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

The great Russian emigrant writer and prose poet has a very special love. She is not the same as his great predecessors described her: 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’s young ladies” with their naivety and romance. 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 majority of the media do today, and with them many writers, considering this to be in demand. He (I.A. Bunin) writes about love, which is the merging of “earth” and “sky,” the harmony of two opposite principles. And it is precisely 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, faithful and necessary for modern society.

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

Before I. A. Bunin in Russian literature, “no one had ever written about love like this.” He not only decided to show the always remaining secret sides of the relationship between a man and a woman. His works about love also became 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.” More often than not, it does not bring happiness; it is followed by separation or even the death of the heroes. But, despite this, Bunin’s prose is a celebration 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 talks about the tragic and many tender and beautiful things - I think that this is the best and most original thing 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 mature 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, consider the writer’s early stories, such as “At the Dacha” (1895), “Velga” (1895), “Without Family and Tribe” (1897), “In the Autumn” (1901), and, identifying them characteristics and finding common features with more late creativity I. A. Bunin, answer the questions: “How did the theme of love arise in the writer’s work? What are they, these thin trees, from which, forty years later, “Dark Alleys” will grow?”

Secondly, my task was to analyze the writer’s stories 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 motifs are intertwined, which became fundamental in the writer’s later stories. These are the motives of love and death, which in their combination give rise to the idea of ​​the immortality of love.

As the basis for my research, I took the method of systemic-structural reading of Bunin’s prose, 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 various sides, and somewhere in order to confirm my assumptions, in my work I turned not only to collections of 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 and destiny. Therefore, in my work I also used facts from the writer’s biography. They were suggested to me by Oleg Mikhailov’s books “The Life of Bunin. Only the word is given life” and Mikhail Roshchin “Ivan Bunin”.

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

To find out the opinion of literary scholars on issues that interested me, I turned to criticism from various authors, for example, articles in the magazine “Russian Literature”, the book by Doctor of Philology I. N. Sukhikh “Twenty Books of the 20th Century” and others.

Of course, 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 books such as “I. A. Bunin. Novels, stories”, published in the series “Russian classics about love”, “Dark Alleys. Diaries 1918-1919" (series "World Classics"), 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).

Philosophy of love in the works of I. A. Bunin

Chapter 1. The appearance of the theme of love in the writer’s work

“The problem of love has not yet been developed in my works. And I feel an urgent need to write about this,” says I. A. Bunin in the fall of 1912 to a Moscow newspaper correspondent. 1912 – the writer is already 42 years old. Is it really before 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 many happy ones, as well as those full of disappointment and suffering from unrequited love days.

We were then - you were sixteen,

I am seventeen years old,

But do you remember how you opened

Door on Moonlight? – this is what I. A. Bunin wrote in his 1916 poem “On a quiet night the late moon came out.” It is a reflection of one of those hobbies that I. A. Bunin experienced when he was very young. There were many such hobbies, but only one of them grew into a truly strong, all-consuming love, which 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 at the editorial office of the Orlovsky Vestnik in 1890. At first he perceived her with hostility, considering 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 fall of 1894, their painful relationship ended - Pashchenko married I. A. Bunin’s friend Arseny Bibikov. After the break with Varya, I. A. Bunin was in such a state that his loved ones feared for his life.

If only it were possible

To love yourself alone,

If only we could forget the past, -

Everything you've already forgotten

Wouldn't embarrass, wouldn't frighten

Eternal darkness of eternal night:

Satisfied eyes

I would love to close it! - 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 writer’s soul as something, although tragic, but still beautiful.

On September 23, 1898, I. A. Bunin hastily married Anna Nikolaevna Tsakni. Two days before the wedding, he ironically writes to his friend N.D. Teleshov: “I’m still single, but - alas! “I’ll soon turn into a married man.” 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 occurred, which I. A. Bunin took very hard. “Don’t be angry at the silence - the devil will break a leg in my soul,” he wrote to a friend at that time.

