Essay “Social theme in the work of A. Main themes in the work of A.I. Kuprin

1. Introduction

Among the outstanding Russian writers of the early twentieth century, one of the most prominent and original places belongs to Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin,” writes V. N. Afanasyev.

The work of Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin is closely connected with the traditions of Russian realism. In his work, the writer relied on the achievements of his three idols: Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy and Chekhov. Main direction creative search Kuprin is expressed in the following phrase: “We need to write not about how people have become impoverished in spirit and vulgarized, but about the triumph of man, about his strength and power.” The themes of this writer's works are extremely diverse. But Kuprin has one cherished theme. This theme of love is one of the highest values ​​in the life of A.I. Kuprin, therefore, in his stories “The Garnet Bracelet” and “Olesya” he touches on this topic that is vital for all times. These works are united common features, the most important of which is the tragedy of the fate of the main characters. In his stories, love is unselfish, selfless, not thirsty for reward, love for which to accomplish any feat, to go to torment is not work at all, but joy.
The story “The Garnet Bracelet” is a confirmation that the writer is looking for people in real life who are “possessed” with a high feeling of love, who are able to rise above those around them, above vulgarity and lack of spirituality, who are ready to give everything without demanding anything in return.

1. The main themes and motives in the work of A.I. Kuprina

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin is a recognized master of the short story, the author of wonderful stories. In them he created a broad, multifaceted picture of Russian life late XIX- beginning of the 20th century. “Man came into the world for immense freedom of creativity and happiness” - these words from Kuprin’s essay could be taken as an epigraph to his entire work. A great lover of life, he believed that life would get better. The dream of happiness, of beautiful love - these motives are reflected in Kuprin’s work.

One of the most studied themes in the works of Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin is the theme of love. The theme of love occupies one of the main places in the works of Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin. With his characteristic high artistic taste, excellent language, and subtle understanding of the psychology of his heroes, he writes about love. Love is one of the brightest and most beautiful human feelings. The dream of happiness, of beautiful love - these are eternal themes in the works of writers, poets, artists, composers. The writer addresses different eras, depicts dissimilar heroes belonging to different strata of society, but they are all united by love, noble, selfless, devoted, ready for
self-sacrifice. It is this kind of love that is shown in Kuprin’s best works: “Olesya” and “Garnet Bracelet”. “The Garnet Bracelet” is a wonderful story about an unrequited great love, love, “which is repeated only once in a thousand years.” V. N. Afanasyev in his article “A. I. Kuprin" writes that "having made his " little man“capable only of selfless... love and at the same time denying him all other interests, Kuprin unwittingly impoverished and limited the image of the hero. Fenced off by love from life with all its worries and anxieties... Zheltkov thereby impoverishes love itself... this quiet, submissive adoration... without fighting for a loved one... dries up the soul, makes it timid and powerless.” Critic A. A. Volkov speaks of unrequited love in the writer’s works, which “opens up the opportunity to convey the high intensity of human experiences, to show how destructive the moral foundations of bourgeois society are for a person.”

In “The Garnet Bracelet,” General Anosov argues that true love is always greatest tragedy. According to Volkov, true “love can arise where a person is close to nature, where social contrasts and the destructive influence of “Moloch” (“Olesya”) are not so felt. Forest fairy tale ends tragically. Volkov believes that the environment in which the heroes were brought up is to blame: a girl, “raised among nature and free from any conventions of bourgeois society, and a man, “weak” in front of these conventions, could not be together.

Love allows heroes to be their best human qualities: spiritual purity, kindness, the ability to sacrifice oneself for the sake of a loved one. The love of Kuprin's heroes has thousands of shades, and each of its manifestations has its own sadness, its own fracture, its own fragrance. Even despite the tragic ending, the heroes are happy, because they believe that the love that illuminated their lives is a genuine, wonderful feeling.

Another well-researched topic in Kuprin’s work is the problems of the army. Many critics and literary scholars called Kuprin the Columbus of the “army continent.” He knows for certain the laws that reign in the army; he experienced all the military drills himself. When “The Duel” was released, it was immediately enthusiastically received by leading critics. Afanasyev believed that, by depicting the tsarist army, Kuprin “managed to touch upon... a number of issues that deeply worried the entire Russian society and were especially acute on the eve of and during the first Russian revolution.” But the most important thing was the concept, which made it possible to discover... the evils of military life... as an expression of the general incurable illness of the monarchical system. A. A. Volkov believed that in “The Duel” the author sought to show “to what a terrifying state senseless drilling and cane discipline brought the already downtrodden, ignorant mass of soldiers. Reactionary criticism attacked Kuprin with accusations of slandering the army. And Lvov, and Volkov, and Afanasyev, and many other critics and literary scholars spoke about the talent of Kuprin, a satirist who managed to expose the army life of tsarist times.

Continuing the traditions of Pushkin and Dostoevsky, Kuprin reveals the theme of the “little man” with whom he sympathizes and reveals his spiritual qualities. On the eve of the revolution and during its years, the theme of the “little man” was the main one in Kuprin’s work. Attention to the “little man”, protection of his ability to feel, love, suffer, in the spirit of Dostoevsky and Gogol. An example of this is Zheltkov from “Garnet Bracelet”.

Also, critics have well studied the early work of Alexander Ivanovich. All of them highlight the same boundaries of early creativity - this is approximately seven years from 1889 to 1896, i.e. from the writer’s first appearance in print with the story “The Last Debut” to his creation of the story “Moloch” - the first major in ideological and artistic terms, original works. Afanasyev believed that in the early stories, despite their unequal value, “the main, leading line appears, connected with the desire of their author to reveal the spiritual beauty of a working man, a man from the people, to show the unsightly appearance of the “masters of life.” Kuleshov believes that it is in early work“a circle of the writer’s favorite topics is outlined and the search for a positive hero begins.” Over the seven to eight years of his youth as a writer, Kuprin published approximately forty short stories, two novellas, fourteen everyday essays, half a dozen “industrial” essays, a number of poems, countless reporters’ notes, newspaper articles, feuilletons, correspondence and chronicles.

And another insufficiently studied topic is the masses in Kuprin’s works. Kuprin, like Turgenev, looked at the people differently. In his portrayal of ordinary people, Kuprin differed from writers prone to popular worship. His democracy was not limited to a tearful demonstration of their “humiliation and insult.” Kuprin’s common man turned out to be not only weak, but also capable of standing up for himself. People's life appeared in his works in its free, spontaneous, natural flow, with its own circle of ordinary concerns - not only sorrows, but also joys and consolations.

Another topic is Kuprin the psychologist. According to Volkov, “Kuprin displays a great ability for artistic transformation, “entering” into an image, which allowed him to create living characters and convey with deep truthfulness the complex train of thoughts and experiences of his heroes. The strength of Kuprin the artist was revealed in revealing the psychology of people placed in various life circumstances, especially those in which nobility and strength of spirit are manifested.

3. The story “Garnet Bracelet”

A.I. Kuprin worked on the story in Odessa. The “Garnet Bracelet” was started in September and completed in early December 1910. In 1908 - 1910. Kuprin creates a whole series of short stories about love. This series opens with the story “Shulamith” and ends with the realistic story “The Garnet Bracelet”. The theme of love has always worried the writer. And this feeling was regarded by him as raising “the value of the human personality to infinite heights,” bestowing equally beautiful “tender chaste fragrance” and “the thrill of intoxication” with pure passion. At the same time, Kuprin clearly saw the tragic outcome of love, so he wrote the wonderful story “The Garnet Bracelet.”

"The Garnet Bracelet" is one of the most touching, saddest stories about unrequited love. As V. G. Afanasyev wrote: “Love has always been the main, organizing theme of all Kuprin’s great works. In “The Garnet Bracelet” there is a great passionate feeling that inspires the heroes, determines the movement of the plot, and helps to bring out the best qualities of the heroes.

