What kind of love is depicted in the story of sunstroke. Problems and heroes of the story I

What is the peculiarity of the plot of the story?

(The story begins without an introduction, as if it is a continuation of some story. The writer seems to grab a piece of life - the brightest piece, like “sunstroke.” The heroes have no names, just she and the woman and the man. it is important to show the feeling itself and what it does to the person.)

Why does Bunin not mention the reasons for the sudden love of the heroes?

(The story is very short, it omits long descriptions, omits the reasons that pushed the characters to each other. This remains a mystery that cannot be solved.)

What is the peculiarity of the portrait of the heroine?

(Bunin does not describe the appearance of the heroine, but highlights the main thing in her - a simple, adorable laugh speaks of how "everything was lovely in this little woman.")

What Bunin describes a stranger after a night in the room?

(“She was fresh, as at the age of seventeen she was very slightly embarrassed; she was still simple, cheerful and already reasonable.”)

How does she explain what happened to them?

(“It was as if an eclipse had come over me ... Or rather, we both got something like a sunstroke.” The woman was the first to understand the severity of what had happened and the impossibility of continuing this too strong feeling.)

What has changed in the room since her departure that reminds of her?

("The number without her seemed like something completely different than it was with her. It was still full of her - let it be. Only the smell of good English cologne and an unfinished cup remained, but she was gone ...".)

What impression did this make on the lieutenant?

(The lieutenant's heart suddenly sank with such tenderness that he hastened to light a cigarette and walked up and down the room several times. The lieutenant laughs at his "strange adventure," and at the same time, "tears are pouring into his eyes."

What is the role of detail in this story?

(At the beginning of the story, the details of the heroine's portrait: "A small strong hand smelled like a tan light canvas dress" - emphasize the naturalness, simplicity and charm of a woman. "), Tenderness.

Other details (the smell of cologne, a cup, a pushed back screen, an unmade bed, a hairpin forgotten by her) reinforce the impression of the reality of what happened, deepen the drama: "He felt such pain and such a uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was seized with horror and despair." The steamer is a symbol of separation.)

What does such a seemingly small detail mean - a hairpin forgotten by the heroine?

(This is the last trace of the "little woman", visible, real. It is important for Bunin to show that the feeling that flared up after a fleeting meeting will not leave the hero.)

What new feelings did the lieutenant have?

(All the feelings of the lieutenant seem to be sharpened. He "remembered her all, with all her slightest features, remembered the smell of her tan and gingham dress, her strong body, the lively, simple and cheerful sound of her voice." torments the lieutenant: this is a strange, incomprehensible feeling. He does not know "how to live the whole next day without her," he feels unhappy.

This feeling is gradually transformed: “Everything was good, there was immeasurable happiness in everything, great joy ... and at the same time, the heart was simply torn to pieces.”)

Why is the hero trying to free himself from the feeling of love?

(The "sunstroke" that struck the lieutenant was too strong, unbearable. Both the happiness and the pain that accompanied him were unbearable.)

("Sunstroke" is accompanied by natural heat, which aggravates the feeling of loss. The hot streets cannot dispel the pain of separation and longing. Nature in the story emphasizes the strength of a sudden outbreak of feelings and the inevitability of separation.)

Too much love - why is it dramatic and even tragic?

(It is impossible to return a loved one, but it is also impossible to live without her. The hero cannot get rid of sudden, unexpected love, the "sunstroke" leaves an indelible mark on his soul.)

How did the experiences of the past day affect the hero?

(The hero feels ten years older. The instant of the experience he experienced made him so acute that it seems that almost a whole life has been contained in him.)

Final questions for the story:

1. How should the title of the story be understood? What is the meaning of the writer in the epithet "solar"? How does this meaning vary throughout the story?

2. Explain how Bunin paints the inner world of a person. With whom of the Russian writers of the nineteenth century can you compare the methods of psychological analysis used by him?

3. Give examples of ring composition of a piece. Can we talk about the absolute identity of "beginnings" and "ends"?

Output:

Love in Bunin's works is dramatic, even tragic, it is something elusive and natural, blinding a person, acting on him like a sunstroke. Love is a great abyss, mysterious and inexplicable, strong and painful.