Several years have passed. The bachelor life of I. A. Bunin has exhausted itself. He needed a person who could support him, an understanding life partner who shared his interests. Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, the daughter of a professor at Moscow University, became such a woman in the writer’s life. 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 dramatically changed my life: from a sedentary life I turned it into a nomadic one for almost twenty years,” wrote V.N. Muromtseva 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 the point of 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 affected his work? They were reflected - the theme of love began to sound in Bunin’s works. But why then did he declare that it was “not being developed”? To answer this question, let's take a closer look at the stories written by I. A. Bunin before 1912.

Almost all works written by Ivan Alekseevich during this period are of a social nature. The writer tells the stories of those who live in the village: small landowners, peasants, and compares the village and the city and the people living in them (the story “News from the Motherland” (1893)). However, these works cannot do 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, an impudently beautiful young woman, began to have 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 somehow a relationship did not develop between her and the teacher.”

The image of a beautiful young girl, and with it the feeling of slight love, appears in the story “At the Dacha” (1895): “Either smiling or grimacing, she absentmindedly looked with her blue eyes at the sky. Grisha passionately wanted to come up and kiss her on the lips.” We will see “her”, Marya Ivanovna, on the pages of the story only a few times. I. A. Bunin will make her feelings for Grisha, and his feelings 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 appears. This is a story about the unrequited love of a girl Velga 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’s hand” (Sneggar is Velga’s sister). Velga is tormented by jealousy, but when she finds out that her beloved has disappeared at sea and that only she can save him, she sails 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 Irvald will never know about her sacrifice, but this does not stop her. “He instantly woke up from a scream - his friend’s voice touched his heart - but, looking, he saw only a seagull flying up screaming above the boat,” writes I. A. Bunin.

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

In style, “Velga” differs from all works written by I. A. Bunin both before and after it. This story has a very special rhythm, which is achieved through inversion, reverse order words (“And Velga began to sing sonorous songs on the seashore through her tears”). The story resembles the legend not only in its style of speech. The characters in it are depicted schematically, their characters are not described. The basis of the narrative is a description of their actions and feelings, however, the feelings are quite superficial, often clearly indicated by the author 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 a poetic narrative in the form of a legend does not satisfy him - there will no longer be such works as “Velga” in the writer’s work. I. A. Bunin continues to search for words and forms to describe love.

In 1897, the story “Without Family or Tribe” appeared. It, unlike “Velga”, is written in the usual Bunin style - 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 subsequently see in almost all Bunin’s stories about love. However, when reading the story “Without Family or 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 hero’s state after he learns that Zina, the girl he loves, is marrying someone else. 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 occurred and is not the main thing in the story.

There are two women in the life of the main character: Zina, whom he loves, and Elena, whom he considers his friend. Two women and the different, unequal relationships towards them that appeared in I. A. Bunin in this story can also be seen in “Dark Alleys” (stories “Zoika and Valeria”, “Natalie”), but in a slightly different light.

To conclude the conversation about the emergence of the theme of love in the works of I. A. Bunin, one cannot help but mention the story “In Autumn,” written in 1901. “Made by an unfree, tense 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, “unfree”, that make up the whole charm of the story.

“Well, I have to go!” - she says and leaves. He follows. And, full of excitement, unconscious fear of each other, they go to the sea. “We quickly walked through leaves and puddles, along some high alley towards the cliffs,” we read at the end of the third part of the story. “alley” seems to be a symbol of future works, “Dark Alleys” of love, and the word “precipice” seems to personify everything that should happen between the heroes. And indeed, in the story “In Autumn” we see for the first time love the way it will appear to us in the writer’s later works - a flash, an 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 these 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 also has in common with the “Dark Alleys” cycle the way 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 like the face of an immortal " However, all these obvious similarities are not the main thing that makes the story “In 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 fragility, transience, but at the same time the extraordinary power of love.