The most surprising thing in this story can be considered the epigraph: “L. van Beethoven.2 Son (op. 2, no. 2). Largo Appassionato.” Here the sadness and delight of love are combined with the music of Beethoven. The music is in amazing harmony with the experiences of Faith, in whose soul the words ring: “Hallowed be Thy name.” In these gentle sounds- a life that “humbly and joyfully doomed itself to torment, suffering and death.” The story “The Garnet Bracelet” is a textbook of life, a source of wisdom and moral purity. The essence of the great feeling is revealed to us in its entirety.

The originality of this story lies in the gradual, seemingly imperceptible emergence and growth of a tragic theme.

The love of the little official Zheltkov is alien to this deep hiddenness, in which noble modesty is intertwined with pride, alien to this fear of disturbing the peace of the One and Unattainable with even the slightest hint. Kuprin's hero systematically makes himself known to his Madonna, sometimes approaching that dangerous edge beyond which importunity begins. The funny thing in his behavior turns out to be not the most important thing. This is simply the external clumsiness of a person who grew up and lives in a social environment. The love of this strange, lonely man turned out to be serious and tragic. The story “The Garnet Bracelet” has a real basis. Throughout the entire story, Kuprin tries to instill in readers “the concept of love on the edge of life,” and he does this through Zheltkov, for him love is life, therefore, no love, no life. And when Vera’s husband persistently asks to stop love, his life ends: “... you are offered one of two things: either you completely refuse to pursue Princess Vera Nikolaevna, or, if you do not agree to this, we will take measures that our position allows us …”.

In an effort to glorify the beauty of a lofty, but obviously unrequited feeling, of which “perhaps one in a thousand is capable,” Kuprin endows this feeling to the tiny official Zheltkov. His love for Princess Vera Sheina is unrequited, unable to inspire him. Closed in itself, this love does not have creative, constructive power. “It so happened that nothing in life interests me: neither politics, nor science, nor philosophy, nor concern for the future happiness of people,” Zheltkov writes before his death to the object of his worship, “for me, all life lies only in you.” A petty official, a lonely and timid dreamer, hopelessly in love with a young woman society lady. Princess Vera. The unrequited romance has been going on for eight years. For Zheltkov, the woman he loves embodies all the beauty of the earth: “there is no animal, no plant, no person more beautiful and tender than you,” he writes in farewell letter To her. The lover's letters serve as objects of ridicule for members of Vera Nikolaevna's family, and the gift sent to the lover is Garnet bracelet- causes a storm of indignation, and only old General Anosov guesses about the true motives: “Perhaps your true path, Verochka, was crossed by precisely the kind of love that women dream about and which men are no longer capable of.

Zheltkov - was he a sick man, and was pursuing an unhappy woman, or was he sick with love - unrequited, the most cruel love in the world, which did not give hope for reciprocity. Eight years of “hopeless and polite love” have passed, but the feeling cannot be drowned out. Zheltkov sees the only way out - death. The “enormous tragedy of the soul” is resolved by suicide. The story of extraordinary love itself, the story of the garnet bracelet, is told in such a way that we see it through the eyes of different people: Prince Vasily, who tells it as an anecdotal incident, brother Nikolai, for whom everything in this story seems offensive and suspicious, Vera Nikolaevna herself, and, finally, , General Anosov, who was the first to suggest that there might be hidden here real love, “which women dream about and which men are no longer capable of.” The circle to which Vera Nikolaevna belongs cannot admit that this is a real feeling, not so much because of the strangeness of Zheltkov’s behavior, but because of the prejudices that control them. Kuprin, wanting to convince us, the readers, of the authenticity of Zheltkov’s love, resorts to the most irrefutable argument - the hero’s suicide. Thus, the little man’s right to happiness is affirmed, but the motive of his moral superiority over the people who so cruelly insulted him and failed to understand the strength of the feeling that was the whole meaning of his life arises. Leaving forever, he thought that Vera’s path would become free, and life would improve and go on as before. But there is no turning back. Saying goodbye to Zheltkov’s body was the culminating moment of her life. At this moment, the power of love reached its maximum value and became equal to death. Eight years of bad, selfless love that demands nothing in return, eight years of devotion to a sweet ideal, selflessness from one’s own principles. In one short moment of happiness, sacrificing everything accumulated over such a long period of time is not something everyone can do. But Zheltkov’s love for Vera did not obey any models, she was above them. And even if her end turned out to be tragic, Zheltkov’s forgiveness was rewarded. Zheltkov kills himself so as not to interfere with the princess’s life, and, dying, thanks her for the fact that she was for him “the only joy in life, the only consolation, the only thought.” This is a story not so much about love as a prayer to it. In his dying letter, the loving official blesses his beloved princess: “As I leave, I say in delight: “Hallowed be Thy name.” The crystal palace in which Vera lived shattered, letting in a lot of light, warmth, and sincerity into life. Merging in the finale with Beethoven's music, it merges with Zheltkov's love and with the eternal memory of him, honoring Zheltkov's feelings.

Short description

Among the outstanding Russian writers of the early twentieth century, one of the most prominent and original places belongs to Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin,” writes V. N. Afanasyev.
The work of Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin is closely connected with the traditions of Russian realism. In his work, the writer relied on the achievements of his three idols: Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy and Chekhov. The main direction of Kuprin’s creative search is expressed in the following phrase: “We need to write not about how people have become impoverished in spirit and vulgarized, but about the triumph of man, about his strength and power.”

Kuprin always loved Russia passionately and tenderly. This feeling was reflected in his work. The main themes of the realist writer’s work are ordinary working people, Balaklava fishermen who are magnificent in work and revelry, philosophizing lieutenants and tortured privates, the magnificent nature of Russia with its inhabitants, the circus and children, as well as a number of works in which there is a place for the mystical and even fantastic .

Kuprin conveys in his works the experiences and accumulated life experience gained in military educational institutions and in the service through the image of a “little” man oppressed by an environment that is offensively alien and hostile to him. Subject oppression and insult of the “little” person transmitted
in the story “The Duel” (1905), the story “Inquiry” (1894), as well as in Kuprin’s early work - the story “At the Turning Point” (“Cadets”, 1900). In the story “At the Turning Point” “ Kuprin captured in detail the morals that cripple a child’s soul, the inertia of his superiors, the “universal cult of the fist,” which gave the weaker to be torn to pieces by the stronger, and finally, the desperate longing for family
and home". Kuprin’s early stories from army life are imbued with the same deep sympathy for the common man (“Inquiry”
and “Army Ensign”), as well as stories exposing bribe-taking officials and scoundrels (“Unofficial Audit” and “The Petitioner”).

Work at the factories of the Donetsk basin in 1896 served as material for a series of essays on the situation of workers, which were later transformed into Kuprin’s first major work - the story “Molochov”. The theme of these stories and stories was ordinary working people.

Kuprin continues to develop the theme of simple, ordinary people, workers of different professions. Another famous group of works dedicated to ordinary people, - essays “Listrigons”. The essays develop the theme of the life of Balaklava fishermen, glorify their hard work,
as well as healthy and courageous people living a harsh, but rich in feelings life. This theme began to develop in the essays “The Lord’s Fish”, “Silence” and “Mackerel” (published under the general title “Balaklava” in 1908), as well as in subsequent essays: “Theft”
and "Beluga", released under the general name "Listrigons". Among the works written far from the homeland, Kuprin’s story “Svetlana” (1934) should be noted.

In his story “The Pit,” Kuprin opens a very unusual theme for the literature of that time, the theme women who find themselves at the bottom of their lives. Kuprin describes images of prostitutes, creating lively and beautiful characters. The author treats his characters with deep sympathy, causing regret and deep compassion. Unfortunately, the story “The Pit” did not become an outstanding phenomenon in Russian literature. It's connected
that " the naturalistic descriptiveness that arose in “The Pit” was in conflict with the aesthetic principles that were embodied in a number of his previous works - with faith in man,
with the glorification of beauty, hatred of social forces that destroy beauty". Kuprin’s intentions were not to admire the “bottom,” however, when reading the story, one gets the feeling that the author sometimes admires the paintings he creates. In his story, Kuprin showed a man already mutilated by society, who had sunk to the bottom of bourgeois society, and not the process of mutilation human personality. Such a controversial work for the author himself, however, did not deviate from his main theme, the theme of the “little” man, while adding the theme of bourgeois society.