Tasks:

1. What is the difference between the interpretation of love in the stories "Light Breath", "Grammar of Love" and "Sunstroke"?

2. What cross-cutting images-motives are present in Bunin's stories about love?

In the work of I. A. Bunin, perhaps the leading place is occupied by the theme of love. Bunin's love is always a tragic feeling that has no hope for a happy ending; it is a difficult test for lovers. This is how it appears to readers in the story "Sunstroke".

Along with the collection of stories about love "Dark Alleys", created by Ivan Alekseevich in the mid-1920s, "Sunstroke" is one of the pearls of his work. The tragedy and complexity of the time during which I. Bunin lived and wrote were fully embodied by the writer in the images of the main characters of this work.

The work was published in "Sovremennye zapiski" in 1926. Critics took the work with caution, skeptically noting the emphasis on the physiological side of love. However, not all reviewers were so sanctimonious; among them there were also those who warmly welcomed Bunin's literary experiment. In the context of Symbolist poetics, his image of the Stranger was perceived as a mystical mystery of feeling, clothed in flesh and blood. It is known that the author, creating his story, was impressed by Chekhov's work, so he crossed out the introduction and began his story with a random sentence.

About what?

From the very beginning, the story is intriguing because the story begins with an impersonal sentence: "After dinner we went out ... on deck ...". The lieutenant meets a beautiful stranger on the ship, whose name, like his name, remains unknown to the reader. They both seem to be struck by sunstroke; passionate, ardent feelings flare up between them. The traveler and his companion leave the ship for the city, and the next day she leaves by steamer to her family. The young officer is left completely alone and after a while realizes that he can no longer live without that woman. The story ends with the fact that, sitting under a canopy on the deck, he feels ten years older.

The main characters and their characteristics

She. From the story, you can learn that this woman had a family - a husband and a three-year-old daughter, to whom she returned on a steamer from Anapa (probably from rest or treatment). The meeting with the lieutenant became a "sunstroke" for her - a fleeting adventure, "clouding of her mind." She does not tell him her name and asks not to write to her in her city, as she understands that what was between them was just a momentary weakness, and her real life is completely different. She is beautiful and charming, her charm lies in mystery.
The lieutenant is an ardent and impressionable man. For him, a meeting with a stranger became fatal. He managed to truly realize what happened to him only after the departure of his beloved. He wants to find her, return, because he was seriously carried away by her, but it is too late. The misfortune that can happen to a person from an overabundance of the sun, for him was a sudden feeling, true love, which made him suffer from the realization of the loss of his beloved. This loss affected him greatly.

Problematic

One of the main problems in the story "Sunstroke" of this story is the problem of the essence of love. In I. Bunin's understanding, love brings a person not only joy, but also suffering, making him feel unhappy. The happiness of short moments in the future pours into the bitterness of separation and painful parting.
This also gives rise to another problem of the story - the problem of the short duration, the fragility of happiness. For both the mysterious stranger and the lieutenant, this euphoria was short-lived, but in the future they both "recalled this moment for many years." Short moments of delight are accompanied by long years of melancholy and loneliness, but I. Bunin is sure that it is thanks to them that life takes on meaning.

Theme

The theme of love in the story "Sunstroke" is a feeling full of tragedy, mental anguish, but at the same time it is filled with passion and fervor. This great, all-consuming sensation becomes both happiness and grief at the same time. Bunin's love is like a match that rapidly flares up and fades away, and at the same time it suddenly strikes, like a sunstroke, and can no longer leave its imprint on the human soul.

Meaning

The meaning of "Sunstroke" is to show readers all facets of love. It comes on suddenly, lasts a little, passes hard, like an illness. She is beautiful and painful at the same time. This feeling can both elevate a person and completely destroy him, but it is this feeling that can give him those bright moments of happiness that color his faceless everyday life and fill his life with meaning.

Ivan Aleksandrovich Bunin in his story "Sunstroke" seeks to convey to readers his main idea that passionate and strong emotions do not always have a future: a love fever is fleeting and similar to a powerful shock, but this is what makes it the most beautiful feeling in the world.

