work, we read: “But relations somehow did not start between her and the teacher.”

The image of a beautiful young girl, and with it the feeling of light love, appear in the story “At the Country House” (1895): “Either smiling, or grimacing, she absently looked with her blue eyes at the sky. Grisha passionately wanted to come up and kiss her on the lips. “Her”, Marya Ivanovna, we will see on the pages of the story only a few times. I. A. Bunin will make her feeling for Grisha, and him for her nothing more than flirting. The story will be of a socio-philosophical nature, and love will play only an episodic role in it.

In the same year, 1895, but a little later, "Velga" (originally "Northern Legend") also appeared. This is a story about the girl Velga's unrequited love for her childhood friend Irvald. She confesses her feelings to him, but he replies: “Tomorrow I will go to sea again, and when I return, I will take Sneggar by the hand” (Sneggar is Velga’s sister). Velga is tormented by jealousy, but when she finds out that her beloved has disappeared into the sea and that only she can save him, she swims away to the "wild cliff at the end of the world", where her beloved is languishing. Velga knows that she is destined to die and that Irwald will never know about her sacrifice, but this does not stop her. “He instantly woke up from a scream,” the voice of a friend touched his heart, but, looking, he saw only a seagull flying up screaming over the boat,” writes I. A. Bunin.

By the emotions caused by this story, we recognize in it the predecessor of the Dark Alleys cycle: love does not lead to happiness, on the contrary, it becomes a tragedy for a girl in love, but she, having experienced the feeling that brought her pain and suffering, does not regret anything “joy resounds in her lamentations.”

In style, "Velga" differs from all the works written by I. A. Bunin, both before and after it. This story has a very special rhythm, which is achieved by inversion, the reverse order of words (“And Velga began to sing ringing songs on the seashore through her tears”). The story resembles a legend not only in the style of speech. The characters in it are depicted schematically, their characters are not spelled out. The basis of the narrative is a description of their actions and feelings, but the feelings are rather superficial, clearly indicated by the author, often even in the speech of the characters themselves, for example: “I want to cry that you were gone for so long, and I want to laugh that I see you again” (words Velgi).

In his first story about love, I. A. Bunin is looking for a way to express this feeling. But the poetic, in the form of a legend, narration does not satisfy him - there will be no more such works as "Velga" in the writer's work. I. A. Bunin continues to search for words and form to describe love.

In 1897, the story "Without a clan-tribe" appears. It, unlike "Velga", was already written in the usual Bunin manner - emotional, expressive, with a description of many shades of mood that add up to a single feeling of life at one time or another. In this work, the narrator is main character, which we will see later in almost all Bunin's stories about love. However, when reading the story “Without a clan-tribe”, it becomes clear that the writer has not yet finally formulated for himself the answer to the question: “What is love?” Almost the entire work is a description of the state of the hero after he learns that Zina, the girl he loves, is marrying another. The author's attention is focused precisely on these feelings of the hero, but love itself, the relationship between the characters is presented in the light of the breakup that has occurred and is not the main thing in the story.

There are two women in the life of the protagonist: Zina, whom he loves, and Elena, whom he considers his friend. Two women and various, unequal attitudes towards them that appeared in I. A. Bunin in this story can also be seen in “ dark alleys”(the stories “Zoyka and Valeria”, “Natalie”), but in a slightly different light.

At the end of the conversation about the appearance of the theme of love in the work of I. A. Bunin, one cannot fail to mention the story "Autumn", written in 1901. “Made by a non-free, strained hand,” A.P. Chekhov wrote about him in one of his letters. In this statement, the word "tense" sounds like criticism. However, it is precisely the tension, the concentration of all feelings in a short period of time and the style, as if accompanying this situation, "not free", that make up the whole charm of the story.

"Well, I have to go!" she says and leaves. He is next. And, full of excitement, unconscious fear of each other, they go to the sea. “We quickly went through the leaves and puddles, along some high alley to the cliffs,” we read at the end of the third part of the story. "alley" - as if a symbol of future works, "Dark Alleys" of love, and the word "cliff" seems to personify everything that should happen between the characters. And indeed, in the story "Autumn" for the first time we see love as it appears before us in the later works of the writer - a flash, insight, a step over the edge of a cliff.

“Tomorrow I will remember this night with horror, but now I don’t care. I love you,” says the heroine of the story. And we understand that he and she are destined to part, but that both of them will never forget those few hours of happiness that they spent together.

The plot of the story "In Autumn" is very similar to the plots of "Dark Alleys", as well as the fact that the author does not indicate the names of either the hero or the heroine and that his character is barely outlined, while she occupies the main place in the story. This work combines with the cycle "Dark Alleys" also how the hero, and with him the author, treats a woman - reverently, with admiration: "she was incomparable", "her pale, happy and tired face seemed to me the face of an immortal ". However, all these obvious similarities are not the main thing that makes the story "Autumn" similar to the stories of "Dark Alleys". There is something more important. And this is the feeling that these works evoke, a feeling of unsteadiness, transience, but at the same time, the extraordinary power of love.