Subject bourgeois society, or rather, Kuprin’s criticism of the bourgeois intelligentsia is presented in the stories “Murderer”, “Resentment”, “Delusion” and the fairy tale “Mechanical Justice”. These works are connected by a common idea of ​​protest against violence against humans.

Kuprin's acting activity contributed to the writing of works about the circus, about simple and noble people– wrestlers, clowns, trainers, acrobats. Several short stories are devoted to this topic.
and Kuprin’s stories: “Olga Sur” (1929), “Bad Pun” (1929), “Blondel” (1933), “White Poodle”.

One of the common themes in the works of A. I. Kuprin is nature theme, love and respect for the world around us. Kuprin, as a realist writer, quite fully and colorfully describes the landscapes of his beloved homeland
and other places. In the descriptions of nature one can feel deep sympathy and love for these places, as well as respect for its inhabitants. Environment theme
in Kuprin’s work is present in many of his works: somewhere it is shown in ordinary descriptions of the area, somewhere it helps to understand the plot of the work and the mental state of the characters, and somewhere it is key theme works. Among Kuprin's stories there are several about the world around us, where the heroes are the most ordinary animals, which turn into heroes on the pages of the work. In Kuprin’s works, among the stories telling about animals, the stories “White Poodle”, “Barbos and Zhulka”, “Emerald”, “Ralph”, “Yu-Yu”, “Elephant” stood out. These stories were written by the author in different years, but they are united by a common idea - to show readers the capabilities and abilities of animals, their advantages
and quality, as well as to convince future writers to pay attention to the natural world and its representatives.

Speaking about the theme of nature, we should not forget that in his works Kuprin wrote a lot about children and for children. Kuprin loved children very much.
He treated them in a friendly manner and believed that they should not be treated frivolously, in a buffoonish manner. Kuprin wrote many works for children,
These include works of the legend-fairy tale genre (“Blue Star”), as well as several works about animals.

The theme became no less important in Kuprin’s work love
and romantic feelings. This theme is filled with lines such
famous works such as the stories “Olesya”, “Garnet Bracelet”
and the story “The Wheel of Time,” written in Marseille, as well as the early story “A Strange Case” and many other works.

The story “Olesya” touches on the topic ordinary working people,
subject aspirations for nature, and also in the plot of the story there is mysticism. The theme of love in the story “Olesya” is conveyed through the romance of love
and dramatic feeling.

« Love to the point of self-denial and even self-destruction, readiness to die in the name of the woman you love..."- exactly like this
understanding reveals the theme of love in Kuprin’s early story
"A Strange Case" (1895), and later in "The Garnet Bracelet". K. Paustovsky wrote about the theme of love in the story “Garnet Bracelet”:
“... love exists as unexpected gift– poetic,
illuminating life, among everyday life, among sober reality
and established life” .

Subject wars is most fully represented in Kuprin's works
in the story "Cantaloupes". In a story, simple and “plotless”,
The author, through the character of the hero, exposes the hypocrite, “ ... ominously colors the figures of bourgeois money-grubbers, for whom the people's grief is a source of new profits» .

In his works, Kuprin considered theme of war Not only
from the side of oppression and profit-making by bourgeois money-grubbers.
In his works about the war, the writer talks about the life of ordinary Russian people, who had the responsibility to fulfill their duty to their homeland. When creating images of heroes, Kuprin endows them with warmth and good-natured humor. A military pilot became such a hero
in the story "Sashka and Yashka".

During the years of exile, Kuprin yearns for his homeland, which he writes about in his essay “Motherland”. The theme of longing for Russia is clearly expressed in Kuprin’s major work - the story “Zhaneta”. In his autobiography “Junker,” Kuprin additionally opens up the theme of Moscow, Moscow “ forty forty» .

In addition to his usual, already established topics, Kuprin tries himself
in such genres as fantasy novella, legend-fairy tale, religious legend and others. However, creating a certain fiction, changing images
And surrounding world heroes of the works, Kuprin remains true to his principles of realism.

In his works of the fantastic genre, he only reveals his ability to combine the fantastic with the concrete in life. This skill is revealed in the fantastic story “The Star of Solomon.”

Kuprin’s works in the genre of legend-fairy tales are very interesting and entertaining. A little humorous, life-like and instructive, they found their readers among both children and adults. Especially witty and a cautionary tale became “Blue Star”, which in its motif resembles a fairy tale Andersen"Ugly duck". The works “Four Beggars” and “Hero, Leander and the Shepherd” belong to this genre.

To genre religious legends Kuprin turns to the war years.
In the works “Two Saints” and “The Garden of the Blessed Virgin” (1915) it is expressed deep respect and sympathy for to the common people, oppressed
and humiliated.

Kuprin is known in literature not only as writer, but also how journalist, publicist and even editor.

While still a young writer, in 1894 Kuprin submitted a petition
about his resignation and moves to Kyiv. The writer works in newspapers, writes stories, essays, notes. The result of this half-writing, half-reporting work were two collections: essays “Kyiv Types” (1896) and stories “Miniatures” (1897).

After 1902, Kuprin participated in the publication of the magazine “World of God” as an editor, and also published several of his works in it: “In the Circus”, “Swamp” (1902), “Measles” (1904), “From the Street” (1904 ), however, he soon lost interest in the editorial work that interfered with his creativity.

1. A word about the work of A. I. Kuprin.

2. Main themes and creativity:

a) “Moloch” - an image of bourgeois society;

b) image of the army (“Night shift”, “Campaign”, “Duel”);

c) conflict romantic hero with everyday reality (“Olesya”);

d) the theme of the harmony of nature, human beauty (“Emerald”, “White Poodle”, “Dog Happiness”, “Shulamith”);

e) the theme of love (“Garnet Bracelet”).

3. The spiritual atmosphere of the era.

1. The work of A. I. Kuprin is original and interesting; it is striking in the author’s observation and the amazing verisimilitude with which he describes people’s lives. As a realist writer, Kuprin carefully looks at life and highlights the main, essential aspects of it.

2. a) This gave Kuprin the opportunity to create in 1896 a large work “Moloch”, dedicated to the most important topic capitalist development of Russia. Truthfully and without embellishment, the writer depicted the true appearance of bourgeois civilization. In this work, he denounces hypocritical morality, corruption and falsehood in relations between people in a capitalist society.

Kuprin shows a large factory where workers are brutally exploited. The main character, engineer Bobrov, an honest, humane man, is shocked and outraged by this terrible picture. At the same time, the author portrays the workers as a resigned crowd, powerless to take any active action. In “Moloch” there emerged motifs characteristic of all subsequent work of Kuprin. Images of humanist truth-seekers will appear in a long line in many of his works. These heroes yearn for the beauty of life, rejecting the ugly bourgeois reality of their time.

b) Kuprin dedicated pages filled with enormous revealing power to a description of the tsarist army. The army was a stronghold of autocracy, against which in those years all the progressive forces of Russian society rose up. That is why Kuprin’s works “Night Shift”, “Hike”, and then “Duel” had a great public resonance. The tsarist army, with its incompetent, morally degenerate command, appears on the pages of “The Duel” in all its unsightly appearance. Before us passes a whole gallery of idiots and degenerates, devoid of any glimmer of humanity. They are opposed main character story by Second Lieutenant Romashov. He protests with all his soul against this nightmare, but is unable to find a way to overcome it. This is where the title of the story comes from - “The Duel”. The theme of the story is the drama of the “little man,” his duel with the ignorant environment, which ends with the death of the hero.

c) But not in all of his works Kuprin adheres to the framework of a strictly realistic direction. His stories also have romantic tendencies. He places romantic heroes in daily life, in a real environment, next to ordinary people. And very often, therefore, the main conflict in his works becomes the conflict of the romantic hero with everyday life, dullness, and vulgarity.

