Essay “The Theme of Love in the Works of I. A. Bunin (based on the story “Clean Monday”). “Clean Monday” essay based on the story by I. Bunin Love according to Bunin Clean Monday

- the first writer in Russia to be awarded Nobel Prize. This is a man with a difficult life, who had a talent for writing works, including those on love themes. Moreover, Bunin can be confidently called a writer of stunning talent, regarding everything related to love. He knew how to very subtly and accurately convey the feelings of the characters and their state of mind during the period of falling in love. Bunin managed to touch on frank topics, revealing intimate human experiences that we can trace, for example, in Bunin’s story Clean Monday. Let's make this piece.

Brief analysis of the story

In grade 11, we studied Bunin's work Clean Monday, written by the author in 1944. This story, like many others that were written between 1937 and 1944, was included in the book Dark alleys. Here we also see a flashback motif, where the narrator takes the reader to the capital. He is handsome and young, and met an equally beautiful heroine. The author does not give them names, but this does not prevent us from enjoying a love story that began beautifully and ended quickly.

Analyzing Bunin's story Clean Monday, I would like to note that when getting acquainted with the work, the reader encounters such famous personalities, like Andrei Bely, who gives a lecture, where the heroes meet. Here we see Stanislavsky and Moskovin at the next skit. The story contains the name of a famous theatrical figure Sulerzhitsky and other famous people of that time. Main character falls in love with a woman and is ready to do anything for her. She turned out to be a mystery. Her actions were inexplicable, irrational and spontaneous. The main character of the story immediately stands out among other representatives of the fair sex. She takes courses, not understanding why she needs this study. The girl is educated, smart, but very distant. At the same time, she knows how to live, enjoying reading, food and entertainment.

The characters love each other, but as the narrator notes, their love is somehow strange. He seems to foresee a quick end to their relationship, because the girl does not allow them to develop. The heroine interrupts all conversations about the wedding and constantly says that she is not meant to be a wife. We see that she likes the idle life, but at the same time she wants something else.

And so, on Clean Monday, having decided to surrender completely to the feelings of love, the heroes spend the night together. This was not only their first night of love, but also their last. After the night, the young man found a note in which he learned that his beloved had decided to go to a monastery.

It was a terrible shock for him; he was going through the breakup painfully and became an alcoholic. Under New Year he wanted to walk along the same roads along which he wandered with his beloved. Walking like this, he approached the monastery. Entering the church, he accidentally saw his lady of his heart. I saw it and immediately ran out. It was theirs last meeting.

The theme of love in Bunin's story Clean Monday

After reading Ivan Bunin's work Clean Monday, we became acquainted with the story of a mysterious love. This feeling was both happiness and torment, and a great mystery, and an unsolved riddle. The story introduced us to young lovers, a beautiful couple that everyone paid attention to. However, these were different people, with different inner worlds. The hero in love looked after him beautifully, gave gifts, took her to clubs and restaurants, and was so blinded by love that he did not try to examine the inner world of his heroine. Only occasionally did he notice their strange relationship, even calling their love strange. Meanwhile, he didn’t even try to figure out the problem. Absorbed in the adoration of his beloved, he did not consider the complex, multifaceted world of his chosen one.

The girl also loved young man, but at the same time she is attracted to the spiritual world. For a long time she could not understand what was more important to her, the eternal or the momentary. Only after a night of love, on Clean Monday, the girl decided everything for herself and left silently, without saying goodbye. Later she will answer in a letter that she has decided to become a nun.

Reading Clean Monday, you understand that there is some kind of barrier of misunderstanding between the characters. The problem was that their love had no depth. The hero, having surrounded his beloved with attention, did not know her inner world and spiritual desires. The girl herself managed to understand that Savor petty and insignificant. So she chose love for God, sacrificing romantic attraction to a man.

As we see, this time love does not end with the happiness of the two heroes. And there is neither a wedding nor a created family. However, there is love - mysterious, enigmatic, incomprehensible. And this is the charm of Bunin’s story.

Main characters

There are only two main characters in the story Clean Monday. They are nameless. Just him and her.

He is a young, rich nobleman who fell in love with the main character of the story. His love was sincere and strong. He was ready to seal the relationship by marriage. But the heroine constantly avoided answering. He is afraid to look into the future and lives in the present, while feeling a certain detachment from his chosen one. He suffers from this incompleteness of reciprocal feelings, but he begins to suffer even more when he finds out that the girl has become a nun. He becomes an alcoholic and cannot find peace.

She is rich, beautiful, loves secular society And beautiful life. At the same time he behaves very strangely. The reader will find out the reason later. Her detachment was due to the search for her self. In the end, the girl makes her choice, drowning out her earthly feelings.

The meaning of the story

If we talk about the meaning of Bunin's story Clean Monday, then everything is very complicated. As for me, the meaning of the story is as follows. The author tried to show the reader that not only the feeling of love, but also the state of the soul is important in life. To achieve true happiness, you have to make a moral choice. Many of us make the wrong choices and are afraid to admit it to ourselves. But others, like the heroine of the story, find strength and are not afraid to change their destiny.

“Clean Monday” essay based on the story by I. Bunin

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The story “Clean Monday,” written in 1944, is one of the author’s favorite stories. I.A. Bunin recounts the events of the distant past from the perspective of the narrator - a young wealthy man with no special occupation. The hero is in love, and the heroine, as he sees her, makes a strange impression on the reader. She is good-looking, loves luxury, comfort, expensive restaurants, and at the same time she is a “modest student” and has breakfast in a vegetarian canteen on Arbat. She has a very critical attitude towards many fashionable works of literature, famous people. And she is clearly not in love with the hero as much as he would like. To his proposal of marriage, she replies that she is not fit to be a wife. " Odd love! - the hero thinks about this. The heroine’s inner world is revealed completely unexpectedly for him: it turns out that she often goes to churches, is deeply passionate about religion and church rituals. For her, this is not just religiosity - it is the need of her soul, her sense of homeland, antiquity, which is internally necessary for the heroine. The hero believes that these are just “Moscow quirks”; he cannot understand her and is deeply shocked by her choice when, after their only night of love, she decides to leave and then go to a monastery. For him, the collapse of love is a catastrophe of his entire life, unimaginable suffering. For her, the power of faith and the preservation of her inner world turned out to be higher than love; she decides to devote herself to God, renouncing everything worldly. The author does not reveal the reasons for it moral choice, what influenced her decision - social circumstances or moral and religious quests, but he clearly shows that the life of the soul is not subject to reason. This is especially emphasized in the episode of the last meeting of the heroes in the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. The heroes not only see how much they feel each other, they do not control their feelings: the hero “for some reason” wanted to enter the temple, the heroine internally feels her presence. This riddle, the mystery of human feelings, is one of the inherent properties of love in Bunin’s depiction, a tragic and powerful force that can turn a person’s whole life upside down.