Chapter 2. Love as a fatal shock

The works 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 (“Mitya’s Love”, “Sunstroke”, “Ida”, “The Case of Cornet Elagin”), despite all the striking differences, are united by one idea that underlies each of them. This idea is love as a shock, “sunstroke,” a fatal feeling that brings, along with moments of joy, enormous suffering, which fills a person’s entire existence and leaves an indelible mark on his life. This understanding of love, or rather its prerequisites, can be seen in early stories I. A. Bunin, for example, in the story “In Autumn,” discussed earlier. However, the theme of the fatal predetermination 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 accustomed to taking love adventures lightly, meets a woman on a ship, spends the night with her, and in the morning she leaves. “Nothing even similar to what happened has ever happened to me, and there never will be again. It’s like an eclipse hit me, or rather, we both got something like sunstroke,” she tells him before leaving. The lieutenant “somehow easily” agrees with her, but when she leaves, he suddenly realizes that this is not a simple road adventure. This is something more, making you feel “the pain and uselessness of everything later life without her,” without this “little woman,” who remained a stranger to him.

“The lieutenant was sitting 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 letters, capable of becoming the most precious thing in a person’s life and at the same time his torment and tragedy.

We will see love-moment, love-flash in the story “Ida”, also written in 1925. The hero of this work is a middle-aged composer. He has a “stocky body”, a “wide peasant face with narrow eyes”, a “short neck” - the image of a seemingly rather rude man, incapable, at first glance, of sublime feelings. But this is only at first glance. While in a restaurant with friends, the composer conducts his story in an ironic, mocking tone; it is awkward and unusual for him 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. Her friend Ida often visited the house where he and his wife lived. 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 I. A. Bunin’s creation of full-fledged female images. In this short work, the traits that the writer extolled in a woman are noted, as if in passing, in passing: naturalness, following the aspirations of her heart, frankness in her feelings towards herself and her loved one.

However, let's return 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 farthest, side platform,” she unexpectedly confesses her love to him. She kisses him “with one of those kisses that is remembered later not only to the grave, but also in the grave,” and leaves.

The narrator says that when he met Ida at that station, hearing her voice, “he understood only one thing: that, it turns out, he had been brutally in love with this same 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: “the composer suddenly tore off his hat and, with all his strength, shouted at entire area:

My sun! My beloved! Hurray!”

And in " Sunstroke“, and in “Ida” we see the impossibility of happiness for lovers, a kind of doom, a fate that dominates 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 the Cornet Elagin.” However, in them these motives seem to be concentrated, they form the basis of the narrative and, ultimately, lead the heroes to a tragic outcome - 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 love of mine was a catastrophe, “I was close to suicide.” These words of the writer himself can best demonstrate the idea of ​​such works as “Mitya’s Love” and “The Case of Cornet Elagin”, and become a kind of epigraph for them.

The story “Mitya's Love” was written by I. A. Bunin in 1924 and marked 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 records the slightest changes in a young man’s feelings.

The narrative is built only to a small extent on external aspects; 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 forces his reader to look around, to see some, at first glance, insignificant, but characterizing internal state hero details. This feature of the narrative will manifest itself in many of I. A. Bunin’s later works, 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 carefree, this is what the very first line of the work sets up: “In Moscow, Mitya’s last happy day was on March 9.” How to explain these words? Maybe this is followed by the separation of the heroes? Not at all. They continue to meet, but Mitya “persistently thinks that something terrible has suddenly begun, that something has changed in Katya.”

The whole work is based on internal conflict Main character. The beloved exists for him as if 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 rejection of both the environment in which Katya lives and the atmosphere of the village where he will go.

In “Mitya’s Love,” for the first time, the understanding of the surrounding reality as the main obstacle to the happiness of lovers is clearly visible. The vulgar artistic environment of St. Petersburg, with its “falseness and stupidity,” under the influence of which Katya becomes “all stranger, all public,” is hated by the main character, 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 seems so sweet, beautiful, and expensive, the image of Katya haunts him constantly.