In the wonderful story “Olesya,” imbued with genuine humanism, Kuprin glorifies people living among nature, untouched by money-grubbing and corrupting bourgeois civilization. Against the backdrop of wild, majestic, beautiful nature, strong, original people live - “children of nature.” This is Olesya, who is as simple, natural and beautiful as nature itself. The author clearly romanticizes the image of the “daughter of the forests.” But her behavior, psychologically subtly motivated, allows her to see the real prospects of life. Endowed with unprecedented power, the soul brings harmony into the obviously contradictory relationships of people. Such a rare gift is expressed in love for Ivan Timofeevich. Olesya seems to be returning the naturalness of his experiences that he had briefly lost. Thus, the story describes the love of a realist man and romantic heroine. Ivan Timofeevich finds himself in the romantic world of the heroine, and she - in his reality.

d) The theme of nature and man worries Kuprin throughout his life. The power and beauty of nature, animals as an integral part of nature, a person who has not lost touch with it, living according to its laws - these are the facets of this topic. Kuprin is fascinated by the beauty of a horse (“Emerald”), the loyalty of a dog (“White Poodle”, “Dog’s Happiness”), and women’s youth (“Shulamith”). Kuprin glorifies the beautiful, harmonious, living world of nature.

e) Only where a person lives in harmony with nature is love beautiful and natural. In the artificial life of people, love, true love, which happens once every hundred years, turns out to be unrecognized, misunderstood and persecuted. In “The Garnet Bracelet,” the poor official Zheltkov is endowed with this gift of love. Great love becomes the meaning and content of his life. The heroine - Princess Vera Sheina - not only does not respond to his feelings, but also perceives his letters, his gift - a garnet bracelet - as something unnecessary, disturbing her peace, her usual way of life. Only after Zheltkov’s death does she realize that “the love that every woman dreams of” has passed by. Mutual, perfect love did not take place, but this lofty and poetic feeling, albeit concentrated in one soul, opens the way to the beautiful rebirth of another. Here the author shows love as a phenomenon of life, as an unexpected gift - poetic, illuminating life among everyday life, sober reality and sustainable life.

3. Reflecting on the individuality of the hero, his place among others, on the fate of Russia in times of crisis, at the turn of two centuries, Kuprin studied the spiritual atmosphere of the era, depicting “living pictures” of his surroundings.

3. Poetry of Russian symbolism (based on the example of the work of one poet)

SYMBOLISM -

the first literary and artistic movement of European modernism, which arose in late nineteenth century in France in connection with the crisis of the positivist artistic ideology of naturalism. The foundations of the aesthetics of symbolism were laid by Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stéphane Mallarmé.

Symbolism was associated with contemporary idealistic philosophical movements, the basis of which was the idea of ​​two worlds - the apparent world of everyday reality and the transcendental world of true values ​​(compare: absolute idealism). In accordance with this, symbolism is engaged in the search for a higher reality that is beyond sensory perception. Here the most effective creative tool is the poetic symbol, which allows one to break through the veil of everyday life to transcendental Beauty.

The most general doctrine of symbolism was that art is an intuitive comprehension of world unity through the discovery of symbolic analogies between the earthly and transcendental worlds (compare: the semantics of possible worlds).

Thus, the philosophical ideology of symbolism is always platonism in the broad sense, two-worldness, and the aesthetic ideology is panaestheticism (compare: “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde).

Russian symbolism began at the turn of the century, having absorbed the philosophy of the Russian thinker and poet Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov about the Soul of the World, Eternal Femininity, Beauty that will save the world (this mythology is taken from Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot”).

Russian symbolists are traditionally divided into “senior” and “younger”.

The elders - they were also called decadents - D.S. Merezhkovsky, Z.N. Gippius, V.Ya. Bryusov, K.D. Balmont, F.K. Sologub reflected the features of pan-European panaestheticism in their work.

The younger symbolists - Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Innokenty Annensky - in addition to aestheticism, embodied in their work the aesthetic utopia of the search for the mystical Eternal Femininity.

Russian symbolism is especially characterized by the phenomenon of life-building (see biography), blurring the boundaries between text and reality, living life as a text. The symbolists were the first in Russian culture to construct the concept of intertext. In their work, the idea of ​​the Text with capital letters generally plays a decisive role.

Symbolism did not perceive the text as a reflection of reality. For him it was the opposite. Properties literary text they attributed to reality itself. The world was presented as a hierarchy of texts. In an effort to recreate the Text-Myth located at the top of the world, symbolists interpret this Text as a global myth about the world. This hierarchy of world-texts was created with the help of the poetics of quotes and reminiscences, that is, the poetics of neo-mythologism, also first used in Russian culture by the Symbolists.

We will briefly show the features of Russian symbolism using the example of the poetry of its outstanding representative Alexander Alexandrovich Blok.

Blok came to literature under the direct influence of the works of Vladimir Solovyov. His early “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” directly reflect the ideology of Solovyov’s dual world, the search for a female ideal that cannot be achieved. The heroine of Blok's early poems, projected onto the image of the poet's wife Lyubov Dmitrievna Mendeleeva, appears in the form of a vague appearance of Eternal Femininity, Princess, Bride, Virgin. The poet's love for the Beautiful Lady is not only platonic and colored with features of medieval courtliness, which was most manifested in the drama "Rose and Cross", but it is something more than just love in the everyday sense - it is a kind of mystical quest for the Divine under the cover of the erotic. started.

Since the world is doubled, the appearance of the Beautiful Lady can only be sought in the correspondences and analogies that symbolist ideology provides. Even if the appearance of the Beautiful Lady is seen, it is not clear whether it is a genuine appearance or a false one, and if it is genuine, then whether it will change under the influence of the vulgar atmosphere of earthly perception - and this is the most terrible thing for the poet:

I have a feeling about you. The years pass by

All in one form I foresee You.

The whole horizon is on fire - and unbearably clear,

And I wait silently - yearning and loving.

The whole horizon is on fire, and the appearance is near,

But I’m scared: you’ll change your appearance,

And you will arouse impudent suspicion,

Changing the usual features at the end.

In essence, this is exactly what happens in the further development of Blok’s lyrics. But first, a few words about the compositional structure of his poetry as a whole. IN mature years the poet divided the entire corpus of his poems into three volumes. It was something like the Hegelian triad: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The thesis was the first volume - "Poems about a Beautiful Lady." The antithesis is the second. This is the otherness of the heroine, who has descended to earth and is about to “change her appearance.”

She appears amid the vulgar bustle of the restaurant in the form of a beautiful Stranger.

And slowly, walking between the drunken,

Always without companions, alone,

Breathing spirits and mists,

She sits by the window.

And they breathe ancient beliefs

Her elastic silks

And a hat with mourning feathers,

And in the rings there is a narrow hand.

And chained by a strange intimacy,

I look behind the dark veil,

And I see the enchanted shore

And the enchanted distance.

Subsequently, the worst happens: the poet becomes disillusioned with the very idea of ​​platonic love - the search for an ideal. This is especially evident in the poem “Above the Lake” from the series “Free Thoughts”. The poet stands in a cemetery above the evening lake and sees beautiful girl, who, as usual, seems to him to be a beautiful stranger, Tekla, as he calls her. She is completely alone, but some vulgar officer comes towards her “with a wobbling butt and legs / Wrapped in the tubes of his pants.” The poet is sure that the stranger will drive away the vulgar, but it turns out that it’s just her husband:

He came up... he shakes her hand!.. they look

His glances into clear eyes!..

I even moved out from behind the crypt...

And suddenly... he kisses her protractedly,

He gives her his hand and leads her to the dacha!

I want to laugh! I run up. I'm quitting

In them with cones, sand, squealing, dancing

Among the graves - invisible and tall...

I shout “Hey, Thekla, Thekla!”...