The story “Clean Monday” is part of Bunin’s series of stories “Dark Alleys”. This cycle was the last in the author’s life and took eight years of creativity. The cycle was created during the Second World War. The world was collapsing, and the great Russian writer Bunin wrote about love, about the eternal, about the only force capable of preserving life in its highest purpose. The cross-cutting theme of the cycle is love in all its diversity, the merging of the souls of two unique, unique worlds, lovers' shower. The story “Clean Monday” […]
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Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is the greatest writer of the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. He entered literature as a poet and created wonderful poetic works. 1895 ...The first story “To the End of the World” is published. Encouraged by the praise of critics, Bunin begins to engage in literary creativity. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is a laureate of various awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933.

In 1944, the writer created one of the most wonderful stories about love, about the most beautiful, significant and lofty thing on Earth - the story “Clean Monday”. Bunin said about this story of his: “I thank God that He gave me to write, Clean Monday.”

In the story “Clean Monday,” the psychologism of Bunin’s prose and the peculiarities of “external depiction” were especially clearly manifested.

“The Moscow gray winter day was darkening, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the store windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening Moscow life, freed from daytime affairs, flared up, the cabbies' sleighs rushed thicker and more vigorously, the crowded, diving trams rattled more heavily - in the darkness it was already visible how the green stars hissed from the wires - the dimly blackened passers-by hurried more animatedly along the snowy sidewalks...” - these are the words with which the author begins his narrative, taking the reader to old Moscow at the beginning of the 20th century. The writer with the greatest detail, without losing sight of the slightest detail, reproduces all the signs of this era. And from the very first lines, the story is given a special sound by the constant mention of details of deep antiquity: about ancient Moscow churches, monasteries, icons (the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the Iveron Church, the Martha and Mary Convent, the icon of the Mother of God of the Three Hands), about the names of outstanding personalities. But next to this antiquity, eternity, we notice signs of a later way of life: the restaurants “Prague”, “Hermitage”, “Metropol”, “Yar”, known and accessible to the wealthiest layers of citizens; books by contemporary authors; “Motla” by Ertel and Chekhov... Judging by how the action unfolds in the story, we can judge that the past for the heroes is extremely clear, the present is vague, and the future is absolutely unclear.

There are two heroes in the story: he and she, a man and a woman. The man, according to the writer, was healthy, rich, young and handsome for some reason with a southern, hot beauty, he was even “indecently handsome.” But the most important thing is that the hero is in love, so in love that he is ready to fulfill any whim of the heroine, just not to lose her. But, unfortunately, he cannot and does not try to understand what is going on in the soul of his beloved: he “tried not to think, not to think about it.” The woman is portrayed as mysterious, enigmatic. She is mysterious, just as the soul of a Russian woman with her spirituality, devotion, dedication, self-denial is mysterious in general... The hero himself admits: “She was mysterious, strange to me.” Her whole life is woven from inexplicable contradictions and tossing. “It looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no lunches, no theaters, no dinners out of town,” the narrator says, but immediately adds: “Although flowers were still her favorite and unloved, all the books... she always read, she ate a whole box of chocolate a day, at lunches and dinners she ate as much as me...” When going somewhere, she most often did not know where she would go next, what she would do, in a word, she did not know, with by whom, how and where he will spend his time.

The writer tells us quite fully about her origins and her current activities. But in describing the heroine’s life, Bunin very often uses indefinite adverbs(for some reason there was a portrait of a barefoot Tolstoy hanging above her sofa).

All a woman’s actions are spontaneous, irrational and at the same time as if planned. On the night of Clean Monday, she gives herself to the hero, knowing that in the morning she will go to the monastery, but whether this departure is final is also unclear. Throughout the entire story, the author shows that the heroine does not feel comfortable anywhere, she does not believe in the existence of simple earthly happiness. “Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing,” she quotes Platon Karataev.

The emotional impulses of the heroes of “Clean Monday” often defy logical explanation. It seems as if both the man and the woman have no control over themselves, are not able to control their feelings.

The narrative centers on the events of Forgiveness Sunday and Clean Monday. Forgiveness Sunday is a religious holiday revered by all believers. They ask each other for forgiveness and forgive their loved ones. For the heroine, this is a very special day, not only a day of forgiveness, but also a day of farewell to worldly life. Clean Monday is the first day of Lent, on which a person is cleansed of all filth, when the joy of Maslenitsa gives way to introspection. This day becomes a turning point in the hero's life. Having gone through the suffering associated with the loss of his beloved, the hero experiences the influence of surrounding forces and realizes everything that he had not noticed before, being blinded by his love for the heroine. Two years later, the man, remembering the events of days long gone, will repeat the route of their long-standing joint trip, and “for some reason” he will really want to go to the church of the Marfo-Mariinsky monastery. What unknown forces draw him towards his beloved? Does he strive for the spiritual world into which she goes? We don’t know this, the author does not lift the veil of secrecy for us. He only shows us humility in the hero’s soul; their last meeting ends with his humble departure, and not with the awakening of his former passions.