Chapter 2

The work of I. A. Bunin in the 1920s

Works about love written by Ivan Alekseevich Bunin from the autumn of 1924 to the autumn of 1925 ("Mitina's Love", "Sunstroke", "Ida", "The Case of the Elagin Cornet"), with all the conspicuous differences, are united by one idea underlying each of them. This idea is love as a shock, a "sunstroke", a fatal feeling that brings moments of joy and great suffering, which fills the whole existence of a person and leaves an indelible mark on his life. Such an understanding of love, or rather its premises, can be seen in early stories I. A. Bunin, for example, in the story "Autumn", discussed earlier. However, the theme of the fatal predestination and tragedy of this feeling is truly revealed by the author precisely in the works of the 1920s.

The hero of the story "Sunstroke" (1925), a lieutenant who is accustomed to easily relate to love adventures, meets a woman on a steamer, spends the night with her, and in the morning she leaves. “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, ”she tells him before leaving. The lieutenant "somehow easily" agrees with her, but when she leaves, he suddenly realizes that it was not a simple road adventure. This is something more, which makes one feel “pain and uselessness of the whole future life without her”, without this “little woman”, who remained a stranger to him.

“The lieutenant sat under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older,” we read at the end of the story, and it becomes clear that the hero experienced a strong, all-consuming feeling. love, love with capital letter, capable of becoming the most expensive in a person’s life and at the same time his torment, tragedy.

Love-instant, love-flash, we will see in the story "Ida", also written in 1925. The hero of this work is a middle-aged composer. He has a “stocky torso”, “a broad peasant face with narrow eyes”, a “short neck” - the image of a seemingly rather rude person who, at first glance, is not capable of lofty feelings. But this is only at first glance. Being in a restaurant with friends, the composer leads his story in an ironic, mocking tone, he is embarrassed, unusual to talk about love, he even attributes the story that happened to him to his friend.

The hero talks about events that took place several years ago. In the house where he lives with his wife, her friend Ida often visited. She is young, pretty, with "rare harmony and naturalness of movements", lively "violet eyes". It should be noted that it is the story "Ida" that can be considered the beginning of the creation by I. A. Bunin of full-fledged female images. In this short work, as if in passing, between times, those features that the writer extolled in a woman are noted: naturalness, following the aspirations of one's heart, frankness in one's feelings towards oneself and towards a loved one.

However, back to the story. The composer does not seem to pay attention to Ida, and when one day she stops visiting their house, he does not even think to ask his wife about her. Two years later, the hero accidentally meets Ida at the railway station and there, among the snowdrifts, “on some of the farthest, side platforms”, she unexpectedly confesses her love to him. She kisses him "with one of those kisses that I remember later not only to the grave, but also in the grave," and leaves.

The narrator says that when he met Ida at that station, when he heard her voice, he “understood only one thing: that, it turns out, he has been brutally in love with this very Ida for many years.” And it is enough to look at the end of the story to understand that the hero still loves her, painfully, tenderly, nevertheless knowing that they cannot be together: entire area:

My sun! My beloved! Hurrah!

And in " Sunstroke”, and in “Ida” we see the impossibility of happiness for lovers, a kind of doom, fate that weighs on them. All these motifs are also found in two other works by I. A. Bunin, written around the same time: "Mitya's Love" and "The Case of Cornet Elagin". However, in them, these motives are, as it were, concentrated, they are the basis of the narrative and, as a result, lead the heroes to a tragic denouement - death.

"Don't you already know that love and death are inextricably linked?" - wrote I. A. Bunin and convincingly proved this in one of his letters: “Every time I experienced a love catastrophe, - and there were many of these love catastrophes in my life, or rather, almost every one of my loves was a disaster, “I was close to suicide.” These words of the writer himself can perfectly show the idea of ​​such his works as "Mitina's Love" and "The Case of Cornet Elagin", become a kind of epigraph for them.

The story "Mitya's Love" was written by I. A. Bunin in 1924 and became a commemoration of a new period in the writer's work. In this work, for the first time, he examines in detail the evolution of his hero's love. As an experienced psychologist, the author captures the slightest changes in the feelings of a young man.

The narrative is built only to a small extent on external moments, the main thing is the description of the thoughts and feelings of the hero. It is on them that all attention is focused. However, sometimes the author makes his reader, as it were, look around, see some, at first glance, insignificant, but characterizing the inner state of the hero, details. This feature of the narrative will manifest itself in many of the later works of I. A. Bunin, including Dark Alleys.

The story "Mitya's Love" tells about the development of this feeling in the soul of the main character - Mitya. When we meet him, he is already in love. But this love is not happy, not careless, it speaks of this, the very first line of the work sets it up: "In Moscow, Mitya's last happy day was on the ninth of March." How to explain these words? Perhaps this is followed by the separation of the heroes? Not at all. They continue to meet, but Mitya "stubbornly seems that something terrible has suddenly begun, something has changed in Katya."

At the heart of the whole work lies the internal conflict of the protagonist. The beloved exists for him, as it were, in a double perception: one is close, beloved and loving, dear Katya, the other is “genuine, ordinary, painfully different from the first.” The hero suffers from this contradiction, which is subsequently joined by the rejection of both the environment in which Katya lives and the atmosphere of the village where he will leave.

In "Mitya's Love" for the first time, an understanding of the surrounding reality as the main obstacle to the happiness of lovers is clearly traced. The vulgar artistic environment of St. Petersburg, with its "falseness and stupidity", under the influence of which Katya becomes "all alien, all public", is hated by the protagonist, just like the village one, where he wants to go to "give himself a rest". Running away from Katya, Mitya thinks that he can also run away from his painful love for her. But he is mistaken: in the village, where everything would seem so nice, beautiful, expensive, the image of Katya haunts him all the time.