Composition

Bunin considered his most perfect creation to be the book "Dark Alleys" - a cycle of stories about love. The book was written during the Second World War, when the Bunin family found themselves in an extremely dire situation (conflicts with the authorities, a virtual lack of food, cold, etc.). The writer made an unprecedented artistic courage attempt in this book: he wrote “about the same thing” thirty-eight times (this is the number of stories in the book). However, the result of this amazing constancy is striking: the sensitive reader each time experiences the recreated picture (seemingly knowingly known to him) as completely new, and the acuteness of the "details of feeling" communicated to him is not only not dulled, but, it seems, only intensifies. In terms of subject matter and style, the collection "Dark Alleys" is related to the story "Sunstroke" created in 1927.

The narrative technique of Bunin's later works is distinguished by a striking combination of noble simplicity and sophistication. "Sunstroke" begins - without any anticipatory explanation - with an indefinitely personal sentence: "After dinner, we left the brightly and hotly lit dining room on the deck ...". The reader still does not know anything about the upcoming event, or about its participants: the very first impressions of the reader are associated with sensations of light and heat. The images of fire, stuffiness, sunshine will keep the story “hot” throughout this six-page story. The heroine's hand will smell like tan; a hotel footman will meet the young couple in a "pink" shirt, and a hotel room will be "terribly stuffy, hotly heated"; the heat will permeate the “unfamiliar town”, in which you will have to burn yourself from touching the buttons of your clothes and squint your eyes from the intolerable light.

Who is "she", where and when does the action take place? Perhaps the reader, like the main character, will not have time to give himself an account of this: in Bunin's story, all this will be pushed to the periphery of the only important event - "too much love", "too much happiness." The story, devoid of an exposition, will end with a laconic epilogue - a short sentence in which the lieutenant who feels "ten years old" will freeze forever.

The transience of the incident that served as the basis for the plot is emphasized in Sunstroke, as in other later works of Bunin, by the fragmentary, dotted line of the story of a love affair: individual details, gestures, and fragments of dialogue were selected and as if hastily assembled. Patter about the parting of the lieutenant with the "beautiful stranger": "easily agreed", "drove to the pier", "kissed on the deck", "returned to the hotel." In general, the description of a meeting of lovers takes up a little more than one page of text. This compositional feature of Bunin's works about love - the selection of the most significant, critical episodes, high plot "speed" in the transmission of a love story - allows many literary historians to talk about the "novelistic" nature of Bunin's later prose. Very often (and quite reasonably) researchers directly call these works of his novels. However, Bunin's works are not limited to a dynamic narration about the vicissitudes of love.

The recurring "formula" of the plot - a meeting, a quick rapprochement, a dazzling flash of feelings and an inevitable parting, sometimes accompanied by the death of one of the lovers - it is precisely because of its repetition that it ceases to be "news" (the literal meaning of the Italian word "novella"). Moreover, as a rule, already the initial fragments of the text contain the author's instructions not only on the transience of the upcoming event, but also on the future memories of the characters. In Sunstroke, such an indication immediately follows the mention of the first kiss: "... Both ... for many years later remembered this moment: neither one nor the other had ever experienced anything like this in their entire life." Noteworthy is the "grammatical inaccuracy", possibly deliberately made by Bunin in this sentence: the verb "experienced" should have been used in the plural. A possible explanation is the author's desire for ultimate generalization: regardless of social, psychological, and even gender differences, the characters in Bunin's stories embody one consciousness and one attitude.

Let us pay attention to how, within the framework of one sentence, "wonderful moment" and "whole life" are conjugated and turn out to be of the same order. Bunin writes not only about love, the scale of all earthly human existence is important to him, he is attracted by the mysterious fusion of "terrible" and "beautiful", "miracle" and "horror" of this life. That is why the love story often turns out to be only a part of the work, coexisting with fragments of a meditative nature.

Almost five of the total six pages of the Sunstroke text describe the state of the lieutenant after parting with a stranger. The storyline itself is just a preamble to the hero's lyrically rich reflections on the mystery of life. The intonation of these reflections is set by a dotted line of recurring persistent questions that do not suggest an answer: “Why prove?”, “What to do now?”, “Where to go?”. As you can see, the series of events in the story is subordinated to the universal human problematics of eternal "joys and sorrows." The growing feeling of immensity and - at the same time - the tragic irreversibility of the experienced happiness constitutes the compositional core of the story in Sunstroke.