The future of the heroes is unclear. Besides everything, the writer does not even directly indicate anywhere that the nun the man met is his former lover. Only one detail - dark eyes - resembles the appearance of the heroine. It is noteworthy that the heroine goes to the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. This monastery is not a monastery, but the Church of the Intercession of Our Lady on Ordynka, which had a community of secular ladies who took care of the orphans who lived at the church and those wounded in the first world war. And this service in the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God, perhaps, is a spiritual insight for the heroine of “Clean Monday”, because it was the Immaculate Heart of the Mother of God who warned the world against war, death, blood, orphanhood...

The fate of the hero in "Clean Monday" is pushed aside, as if covered by something more significant, which inspired us from the fate of the heroine. We clearly felt that it was not for nothing and not by chance that Bunin prepared such an unexpected ending for stories about love - renunciation of “worldly” affairs and departure to the monastery. And one more feature strikes the eye when getting acquainted with this Bunin masterpiece - the complete absence of fictitious names. Not names at all and not only the names of the main characters, which is typical of most stories about love, but fictitious names, which cannot but give the impression of a kind of demonstrativeness. There is only one fictitious name in the story - the name of an incidental person, Fyodor, the main character's coachman. All other names belong to real persons.

These are either the authors of fashionable works (Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Tetmeyer, Przybyszewski); or fashionable Russian writers of the beginning of the century (A. Bely, Leonid Andreev, Bryusov); or genuine figures Art Theater(Stanislavsky, Moskvin, Kachalov, Sulerzhitsky); or Russian writers of the last century (Griboyedov, Ertel, Chekhov, L. Tolstoy); or heroes of ancient Russian literature (Peresvet and Oslyabya, Yuri Dolgoruky, Svyatoslav Seversky, Pavel Muromsky); the characters of “War and Peace” are mentioned in the story - Platon Karataev and Pierre Bezukhov; Chaliapin's name was mentioned once; The real name of the owner of the tavern in Okhotny Ryad, Yegorov, has been revealed.

In such an environment, deliberately nameless heroes act, pushed into a certain chronological frame. At the end of the story, Bunin even pinpoints the year in which the action takes place, although the chronological discrepancy between the facts mentioned in the story immediately catches the eye (obviously, chronological accuracy was the last thing on his mind). Bunin calls the time of action of his story the spring of the thirteenth year? approaching the end of the story, the hero casually remarks: “Almost two years have passed since that Clean Monday... In the fourteenth year, on New Year’s Eve, there was the same quiet, sunny evening...” Clean Monday - the first Monday after Maslenitsa Therefore, the action takes place in early spring (late February - March).

The last day of Maslenitsa is “Forgiveness Sunday”, on which people “forgive” each other for insults, injustices, etc. Then comes “Clean Monday” - the first day of fasting, when a person, cleansed of filth, enters a period of strict performance of rituals, when the Maslenitsa festivities end and the fun is replaced by the rigor of life’s routine and self-focus. On this day, the heroine of the story finally decided to go to the monastery, parting with her past forever. But all these are spring rites. Counting back “almost two years” from the end of 1914, we get the spring of 1913.

The story was written exactly thirty years after the events described, in 1944, a year before the end of the Second World War. Obviously, according to Bunin, Russia has again found itself at some important historical milestone, and he is busy thinking about what now awaits his homeland along its path. He turns back, trying, within the confines of a short story, to reproduce not only the diversity, but the diversity and “restlessness” of Russian life, the general feeling of an impending catastrophe. He brings together facts that were actually separated by several years in order to further strengthen the impression of the diversity of Russian life at that time, the diversity of faces and people who had no idea what a great test history was preparing for them.

1913 is the last pre-war year in Russia. This year is what Bunin chooses as the time for the action of the story, despite its obvious discrepancy with the details of the Moscow life described. In the minds of the people of that era who lived through it, this year generally grew into a historical milestone of enormous significance. Standing at the window in the heroine’s apartment, the hero reflects on Moscow, looking at the opening view, the central part of which is the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the Kremlin wall: “Strange city!” I said to myself, thinking about Okhotny Ryad, about Iverskaya, about St. Basil’s. - St. Basil and Savior on Bor, Italian cathedrals - and something Kyrgyz in the points of the towers on the Kremlin walls..." An important and telling reflection. This is a kind of result that Bunin comes to as a result of many years of observations of the “East-West” features of the appearance of Russia.

From the story “The Bonfire,” written in 1902, to “Clean Monday” (1944), Bunin is accompanied by the idea that his homeland, Russia, is a strange but clear combination of two layers, two cultural ways - “Western” and "Eastern", European and Asian. The idea that Russia, in its appearance, as well as in its history, is located somewhere at the intersection of these two lines of the world historical development, - this thought runs like a red thread through all fourteen pages of Bunin’s story, which, contrary to the initial impression, is based on a complete historical concept that touches on the most fundamental aspects of Russian history and the character of the Russian person for Bunin and the people of his era.

In the numerous hints and half-hints with which the story abounds, Bunin emphasizes the duality, contradictory nature of the way of Russian life, the combination of the incongruous. In the heroine’s apartment there is a “wide Turkish sofa”, next to it is an “expensive piano”, and above the sofa, the writer emphasizes, “for some reason there was a portrait of a barefoot Tolstoy.” A Turkish sofa and an expensive piano are East and West, barefoot Tolstoy is Russia, Rus' in its unusual, “clumsy” and eccentric appearance that does not fit into any framework. The hero of the story, “being from the Penza province,” that is, from the very heart of provincial Russia, is handsome, as he himself says about himself, “with southern, hot beauty,” even “indecently handsome,” as “one famous actor” put it. , who added: “The devil knows who you are, some kind of Sicilian.”

The Sicilian comes from the Penza province! The combination is incredible, unusual, but hardly accidental in the context of the story. Finding herself on the evening of “Forgiveness Sunday” at the Yegorov tavern, famous for its pancakes, the heroine says, pointing to the icon of the Mother of God of Three Hands hanging in the corner: “Good! There are wild men below, and here are pancakes with champagne and the Mother of God of Three Hands. Three hands! After all, this is India !" The same duality is emphasized here by Bunin: “wild men” - on the one hand, “pancakes with champagne” - on the other, and next to it is Rus', but again extraordinary, as if correlated with the appearance of the Christian Mother of God, reminiscent of the Buddhist Shiva .