Gradually, the tension builds up, the psychological state of the hero becomes more and more unbearable, step by step leading him to a tragic denouement. The ending of the story is predictable, but no less terrible: “She, this pain, was so strong, so unbearable, that wanting only one thing - to get rid of her at least for a minute, he fumbled and pushed the drawer of the night table, caught a cold and heavy lump of a revolver and, with a deep and joyful sigh, he opened his mouth and fired with force, with pleasure.

On the night of July 19, 1890, in the city of Warsaw in the house number 14 on Novgorodskaya Street, the cornet of the hussar regiment Alexander Bartenev shot from a revolver shot the artist of the local Polish theater Maria Visnovskaya. Soon, the offender confessed to his deed and said that he had committed the murder at the insistence of Visnovskaya herself, his lover. This story was widely covered in almost all the newspapers of that time, and I. A. Bunin could not help but hear about it. It was the Bartenev case that served as the basis for the plot of the story, created by the writer 35 years after this event. Subsequently (this will be especially evident in the cycle "Dark Alleys"), when creating stories, I. A. Bunin will also turn to his memories. Then it will be enough for him to have an image flashed in his imagination, a detail, in contrast to the “Cornet Elagin Case”, in which the writer will leave the characters and events practically unchanged, trying, however, to identify the true reasons for the cornet’s act.

Following this goal, in "The Case of Cornet Elagin" I. A. Bunin for the first time will focus the reader's attention not only on the heroine, but also on the hero. The author will describe in detail his appearance: “a small, frail, reddish and freckled man, on crooked and unusually thin legs”, as well as his character: “a man very fond of, but as if always expecting something real, unusual”, “he used to modest and shyly secretive, then he fell into some recklessness, bravado. However, this experience turned out to be unsuccessful: the author himself wanted to name his work, in which it is the hero, and not his feeling, that occupies a central place, "Boulevard novel" I. A. Bunin will no longer return to this type of narration - in his further works about love , in the cycle "Dark Alleys" we will no longer see stories where the spiritual world and the character of the hero would be considered in such detail - all the author's attention will be focused on the heroine, which will serve as a reason for recognizing "Dark Alleys" as "a string of female types".

Despite the fact that I. A. Bunin himself wrote about the “Cornet Elagin Case”: “It’s just very stupid and simple,” this work contains one of the thoughts that became the basis of Bunin’s formed philosophy of love: “Is it really not known what is strange property of any strong and generally not quite ordinary love, even how to avoid marriage? And indeed, among all the subsequent works of I. A. Bunin, we will not find a single one in which the characters would come to a happy life together not only in marriage, but in general. The cycle "Dark Alleys", which is considered the pinnacle of the writer's work, will be devoted to love that dooms suffering, love as a tragedy, and the prerequisites for this should undoubtedly be sought in the early works of I. A. Bunin.

Chapter 3

It was a wonderful spring

They were sitting on the beach

She was in her prime,

His mustache was barely black

Around the wild rose scarlet bloomed,

There was an alley of dark lindens

N. Ogarev "Ordinary Tale".

These lines, once read by I. A. Bunin, evoked in the writer's memory what one of his stories begins with - Russian autumn, bad weather, a high road, a tarantass and an old military man passing through it. “The rest somehow came together, was invented very easily, unexpectedly,” I. A. Bunin will write about the creation of this work, and these words can be attributed to the entire cycle, which, like the story itself, bears the name “Dark alleys".

"Encyclopedia of love", "encyclopedia of love dramas" and, finally, according to I. A. Bunin himself, "the best and most original" that he wrote in his life - all this is about the cycle "Dark Alleys". What is this cycle about? What is the philosophy behind it? What ideas unite the stories?

First of all, this is the image of a woman and her perception by a lyrical hero. The female characters in "Dark Alleys" are extremely diverse. These are “simple souls” devoted to their beloved, such as Styopa and Tanya in the works of the same name; and bold, self-confident, sometimes extravagant women in the stories "Muse" and "Antigone"; and heroines who are spiritually rich, capable of a strong, lofty feeling, whose love is capable of giving unspeakable happiness: Rusya, Heinrich, Natalie in the stories of the same name; and the image of a restless, suffering, languishing "some kind of sad thirst for love" woman - the heroine of "Clean Monday". However, for all their apparent alienation to each other, these characters, these heroines are united by one thing - the presence in each of them of the original femininity, "light breathing ”, as I. A. Bunin himself called her. This feature of some women was defined by him in his early works, such as, for example, “Sunstroke” and the story “Light Breathing”, about which I. A. Bunin said: “We call it uterine, and I called easy breathing". How to understand these words? What is womb? Naturalness, sincerity, spontaneity and openness to love, submission to the movements of one's heart - all that is the eternal secret of female charm.

Turning in all the works of the cycle "Dark Alleys" it is to the heroine, to the woman, and not to the hero, making her the center of the story, the author, like every man, in this case a lyrical hero, tries to unravel the mystery of the Woman. He describes many female characters, types, but not at all in order to show how diverse they are, but in order to get as close as possible to the secret of femininity, to create a unique formula that would explain everything. “Women seem mysterious to me. The more I study them, the less I understand, ”I. A. Bunin writes these words of Flaubert in his diary.