Bunin's focus on "eternal" questions of human existence, on existential problems of being, does not make stories about love philosophical: the writer does not like logical abstractions, does not allow philosophical terminology in his texts. The foundation of the Bunin style is not a logically consistent development of thought, but an artistic intuition of life, which finds expression in almost physiologically tangible descriptions, in complex "patterns" of light and rhythmic contrasts.

The experience of life is the material of Bunin's stories. What is the subject of this experience? At first glance, the narrative in his stories is focused on the point of view of the character (this is especially noticeable in "Pure Monday", in which the story is told on behalf of a wealthy Muscovite, outwardly distanced from the author). However, the characters, even if they are endowed with signs of individuality, appear in both analyzed stories as a kind of mediums of a certain higher consciousness. These characters are inherently "ghostly": they are like the shadows of the author, and therefore the descriptions of their appearance are extremely laconic. The portrait of the lieutenant in Sunstroke is made in a deliberately “depersonalizing” manner: “He ... looked at himself in the mirror: his face was an ordinary officer's face, gray from sunburn, with a whitish mustache that had burnt out from the sun and bluish white eyes. .. ". We only learn about the narrator of "Clean Monday" that he "was at that time beautiful for some reason, southern, hot beauty ..."

Bunin's characters were gifted with an exceptional acuteness of sensory reactions, which was characteristic of the author himself. That is why the writer almost never resorts to the form of an internal monologue (this would make sense if the character's mental organization was significantly different from the author's). The author and the heroes (and after them the readers) of Bunin's stories see and hear alike, are equally amazed at the endlessness of the day and the transience of life. Bunin's manner is far from Tolstoy's methods of the "dialectic of the soul"; it is not similar to Turgenev's "secret psychologism" (when the writer avoids direct assessments, but allows one to judge the state of the hero's soul by skillfully selected external manifestations of feeling). The movements of the soul of the Bunin heroes defy logical explanation. The characters seem to have no control over themselves, as if they are deprived of the ability to control their feelings.

In this regard, it is interesting to Bunin's addiction to impersonal verbal constructions in the descriptions of the character's states. “I had to save myself, do something to occupy myself, distract myself, go somewhere ...” - he conveys the state of the hero of “Sunstroke”. “.... For some reason I wanted to go in there by all means,” testifies the narrator of “Clean Monday” about his visit to the Martha and Mary Convent, where he will see his beloved for the last time. The life of the soul in the image of Bunin is beyond the control of reason, inexplicable, it languishes in the mystery of the meaning hidden from mortals. The most important role in the transmission of the "emotional whirlwinds" experienced by the heroes is played by the methods of lyrical "infection" (associative parallels, rhythmic and sound organization of the text).

Vision, hearing, taste and temperature sensations of the lieutenant in "Sunstroke" are extremely acute. That is why a whole symphony of smells is so organic in the story (from the smells of hay and tar to the smells of “her good English cologne ..., her tan and gingham dress”), and the details of the sound background (the “soft knock” of a steamer hitting the pier ; the clinking of bowls and pots sold at the bazaar; the noise of "boiling and running water"), and gastronomic details (botvinia with ice, lightly salted cucumbers with dill, tea with lemon). But the most expressively described states of the character in the story are associated with a keen perception of the luminous and glowing sun. It is from the light and temperature details, again and again presented in close-up and giving clarity to the inner rhythm of the story, that the "brocade" verbal fabric of "Sunstroke" is woven. Bringing together, focusing these energetic verbal threads, Bunin without any explanations, without appeals to the consciousness of the character, conveys the ecstasy of the moments he is experiencing. However, the psychological state of the lieutenant turns out to be not only a fact of his inner life. Inseparability of beauty and horror; joy, from which "the heart was simply torn to pieces," turn out to be objectively existing characteristics of being.

The writer turns in his later prose not to the rationally comprehended facets of life, but to those spheres of experience that allow even for a moment to touch the mysterious, metaphysical depths of being (metaphysical - that which is beyond the natural phenomena perceived by man; that which is impossible rationally comprehend). This is precisely the sphere of love for Bunin - the sphere of unsolved mystery, unspokenness, opaque semantic depth. The experience of love in the portrayal of the writer is associated with an unprecedented rise in all emotional abilities of a person, with his exit into a special dimension, contrasting with the everyday flow of life. This is the true dimension of being, in which not everyone is involved, but only those who have been given a happy (and always the only) opportunity to experience the painful joy of love.