Like a pendulum, the narrative in “Clean Monday” deviates, now towards Europe, now towards Asia, now towards the West, now towards the East, somewhere in the middle, in the very center, denoting an elusive feature, line, point of Russia. Hearing the chime of the clock on the Spasskaya Tower of the Kremlin, the heroine notes: “What an ancient sound, something tin and cast iron. And just like that, with the same sound, three o’clock in the morning struck in the fifteenth century. And in Florence there is exactly the same chime, it there reminded me of Moscow..." And everything in Moscow is like in Europe, like in Asia, like in Italy, like in India.

How densely everything is intertwined and rich in this story! Here every word is calculated, every insignificant detail is taken into account and carries a semantic load. Griboedov, who was included in the story because he, Russian by origin, but European by education and culture, died in Asia - in Persia, at the very moment when he was busy developing a project by which it would be possible to connect Europe with Asia through Russia and Transcaucasia. And he died terribly, brutally killed by an enraged crowd of Persians. Persia, the constantly emphasized Persian beauty of the heroine, has a very special character in the story. symbolic meaning something menacing, spontaneously passionate. Then Ordynka itself, where Griboedov’s house is found, is nothing more than a former Tatar settlement (Ordynka - horde - Horde). And, finally, Egorov’s tavern in Okhotny Ryad (a purely Russian establishment!), where, however, they serve not just pancakes, but with champagne, and in the corner hangs an icon of the Mother of God with three hands...

The most significant and profound indicator of this two-sidedness (or, rather, bifurcation) of the historical process, in the power of which, according to Bunin, Russia found itself, is the heroine herself in the story. The duality of her appearance is so persistently emphasized by the writer that in the end the question arises: isn’t there some kind of hidden, not directly expressed, but perhaps the main idea story? The heroine's father is "an enlightened man of a noble merchant family, who lived in retirement in Tver." At home, the heroine wears a silk archaluk trimmed with sable: “The inheritance of my Astrakhan grandmother,” she explains (although, we note in parentheses, no one asks her about this).

So, the father is a Tver merchant, the grandmother is from Astrakhan. Russian and Tatar blood merged in the veins of this young woman. Looking at her lips, “at the dark fluff above them, at the garnet velvet of the dress, at the slope of her shoulders and the oval of her breasts, smelling some slightly spicy smell of her hair,” the hero thinks: “Moscow, Astrakhan, Persia, India!” Moreover, the distribution of shades here is such that what is Russian and Tver is hidden inside, dissolved in the mental organization, while the appearance is entirely given over to the power of Eastern heredity.

And the hero himself, on whose behalf the story is told, never tires of emphasizing that the beauty of his beloved “was somehow Indian, Persian”: “... a dark-amber face, magnificent and somewhat ominous hair in its thick blackness, softly shining, like black sable fur, eyebrows, eyes as black as velvet coal; her captivating velvety-crimson lips were shaded with dark down; when going out, she most often wore a garnet velvet dress and the same shoes with gold clasps..."

This is an oriental beauty in all the splendor of her non-Russian, non-Slavic beauty. And when she “in a black velvet dress” appeared at the skit party of the Art Theater and “pale from drunkenness,” Kachalov came up to her with a glass of wine and, “looking at her with feigned gloomy greed,” said to her: “The Tsar-Maiden, the Shamakhan Queen, your health!" - we understand that it was Bunin who put into his mouth his own concept of duality: the heroine is, as it were, both the “Tsar-Maiden” and the “Shamakhan Queen” at the same time. In Pushkin’s “The Tale of the Golden Cockerel,” which Bunin is guided by, it is said differently: “maiden, Shamakhan queen.” It’s just that “maiden” or “tsar-maiden” are different things; in the first case there is semantic and stylistic neutrality, in the second there is a clear orientation towards Slavic folklore. But in Bunin's heroine, at least in her appearance, there is nothing from the “Tsar Maiden”, that is, from the Russian, Slavic, folklore root.

A very important dialogue, and it is important primarily for its hidden allegory. Indeed, where did Eastern wisdom come from here? After all, there is nothing specifically oriental either in the appearance of Platon Karataev, or in the content of his speeches, or in the above proverb. We can consider his surname Karataev to be eastern - Tatar, which is truly of Tatar origin.

In 1944, the writer created one of the most wonderful stories about love, about the most beautiful, significant and lofty thing that exists on Earth - the story “Clean Monday”. Bunin said about this story of his: “I thank God that He gave me to write, Clean Monday.”

In the story “Clean Monday,” the psycho-logism of Bunin’s prose and the features of “external depiction” were especially clearly manifested.

“The Moscow gray winter day was darkening, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the shop windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening Moscow life, freed from daytime affairs, flared up, the cabbies' sleighs rushed thicker and more vigorously, the crowded, diving trams rattled more heavily - in the dusk one could already see green stars falling from the wires with a hiss - dimly blackened passers-by hurried more animatedly along the snowy sidewalks...” - these are the words with which the author begins his narrative, taking the reader to old Moscow at the beginning of the 20th century. The writer with the greatest detail, without losing sight of the slightest detail, reproduces all the signs of this era. And from the very first lines the story is given a special sound by the constant mention of details of deep antiquity: about ancient Moscow churches, monasteries, icons (the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the Iveron Church, the Martha and Mary Convent, the icon of the Mother of God of Three Hands), about names outstanding personalities. But next to this antiquity, eternity, we notice signs of a later way of life: the restaurants “Prague”, “Hermitage”, “Metropol”, “Yar”, known and accessible to the wealthiest layers of citizens; books by contemporary authors; “Motla” by Ertel and Chekhov... Judging by how the action unfolds in the story, we can judge that the past for the heroes is extremely clear, the present is vague, and the future is absolutely unclear.