The writer creates "Dark Alleys" already at the end of his life - at the end of 1937 (the time of writing the first story of the cycle, "The Caucasus"), I. A. Bunin is 67 years old. He lives with Vera Nikolaevna in Nazi-occupied France, far from his homeland, from friends, acquaintances and just people with whom he could talk in his native language. All that remains with the writer is his memoirs. They help him not only to relive once again what happened then, long ago, almost in past life. The magic of memories becomes for I. A. Bunin a new basis for creativity, allowing him to work, write again, and thus giving him the opportunity to survive in a bleak and alien environment in which he finds himself.

Almost all the stories of "Dark Alleys" are written in the past tense, sometimes even with an emphasis on this: "In that distant time, he spent himself especially recklessly" ("Tanya"), "He did not sleep, lay, smoked and mentally looked at that summer "(" Rus ")," In the fourteenth year, under New Year, was the same quiet, sunny evening, like that one, unforgettable ”(“ Clean Monday”) Does this mean that the author wrote them “from life”, recalling the events own life? No. I. A. Bunin, on the contrary, always claimed that the plots of his stories were fictitious. “In it, everything from word to word is invented, as in almost all of my stories, both past and present,” he said about “Natalie”.

Why, then, was this look from the present into the past needed, what did the author want to show by this? The most accurate answer to this question can be found in the story "Cold Autumn", which tells about a girl who saw off her fiancé to the war. Having lived a long, difficult life after she learned that her loved one had died, the heroine says: “But what happened in my life anyway? Just that cold autumn evening. the rest is an unnecessary dream.” True love, true happiness are only moments in a person’s life, but they are able to illuminate his existence, become the most important and important for him and, ultimately, mean more than the whole life he has lived. This is exactly what I. A. Bunin wants to convey to the reader, showing in his stories love as something that has already become a particle of the past, but left an indelible mark on the souls of the heroes, like lightning illuminated their lives.

The death of a hero in the stories "Cold Autumn" and "In Paris"; impossibility to be together in "Rus", "Tanya"; the death of the heroine in "Natalie", "Heinrich", the story "Oaks" Almost all the stories of the cycle, with the exception of works that are almost plotless, such as "Smaragd", tell us about the inevitability of a tragic ending. And the reason for this is not at all that misfortune, grief is more diverse in its manifestations, in contrast to happiness, and, therefore, it is “more interesting” to write about it. Not at all. The long, serene existence of lovers together in the understanding of I. A. Bunin is no longer love. When a feeling turns into a habit, a holiday into weekdays, excitement into calm confidence, Love itself disappears. And in order to prevent this, the author "stops the moment" at the highest rise of feelings. Despite the separation, grief and even death of the heroes, which seem to the author less terrible for love than everyday life and habit, I. A. Bunin does not get tired of repeating that love is the greatest happiness. “Is there an unhappy love? Doesn't the most mournful music in the world give happiness? - says Natalie, who survived the betrayal of her beloved and a long separation from him.

"Natalie", "Zoyka and Valeria", "Tanya", "Galya Ganskaya", "Dark Alleys" and a few other works - these are, perhaps, all the stories of thirty-eight in which the main characters: he and she - have names. This is due to the fact that the author wants to focus the reader's attention primarily on the feelings and experiences of the characters. External factors, such as names, biographies, sometimes even what is happening around, are omitted by the author as unnecessary details. The heroes of "Dark Alleys" live, captured by their feelings, they do not notice anything around. Reasonable loses all meaning, only submission to feeling, “non-thinking” remains. Under such a narrative, the very style of the story, as it were, adjusts, letting us feel the irrationality of love.

Details, such as the description of nature, the appearance of the characters, what is called the "background of the story", are still present in "Dark Alleys". However, they are again designed to draw the reader's attention to the feelings of the characters, to complement the picture of the work with bright touches. The heroine of the story "Rusya" presses the cap of her brother's tutor to her chest when they go for a boat ride, with the words: "No, I will take care of him!" And this simple, frank exclamation becomes the first step towards their rapprochement.

In many stories of the cycle, such as, for example, "Rusya", "Antigone", "In Paris", "Galya Ganskaya", "Clean Monday", the final rapprochement of the characters is shown. In the rest, it is implied to one degree or another: in "The Fool" it is said about the connection of the deacon's son with the cook and that he has a son from her, in the story "One Hundred Rupees" the woman who struck the narrator with her beauty turns out to be corrupt. It was this feature of Bunin's stories that probably served as the reason for identifying them with Junker poems, "literature not for ladies." I. A. Bunin was accused of naturalism, the eroticization of love.

However, when creating his works, the writer simply could not set himself the goal of making the image of a woman as an object of desire mundane, simplifying it, thereby turning the narrative into a vulgar scene. A woman, like a woman's body, has always remained for I. A. Bunin "wonderful, inexpressibly beautiful, completely special in everything earthly." Impressed by your skill artistic expressiveness, I. A. Bunin balanced in his stories on that barely perceptible border, where true art does not decrease even to the hint of naturalism.