Love in Bunin's works allows a person to accept life as the greatest gift, to acutely feel the joy of earthly existence, but this joy for the writer is not a blissful and serene state, but a tragic feeling, colored with anxiety. The emotional atmosphere of the stories is created by the interaction of the motives of love, beauty and the inevitable finiteness, short duration of happiness, which are stable in the late Bunin prose. Joy and anguish, sadness and glee are fused in Bunin's later works into an indissoluble whole. "Tragic major" - this is how the pathos of Bunin's stories about love was defined by the critic of the Russian diaspora Georgy Adamovich: places, the sun is the sun, love is love, good is good. "

They meet in the summer, on one of the Volga steamers. He is a lieutenant, She is a lovely, small, tanned woman returning home from Anapa.

I'm completely drunk, ”she laughed. - Actually, I'm completely crazy. Three hours ago, I didn't even know you existed.

The lieutenant kisses her hand, and his heart stops blissfully and terribly.

The steamer approaches the pier, the lieutenant begs her to get off. A minute later they go to the hotel and rent a large, but stuffy room. As soon as the footman closes the door behind him, both of them merge so frenziedly in a kiss that then for many years they remember this moment: none of them has ever experienced anything like it.

And in the morning this little nameless woman, jokingly calling herself "a beautiful stranger" and "Princess Marya Morevna", leaves. Despite an almost sleepless night, she is as fresh as at seventeen, a little embarrassed, still simple, cheerful, and already sensible: she asks the lieutenant to stay until the next steamer.

Nothing even similar to what happened has never happened to me, and there will never be any more. I was definitely eclipsed ... Or rather, we both got something like a sunstroke ...

And the lieutenant somehow easily agrees with her, takes her to the pier, gets on the ship and kisses in front of everyone on the deck.

He easily and carelessly returns to the hotel, but the room seems to the lieutenant for some other. It is still full of it - and empty. The lieutenant's heart suddenly squeezes with such tenderness that there is no strength to look at the unmade bed - and he closes it with a screen. He thinks this sweet "road trip" is over. He cannot “come to this city, where her husband, her three-year-old girl, in general her whole ordinary life”.

The thought amazes him. He feels such pain and the uselessness of his entire future life without her that he is seized with horror and despair. The lieutenant begins to believe that this is really a "sunstroke" and does not know "how to live this endless day, with these memories, with this insoluble torment."

The lieutenant goes to the bazaar, to the cathedral, then circles for a long time around the abandoned garden, but nowhere does he find comfort and deliverance from this uninvited feeling.

How wild, how absurd is everything everyday, ordinary, when the heart is struck by this terrible "sunstroke", too much love, too much happiness.

Returning to the hotel, the lieutenant orders lunch. All is well, but he knows that he would die tomorrow without hesitation, if it were possible by some miracle to return the "beautiful stranger" and prove how painfully and enthusiastically he loves her. He does not know why, but this is more necessary for him than life.

Realizing that it is impossible to get rid of this unexpected love, the lieutenant decisively goes to the post office with a telegram already written, but stops at the post office in horror - he does not know her name or surname! The lieutenant returns to the hotel completely broken, lies down on the bed, closes his eyes, feeling tears rolling down his cheeks, and finally falls asleep.

The lieutenant wakes up in the evening. He remembers yesterday and this morning as a distant past. He gets up, washes, drinks tea with lemon for a long time, pays for the room and goes to the pier.

The steamer leaves at night. The lieutenant sits under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older.

Russian literature has always been distinguished by its extraordinary chastity. Love in the mind of a Russian person and a Russian writer is primarily a spiritual feeling. The attraction of souls, mutual understanding, spiritual community, the similarity of interests have always been more important than the attraction of bodies, the desire for physical intimacy. The latter, in accordance with Christian dogmas, was even condemned. Over Anna Karenina L. Tolstoy holds a strict trial, no matter what various critics may say. In the traditions of Russian literature, there was also an image of women of easy virtue (remember Sonechka Marmeladova) as pure and immaculate creatures, whose soul is not affected in any way by the "costs of the profession." And in no way could a short-term relationship, a spontaneous rapprochement, a carnal impulse of a man and a woman to each other be welcomed or justified. A woman who embarked on this path was perceived as being either frivolous or desperate. In order to justify Katerina Kabanova in her actions and to see in her betrayal to her husband an impulse for freedom and a protest against oppression in general, N.A. Dobrolyubov in his article "A ray of light in the dark kingdom" had to involve the entire system of social relations in Russia! And of course, such a relationship was never called love. Passion, attraction at its best. Ho not love.