Gradually, the tension increases, 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: “This pain was so strong, so unbearable that, wanting only one thing - to get rid of it at least for a minute, he fumbled and pushed aside the drawer of the night table, caught the cold and heavy lump of a revolver and, taking a deep and joyful breath, opened his mouth and fired with force and pleasure.”

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

Following this goal, in “The Case of Cornet Elagin” I. A. Bunin for the first time focuses the reader’s attention not only on the heroine, but also on the hero. The author will describe in detail his appearance: “a small, puny man, reddish and freckled, with crooked and unusually thin legs,” as well as his character: “a very keen man, but as if he was always expecting something real, extraordinary,” “then he modest and shyly secretive, he fell into some recklessness and bravado.” However, this experience turned out to be unsuccessful: the author himself wanted to call his work, in which it was the hero, and not his feeling, that occupied the central place, “Boulevard Novel.” I. A. Bunin will no longer return to this type of narration - in his further works about love, the “Dark Alleys” cycle, we will no longer see stories where spiritual world and the character of the hero - 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 Case of Cornet Elagin”: “It’s just very stupid and simple,” this work contains one of the thoughts that became the basis of the formed Bunin philosophy of love: “Is it really unknown that there is a strange is the property of any strong and generally not quite ordinary love to even, as it were, avoid marriage?” And indeed, among all the subsequent works of I. A. Bunin, we will not find a single one in which the heroes would come to a happy life together not only in marriage, but also in principle. The cycle “Dark Alleys,” considered the pinnacle of the writer’s work, will be dedicated to love that dooms suffering, love as tragedy, and the prerequisites for this should undoubtedly be sought in the early works of I. A. Bunin.

Chapter 3. Cycle of stories “Dark Alleys”

It was a wonderful spring

They sat on the shore

She was in her prime,

His mustache was barely black

The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around,

There was a dark linden alley

N. Ogarev “An 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 carriage and an old military man passing in it. “The rest all somehow worked out on its own, came up 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, in the words of 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 philosophy underlies it? What ideas do the stories share?

First of all, this is the image of a woman and her perception by the lyrical hero. The female characters in Dark Alleys are extremely diverse. These include “simple souls” devoted to their beloved, such as Styopa and Tanya in the works of the same name; and brave, self-confident, sometimes extravagant women in the stories “Muse” and “Antigone”; and heroines, rich spiritually, capable of strong, high feelings, whose love can give 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, with all their apparent alienness to each other, these characters, these heroines are united by one thing - the presence in each of them of primordial femininity, “easy breathing ", as I. A. Bunin himself called it. This trait of some women was identified by him in his early works, such as “Sunstroke” and the story itself “ Easy breath”, about which I. A. Bunin said: “We call it the womb, but I called it light breathing.” How to understand these words? What is the womb? Naturalness, sincerity, spontaneity and openness to love, submission to the movements of your heart - all that is the eternal secret of female charm.

By turning in all the works of the “Dark Alleys” cycle specifically to the heroine, to the woman, and not to the hero, making her the center of the narrative, the author, like every man, in this case the lyrical hero, tries to unravel the riddle 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 somewhat mysterious to me. The more I study them, the less I understand,” I. A. Bunin writes these words of Flaubert into 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 in the series, “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 memories. They help him not only relive what happened then, a long time ago, almost a century ago. past life. The magic of memories becomes a new basis for creativity for I. A. Bunin, allowing him to work and write again, and thereby giving him the opportunity to survive in the joyless and alien environment in which he finds himself.

Almost all the stories in “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 "("Rusya"), "In the fourteenth year, under New Year, it was the same quiet, sunny evening as that unforgettable one" (“ Clean Monday") Does this mean that the author wrote them “from life”, remembering the events own life? No. I. A. Bunin, on the contrary, always claimed that the plots of his stories were fictional. “Everything in it, from word to word, is made up, as in almost all of my stories, both previous and present,” he said about “Natalie.”