The stories of the cycle "Dark Alleys" contain the problem of sex because it is inseparable from the problem of love in general. I. A. Bunin is convinced that love is a union of earthly and heavenly, body and spirit. If the different sides of this feeling are focused not on one woman (as in almost all the stories of the cycle), but on different ones, or only the “earthly” (“Fool”) or only the “heavenly” is present, this leads to an inevitable conflict, as, for example, in the story "Zoyka and Valeria". The first, a teenage girl, is the object of the hero’s desire, while the second, “a real Little Russian beauty”, cold to him, inaccessible, causes passionate adoration, devoid of hope for reciprocity. When, out of a sense of revenge for the man who rejected her, Valeria is given to the hero, and he understands this, a long-overdue conflict of two loves breaks out in his soul. “He resolutely rushed, pounding on the sleepers, down the slope, towards the steam locomotive escaping from under him, rumbling and blinding with lights,” we read at the end of the story.

The works included by I. A. Bunin in the cycle “Dark Alleys”, for all their dissimilarity, heterogeneity at first glance, are valuable precisely because when read they form, like multi-colored mosaic tiles, a single harmonious picture. And this picture depicts Love. Love in its wholeness, Love that goes hand in hand with tragedy, but at the same time is a great happiness.

Finishing the conversation about the philosophy of love in the works of I. A. Bunin, I would like to say that it is his understanding of this feeling that is closest to me, as, I think, to many modern readers. Unlike the writers of romanticism, who presented the reader with only the spiritual side of love, from the followers of the idea of ​​the connection of sex with God, such as V. Rozanov, from the Freudians, who put the biological needs of man in the first place in matters of love, and from the symbolists, who bowed before the woman, the Beautiful Lady, I. A. Bunin, in my opinion, was closest to the understanding and description of love that really exists on earth. As a true artist, he was able not only to present this feeling to the reader, but also to point out in it what made and makes many people say: "He who did not love, he did not live."

The path of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin to his own understanding of love was long. In his early works, for example, in the stories "Teacher", "In the Country", this topic was practically not developed. In later ones, such as "The Case of Cornet Elagin" and "Mitina's Love", he searched for himself, experimented with the style and manner of narration. And, finally, at the final stage of his life and work, he created a cycle of works in which his already formed, integral philosophy of love was expressed.

After going through a rather long and fascinating path of research, I came to the following conclusions in my work.

In Bunin's interpretation of love, this feeling is, first of all, an unusual upsurge of emotions, a flash, a lightning bolt of happiness. Love cannot last long, which is why it inevitably entails tragedy, grief, separation, preventing everyday life, everyday life and habit from destroying itself.

It is the moments of love, the moments of its most powerful expression, that are important to I. A. Bunin, so the writer uses the form of memories for his narrative. After all, only they are able to hide everything unnecessary, petty, superfluous, leaving only a feeling - love, illuminating with its appearance the whole life of a person.

According to I. A. Bunin, love is something that cannot be rationally comprehended, it is incomprehensible, and nothing but the feelings themselves, no external factors are important for it. It is this that can explain the fact that in most of the works of I. A. Bunin about love, the heroes are deprived not only of biographies, but even of names.

The image of a woman is central in the later works of the writer. It is always more interesting for the author than he is, all attention is focused on it. I. A. Bunin describes many female types, trying to comprehend and capture on paper the secret of a Woman, her charm.

Speaking the word "love", I. A. Bunin means not only its spiritual and not only its physical side, but their harmonious combination. It is this feeling, which combines both opposite principles, that, according to the writer, can give a person true happiness.

The stories of I. A. Bunin about love could be analyzed endlessly, since each of them is a work of art and is unique in its own way. However, the purpose of my work was to trace the formation of Bunin's philosophy of love, to see how the writer went to his main book "Dark Alleys", and to formulate the concept of love, which was reflected in it, revealing the common features of his works, some of their patterns. Which is what I tried to do. And I hope I succeeded.

"Pines" of 1901 - the first step in the controversy: the image of a snow-covered village where Mitrofan dies - "to live as a laborer of life."

The denunciation of the foundations of an inhuman, ugly system is combined here with a sharp foreboding of the inevitable catastrophe of a society based on violence and enslavement, with the expectation of formidable social upheavals. The poverty and suffering of the enslaved people, trampled under the heel of the English "cultural tregers", are expressively depicted by Bunin in the story "Brothers". The work was the result of living impressions of the author, who visited Ceylon in 1911.
Contrasting are the images of a cruel, satiated Englishman and a young "native" - ​​a rickshaw who is in love with a beautiful girl of his region. One after another, episodes of the inhuman mockery of the colonialists over the local population pass: having overstrained himself at overwork, the father of the hero of the story dies, the bride of a young rickshaw ends up in a brothel, and he himself, tormented by unbearable mental pain, commits suicide on a deserted ocean shore. The name “brothers” sounds ironic and angry in relation to the oppressor and his slave.
Not satisfied with the external pattern of events, Bunin seeks to show the psychology of the oppressor. An Englishman, returning from Ceylon, reflects on his role. The author forces him to admit that he brings with him grief, hunger and crimes to all lands where the greedy will of the colonialist brings him ...
“In Africa,” he says, “I killed people, in India, plundered by England, and therefore, partly by me, I saw thousands dying of hunger, in Japan I bought girls for monthly wives, in China I beat defenseless ape-like old men with a stick on the heads, in Java and Ceylon he drove the rickshaw to his death rattle.
In the spirit of abstract humanism, Bunin reflects on the brotherhood of people, on the violation of high moral laws by representatives of that inhuman order in which one "brother" kills another. But this abstract moral idea is artistically overcome by a vivid social denunciation, and a concrete image of the disastrous consequences of colonialism in a country that could become earthly paradise, gives the work a great social sound, determines its effectiveness and strength not only for the distant pre-October years, but also for the present.