Bunin fundamentally rethinks this "scheme". For him, the feeling that suddenly arises between random fellow travelers on a steamer is as priceless as love. Moreover, it is precisely love that is this heady, selfless, suddenly arising feeling that evokes an association with sunstroke. He is convinced of this. “Coming soon,” he wrote to his friend, “the story“ Sunstroke ”, where I again, like in the novel“ Mitya's Love, ”in“ The Case of Yelagin's Cornet, ”in“ Ide, ”I am talking about love."

Bunin's interpretation of the theme of love is associated with his idea of Eros as a powerful elemental force - the main form of manifestation of cosmic life. It is tragic in its essence, as it turns a person upside down, dramatically changes the course of his life. Much brings Bunin closer to Tyutchev in this respect, who also believed that love does not so much bring harmony into human existence as it manifests the “chaos” lurking in it. But if Tyutchev was nevertheless attracted by the “union of the soul with his own soul”, which ultimately resulted in a fatal duel, if in his poems we see unique individuals who, initially, even striving for this, are not able to bring each other happiness, then Bunin is not worries about the union of souls. Rather, he is shocked by the union of bodies, which in turn gives rise to a special understanding of life and another person, a feeling of indestructible memory, which makes life meaningful, and in a person manifests its natural principles.

We can say that the whole story "Sunstroke", which, as the writer himself admitted, grew out of one mental "idea of going out on deck ... from the light into the darkness of a summer night on the Volga", is devoted to the description of this plunge into darkness, which the lieutenant is experiencing who lost his accidental lover. This plunge into darkness, almost "insanity" occurs against the background of an unbearably sultry sunny day, filling everything around with penetrating heat. All descriptions are literally overwhelmed with burning sensations: the room where casual fellow travelers spend the night is "hotly heated by the sun during the day." And the next day begins with a “sunny, hot morning”. And later “everything around was bathed in hot, fiery ... sun”. And even in the evening, the heat spreads in the rooms from the heated iron roofs, the wind raises white thick dust, the huge river glistens under the sun, the distance of water and sky shines dazzlingly. And after the forced wanderings around the city, the shoulder straps and buttons of the lieutenant's tunic “sank so hard that it was impossible to touch them. The peg of the cap was wet with sweat inside, his face was on fire ... ”.

The sunshine, the blinding whiteness of these pages should remind readers of the "sunstroke" that overtook the heroes of the story. It is at the same time immeasurable, sharpest happiness, but it is still a blow, albeit “sunny”, that is. painful, twilight state, loss of mind. Therefore, if at first the epithet solar is adjacent to the epithet happy, then later on the pages of the story will appear “joyful, but here it’s like an aimless sun”.

Bunin very carefully reveals the ambiguous meaning of his work. He does not let the participants in a short-term romance immediately understand what happened to them. The first word about some kind of "eclipse", "sunstroke" is pronounced by the heroine. Later, in bewilderment, he will repeat them: “Indeed, it’s like some kind of“ sunstroke ”. But she still talks about it without thinking, more worried about ending the relationship immediately, because she may be “unpleasant” with their continuation: if they go together again, “everything will be ruined”. At the same time, the heroine repeatedly repeats that something like this has never happened to her, that what happened to her is incomprehensible, incomprehensible, unique to her. But the lieutenant seems to deafen her words (then he, however, with tears in his eyes, perhaps only to revive her intonation, will repeat them), he easily agrees with her, easily brings her to the pier, easily and carelessly returns to the room where they were just the two of them.