There are two heroes in the story: he and she, a man and a woman. The man, according to the writer, was healthy, rich, young and handsome for some reason with a southern, hot beauty, he was even “indecently handsome.” But the most important thing is that the hero is in love, so in love that he is ready to fulfill any whim of the heroine, just not to lose her. But, unfortunately, he cannot and does not try to understand what is going on in the soul of his beloved: he “tried not to think, not to think about it.” The woman is portrayed as mysterious, enigmatic. She is mysterious, just as the soul of a Russian woman with her spirituality, devotion, dedication, self-denial is generally mysterious... The hero himself admits: “She was mysterious, strange to me.” Her whole life is woven from inexplicable contradictions and tossing. “It looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no dinners, no theaters, no dinners out of town,” the narrator says, but immediately adds: “Although there were still flowers she has favorites and least favorites, all the books... she always read, she ate a whole box of chocolate a day, she ate as much as me at lunches and dinners...” When going somewhere, she most often did not know where she would go next, what she would do, in a word, he doesn’t know with whom, how and where he will spend his time.

The writer tells us quite fully about her origins and her current activities. But in describing the heroine’s life, Bunin very often uses indefinite adverbs (for some reason there was a portrait of a barefoot Tolstoy hanging above her sofa).

The story centers on the events of Forgiveness Sunday and Clean Monday. Forgiveness Sunday is a religious holiday revered by all believers. They ask each other for forgiveness and forgive their loved ones. For the heroine, this is a very special day, not only a day of forgiveness, but also a day of farewell to worldly life. Clean Monday is the first day of Lent, on which a person is cleansed of all filth, when the joy of Maslenitsa gives way to self-contemplation. This day becomes a turning point in the hero’s life. Having gone through the suffering associated with the loss of his beloved, the hero experiences the influence of surrounding forces and realizes everything that he had not noticed before, being blinded by his love for the heroine. Two years later, the man, remembering the events of days long gone, will repeat the route of their long-standing joint trip, and “for some reason” he will really want to go to the church of the Marfo-Mariinsky monastery. What unknown forces draw him towards his beloved? Does he strive for the spiritual world into which she goes? We don’t know this; the author does not lift the veil of secrecy for us. He only shows us humility in the hero’s soul; their last meeting ends with his humble departure, and not with the awakening of his former passions.

The future of the heroes is unclear. Besides everything, the writer does not even directly indicate anywhere that the nun the man met is his former lover. Only one detail - dark eyes - resembles the appearance of the heroine. It is noteworthy that the heroine goes to the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. This monastery is not a monastery, but the Church of the Intercession of Our Lady on Ordynka, which had a community of secular ladies who took care of the orphans who lived at the church and those wounded in the First World War. And this service in the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God, perhaps, is a spiritual insight for the heroine of “Maundy Monday”, because it was the Immaculate Heart of the Mother of God who warned the world against war, death, blood, orphanhood...

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1. Images of the main characters.
2. Moral quest heroines.
3. Tragic ending works.

I. A. Bunin considered the story “Clean Monday” one of his best works. In fact, one cannot treat this story with indifference. The plot of the story is relatively simple. It's about love. But the love story is completely extraordinary. In general, in Bunin’s work we encounter a special perception of it. This wonderful feeling most often does not bring joy, does not make people happy, on the contrary, it makes them suffer and suffer. Love becomes a test of fate and at the same time a punishment from above. In the story “Clean Monday” we encounter just such a situation when love does not bring happiness.

The story contains many everyday details. The writer describes in sufficient detail the lives of the main characters. They are young, beautiful, rich. “We were both rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that people stared at us in restaurants and at concerts.”

They can be called real darlings of fate. Hardships and sorrows are not familiar to them. We know that the lovers often went to dinner at Prague, the Hermitage, and the Metropol. Young people could simply enjoy every day they live. But everything happens completely differently. Almost immediately, at the very beginning of the story, we begin to anticipate a tragic outcome. The author does not say this directly. It only gives readers the opportunity to pay attention to what is unsaid, to what is only implied. It is very important that the main character does not know where his relationship with the girl is leading. However, the young man believes that it is better not to think about it. He is more pragmatic, prefers to live for today, to get as much joy as possible from the present. And the girl flatly refuses to talk about the future. “I didn’t know how this was going to end, and I tried not to think, not to think: it was useless - just like talking to her about it: she once and for all stopped talking about our future...” says the narrator.

The main character of the story from the very beginning seems strange, unlike the others. She is taking courses. But, apparently, he does not have a clear idea of why he is doing this. It is no coincidence that she very vaguely answers the question of why she is studying. The girl says: “Why is everything done in the world? Do we understand anything in our actions? There is a very important philosophical subtext hidden in this answer. The heroine tries to find the meaning of life, but she fails. Perhaps this is why she decides to find salvation in religion and goes to a monastery.

The main character loves beautiful things. She seems smart, able to carry on a conversation on any topic. But on the other hand, she is almost completely immersed in her inner world. And the outside world seems less interesting to her: “It looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no lunches, no theaters, no dinners outside the city...” The girl leads a lifestyle that seems to be accepted in society. But she herself wants something different. The main character cannot help but think about how amazing and incomprehensible their relationship is. The girl does not think about marriage, does not want to become a wife and mother. She's honest about it. The main character is simultaneously drawn to a luxurious life and denies it. This contradiction in her nature seems strange and incomprehensible.

The girl is characterized by an interest in religion. She visits churches, she is drawn to the Kremlin cathedrals. But at the same time, she cannot be called particularly devout, because she leads a secular lifestyle, without limiting herself in anything. However, quite unexpectedly, the girl goes to a monastery. She doesn't explain anything to anyone. He simply leaves his usual life and his loved one. The girl’s action was completely unexpected for the young man. He cannot understand the behavior of his beloved. And once again he thinks about her action, without finding an explanation for it. The heroes of the story separated for a very long time. The young man saw his beloved only two years later. What does the title of the story tell us? The young man found out about the girl’s religiosity on the eve of Clean Monday. Previously, he had never even thought about the fact that his beloved was so interested in religion. This behavior of a young girl seems to us readers to be an amazing discovery. Maybe the heroine considers her life sinful, and wants to find salvation for her soul in the monastery. After all, the girl’s life was full of entertainment, she visited theaters, restaurants, and had a lot of fun.