Why then was this look from the present to the past needed, what did the author want to show with 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: “What happened in my life after all? Only that cold autumn evening. the rest is an unnecessary dream.” True love, true happiness are only moments in a person’s life, but they can illuminate his existence, become the most important and important thing for him and, ultimately, mean more than the entire 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 part of the past, but left an indelible mark in the souls of the heroes, like lightning illuminated their lives.

Death of the hero in the stories “Cold Autumn” and “In Paris”; the impossibility of being together in “Rus”, “Tana”; the death of the heroine in “Natalie”, “Henry”, the story “Dubki” Almost all the stories in the cycle, with the exception of almost plotless works, such as “Smaragd”, tell us about the inevitability tragic ending. And the reason for this is not at all that misfortune and grief are more diverse in their 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 everyday life, 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 never tires of repeating that love is the greatest happiness. “Is there such a thing as unhappy love? Doesn’t the most sorrowful 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 several other works - these are, perhaps, all the stories out 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 them are omitted by the author as unnecessary details. The heroes of “Dark Alleys” live, captured by their feelings, not noticing anything around them. The rational loses all meaning, all that remains is submission to feeling, “not thinking.” The style of the story itself seems to adapt to such a narrative, letting us feel the irrationality of love.

Details, such as descriptions of nature, the appearance of the characters, and what is called the “background of the narrative,” are still present in “Dark Alleys.” However, they are again intended 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” clutches her brother’s tutor’s cap to her chest when they go boating, saying: “No, I’ll take care of him!” And this simple, frank exclamation becomes the first step towards their rapprochement.

Many stories in the cycle, such as “Rusya”, “Antigone”, “In Paris”, “Galya Ganskaya”, “Clean Monday”, show the final rapprochement of the heroes. In the rest, it is implied to one degree or another: in “The Fool” it is said about the relationship 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 amazed the narrator with her beauty turns out to be corrupt. It was precisely this feature of Bunin’s stories that probably served as the reason for identifying them with cadet poems, “literature not for ladies.” I. A. Bunin was accused of naturalism and 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, always remained for I. A. Bunin “wonderful, unspeakably beautiful, absolutely special in everything earthly.” Amazing with your skill artistic expression, I. A. Bunin balanced in his stories on that subtle border where true art does not even reduce to hints of naturalism.

The stories of the “Dark Alleys” series contain the problem of gender because it is inseparable from the problem of love in general. I. A. Bunin is convinced that love is the union of the earthly and heavenly, body and spirit. If different sides of this feeling are concentrated not on one woman (as in almost all the stories in the cycle), but on different ones, or if only the “earthly” (“Fool”) or only the “heavenly” is present, this leads to an inevitable conflict, as, for example, in the story “Zoika and Valeria”. The first, a teenage girl, is the object of the hero’s desire, while the second, “a real Little Russian beauty,” is cold towards him, inaccessible, arouses passionate adoration, devoid of hope for reciprocity. When Valeria, out of a sense of revenge for the man who rejected her, gives herself to the hero, and he understands this, a long-overdue conflict between two loves breaks out in his soul. “He decisively rushed, pounding on the sleepers, downhill, towards the steam locomotive that had burst out 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 “Dark Alleys” cycle, for all their dissimilarity and 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 integrity, Love that goes hand in hand with tragedy, but at the same time represents great happiness.

Concluding 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. In contrast to the writers of romanticism, who presented the reader only with the spiritual side of love, from the followers of the idea of ​​the connection of gender 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 worshiped the Beautiful woman. The 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 is forcing many to say: “He who did not love 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”, “At the Dacha”, this topic was practically not developed. In later ones, such as “The Case of Cornet Elagin” and “Mitya’s Love,” he searched for himself, experimented with style and manner of storytelling. 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.

Having gone 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 extraordinary rise of emotions, a flash, a lightning of happiness. Love cannot last long, which is why it inevitably entails tragedy, grief, separation, without giving the opportunity to everyday life and habit to destroy itself.