So, Tekla turns into Thekla and this, in essence, ends the negative part of the poet’s sobering up from Solovyov’s mysticism. The last complex of his lyrics is “Carmen”, and the last parting with his “ex” Beautiful Lady- poem "The Nightingale Garden". Then follows a catastrophe - a series of revolutions, to which Blok responds with the brilliant poem "The Twelve", which is both the apotheosis and the end of Russian symbolism. Blok died in 1921, when his heirs, representatives of Russian Acmeism, began to speak about themselves in full voice.

4. Poetry of Russian acmeism (based on the example of the work of one poet)

ACMEISM -

(ancient Greek akme - the highest degree of flourishing, maturity) a direction of Russian modernism, formed in the 1910s and in its poetic attitudes based on its teacher, Russian symbolism.

The Acmeists, who were part of the “Workshop of Poets” association (Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam, Mikhail Kuzmin, Sergei Gorodetsky), were “overcoming symbolism,” as the critic and philologist, future academician V.M. called them in an article of the same name. Zhirmunsky. Acmeism contrasted the transcendental two-worldliness of the Symbolists with the world of simple everyday feelings and everyday spiritual manifestations. Therefore, the Acmeists also called themselves “Adamists,” imagining themselves as the first man Adam, “ naked man on bare ground." Akhmatova wrote:

I don't need odic armies

And the charm of elegiac undertakings.

For me, everything should be out of place in poetry,

Not like with people.

If only you knew what kind of rubbish

Poems grow without shame,

How yellow dandelion at the fence,

Like burdocks and quinoa.

But the simplicity of Acmeism from the very beginning was not that healthy sanguine simplicity that is common among village people. It was an exquisite and certainly autistic (see autistic consciousness, characterology) simplicity of the outer cover of the verse, behind which lay the depths of intense cultural searches.

Akhmatova again:

My chest was so helplessly cold,

But my steps were easy

I'm on right hand put it on

Glove from the left hand.

An erroneous gesture, an “erroneous action,” to use Freud’s psychoanalytic terminology from his book “The Psychopathology of Everyday Life,” which had already been published in Russia, conveys a powerful inner experience. We can roughly say that all of Akhmatova’s early poetry is “the psychopathology of everyday life”:

I've lost my mind, oh strange boy,

Wednesday at three o'clock!

Pricked my ring finger

A wasp ringing for me.

I accidentally pressed her

And it seemed she died

But the end of the poisoned sting

It was sharper than a spindle.

Salvation from habitually unhappy love lies in one thing - creativity. Perhaps the best poems of Acmeism are poems about poems, which Acmeism researcher Roman Timenchik called autometa-description:

When I wait for her to come at night,

Life seems to hang by a thread.

What honors, what youth, what freedom

In front of a lovely guest with a pipe in her hand.

And then she came in. Throwing back the covers,

She looked at me carefully.

I tell her: “Did you dictate to Dante?

The pages of Hell?" Answers: "I."

Initially, the great Russian poet of the 20th century, Mandelstam, was also faithful to the restrained, “clarified” (that is, proclaiming clarity) poetics of Acmeism. Already the first poem of his famous “Stone” speaks of this:

The sound is cautious and dull

The fruit that fell from the tree

Among the incessant chant

Deep forest silence...

The laconicism of this poem forces researchers to recall the poetics of Japanese haiku (tercets), belonging to the Zen tradition (see Zen thinking) - external colorlessness, behind which lies an intense internal experience:

On a bare branch

Raven sits alone...

Autumn evening!

So it is with Mandelstam in the above poem. It seems that this is just a household sketch. In fact we're talking about about an apple falling from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that is, about the beginning of history, the beginning of the world (which is why the poem is the first in the collection). At the same time, it can also be Newton’s apple - the apple of discovery, that is, again, the beginning. The image of silence plays very big role- he refers to Tyutchev and the poetics of Russian romanticism with its cult of the inexpressibility of feelings in words.

The second poem of “The Stone” also refers to Tyutchev. Strings

Oh, my prophetic sadness,

Oh my quiet freedom

echo Tyutchev’s lines: O my prophetic soul!

O heart full of anxiety!

Gradually, the poetics of Acmeism, especially its two main representatives, Akhmatova and Mandelstam, became extremely complicated. The biggest and famous work Akhmatova’s “Poem without a Hero” is built like a box with a double bottom - the riddles of this text are still being solved by many commentators.

The same thing happened with Mandelstam: the excess of cultural information and the peculiarity of the poet’s talent made his mature poetry the most complex in the twentieth century, so complex that sometimes researchers in a separate work analyzed not the whole poem, but only one line of it. We will finish our essay on Acmeism with the same analysis. We are talking about a line from the poem "Swallow" (1920):

An empty boat floats in a dry river.

G.S. Pomerantz believes that this line should be understood as deliberately absurd, in the spirit of a Zen koan. It seems to us that, on the contrary, it is overloaded with meaning. Firstly, the word “shuttle” appears in Mandelstam two more times, and both times in the meaning of a part of a loom (“The shuttle scurries, the spindle hums”). For Mandelstam, the contextual meanings of words are extremely important, as proven by research from the school of Professor K.F. Taranovsky, who specialized in the study of the poetics of Acmeism.

The shuttle thus moves across the river and is crossed across the river. Where is he going? This suggests the context of the poem itself:

I forgot what I wanted to say.

The blind swallow will return to the palace of shadows.

The “Chamber of Shadows” is the kingdom of shadows, the kingdom of the dead of Hades. Charon's empty, dead boat (shuttle) floats to the "hall of shadows" along the dry river of the dead Styx. This is an ancient interpretation.

There may be an eastern interpretation: emptiness is one of the most important concepts in the philosophy of Tao. The Tao is empty because it is the container of everything, Lao Tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching. Chuang Tzu said: “Where can I find a person who has forgotten all the words to talk to?” Hence, the oblivion of the word can be considered not as something tragic, but as a break with European tradition speaking and falling to the eastern as well as the traditional romantic concept of silence.

A psychoanalytic interpretation is also possible. Then the oblivion of the word will be associated with poetic impotence, and the empty canoe in a dry river with the phallus and (unsuccessful) sexual intercourse. The context of the poem also confirms this interpretation. The visit of a living person to the kingdom of the dead, which is undoubtedly spoken of in this poem, can be associated with the mythological death and resurrection in the spirit of the agrarian cycle as a quest for fertility (see myth), which in a subtle sense can be interpreted as the quest of Orpheus (the first poet) following the lost Eurydice into the kingdom of shadows. I think that in this poem, in the understanding of this line, all three interpretations work simultaneously.

5. Russian futurism (using the example of the work of one poet)

Futurism (from Latin futurum - future) is the general name of the artistic avant-garde movements of the 1910s - early 1920s. XX century, primarily in Italy and Russia.

Unlike Acmeism, futurism as a movement in Russian poetry did not arise in Russia. This phenomenon was entirely brought from the West, where it originated and was theoretically justified. The birthplace of the new modernist movement was Italy, and the main ideologist of Italian and world futurism was the famous writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944), who spoke on February 20, 1909 on the pages of the Saturday issue of the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro with the first “Manifesto of Futurism”, which included its stated “anti-cultural, anti-aesthetic and anti-philosophical” orientation.

In principle, any modernist movement in art asserted itself by rejecting old norms, canons, and traditions. However, futurism was distinguished in this regard by its extremely extremist orientation. This movement claimed to build a new art - “the art of the future”, speaking under the slogan of a nihilistic negation of all previous artistic experience. Marinetti proclaimed the “world-historical task of Futurism,” which was to “spit every day on the altar of art.”

Futurists preached the destruction of the forms and conventions of art in order to merge it with the accelerated life process of the 20th century. They are characterized by a reverence for action, movement, speed, strength and aggression; exaltation of oneself and contempt for the weak; the priority of force, the rapture of war and destruction were asserted. In this regard, futurism in its ideology was very close to both right-wing and left-wing radicals: anarchists, fascists, communists, focused on the revolutionary overthrow of the past.

