"No, it's not the landscape that attracts me,
It’s not the colors that I’m trying to notice,
And what shines in these colors -
Love and joy of being."
(1870-1953)
Writer and translator, honorary member
Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences
Born on October 10 (22 NS) in Voronezh into a noble family. His childhood years were spent on the family estate on the Butyrka farm in the Oryol province, among “a sea of bread, herbs, flowers,” “in the deepest silence of the field,” under the supervision of a teacher and educator, “a strange man,” who captivated his student with painting, from which he “had quite a long period of insanity,” which otherwise yielded little.
In 1881 he entered the Yelets Gymnasium, which he left four years later due to illness. He spent the next four years in the village of Ozerki, where he grew stronger and matured. His education ended in an unusual way. His older brother Julius, who graduated from the university and served a year in prison for political matters, was exiled to Ozerki and went through the entire gymnasium course with his younger brother, studied languages with him, and read the rudiments of philosophy, psychology, social and natural sciences. Both were especially passionate about literature.
In 1889, Bunin left the estate and was forced to look for work to ensure a modest existence for himself (he worked as a proofreader, statistician, librarian, and contributed to a newspaper). He moved often - he lived in Orel, then in Kharkov, then in Poltava, then in Moscow. In 1891, his collection “Poems” was published, full of impressions from his native Oryol region.
Ivan Bunin In 1894 in Moscow he met with L. Tolstoy, who kindly received the young Bunin, and the next year he met A. Chekhov. In 1895, the story “To the End of the World” was published, which was well received by critics. Inspired by success, Bunin turned entirely to literary creativity.
In 1898 the collection of poems “Under the Open Air” was published, in 1901 - the collection “Leaf Fall”, for which he was awarded the highest prize of the Academy of Sciences - the Pushkin Prize (1903). In 1899 he met M. Gorky, who attracted him to collaborate with the publishing house "Znanie", where the best stories of that time appeared: "Antonov Apples" (1900), "Pines" and "New Road" (1901), "Chernozem" ( 1904). Gorky will write: “...if they say about him: he is the best stylist of our time, there will be no exaggeration.” In 1909 Bunin became an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The story "The Village", published in 1910, brought its author wide readership. In 1911 - the story "Sukhodol" - a chronicle of the degeneration of the estate nobility. In subsequent years, a series of significant stories and novellas appeared: “The Ancient Man”, “Ignat”, “Zakhar Vorobyov”, “The Good Life”, “The Gentleman from San Francisco”.
Having met the October Revolution with hostility, the writer left Russia forever in 1920. Through Crimea, and then through Constantinople, he emigrated to France and settled in Paris. Everything he wrote in exile concerned Russia, Russian people, Russian nature: “Mowers”, “Lapti”, “Distant”, “Mitya’s Love”, the cycle of short stories “Dark Alleys”, the novel “The Life of Arsenyev”, 1930, etc. In 1933 Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize. He wrote books about L. Tolstoy (1937) and about A. Chekhov (published in New York in 1955), the book “Memoirs” (published in Paris in 1950).
Bunin lived a long life, survived the invasion of fascism in Paris, and rejoiced at the victory over it.
Poems by Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
Angel
In the evening hour, over the peaceful steppe,
When the sunset shone over her,
Among the heavens, the ethereal paths,
The evening angel flew by.
He saw the pre-sunset twilight, -
The east was already turning blue in the distance, -
And suddenly he heard an indistinct
In the neighs of a child there is a voice.
He walked, collecting ears of corn,
He wove a wreath and sang in silence,
And there were sounds of heaven in the song -
An innocent, unearthly soul.
"Bless your little brother,"
The Lord said. - Bless
Baby at the quiet hour of sunset
On the path of truth and love!"
And an angel with a bright smile
The child was quietly dawned
And at sunset, radiantly unsteady
He rose in the brilliance of gentle krills.
And like golden wings,
The dawn burned in the heights,
And for a long time the eyes of young
They watched her in silence!
For everything, Lord, I thank you!
You, after a day of anxiety and sadness,
Give me the evening dawn,
The spaciousness of the fields and the gentleness of the blue distance.
I am alone now - as always.
But then the sunset spread its magnificent flame,
And the Evening Star melts in it
Trembling through and through, like a semi-precious stone.
And I am happy with my sad fate,
And there is sweet joy in consciousness,
That I am alone in silent contemplation,
That I am a stranger to everyone and say - with You.
Inscription on the gravestone
There are no, Lord, sins and atrocities
Above Thy mercy!
Slave of the earth and vain desires
Forgive his sins for his sorrows.
I kept the covenant of love sacredly in my life:
In days of melancholy, in defiance of reason,
I did not harbor any enmity against my brother,
I have forgiven everything, according to Your word.
I, who have known deathly silence,
I, who have accepted the sorrows of darkness,
From the depths of the earth I preach the gospel to the earth
Verbs of Unsunset Beauty!
*****
At the gates of Zion, above Kidron,
On a hillock, scorched by the winds,
Where there is shadow from the wall,
I once sat next to a leper,
Eating grains of ripe henbane.