The heroine finds the strength to abandon everything that was familiar and dear to her. Instead of fun and joy, she chooses life in a monastery. However, if we remember that the girl was indifferent to what surrounded her, you won’t be surprised at her action. Even love did not keep the girl from becoming a nun. What was love for her? Something temporary, unimportant, vain? The ending of the story remains open.

“Clean Monday” is tragic in its essence. He stands apart in Bunin’s work, because here the lovers do not part due to the ill will of fate. The girl chooses her own path. Nobody and nothing bothered the young people. They could be happy, completely dissolving in each other. But it turned out differently. May be, main character was unable to understand and appreciate such a beautiful and sublime feeling? Or there was no place for love in her soul at all, because the heroine seemed to live in her own world. We don’t know what is most important to her, but we can only guess.

In fact, little is known about the main character and it is difficult to understand her. You can perceive her mental torment as evidence of internal dissatisfaction real life. But maybe, on the contrary, she long ago determined what the meaning of her life was. And gradually I walked towards the desired result. Usual life did not attract the girl, she expected something more. Religion turned out to be more important for her than usual activities and joys. And in this regard, love for a man seemed to the girl less important than love for God.

Of course, only an extraordinary nature can refuse the usual worldly joys. The girl is certainly a strong and extraordinary person. She is looking for her own meaning in life. And leaving for a monastery seems to her to be the right decision, because now the bustle of a simple and vulgar life will have absolutely no meaning.

The story cannot but evoke feelings of sadness in the reader. But at the same time, the story makes you think about how unique, inimitable and incomprehensible a person can be to others. This is exactly what the main character is. She is unlike anyone else. She has her own choice. And the girl makes the decision on her own, without asking anyone for advice, without needing the approval of others. However, one cannot help but admit that the main character is not so ideal. After all, her act turned out to be a cruel blow for the young man. He suffers from separation from his beloved. Surprisingly, we learn that the girl is also experiencing separation pain. After all, in the letter she writes: “May God give strength not to answer me - it is useless to prolong and increase our torment...” So why did the girl choose her path? Why did she decide to ruin the life of her beloved? It can be concluded that she felt unhappy. And she decided to break with the world in order to forever forget about everything connected with it.

Bunin's story "Clean Monday" tells us about the complexity human life. The role of this work in Russian literature is very great. Thanks to him, we got the opportunity to learn about how tragic the ending of a love story can be.

Love is beautiful and love is doomed.
External similarity and internal differences between the characters in the story.
The ideal life of the heroine of the story.

One of the main themes of the writer’s work is the theme of love. Bunin approached this topic with all his soul, and neither war nor revolution could shake this attachment of his. In this area, full of unexpressed shades and ambiguities, his gift found worthy use. He described love in all states, and in emigration he treated this feeling even more closely and concentratedly. Love in Bunin’s depiction amazes not only with the power of artistic representation, but also with its subordination to some internal laws unknown to man. But these laws do not often break through to the surface - most people do not experience their fatal impact until the end of their days. This depiction of love unexpectedly gives Bunins sober, “merciless” talent a romantic glow. The proximity of love and death, their conjugation were obvious facts for Bunin and were never questioned. However, the catastrophic nature of existence, the fragility of human relationships and existence itself - all these favorite Bunin themes after the gigantic social cataclysms that shook Russia were filled with a new formidable meaning. “Love is beautiful” and “love is doomed” - these concepts, having finally come together, coincided, carrying in the depths of each story personal grief Bunin the emigrant. During the war, Bunin completed a book of short stories, “Dark Alleys,” which was published in in full force in 1946 in Paris. This is the only book in Russian literature that is “all about love.” Thirty-eight short stories in the collection provide a great variety of unforgettable female images- Rusya, Antigone, Galya Ganskaya, heroine of “Clean Monday”.

In Bunin's story "Clean Monday" the heroine is nameless. The name is not important, the name is for the earth, and God knows everyone even without a name. Bunin calls the heroine - she. From the very beginning, she was strange, silent, unusual, as if a stranger to the whole world around her, looking through it, “kept thinking about something, seemed to be delving into something mentally; lying on the sofa with a book in her hands, she often lowered it and looked questioningly in front of her.” She seemed to be from a completely different world, and just so that she would not be recognized in this world, she read, went to the theater, had lunch, dinner, went for walks, and attended courses. “We were both rich; healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants and at concerts they looked at us,” says the hero of “Clean Monday.” It would seem that they have everything for absolute happiness. What else is needed? “Our happiness, my friend,” his beloved quotes Platon Karataev as saying, “is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing.” The hero and heroine of the story are different natures. The hero of “Clean Monday” is an “ordinary” person, for all his physical attractiveness and emotional fullness. But the heroine is different. In her strange actions one can sense the significance of her character, the rarity of her “chosen nature.” Her mind is torn. She is not averse to plunging into the “today’s” life of that elite Moscow - Chaliapin’s concerts, the “kapustniks” of the Art Theater, some courses, reading fashionable Western writers of the beginning of the century: Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Przybyshevsky, lectures by Andrei Bely, etc., however internally she is alien (like Bunin himself) to all this. She was always drawn to something lighter, intangible, to faith, to God, and just as the Church of the Savior was close to the windows of her apartment, so God was close to her heart. She often went to churches, visited monasteries and old cemeteries. She is intensely looking for something whole, heroic, selfless and finds her ideal in serving God. The present seems pitiful and untenable to her. And finally she made up her mind. IN last days She drank the cup of worldly life to the bottom, forgave everyone on Forgiveness Sunday and cleansed herself of the ashes of this life on “Clean Monday”: she went to a monastery. “No, I’m not fit to be a wife.” She knew from the very beginning that she could not be a wife. She is destined to be an eternal bride, the bride of Christ. She found her love, she chose her path. You might think that she left home, but in fact she went home. And even her earthly lover forgave her for this. I forgave, although I did not understand. He could not understand that now “she can see in the dark,” and “left the gates” of a strange monastery.