The Futurist Manifesto consisted of two parts: an introduction text and a program consisting of eleven points-theses of the futurist idea. Milena Wagner notes that “in them Marinetti asserts radical changes in the principle of construction literary text- “destruction of generally accepted syntax”; “the use of a verb in the indefinite mood” in order to convey the meaning of the continuity of life and the elasticity of intuition; the destruction of qualitative adjectives, adverbs, punctuation marks, the omission of conjunctions, the introduction into literature of “perception by analogy” and “maximum disorder” - in a word, everything aimed at conciseness and increasing the “speed of style” in order to create a “living style that is created by itself.” yourself, without meaningless pauses expressed by commas and periods.” All this was suggested as a way to do literary work a means of conveying the “life of matter”, a means of “grasping everything that is elusive and elusive in matter”, “so that literature directly enters the universe and merges with it”...

The words of futuristic works were completely freed from the rigid framework of syntactic periods, from the shackles of logical connections. They were freely located in the space of the page, rejecting the norms of linear writing and forming decorative arabesques or playing out entire dramatic scenes, built by analogy between the shape of a letter and any figure of reality: mountains, people, birds, etc. Thus, words turned into visual signs..."

The final, eleventh paragraph of the “Technical Manifesto of Italian Literature” proclaimed one of the most important postulates of the new poetic concept: “to destroy the Self in literature.”

“A man completely spoiled by the library and museum<...>is no longer of absolutely any interest... We are interested in the hardness of a steel plate in itself, that is, in the incomprehensible and inhuman union of its molecules and electrons... The warmth of a piece of iron or wood now excites us more than the smile or tear of a woman.”

The text of the manifesto caused a strong reaction and marked the beginning of a new “genre”, introducing artistic life the exciting element is a fist blow. Now the poet rising on stage began to shock the audience in every possible way: insulting, provoking, calling for rebellion and violence.

Futurists wrote manifestos, held evenings where these manifestos were read out from the stage and only then published. These evenings usually ended in heated arguments with the public that turned into fights. This is how the movement gained its scandalous, but very wide fame.

Considering the socio-political situation in Russia, the seeds of futurism fell on fertile soil. It was this component of the new trend that was, first of all, enthusiastically received by Russian Cubo-Futurists in the pre-revolutionary years. For most of them, “software opuses” were more important than creativity itself.

Although the shocking technique was widely used by all modernist schools, for the futurists it was the most important, since, like any avant-garde phenomenon, futurism needed increased attention. Indifference was absolutely unacceptable for him; a necessary condition for existence was the atmosphere of a literary scandal. The deliberate extremes in the behavior of the futurists provoked aggressive rejection and pronounced protest from the public. Which, in fact, was what was required.

Russian avant-garde artists of the beginning of the century entered the history of culture as innovators who made a revolution in world art - both in poetry and in other areas of creativity. In addition, many became famous as great brawler. Futurists, Cubo-Futurists and Ego-Futurists, Scientists and Suprematists, Radians and Budtenders, all and sundry captured the imagination of the public. “But in discussions about these artistic revolutionaries,” as A. Obukhova and N. Alekseev rightly noted, “a very important thing is often missed: many of them were brilliant figures in what is now called “promotion” and “public relations.” They turned out to be the harbingers of modern “artistic strategies” - that is, the ability not only to create talented works, but also to find the most successful ways to attract the attention of the public, patrons and buyers.

The Futurists, of course, were radicals. But they knew how to earn money. We have already talked about attracting attention through all sorts of scandals. However, this strategy also worked perfectly for quite material purposes. The heyday of the avant-garde, 1912-1916, included hundreds of exhibitions, poetry readings, performances, reports, and debates. And then all these events were paid, you had to buy an entrance ticket. Prices ranged from 25 kopecks to 5 rubles - a lot of money at that time. [Considering that a handyman then earned 20 rubles a month, and sometimes several thousand people came to exhibitions.] In addition, paintings were also sold; On average, items worth 5-6 thousand royal rubles were left at the exhibition.”

In the press, futurists were often accused of self-interest. For example: “We must give justice to the gentlemen futurists, cubists and other ists, they know how to arrange things. Recently, a futurist married a rich Moscow merchant's wife, taking as a dowry two houses, a carriage house and... three taverns. In general, decadents always somehow “fatally” end up in the company of moneybags and make their happiness around them...”

However, at its core, Russian futurism was still a predominantly poetic movement: the futurists’ manifestos spoke about the reform of speech, poetry, and culture. And in the rebellion itself, in shocking the public, in the scandalous cries of the futurists, there were more aesthetic emotions than revolutionary ones. Almost all of them were inclined both to theorizing and to advertising and theatrical propaganda gestures. This in no way contradicted their understanding of futurism as a movement in art that shapes the future of man, regardless of what styles and genres its creator works in. There was no problem of a single style.

“Despite the apparent closeness of Russian and European futurists, traditions and mentality gave each of the national movements its own characteristics. One of the hallmarks of Russian futurism was the perception of all kinds of styles and trends in art. “Allness” became one of the most important futuristic artistic principles.

Russian futurism did not result in a holistic artistic system; this term denoted a variety of trends in the Russian avant-garde. The system was the avant-garde itself. And it was dubbed futurism in Russia by analogy with Italian.” And this movement turned out to be much more heterogeneous than the symbolism and acmeism that preceded it.

The futurists themselves understood this. One of the members of the “Mezzanine of Poetry” group, Sergei Tretyakov, wrote: “Everyone who wants to define futurism (in particular literary) as a school, as literary direction, connected by a commonality of techniques for processing material, a commonality of style. They usually have to wander helplessly between dissimilar factions<...>and stop in bewilderment between the “archaic songwriter” Khlebnikov, the “tribune-urbanist” Mayakovsky, the “esthete-agitator” Burliuk, the “brain-snarling” Kruchenykh. And if we add here “a specialist in indoor aeronautics on a Fokker of syntax” Pasternak, then the landscape will be complete. Those who “fall off” from futurism - Severyanin, Shershenevich and others - will bring even more bewilderment... All these disparate lines coexist under the common roof of futurism, tenaciously holding on to each other!<...>

The fact is that futurism was never a school and the mutual cohesion of disparate people into a group was, of course, not maintained by a factional sign. Futurism would not be itself if it finally settled down on a few found patterns of artistic production and ceased to be a revolutionary fermenting enzyme, tirelessly encouraging invention, the search for new and new forms.<...>The stout bourgeois-philistine way of life, into which past and contemporary art (symbolism) were included as strong parts forming a stable taste of a serene and carefree, prosperous life, was the main stronghold from which futurism pushed off and onto which it collapsed. The blow to aesthetic taste was only a detail of the general planned blow to everyday life. Not a single arch-shocking stanza or futurist manifesto caused such a hubbub and squeal as painted faces, yellow jackets and asymmetrical suits. The brain of a bourgeois could endure any mockery of Pushkin, but to endure mockery of the cut of trousers, a tie or a flower in a buttonhole was beyond his strength...”

The poetry of Russian futurism was closely connected with avant-garde art. It is no coincidence that many futurist poets were good artists - V. Khlebnikov, V. Kamensky, Elena Guro, V. Mayakovsky, A. Kruchenykh, the Burliuk brothers. At the same time, many avant-garde artists wrote poetry and prose and participated in futurist publications not only as designers, but also as writers. Painting greatly enriched futurism. K. Malevich, P. Filonov, N. Goncharova, M. Larionov almost created what the futurists were striving for.

However, futurism also enriched avant-garde painting in some ways. At least in terms of scandal, the artists were not much inferior to their poetic brothers. At the beginning of the new 20th century, everyone wanted to be innovators. Especially artists who were striving for a single goal - to say the last word, or even better - to become the last cry of our time. And our domestic innovators, as noted in the already cited article from the newspaper “foreigner,” began to use scandal as a fully conscious artistic method. They created different scandals, ranging from mischievous theatrical antics to banal hooliganism. The painter Mikhail Larionov, for example, was repeatedly arrested and fined for outrages committed during the so-called “public debates”, where he generously slapped opponents who disagreed with him, threw a music stand or a table lamp at them...