The works of I.A. Bunin are filled with philosophical problems. The main issues of concern to the writer were the issues of death and love, the essence of these phenomena, their influence on human life.

In the foreground at Bunin comes an appeal to the eternal themes of love, death and nature. Bunin has long been firmly established as one of the greatest stylists in Russian literature. In his work, the elusive artistic accuracy and freedom, and figurative memory, and knowledge of the national language, and magnificent figurativeness, and verbal sensibility were clearly manifested. All these features are inherent not only in his poetry, but also in prose. In the pre-revolutionary decade, it was prose that came to the fore in the work of Ivan Bunin, absorbing the lyricism inherent in the writer's talent. This is the time to create such masterpieces as the stories "The Brothers", "The Gentleman from San Francisco", "Chang's Dreams". Literary historians believe that these works are stylistically and ideologically closely related, making together a kind of artistic and philosophical trilogy.

The story "Dreams of Chang"was written in 1916. The very beginning of the work ("Does it matter who to talk about? Everyone who lives on earth deserves it") is inspired by Buddhist motifs, because what is in these words, if not a reference to the chain of births and deaths, into which any living creature is drawn - from an ant to a human?And now the reader from the first lines is inwardly ready for the alternations of the present and memories in the story.
And the storyline is like this. During the voyage, the captain of one of the Russian ships bought a red puppy with intelligent black eyes from an old Chinese man. Chang (that was the name of the dog) during a long journey becomes the only listener of the owner. The captain talks about how he is happy man, because he has an apartment in Odessa, his beloved wife and daughter. Then everything in his life collapses, as the captain realizes that the wife, to whom he aspires with all his heart, does not love him. Without dreams, without hope for the future, without love, this man turns into a bitter drunkard and eventually dies. The main characters of the work are the captain and his faithful dog Chang. It is interesting to observe the changes taking place with the captain throughout his life, to observe how his idea of ​​happiness changes. While sailing on the ship, he says: "But what a wonderful life, my God, how wonderful!" Then the captain loved, he was all in this love and therefore happy. "There were once two truths in the world, constantly replacing each other: the first is that life is unspeakably beautiful, and the other is that life is conceivable only for madmen." Now, after the loss of love, after the disappointment, the captain has only one truth left, the last one. Life seems to him a boring winter day in a dirty tavern. And people ... "They have neither God, nor conscience, nor a reasonable goal of existence, nor love, nor friendship, nor honesty - there is not even a simple pity."
Internal changes also affect the external image of the hero. At the beginning of the story, we see the happy captain, “blurred and shaved, fragrant with the freshness of cologne, with a German mustache, with a shining gaze of keen bright eyes, in everything tight and snow-white.” Then he appears before us as a dirty drunkard living in a vile attic. As a comparison, the author cites the attic of his artist friend, who had just found the truth of life. The captain has dirt, cold, meager ugly furnishings, the artist has cleanliness, warmth, comfort, antique furniture. All this is done in order to oppose these two truths and show how awareness of one or the other affects the external image of a person. The abundance of details used in the work creates the emotional coloring and atmosphere necessary for the reader. For the same purpose, a dual composition of the story was created. Two parallels are clearly visible. One is today's world in which there is no happiness, the other is happy memories. But how does communication take place between them? The answer is simple: this is what the image of the dog was needed for. Chang is the thread that connects reality with the past through his dreams. Chang is the only one in the story who has a name. The artist is not only nameless, but also silent. The woman is completely revealed from some kind of book mists: the marvelous "in her marble beauty" Changa Bunin endows with a sense of "a beginningless and endless world that is not accessible to Death", that is, a sense of authenticity - an inexpressible third truth . The captain is consumed by death, but Chang does not lose his Chinese name and remains unsteady now, for, according to Bunin, he resignedly follows "the most secret commands of Tao, as some sea creature follows them."
Let's try to understand the philosophical the problem of the work. What is the sense of life? Is human happiness possible? In connection with these questions, the image of "distant working people" (Germans) appears in the story. Using the example of their way of life, the writer talks about the possible ways of human happiness. Labor to live and multiply without knowing the fullness of life. These same "hard-working people" are the embodiment. Endless love, which is hardly worth devoting yourself to, since there is always the possibility of betrayal. Incarnation - the image of the captain The path of eternal thirst for search, in which, however, according to Bunin, there is also no happiness. What is it? Maybe in gratitude and fidelity? This idea carries the image of a dog. Through the real unsightly facts of life, a faithful memory breaks through like a dog, when there was peace in the soul, when the captain and the dog were happy. Thus, the story "Chang's Dreams" is primarily a philosophical work of the turn of the century. It considers such eternal themes, like love and death, speaks of the fragility of happiness, built only on love, and the eternity of happiness, based on fidelity and gratitude. In my opinion, Bunin's story is very relevant today. The problems raised in the work found a lively response in my soul, made me think about the meaning of life. After all, the generation to which I belong lives during a transitional period in history, when people tend to take stock and think about the future. It will help to read this work will dispel our inner subconscious fear of him. After all, there are eternal/truths in the world that are not subject to any influence and any changes.
The theme of death is most deeply revealed by Bunin in his story "The Man from San Francisco" (1915). In addition, here the writer tries to answer other questions: what is the happiness of a person, what is his purpose on earth.