This is one of the stories in “Dark Alleys”. In this collection you can find both rough sensuality and a simply skillfully told playful anecdote (“One Hundred Rupees”), but the theme of pure and beautiful love runs through the book. Characteristic of heroes extraordinary strength and sincerity of feeling, there is no inherent savoring of risky details in them. Love seems to say: “Where I stand cannot be dirty!”

Class- 11

Lesson objectives:

introduce students to the life and work of I.A. Bunin, the book “Dark Alleys”;
analyze the story “Clean Monday”: reveal the problem of love, find out the reasons tragic fate heroes;
introduce the spiritual heritage of Russia;
develop the skills of analytical reading of an epic work, the ability to make micro-conclusions and, with their help, a general conclusion;
develop critical thinking, stage skills;
to cultivate spiritual culture, responsibility for one’s actions and the fate of the country;

make interdisciplinary connections - draw parallels: literature, painting, music, religion. Equipment:

exhibition “Who wants to know Russia, visit Moscow”, portrait of I.A. Bunin, music by L.-V. Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”, D. Verdi’s opera “Aida”, “Red Ringing” of bells, candles, texts of the work and prayers of E. Sirin, Kustodiev’s painting “Maslenitsa”, magazine “LSh” - No. 2, 3, 1996, No. 3 , 1997, projector.

During the classes

I. Org. moment.

II. Preparation for the main stage.

Teacher's word.

Today we will get acquainted with the work of I.A. Bunin; Let's find out what problems the author touches on in the story “Clean Monday” and how the characters solve them.

III. Assimilation of new knowledge and methods of action.

1. Presentation about I.A. Bunin. Student’s speech.

2. Reading the epigraph.
Is there such a thing as unhappy love?
Doesn't the world's sad music give happiness?
All love is great happiness,
even if it is not divided.

I. Bunin

These words are the meaning of the entire book “Dark Alleys”. You can call it an encyclopedia of love dramas, a book of 38 love stories created during World War II (1937-1944). I. Bunin in 1947 This is how he assessed his work: “She talks about the tragic and about many tender and beautiful things - I think that this is the best and most original thing that I have written in my life...”

Bunin's love amazes not only with the power of artistic representation, but also with its subordination to some internal, unknown laws. It's a secret. And not everyone, in his opinion, is given the opportunity to touch her. The state of love is not fruitless for the writer’s heroes; it elevates their souls. However, love is not only happiness, but also tragedy. It cannot end in marriage. Bunin's heroes part forever.

4. The history of writing the story “Clean Monday”.

The story “Clean Monday” was written on May 12, 1944.

Why is the date of writing specific, and the events described in the work refer to 1914? 1944 During the years of difficult trials for the country, I. Bunin reminded people of love as the most wonderful feeling in life. Thus, Bunin rejected fascism and exalted Russia.

5. The meaning of the story's title.

1) Historical background holiday. Reading a textbook article.

Maslenitsa – Forgiveness Sunday – Lent – Clean Monday – Easter

2) Description of Clean Monday by I. Shmelev in the novel “The Summer of the Lord.”

(Against the background of Beethoven's music)

“Today is Clean Monday, and everything in our house is being cleaned... It’s dripping outside the window - when it starts crying. So she began to cry - drip... drip... drip... And something joyful is stirring in her heart: everything is new now, different. Now the soul will begin...”, “the soul must be prepared.” To fast, to fast, to prepare for the Bright Day... Today is a special day, a strict one... Yesterday was a forgiven day... Read - “Lord is the Lord of my life...”. The rooms are quiet and deserted, smelling of a sacred smell. In the hallway, in front of the reddish icon of the Crucifixion... they lit a Lenten... lamp, and now it will burn unquenchably until Easter. When my father lights the lamps - on Saturdays he lights the lamps himself - he always hums pleasantly and sadly: “Let us bow to Your Cross, Master,” and I sing after him, wonderful:

And holy... Your Resurrection

Sla-a-vim!..

Joyful prayer! She shines with a gentle light in these sad days of Lent!”

6. Introduction to the Lenten prayer of Ephraim the Syrian.

Ephraim the Syrian is an outstanding figure of the Christian Church of the 4th century, the famous author of many theological works.

“Lord and Master of my life, do not give me the spirit of idleness, covetousness and idle talk. Grant me the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to your servant! To her, Lord the King, grant me to see my sins and not condemn my brother, for blessed are you forever and ever. Amen".

7. Story composition.

The composition is consistent.

Winter at the beginning and end of the story is syntactic parallelism.

8. Conversation based on content.

Why is the plot interesting?

What emotions did the story evoke in you?

What kind of ending were you expecting?

Why didn't your hopes come true?

How would you end the story of this undying love?

Where does the action take place?

Name the holy places of Moscow mentioned in the story. (Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Novodevichy Convent, Conception Monastery, Archangel Cathedral, Marfo-Mariinsky Convent) (Excerpts from a poem about Moscow are heard while the bells are ringing)

Here, as it was, so now -
The heart of all Rus' is holy.
Here are her shrines
Behind the Kremlin wall!
(V.Bryusov)

Wonderful city ancient city,
You fit into your ends
And towns and villages,
And chambers and palaces!
Belted with a ribbon of arable land,
You are all colorful in the gardens:
How many temples, how many towers
On your seven hills!
May you flourish with eternal glory,
City of temples and chambers!
Middle city, heartfelt city,
The city of indigenous Russia!
(F. Glinka)

“This is the Russia we lost,” I. Shmelev laments. And I. Bunin echoes him.

The story is built on contrasts.