For I. A. Bunin, it is precisely the moments of love, the moments of its most powerful expression that are important, so the writer uses the form of memories for his narration. After all, only they are able to hide everything unnecessary, small, superfluous, leaving only a feeling - love, which illuminates a person’s whole life with its appearance.

Love, according to I. A. Bunin, is something that cannot be rationally comprehended, it is incomprehensible, and nothing except the feelings themselves, no external factors are important for it. This is precisely what can explain the fact that in most of I. A. Bunin’s works about love, the heroes are deprived not only of biographies, but even names.

The image of a woman is central in the writer’s later works. She is always of greater interest to the author than he is; all attention is focused on her. I. A. Bunin describes many female types, trying to comprehend and capture on paper the secret of a Woman, her charm.

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

I. A. Bunin's stories 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 towards his main book “Dark Alleys”, and to formulate the concept of love that was reflected in it, identifying the common features of his works, some of their patterns. That's what I tried to do. And I hope that I succeeded.

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

The denunciation of the foundations of an inhuman, ugly system is combined here with an acute premonition 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 “kulturtragers”, are expressively depicted by Bunin in the story "Brothers." The work was the result of the author's vivid impressions when he visited Ceylon in 1911.
The images depicted here of a cruel, jaded Englishman and a young “native” - a rickshaw puller, in love with a beautiful girl from his region - are contrasting. One after another, there are episodes of the colonialists’ inhumane abuse of the local population: the father of the hero of the story dies after overworking himself at back-breaking work, the young rickshaw driver’s fiancee 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 picture of events, Bunin strives to show the psychology of the oppressor. The Englishman, returning from Ceylon, reflects on his role. The author forces him to admit that he brings grief, hunger and crime with him to all the lands where the greedy will of the colonizer takes him...
“in Africa,” he says, “I killed people, in India, robbed by England, and therefore, partly by me, I saw thousands dying of hunger, in Japan I bought girls as monthly wives, in China I beat defenseless monkey-like old men on the heads with a stick, in Java and Ceylon he drove rickshaws until 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 vivid social exposure, and the concrete depiction of the disastrous consequences of colonialism in a country that could become earthly paradise, gives the work a great social resonance, determines its effectiveness and strength not only for the distant pre-October years, but also for the present.



Works by I.A. Bunin are filled with philosophical issues. The main issues that concerned the writer were questions of death and love, the essence of these phenomena, their influence on human life.

Bunin comes to the fore 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. His work clearly demonstrated elusive artistic precision and freedom, imaginative memory, knowledge of the folk language, excellent visual ability, and verbal sensuality. All these features are inherent not only in his poetry, but also in his prose. In the pre-revolutionary decade, prose came to the fore in Ivan Bunin’s work, incorporating the lyricism organically inherent in the writer’s talent. This is the time of the creation of such masterpieces as the stories "Brothers", "Mr. from San Francisco", "Chang's Dreams". Literary historians believe that these works are closely connected stylistically and ideologically, together making up a kind of artistic and philosophical trilogy.