The protagonist of the story - a gentleman from San Francisco - is full of snobbery and complacency. All his life he strove for wealth, setting famous billionaires as an example for himself. Finally, it seems to him that the goal is close, it's time to relax, to live for your own pleasure - the hero goes on a cruise on the ship "Atlantis".

He feels himself to be the "master" of the situation, but that was not the case. Bunin shows that money is a powerful force, but it is impossible to buy happiness, prosperity, life with it ... The rich man dies during his brilliant journey, and it turns out that no one needs him dead. Back it, forgotten and abandoned by everyone, is transported in the hold of the ship.

How much servility and admiration this man saw during his lifetime, the same amount of humiliation experienced his mortal body after death. Bunin shows how illusory the power of money in this world. And pitiful is the man who stakes on them. Having created idols for himself, he strives to achieve the same well-being. It seems that the goal has been achieved, he is at the top, for which he has worked tirelessly for many years. And what did he do, what did he leave to posterity? Nobody even remembered his name.

Bunin emphasizes that all people, regardless of their condition, financial situation, are equal before death. It is she who allows you to see the true essence of man. Physical death is mysterious and mysterious, but spiritual death is even more terrible. The writer shows that such a death overtook the hero much earlier, when he devoted his life to accumulating money.

The theme of beauty and love in Bunin's work is represented by very complex and sometimes contradictory situations. Love for a writer is madness, a surge of emotions, a moment of unbridled happiness, which ends very quickly, and only then is realized and understood. Love, according to Bunin, is a mysterious, fatal feeling, a passion that completely changes a person's life.

This is exactly the meeting of the lieutenant with a beautiful stranger in "Sunstroke". It was a moment of happiness that cannot be returned or resurrected. When she leaves, the lieutenant sits “under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older,” for this feeling suddenly arose and suddenly disappeared, leaving a deep wound in his soul. But still, love is a great happiness. According to Bunin, this is the meaning of human life


The story "The Gentleman from San Francisco" was written by I.A. Bunin in 1915. The story is based on the author's general impression of his journey and, as it were, hints at the social collapse throughout the world. Bunin specifically does not give a name to the main character, presenting us with a generalized image. Initially, the name of the story was "Death on Capri", but in the process of working on the work, Bunin abandoned the title containing the word "death".

Despite this, the feeling of imminent death appears from the very first words of the epigraph.

The story tells about last days the life of a wealthy American gentleman who decided at the age of 58 to start living. It was to start, because he had been working all this time, trying to secure a decent old age. He believed that life is the rest and pleasure that he deserved, so he carefully planned the route of the trip, which in turn is already a stupid obedience to the schedule.

And almost immediately everything goes wrong, as the main character intended. And besides, there was something artificial in his existence, where not only every movement of passengers was painted, but also their emotions. This is where the dissonance between the opinions of the protagonist and the author is already clearly shown. Such an existence cannot be called a full life. The hero lives only for a moment, and then struggling with death.

What happens next is predictable. If at the beginning the hero himself amuses himself, talking with people of the highest circle and watching false lovers, then even after the death of the master, this same highest circle continues to burn through his life now without the main character, whose body rests deep under them.

"The Gentleman from San Francisco" is full of symbolism. The coffin in the hold is a message to those who are having fun, meaning that all people are equal before death, and their money cannot help them in their last painful minutes. Their happiness is actually not happiness at all, their worldview cannot be compared with the vision of the world of ordinary poor mountaineers.

The idea of ​​the work is not just a story about the death of a rich man. The money he had accumulated, his rank no longer mattered. That's what's important. Bunin reveals in his story his own vision of the meaning of life, and this meaning is clearly not in the acquisition of wealth and fame.

The hero is called the master, because this is his essence. At least he thinks so, and therefore revels in his position. It represents that society that destroys all life in humanity, forcing them to come up with a schedule, blindly follow it and coyly smile in feigned pleasure. There is nothing spiritual in such a society, its goal is to be rich and enjoy this wealth. But this has never made anyone truly happy.

"Atlantis" - the ship that carries this society to new pleasures; the ocean on which the ship is sailing is an element beyond the control of even the richest people, capable of instantly destroying the plans of the "dead society" and sending it to the bottom. And at the bottom of the society a gentleman from San Francisco will be waiting. "Atlantis", in fact, is going nowhere, dragging along a blind society of callous people.

The main problem of the story "The Gentleman from San Francisco" is a dead society that can only boast in front of all its money and live according to the schedule drawn up by the same insensitive inanimate person. In his diary, Bunin wrote the following: "I cried, writing the end."

What was he crying about? Over the sad fate of the gentleman who had just begun to live: Over his family, now left without a breadwinner? After all, now they will have to look for a groom so that the master's daughter continues her boring life, as the schedule dictates. I think that the fate of the "dead" society, their way of life and impartiality to other people's grief saddened the author; their callousness and insensitivity. This is precisely the problem of modern society, as it was many years ago.

Updated: 2014-06-04

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A.I. Bunin - the great Russian writer and poet, laureate Nobel Prize about literature. His work is characterized by the ability to reveal the whole tragedy of life, its problems, as well as saturation with small, but undoubtedly important details. In his work, the writer touched on many important topics. One of these is philosophy.

He re-raised eternal problems: the meaning of life and spirituality of people, beauty, life and death.