Artistic detail plays a huge role. This is the color.

black	yellow	red
Black hair	Shoes with gold buckles	Garnet shoes
Eyes as black as coal	Golden Dome	Garnet velvet dress
Tar bangs	Gold brocade	Brick and bloody walls of the monastery
Dark eyes	Sunset Gold Enamel	Red Gate
Charcoal velvet eye	Amber of bare hands
Black board icons	Golden cross on the forehead
Black kid glove	Amber face
Black felt boots	Book “Fire Angel”
Black velvet dress	Yellow-haired Rus'
Black shiny braids	Amber cheeks
Smolny hair	Fire pancakes
Indian Persian beauty	Gold iconostasis
Eyebrows like black sable fur
Black leather sofa

What is their function?

Yellow and red are traditional icon painting colors.

Yellow symbolizes the Kingdom of Heaven.

Red – fire, i.e. life.

Black – humility, submission.

What does SHE do?

(Listening to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”)

The theme of “Moonlight Sonata” is IT.

He is the theme of the march from Aida. Prove it.

(Listen to Verdi's music)

“... human life is entirely under the power of a woman,” noted Maupassant.

Let's listen to their dialogue.

(There are two chairs nearby. She reads silently.)

She: - You are terribly talkative and restless, let me finish reading the chapter.

He: - If I hadn't been talkative and restless, I might never have recognized you

She: - That's all true, but still be silent for a while, read something, smoke...

He: - I can’t remain silent! You can't imagine the power of my love for you! You don't love me!

She: - I can imagine. As for my love, you know well, except for my father and you, I have no one in the world. In any case, you are my first and last. Is this not enough for you? But enough about that.

He (to himself): -Strange love.

She : - I’m not fit to be a wife. I'm not good, I'm not good.

He (to himself): -We’ll see there!

(out loud) No, this is beyond my strength! And why, why do you torture me and yourself so cruelly! “Yes, after all, this is not love, not love...”

She: - May be. Who knows what love is?

He : - I, I know! (exclaimed) And I will wait for you to find out what love and happiness are!

What do his internal remarks say?

Do you think they loved each other? Prove it.

Did he recognize her? Why?

And again the whole evening they talked about strangers.

So January, February passed... Maslenitsa.

On Forgiveness Sunday, she ordered him to come in the evening.

What day is this?

He has arrived. She met him, all in black.

Read their dialogue. (Reading dialogue)

Why does she want to go to a monastery?

Why didn't he know about her religiosity? What were you blinded by?

(Sounds “Moonlight Sonata”)

At 10 o'clock evening the next day (it was Clean Monday) he opened the door with his key. Everything was lit: chandeliers, candelabra, a lamp... and the “Moonlight Sonata” was playing. She stood near the piano in a black velvet dress.

They went to the cabbage party.

What kind of entertainment is this?

How did she behave? Why cheeky? What is strange about her character?

What was the weather like that evening? (Blizzard)

What role does a snowstorm play?

Why did she keep him after the “cabbage party”, which she had not done before?

Why did she take off all her black clothes and wear only swan slippers?

What role does white play?

Why was there no more snowstorm when he left her?

Why is she leaving for Tver?

What letter did she write? Read it.

Why did she go to the monastery?

Why wasn’t he surprised by this ending to their meetings? (Didn't look into the soul)

Re-read the ending of the story.

When it was?

What brought him to the monastery?

What did he understand?

Why did he turn and quietly walk out of the gate?

Why is the story told in 1st person?

IV. Systematization and generalization of knowledge.

Conclusions from the lesson.

Any real love- great happiness, even if it ends in separation, death, tragedy. Bunin’s heroes, who have lost, overlooked, or destroyed their love themselves, come to this conclusion, albeit late. In this late repentance, the late spiritual resurrection of the heroes, we see real people, their imperfection, inability to value what is nearby, and we also see the imperfection of life itself, social conditions, circumstances that often interfere with truly human relationships.

The story, which tells about tragic collisions, does not carry pessimism. He's like music, like everything great art, cleanses, elevates the soul, affirming the truly high and beautiful.

V. Summing up the lesson.

VI. Reflection.

VII. Information about homework.

How would you conclude the story? Complete the love story.

The story “Clean Monday,” written in 1944, is one of the author’s favorite stories. I. A. Bunin recounts the events of the distant past on behalf of the narrator - a young wealthy man with no special occupation. The hero is in love, and the heroine, as he sees her, makes a strange impression on the reader. She is good-looking, loves luxury, comfort, expensive restaurants, and at the same time she is a “modest student” and has breakfast in a vegetarian canteen on Arbat. She has a very critical attitude towards many fashionable works of literature, famous

to people. And she is clearly not in love with the hero as much as he would like. To his proposal of marriage, she replies that she is not fit to be a wife. "Odd love!" - the hero thinks about this. The heroine’s inner world is revealed completely unexpectedly for him: it turns out that she often goes to churches, is deeply passionate about religion and church rituals. For her, this is not just religiosity - it is the need of her soul, her sense of homeland, antiquity, which is internally necessary for the heroine. The hero believes that these are just “Moscow quirks,” he cannot understand her and is deeply shocked by her choice when, after their only night of love, she decides to leave and then go to a monastery. For him, the collapse of love is a catastrophe of his entire life, unimaginable suffering. For her, the power of faith and the preservation of her inner world turned out to be higher than love; she decides to devote herself to God, renouncing everything worldly. The author does not reveal the reasons for her moral choice, what influenced her decision - social circumstances or moral and religious quests, but he clearly shows that the life of the soul is not subject to reason. This is especially emphasized in the episode of the last meeting of the heroes in the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. The heroes not only see how much they feel each other, they do not control their feelings: the hero “for some reason” wanted to enter the temple, the heroine internally feels her presence. This riddle, the mystery of human feelings, is one of the inherent properties of love in Bunin’s depiction, a tragic and powerful force that can turn a person’s whole life upside down.

Brief analysis of the story

The theme of love in Bunin's story Clean Monday

Main characters

The meaning of the story

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