And now the main action begins, because the whole story of the rapprochement of two people was only an exposition, only a preparation for the shock that happened in the soul of the lieutenant and in which he immediately cannot believe. First, it is about the strange feeling of emptiness of the room that startled him when he returned. Bunin boldly collides antonyms in sentences in order to sharpen this impression: “The number without her seemed somehow completely different than it was with her. He was still full of her - and empty ... She still smelled of good English cologne, her unfinished cup was still on the tray, but she was gone. " And in the future, this contrast - the presence of a person in the soul, in memory and his real absence in the surrounding space - will intensify with every moment. In the lieutenant's soul there is a growing feeling of wildness, unnaturalness, improbability of what happened, the intolerance of the pain of loss. The pain is such that one must be saved from it at all costs. But there is no salvation in anything. And each action only brings one closer to the idea that he cannot “get rid of this sudden, unexpected love” in any way that will forever haunt his memories of what he experienced, “about the smell of her tan and canvas dress”, about “lively, simple and cheerful sound her voices ”. Once F. Tyutchev begged:

Oh lord, give searing misery
And scatter the deadness of my soul:
You took her, but the torment of remembering,
Leave me living flour for it.

Bunin's heroes do not need to conjure - "the torment of remembrance" is always with them. The writer splendidly draws that terrible feeling of loneliness, rejection from other people, which the lieutenant experienced, pierced with love. Dostoevsky believed that such a feeling can be experienced by a person who has committed a terrible crime. Such is his Raskolnikov. But what crime did the lieutenant commit? Only that he was struck by “too much love, too much happiness” !? However, it was this that immediately distinguished him from the mass of ordinary people living an ordinary, unremarkable life. Bunin deliberately snatches individual human figures from this mass in order to clarify this idea. Here at the entrance of the hotel a cabman stopped and simply, carelessly, indifferently, calmly sitting on the box, smokes a cigarette, and another cabman, taking the lieutenant to the pier, says something cheerfully. Here women and men in the bazaar are energetically beckoning customers, praising their goods, and from the photographs the satisfied newlyweds look at the lieutenant, a pretty girl in a wrinkled cap and some military man with magnificent sideburns, in a uniform decorated with orders. And in the cathedral the church choir sings "loudly, merrily, decisively."

Of course, the fun, carelessness and happiness of those around them are seen through the eyes of the hero, and, probably, this is not entirely true. But the fact of the matter is that from now on he sees the world just like that, penetrating people who are not “struck” by love, “painful envy”. After all, they really do not experience that unbearable torment, that incredible suffering that does not give him a minute of peace. Hence his abrupt, convulsive movements, gestures, impulsive actions: “got up quickly”, “walked hastily”, “stopped in horror”, “began to look intently”. The writer pays special attention to the character's gestures, his facial expressions, his views (for example, an unmade bed repeatedly falls into his field of vision, possibly still keeping the warmth of their bodies). Also important are his impressions of being, sensations spoken out loud by the most elementary, but therefore stressed phrases. Only occasionally does the reader get the opportunity to learn about his thoughts. This is how Bunin's psychological analysis is built, at the same time secret and obvious, a kind of "super-visual".

The culmination of the story can be considered the phrase: “Everything was good, in everything there was immeasurable happiness, great joy; even in this heat and in all the smells of the bazaar, in all this unfamiliar town and in this old district hotel, there was she, this joy, and at the same time the heart was simply torn to pieces ”. It is even known that in one of the editions of the story it was said that the lieutenant "was ripening a stubborn thought of suicide." This is how the dividing line between the past and the present is drawn. From now on, he exists, "deeply unhappy", and some of them, others, happy and contented. And Bunin agrees that "everything that is everyday, ordinary" is "wild, scary" to the heart, which was visited by great love - that "new ... strange, incomprehensible feeling" that this unremarkable person "could not even imagine in himself." And the hero mentally condemns his chosen one to a “lonely life” in the future, although he knows perfectly well that she has a husband and a daughter. But the husband and daughter are present in the dimension of “ordinary life”, just as in “ordinary life” there are simple, unpretentious joys. Therefore, for him, after parting, the whole world around turns into a desert (not without reason in one of the phrases of the story - for a completely different reason - the Sahara is mentioned). “The street was completely empty. The houses were all the same, white, two-story, merchant ... and it seemed that there was not a soul in them ”. The room breathes with the heat of "a luminous (and therefore, colorless, dazzling! - MM) and now completely empty, silent ... world." This "silent Volga world" is replacing the "immense Volga expanse", in which she dissolved, disappeared forever, beloved, the only one. This motif of the disappearance and at the same time the presence in the world of a human being living in human memory is very reminiscent of the intonation of Bunin's story "Light Breathing" -

about the chaotic and unrighteous life of a young schoolgirl Olya Meshcherskaya, who had this most inexplicable "light breath" and died at the hands of her lover. It ends with the following lines: "Now this light breath has scattered again into the world, in this cloudy sky, in this cold spring wind."