In general, very soon the words “futurist” and “hooligan” became synonymous for the modern moderate public. The press followed with delight the “exploits” of the creators of new art. This contributed to their fame in wide circles population, aroused increased interest and attracted increasing attention.

The history of Russian futurism was a complex relationship between four main groups, each of which considered itself an exponent of “true” futurism and conducted fierce polemics with other associations, challenging the dominant role in this literary movement. The struggle between them resulted in streams of mutual criticism, which by no means united individual participants in the movement, but, on the contrary, intensified their enmity and isolation. However, from time to time, members of different groups became closer or moved from one to another.

+ We add to the answer information from the ticket about V.V. Mayakovsky

Question No. 1 The main themes and motifs in Bunin’s work

Love captures all thoughts, all spiritual and physical potentials of a person - but this state cannot last long. So that love does not fizzle out, does not exhaust itself, it is necessary to part - and forever. If the heroes themselves do not do this, then rock, fate intervenes in their lives: one of the lovers dies. The story "Mitya's Love" ends with the hero's suicide. Death here is interpreted as the only possibility of liberation from love. Bibliography

The main themes in the works of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin - eternal themes: nature, love, death Bunin belongs to the last generation of writers from noble estate, which is closely related to the nature of the central zone of Russia. “Few people can know and love nature like Ivan Bunin can,” wrote Alexander Blok in 1907. No wonder the Pushkin Prize in 1903 was awarded to Bunin for the collection of poems "Falling Leaves", glorifying the Russian rural nature. In his poems, the poet connected the sadness of the Russian landscape with Russian life into one inseparable whole. “Against the background of a golden iconostasis, in the fire of falling leaves, gilded by sunset, stands an abandoned estate.” Autumn - the “quiet widow” - is in unusual harmony with empty estates and abandoned farmsteads. “The native silence torments me, the nests of my native desolation torment me.” Bunin’s stories, which are similar to poetry, are also imbued with this sad poetry of withering, dying, desolation. This is the beginning of it famous story"Antonov apples": "I remember early, fresh, quiet morning. I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinning garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness." And this smell of Antonov apples accompanies him in all his wanderings and in the capitals of the world as a memory of the Motherland : “But in the evenings,” writes Bunin, “I read old poets, close to me in everyday life and in many of my moods, and finally, simply in the area - central Russia. And the drawers of my table are full of Antonov apples, and the healthy autumn aroma transports me to the village, to the estates of the landowners." Along with the degeneration of noble nests, the village is also degenerating. In the story "The Village" he describes the courtyard of a rich peasant family and sees "darkness and dirt" - in physical, mental, and moral life." Bunin writes: “The old man is lying there, dying. He is still alive - and already in Sentsy the coffin has been prepared, pies are already being baked for the funeral. And suddenly the old man recovers. Where was the coffin to go? How to justify the expenditure? Lukyan was cursed for five years later for them, he lived reproaches from the world, starved to death.” And here is how Bunin describes the level of political consciousness of the peasants: - Don’t you know why the court came? - Judge the deputy. They say he wanted to poison the river. -Deputy? Fool, is this really what deputies do? -And the plague knows them. Bunin’s point of view on the people is polemically pointed against those lovers of the people who idealized the people and flattered them. The dying Russian village is framed by a dull Russian landscape: “White grain rushed askance, falling on a black, poor village, on bumpy, dirty roads, on horse manure, ice and water; the twilight fog hid endless fields, all this great desert with its snows, forests, villages and cities - the kingdom of hunger and death." The theme of death will receive varied coverage in Bunin’s work. This is both the death of Russia and the death of an individual. Death turns out to be not only the resolver of all contradictions, but also the source of absolute, purifying power (“Transfiguration”, “Mitya’s Love”). Bunin’s story “The Gentleman from San Francisco” was understood more deeply by Alexander Tvardovsky: “In the face of love and death, according to Bunin, the social, class, and property boundaries that separate people are erased by themselves - before them everyone is equal.

Question No. 2 Main themes and results in Kuprin’s work

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin can confidently be called one of the best Russian writers of the early 20th century!? If we talk about the place of A.S. Pushkin, L.N. Tolstoy, A.M. Gorky in Russian literature, then everything is clear here, this is no longer discussed. But speaking about Kuprin, his contemporaries, critics and literary scholars constantly clarify his place in Russian literature. So A.V. Vorontsov in his article “130 years since his birth” writes: “...It is unlikely that anyone will confidently call Kuprin a figure equal to both his great contemporaries - Chekhov and Bunin, and of a lower rank - Gorky and A. Tolstoy. Why exactly? Are his works outdated, forgotten...? Nothing happened. Children read "White Poodle", "Barbos and Zhulka", adults - "Olesya", "Duel", "The Pit", "Garnet Bracelet". …So what's the deal? Where did Kuprin fall short of joining the ranks of the “greats” or being the first among the “outstanding”?” But really, why? According to the same Vorontsov, he, “a talented writer, never outlived the journalist in himself.”

And Yu. Druzhinin, in the article “Kuprin in Tar and Molasses,” speaks with regret about the unnoticed anniversaries of such a great writer as A. Kuprin. Why did this happen? But because the date “marked something that I didn’t want to remember, so they pretended that they didn’t remember.” In Soviet literary criticism during the times of “perestroika,” a lot of things were revised. Certain writers who were previously banned in their homeland began to move from the black list to the white list. Kuprin was resolved long ago, only the truth about him remained half-hearted and hidden. Apparently, this is why his work has not yet been sufficiently studied, like the work of those to whom fate was more favorable. Soviet criticism did not ignore his life and work, but at different stages of his life it was viewed differently. It was constantly being clarified: “ours” or “not ours”?

S. Chuprinin also speaks with regret about the forgotten Kuprin in the introductory article “Rereading Kuprin” to one of the editions of the author’s works: “Kuprin is rarely remembered now. They re-publish it, write dissertations, but don’t argue.”

It was a shame when I opened the book “100 best writers 20th century,” you won’t find Kuprin there, although few of his contemporaries wrote like him. He had the gift of getting used to every image he created. It was not for nothing that he once said words that one of the heroes of “The Pit” would later repeat: “By God, I would like to become a horse, a plant or a fish for a few days, or be a woman and experience childbirth; I would like to live my inner life and see the world through the eyes of every person I meet.” In addition, Kuprin was the first to touch upon the problems of the army (“Duel”), and opened the world of corrupt love (“The Pit”).

Considering the topics and problems already studied in the works of A. I. Kuprin, we will try to arrange them in a gradational sequence: from the most studied to the least studied.

One of the most studied themes in the works of Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin is the theme of love. Love has always been the main theme of his large works and miniatures, as all researchers of his work believed. And, perhaps, Kuprin’s most poetic work, according to most critics, was “The Pomegranate Bracelet” - a wonderful story about unrequited great love, love, “which is repeated only once in a thousand years.”

But V. N. Afanasyev in his article “A. I. Kuprin writes that “having made his “little man” capable only of selfless... love and at the same time denying him any other interests, Kuprin unwittingly impoverished and limited the image of the hero. Fenced off by love from life with all its worries and anxieties... Zheltkov thereby impoverishes love itself... this quiet, submissive adoration... without fighting for a loved one... dries up the soul, makes it timid and powerless.” But A. A. Volkov in his work “The Work of A. I. Kuprin” speaks specifically about unrequited love in the writer’s works, which “opens up the opportunity to convey the high intensity of human experiences, to show how destructive the moral foundations of bourgeois society are for a person.” In “The Duel,” Nazansky, speaking about love, speaks specifically about unrequited love: “And love has its peaks, accessible only to a few out of millions... Do you understand how much varied happiness and charming torment lies in unrequited, hopeless love.” Volkov, discussing the happiness of unrequited love, comes to the conclusion that “the feeling of unrequited love never dulls, because this love is hopeless, it is not satisfied by a reciprocal feeling.” It is unrequited love that Kuprin’s heroes consider real.