One of the most philosophical works of A.I. Bunin is rightfully considered "The Gentleman from San Francisco". Here the writer told us a story about a man without a first and last name. Working all his life, the gentleman from San Francisco was not distracted from his goal at all and systematically achieved his ideals, not noticing anything around him at all. A.I. Bunin shows us an aimlessly lived life, profit, exploitation, the greedy pursuit of money. For all the years of his existence, the Lord from San Francisco rejected all the joys of life, so that later he would finally feel them to the fullest. For the American rich man, all doors are open, all whims are available, because he has money. But the plans were not destined to come true, even the elements themselves were against it, because this is one of those things that you cannot subdue with a stack of green papers or a guest of coins. The hero simply cannot enjoy life, he does not know how. His death becomes a sudden, but quite logical ending. Money and influence did not save a man from death, they could not give happiness and peace. After the death of the head of the family, the attitude towards him changed: he goes home in a soda box, lies in the cramped and cheapest room. In contrast, the gentleman from San Francisco shows the old man Lorenzo, who, although he was a poor man, lived happy life. Here the author raises the question of true and imaginary values. What is our life worth if it is lived in a cold shadow without vivid emotions and feelings? A.I. Bunin makes us think about the meaning of life, about how we spend the years given to us. Often people give themselves up to false and meaningless things, not noticing that true happiness is passing by.

Another of the writer's philosophical works is the story "Easy breathing". It originates in the cemetery, which makes us understand that here the author will touch on the topic of life and death. The main character is Olesya Meretskaya. She had that "light breath" that she read about in the book. The young schoolgirl was natural, airy, as if she did not walk, but hovered above the ground. Her beauty, inner freedom and sincerity of her soul made her special, distinguished her from other girls. In Olya there is no hypocrisy, lies and falsehood, it is as if she is the embodiment of life itself. Even a terrible incident did not break her, but in the end Olya died. In this story, A.I. Bunin wanted to show how fleeting beauty and life, how tragic its fate in a cruel world, how people break and destroy everything that is clean, beautiful and alive, dooming it to painful death.

A.I. Bunin raises quite burning topics. He seeks meaning and happiness, talks about life and death, captures the "light breath" of human existence. These themes cannot cease to excite the hearts of people of every generation, so they remain relevant to this day.

Content:

“Man not only lies forever, he also eternally believes in goodness, beauty and perfection and sees them even where they do not exist at all, or they exist only in embryo” (E. M. Remarque “Quotes and Aphorisms).

Topic: " Philosophical issues works by Bunin and Kuprin"

The Silver Age gave the world such famous writers a new milestone of realism, like Bunin and Kuprin. Their works are distinguished by grace, but at the same time, they reflect the true life, feelings and experiences of the characters. The philosophical foundations underlying many of the works of these authors will never become obsolete. Including such a philosophical category as love. Let us consider in more detail how the writers described this feeling in their novels? And also, how did they express their attitude to morality and kindness, service to people and fidelity to philosophical principles?

The work "Olesya" Kuprin was one of the most successful in his work. In the center of the story is a man, with his thoughts about the meaning of life, which are mixed with the canvases of the outback, as well as the unkind morals of the Perebrod peasants. The writer introduces his reader into a very evil world. This is a village life, which is flavored with ignorance, rudeness, rudeness and drunkenness. This is a world not of thinking people, but of individuals trying to survive in such harsh conditions of reality. But the writer does not plunge the reader into horror, because he contrasts the world considered with harmony and beauty, as well as true love. What is love in the understanding of Kuprin? The writer says with confidence that a person, his worldview and character are manifested in love. It is thanks to this magical feeling, which includes many other philosophical subcategories (morality, sacrifice, affection for one's neighbor), that a person becomes better. Of course, this does not apply to all people! No no! We remember "Eugene Onegin", where Tatyana's love could not change the main character! You can bring hundreds...
examples, however, love heals a tired and sinful soul. The author in "Oles" becomes the successor of the humanitarian mission of Russian literature and an ardent supporter of the healing properties of love! This is the meaning of the philosophical beginning of his works.

Talking about such a creator of the word as Bunin, one involuntarily recalls his "Dark Alleys". Despite the fact that this work is difficult to classify as the most famous and most popular among the general reader, nevertheless, it is beautiful. Bunin is the writer (according to the author of the essay) who is characterized by brevity of presentation and the absence of complex forms. Such forms, for example, are found in Dostoevsky, which is why it is so difficult to read him. "Dark Alleys" can be reduced to two components: it is a scene of recognizing each other and a stream of regret about unfulfilled love, happiness, and also about all life. The hero is a man of conventions. He is dictated by their society, so in the end he regrets kissing the woman he once loved. Rejecting it, he plunged himself into an abyss of dullness and enduring longing, without suspecting or understanding it himself. Illusions are what most live by modern people. Not suspecting and not understanding the essence of what is happening, we have been looking for something all our lives, not finding it, we become philosophers. There is only one consolation: our experience will help our children. And what about the main character in "Dark Alleys"? She almost did not shoot, but many years have passed ..
She loved and waited, but her moral passion remained unchanged. She didn't dare to judge this man, even to herself. This love that lives in her heart is simply amazing. Let's say more: it is incomprehensible to many readers. Especially for modern young people and girls. Nevertheless, it was and is, since philosophical categories will never go into oblivion.