In full accordance with the contrast between the individual existence of a grain of sand (such a definition suggests itself!) And the infinite world, a clash of times, so significant for the concept of Bunin's life, arises - present, present, even momentary time and eternity, into which time grows out without it. The word never begins to sound like a refrain: “he will never see her again”, “he will never tell” her about his feelings. I would like to write: "From now on, my whole life is forever, to your grave ..." - but you cannot send her a telegram, since the name and surname are unknown; I’m ready to die even tomorrow in order to spend a day together today, to prove my love, but it’s impossible to return my beloved ... At first, it seems unbearable for the lieutenant to live without her only an endless but single day in a dusty town forgotten by God. Then this day will turn into the torment of "the uselessness of all future life without her."

The story has, in fact, a circular composition. At the very beginning of it, one can hear the impact of a steamer on the dock, and at the end, the same sounds are heard. A day lay between them. One day. However, in the imagination of the hero and the author, they are separated from each other by at least ten years (this figure is repeated twice in the story - after everything that happened, after realizing his loss, the lieutenant feels “ten years older”!), But in fact, eternity. Once again, another person is going on a steamer, who has comprehended some of the most important things on earth, who has become familiar with its secrets.

The sense of the materiality of what is happening is striking in this story. Indeed, it seems that such a story could have been written by a person who had only really experienced something like this, who remembered both the lonely hairpin, forgotten by his beloved on the night table, and the sweetness of the first kiss, which took his breath away. Ho Bunin strongly objected to identifying him with his heroes. “I have never told my own novels ... and“ Mitya's Love ”and“ Sunstroke ”are all figments of the imagination,” he was indignant. Rather, in the Maritime Alps, in 1925, when this story was being written, he dreamed of the shining Volga, its yellow shallows, oncoming rafts and a pink steamer sailing along it. All that was no longer destined for him to see. And the only words that the author of the story utters “on his own behalf” are the words that they “remembered this minute for many years: I have never experienced anything like this in my entire life, neither one nor the other”. The heroes, who are not destined to see each other anymore, cannot know what will happen to them in that “life” that will arise outside the narrative, what they will feel afterwards.

In a purely “dense”, material manner of narration (it’s not for nothing that one of the critics called what came out of his pen “brocade prose”), it was precisely the worldview of a writer who thirsts through memory, through touching an object, through a trace left by someone (when Having visited the Middle East, he was glad that he saw in some dungeon a “living and clear footprint” left five thousand years ago) to resist the destructive effect of time, to triumph over oblivion, and therefore over death. It is memory in the mind of the writer that makes a person like God. Bunin proudly said: "I am a man: as a god, I am doomed / To know the melancholy of all countries and all times." Likewise, a person who has learned love in the artistic world of Bunin can consider himself a deity, to whom new, unknown feelings open up - kindness, spiritual generosity, nobility. The writer speaks of the mystery of the currents that run between people, tying them into an indissoluble whole, but at the same time persistently reminds of the unpredictability of the results of our actions, of the “chaos” that is hidden under a decent existence, of the tremulous caution that such a fragile organization requires. like human life.

Bunin's work, especially on the eve of the cataclysm of 1917 and emigration, is permeated with a sense of catastrophism that awaits both the passengers of the Atlantis and selflessly devoted lovers to each other, who are nevertheless divorced by life's circumstances. But no less loudly will the hymn of love and joy of life sound in it, which may be available to people whose heart has not grown old, whose soul is open to creativity. But in this joy, and in this love, and in the self-forgetfulness of creativity, Bunin saw the danger of a passionate attachment to life, which can sometimes be so strong that his characters choose death, preferring eternal oblivion to the acute pain of pleasure.