The story "Chang's Dreams"" was written in 1916. The very beginning of the work ("Does it matter who you talk about? Everyone living 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 person? And now the reader, from the first lines, is internally prepared for the alternations of the present and memories in the story.
And this is the plot of the work. 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 dog's name) becomes the owner's only listener during a long journey. The captain talks about what he is like happy man, because he has an apartment in Odessa, a beloved wife and daughter. Then everything in his life collapses, as the captain realizes that the wife he longs for with all his soul does not love him. Without a dream, without hope for the future, without love, this person 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 occurring with the captain throughout his life, to observe how his idea of ​​happiness changes. While sailing on a ship, he says: “But how magnificent life is, my God, how magnificent!” Then the captain loved, he was all in this love and therefore happy. “Once upon a time there were two truths in the world, constantly replacing each other: the first was that life is unspeakably beautiful, and the other was that life is conceivable only for crazy people.” Now, after the loss of love, after disappointment, the captain has only one truth, the last one. Life seems to him like a boring winter day in a dirty tavern. And people... “They have no God, no conscience, no rational purpose for existence, no love, no friendship, no honesty, not even 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 raised German mustache, with a shining gaze of keen light 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 discovered the truth of life. The captain has dirt, cold, sparse, ugly furnishings, the artist has cleanliness, warmth, comfort, antique furniture. All this is done in order to contrast 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 occur between them? The answer is simple: this is exactly why the image of a dog was needed. 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: wondrous “in her marble beauty” Changa Bunin imparts a feeling of “beginningless and endless world that is inaccessible to Death,” that is, a feeling of authenticity - the inexpressible third truth . The captain is consumed by death, but Chang does not lose his Chinese name and remains unsteady now, for he, according to Bunin, meekly follows “the innermost commands of Tao, as some sea creature follows them.”
Let's try to understand the philosophical problems of the work. What is a sense of life? Is human happiness possible? In connection with these questions, the image of “distant hard-working people” (Germans) appears in the story. Using the example of their way of life, the writer talks about possible ways human happiness. Labor to live and reproduce without experiencing the fullness of life. These same “hard-working people” are the epitome. Endless love, which is hardly worth devoting yourself to, since there is always the possibility of betrayal. The embodiment is 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? Perhaps in gratitude and loyalty? This idea is conveyed by the image of a dog. Through the real unsightly facts of life, a dog's faithful memory breaks through, 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 discusses 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 and 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 may help that reading this work will dispel our internal subconscious fear of it. After all, there are eternal truths in the world that are not subject to any influence or change.
The theme of death is explored most deeply by Bunin in his story “The Man from San Francisco” (1915). In addition, here the writer tries to answer other questions: what is a person’s happiness, what is his purpose on earth.

The main character of the story - a gentleman from San Francisco - is full of snobbery and complacency. All his life he strived 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, live for his own pleasure - the hero goes on a cruise on the ship “Atlantis”.

He feels like the “master” of the situation, but that’s 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 anymore when he’s dead. He is transported back, forgotten and abandoned by everyone, in the hold of the ship.

How much servility and admiration this man saw during his life, the same amount of humiliation his mortal body experienced after death. Bunin shows how illusory the power of money is in this world. And the person who bets on them is pathetic. 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 worked tirelessly for many years. What did you do that you left for your descendants? Nobody even remembered his name.

Bunin emphasizes that all people, regardless of their condition or financial situation, are equal before death. It is she who allows you to see the true essence of a person. 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. For a writer, love 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 between the lieutenant and the beautiful stranger in Sunstroke. It was a moment of happiness that cannot be returned or resurrected. When she leaves, the lieutenant sits “under the 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 "Mr. 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 seems to hint at social collapse throughout the world. Bunin specifically does not name the main character, presenting us with a generalized image. Initially, the title 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, at the age of 58, decided to start living. Just to start, because he worked all this time, trying to provide himself with a decent old age. He believed that life was about relaxation and pleasure, which he deserved, so he carefully planned the route of the trip, which in turn was stupid obedience to the schedule.

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

The further picture is predictable. If at the beginning the hero himself has fun, talking with people of the highest circle and watching false lovers, then even after the death of the master, this same upper circle continues to waste their lives, now without the main character, whose body rests deep under them.

"Mr. 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 in fact not happiness at all; their worldview cannot compare 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 and 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 clearly does not lie in the acquisition of wealth and fame.

The hero is called a master because this is his essence. At least that’s what he thinks, and that’s why he revels in his position. He represents the society that destroys all living things in humanity, forcing us to invent a schedule for ourselves, blindly follow it and smile coyly 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" is a ship carrying this society to new pleasures; The ocean on which the ship sails is an element beyond the control of even the richest people, capable of instantly destroying the plans of a “dead society” and sending it to the bottom. And at the bottom the society will be waiting for a gentleman from San Francisco. "Atlantis", in fact, is going nowhere, carrying with it a blind society of callous people.