In “The Garnet Bracelet,” General Anosov argues that true love is always the greatest tragedy. According to Volkov, true “love can arise where a person is close to nature, where social contrasts and the destructive influence of Moloch are not so felt” (“Olesya”). The forest fairy tale ends tragically. Volkov believes that the environment in which the heroes were brought up is to blame: a girl, “raised among nature and free from any conventions of bourgeois society, and a man, “weak” in front of these conventions, could not be together. But regarding “Sulamith” one can find completely opposite points of view. This work by Kuprin, one of the few, is about mutual feelings ruined by jealousy. According to Sergei Chuprinin, Gorky “classified Shulamith as immoral literature,” and in Volkov we read: “I. Koretskaya, in her comments to “Sulamith,” makes the following verdict: “The oversaturation of exoticism, stylization, and spicy eroticism brought the story closer to modernist art.” P. N. Berkov, not so unconditionally, but also condemns the author for “Shulamith”. But both Volkov and Chuprinin call the story talented, since the author poeticized the tender passion of lovers in it. Appears in this work new thought about love that is “strong as death.”

Another well-researched topic in Kuprin’s work is the problems of the army. Many critics and literary scholars called Kuprin the Columbus of the “army continent.” Who, if not him, knows for certain the laws that reign in the army; he experienced all the military drills himself. When “The Duel” was released, it was immediately enthusiastically received by leading critics. M. Chunosov was the first to respond with the article “The Monster of Militarism”; he saw in “The Duel” army life in all its terrible and tragic ugliness. V. Lvov also wrote about the indictment of soldiers in his article “Priests and Victims.” Afanasyev believed that, by depicting the tsarist army, Kuprin “managed to touch upon... a number of issues that deeply worried the entire Russian society and were especially acute on the eve of and during the first Russian revolution.” But the most important thing was the concept, which made it possible, according to Plotkin, “to discover in particular phenomena... the vices of military life... as an expression of the general incurable illness of the monarchical system.” A. Volkov believed that in “The Duel” the author sought to show “to what a terrifying state senseless drilling and cane discipline brought the already downtrodden, ignorant mass of soldiers.” But Volkov did not see the revolutionary trends in the army described by Kuprin. And Paustovsky, in his book “The Stream of Life,” called “The Duel” “a heaviest slap in the face to the political system of Tsarist Russia,” “a document about the dull and rotten officer caste to the core, about an army that rested only on the fear and humiliation of soldiers, about an army that was, as it were, deliberately created for the inevitable and shameful defeat in the very first battles.” Reactionary criticism attacked Kuprin with accusations of slandering the army (A. Basargin “Literary attack against the military”). And Lvov, and Volkov, and Afanasyev, and many other critics and literary scholars spoke about the talent of Kuprin, a satirist who managed to expose the army life of tsarist times. Kuprin will return to the painfully familiar problems of the army more than once in his stories. Indeed, the relationship between officers and soldiers, the bureaucratic machine of the state, which requires compulsory service even for those who are not physically or psychologically capable, service in the provinces that corrupts young officers - Kuprin was the first to discover all these problems in literature.

Another topic is Kuprin the psychologist. According to Volkov, “Kuprin displays a great ability for artistic transformation, “entering” into an image, which allowed him to create living characters and convey with deep truthfulness the complex train of thoughts and experiences of his heroes. The strength of Kuprin the artist was revealed in revealing the psychology of people placed in various life circumstances, especially those in which nobility and strength of spirit are manifested. However, sometimes he is inclined to delve into the jungle of the pathological psyche, to study the complex bends of a sick soul. It is good when an artist, penetrating into the essence of the pathological psyche, clarifies its social genesis. The error begins when the properties of a sick psyche are passed off as the eternal beginning of the human soul, which cannot be controlled by the mind. We see similar psychological experiments in the stories “Yas” and “Madness”. Unfortunately, even in these stories mystical motives make themselves felt, indicating the influence of decadence.”

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Included in literature in the 90s. His works give a picture of life at the end of the 19th century. 20th century. Reflected many significant phenomena of our time. The fruitful influence of Gorky was felt here.

They talked about the duality of his talent, his simple prose is internally contradictory. Some texts also contain autobiographical moments. The prose is very realistic, almost to the point of naturalism.

Kuprin's first major story is Moloch. Confrontation of the power of nature as a source of wisdom, love, etc. and machine civilization is actually like this. Civilization is evil, nature is good. The development of society is increasingly making man hostage to technological progress, so the ancient gods are being replaced by new gods - machines that, like Moloch, draw out both physical and mental suffering. Gravitates toward the social-allegorical genre. The mythical nature of the images is combined with the concreteness of the details. Here is the symbolism of color painting. Hellish space, now a person finds himself in it. After 30 years, they are already old people, and when they come home after a shift, they have no time for spirituality, but only physical existence. Social evil begins to acquire the scope of anthological evil. As a result, industrial civilization, disfiguring the face of the earth, causes horror in the author and creator, which mystically covers him; this is not rational horror. And man can no longer do anything with this monster. The story is hopeless, the death of love = the death of everything.

A philosophical and aesthetic set of ideas about living life. This is a special cult of life, when the meaning of life is in life itself, in the experience itself, an intuitive comprehension of life. Life is wiser, higher, despite the circumstances around the hero. Heroes trust this life.

Yurkina notes that Kuprin’s concept of nature-man-... was embodied in the Polesie cycle. Attitude as to the world of eternity, the source of life. Some are completely separated from the world, representing civilization, while others, on the contrary, are in the world of natural, living, meaningful existence. But there is an intermediate character who lived in civilization, but knew love. In the cycle: “Olesya”, Silver Wolf, Horse Thieves, Wilderness, Werewolf, etc.

The concept of a living fusion of nature and man is also associated with the unconscious. He is fascinated by Freud, the field of instinct that guides our actions more than we think. Kuprin has a concept of the good unconscious. A person gives up thinking about life, but instinctively connects to the world and finds happiness in this world. Olesya does not trust rational constructs. It develops a special style of writing when we follow one thing and think that that’s where the whole meaning is, but there are constant interspersions of natural landscape sketches that create important moods. When the hero meets Olesya, nature around him changes, he sees beauty. That is, there is lyricism in prose.

It embodies Solovyov's views in most of his works. He has a theme eternal love. Love is what leads to merging with existence. But with Bunin, love is instant.

"Duel". Lots of comparisons with other works. Usually a duel is a way of testing the hero, his humanity, + it is a test of certain laws of society (Onegin shoots Lensky, because society would otherwise consider him a coward). Kuprin does the same. On the one hand, it reveals the personal meaning of this Romashov. On the other hand, the situation in society is revealed. Appears in a conversation between officers in Shurochka's house: this is a way to revive the category of honor, or this is a murder situation in any case. It turns out that this is just a veil that covers up something completely disgusting.

There was also a certain Nozansky, who preferred a gray man who could make a career if she helped him. But Nozansky preached the Nietzschean picture of the world, and Shurochka, his best student, implements this, although Nozansky only talks, but does not implement anything. Shurochka can step over the love of another, through accepted values. This story brought great fame. Adamovich will compare with prose lost generation in America. This is a criticism of a generation that has lost all values, is forced to cling only to external forms of life, and is guaranteed the emptiness of life.

"Shulamith": the absolute embodiment of love arises. And Olesya and the garnet bracelet are just steps. On the one hand, the style of biblical narration is actively used, on the other hand, the technique of hyperbolization. Solomon, choosing wisdom, knew absolute happiness. But Kuprin says that he is not happy, because all this is vanity of vanities, but when he meets Shulamith, this is the knowledge of true love. Having known her, he finds complete and absolute happiness. But when she dies, he experiences the fullness of grief. Therefore, love is both a way out to eternity, and the highest completeness of happiness, but at the same time, it is also a complete and highest tragedy.

In 1917 Kuprin immigrates to Finland, then to France. The prose of this period is filled with nostalgic themes and an autobiographical element. The novel "Junker" is the most striking example.

In 1937 Kuprin returns to Soviet Russia, dies in 1938.

He writes as if in defiance of before 1905, after which he embodies the theme of humanity as the highest value.