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

What was he crying over? Over the sad fate of a 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 can continue her boring life, as the schedule dictates. I think that the author was saddened by the fate of the “dead” society, their way of life and impartiality to the grief of others; their callousness and insensitivity. That's the problem modern society, just like many years ago.

Updated: 2014-06-04

Attention!
If you notice an error or typo, highlight the text and click Ctrl+Enter.
By doing so, you will provide invaluable benefit to the project and other readers.

Thank you for your attention.

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

He raised again 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 “Mr. from San Francisco”. Here the writer told us a story about a man without a name or surname. Working all his life, the gentleman from San Francisco was not at all distracted from his goal and systematically achieved his ideals, completely not noticing anything around him. A.I. Bunin shows us a life lived aimlessly, profit, exploitation, and the greedy pursuit of money. For all the years of his existence, the Mr. from San Francisco rejected all the joys of life, so that later he could finally experience them to the fullest. For the American rich, 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 cannot be subdued by a stack of green papers or coins. The hero simply cannot enjoy life, he does not know how to do that. His death becomes a sudden, but quite logical ending. Money and influence did not save a man from death, they could not give him 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 to the gentleman from San Francisco, old Lorenzo is shown, who, although he was poor, lived happy life. Here the author raises the issue of true and imaginary values. What is our life worth if it is lived in a cold shadow without bright emotions and feelings? A.I. Bunin makes us think about the meaning of life, about how we spend the years we are given. Often people give themselves over to false and meaningless things, not noticing that true happiness passes by.

Another of the writer’s philosophical works is the story “Easy Breathing.” It originates in a 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 breathing” that she read about in the book. The young schoolgirl was natural, airy, it was as if she did not walk, but hovered above the ground. Her beauty, inner freedom and sincerity of her soul made her special and distinguished her from other girls. There is no hypocrisy, lies or falsehood in Olya; it is as if she is the embodiment of life itself. Even the 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 are, how tragic its fate is in a cruel world, how people break and destroy everything that is pure, beautiful and living, dooming it to painful death.

A.I. Bunin raises some rather pressing topics. He searches for meaning and happiness, talks about life and death, and captures the “light breath” of human existence. These topics cannot cease to excite the hearts of people of every generation, which is why they remain relevant to this day.

Content:

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

Subject: " 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 heroes. The philosophical foundations underlying many of the works of these authors will never become obsolete. Including such a philosophical category as love. Let's take a closer look at how writers described this feeling in their novels? And also, how did they express their attitude towards morality and kindness, service to people and loyalty to philosophical principles?

The work “Olesya” by Kuprin was one of the most successful in his work. At 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 Perbrod peasants. The writer introduces his reader to a very evil world. This is rural 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, for he contrasts the world considered with harmony and beauty, as well as true love. What is love in Kuprin’s understanding? The writer confidently says that love reveals a person, his worldview and character. 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 give hundreds...
examples, however, love heals a tired and sinful soul. The author in “Oles” becomes a continuer of the humanitarian mission of Russian literature and an ardent supporter of the healing properties of love! This is precisely the meaning of the philosophical beginning of his works.

When talking about such a creator of words as Bunin, one inevitably remembers his “Dark Alleys”. Despite the fact that this work is difficult to classify as the most famous and popular among the average reader, it is nevertheless beautiful. Bunin is the writer (according to the author of the essay) who is characterized by conciseness of presentation and the absence of complex forms. Dostoevsky, for example, has such forms, 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 the whole life. A hero is a man of conventions. Their society dictates to him, so in the end he regrets that kiss to the woman he once loved. By refusing it, he plunged himself into the abyss of dullness and enduring melancholy, without suspecting it or understanding it. Illusions are what most people live by modern people. Without suspecting or understanding the essence of what is happening, we spend our whole lives looking for something, and without finding it, we become philosophers. There is only one consolation: our experience will help our children. So what? main character in "Dark Alleys"? She barely shot, and many years have passed...
She loved and waited, but her moral passion remained unchanged. She didn't dare condemn 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.