He breathed an indescribable stench,
He, crazy, was poisoned by poison,
Meanwhile, with a smile on his lips,
He looked around with a blissful look,
Muttering: "Blessed be Allah!"
Merciful God, why are you
Gave us passions, thoughts and worries,
Do I thirst for business, fame and pleasure?
Joyful are cripples, idiots,
The leper is the most joyful of all.
Trinity
The buzzing gospel calls to prayer,
It rings in the sun's rays over the fields;
The distance of water meadows is buried in azure,
And the river in the meadows sparkles and burns.
And in the village in the morning there is mass in the church;
The entire pulpit is strewn with green grass,
The altar, shining and decorated with flowers,
Illuminated with the amber shine of candles and the sun.
And the choir sings loudly, cheerful and discordant,
And the breeze brings aroma to the windows -
Today your day has come, tired, meek brother,
Your spring holiday is both bright and calm!
You are now from the labor sown fields
Brought here simple offerings:
Garlands of young birch branches,
Sorrow is a quiet sigh, prayer - and humility.
Homeland
They mock you
They, O Motherland, reproach
You with your simplicity,
Poor looking black huts...
So son, calm and impudent,
Ashamed of his mother -
Tired, timid and sad
Among his city friends,
Looks with a smile of compassion
To the one who wandered hundreds of miles
And for him, on the date of the date,
She saved her last penny.
*****
The day will come when I will disappear,
And this room is empty
Everything will be the same: table, bench
Yes, the image is ancient and simple.
And it will fly in the same way
Colored butterfly in silk –
Flutter, rustle and flutter
On the blue ceiling.
And so will the bottom of the sky
Look out the open window
And the sea is smooth blue
Beckon you into your deserted space.
*****
And flowers, and bumblebees, and grass, and ears of corn,
And the azure, and the midday heat...
The time will come - the Lord will ask the prodigal son:
“Were you happy in your earthly life?”
And I’ll forget everything - I’ll only remember these
Field paths between ears and grasses -
And from sweet tears I won’t have time to answer,
Falling to the merciful knees.
*****
...Why and what to talk about?
With all my soul, with love, with dreams,
Try to open my whole heart -
And what? - in just words!
And at least in human words
It wasn't all that clichéd!
You won’t find meaning in them,
Their meaning has been forgotten!
And who should I tell?
With even a sincere desire
No one will be able to understand
All the power of someone else's suffering!
*****
Christ is risen! Again at dawn
The shadow of the long night is thinning,
Again lit above the ground
A new day for a new life.
The thickets of the forest are still turning black;
Still in its damp shadow,
Lakes stand like mirrors
And breathe the freshness of the night;
Still in the blue valleys
The fogs are floating... But look:
Already burning on mountain ice floes
Fiery rays of dawn!
They are still shining on high,
Unattainable like a dream
Where the voices of the earth fall silent
And beauty is immaculate.
But, getting closer every hour
Because of the reddening peaks,
They will sparkle, flaring up,
And into the darkness of the forests and into the depths of the valleys;
They will rise in the desired beauty
And they will announce from the heights of heaven,
That the promised day has come,
That God has truly risen!
Day and night
I read an old book on long nights
With a lonely and quietly trembling fire:
<Все мимолетно - и скорби, и радость, и песни,
Only God is eternal. He is in the unearthly silence of the night>.
I see a clear sky through the window at dawn.
The sun rises, and the mountains call to the azure:
<Старую книгу оставь на столе до заката.
The birds sing about the joy of the eternal God!>
From the Apocalypse
Chapter IV
And I saw: a door was opened in heaven,
And the old voice that I heard
Like the sound of a trumpet blaring above me,
He commanded me: come in and see what will happen.
And the Spirit instantly overshadowed me.
And behold, in heaven before my eyes
There was a throne, and there was one sitting on it.
And this Seated One, shining with His grace,
There was like a jasper and sardis stone,
And a rainbow like emerald,
His throne embraced widely.
And around the throne are twenty-four
There were other thrones, and on each
I saw an old man in a snow-white robe
And wearing a golden crown on his head.
And voices came from the throne,
And lightning and thunder, and before him -
Seven fiery lamps burned,
Of whom every one was the spirit of the Lord.
And before the face of the throne was the sea,
Glass like crystal
And in the middle of the throne and around -
Animals, there are four of them.
And the first was like a lion,
For Taurus - the second, the third - for man,
Fourth - to the flying eagle.
And each of the four animals
It had three pairs of wings, and inside
They are filled without counting eyes
And they never know peace,
Calling upon Glory: holy, holy, holy is the Lord,
God Almighty, Who abides
And was forever and ever and is to come!
When do they call out like this, rewarding
Honor and praise to Him who lives forever,
To Him who sits in glory on the throne,
Then all twenty-four elders
They prostrate themselves at the throne in humility
And, worshiping Jehovah forever,
They lay the crowns to the throne and recite:
<Воистину достоин восприяти
You, O Lord, give praise and honor and strength,
Because everything was created by You
And it exists by Your will!>
Exile
It's getting dark and the twilight is whistling in the desert.
Fields and ocean...
Who will satisfy in the desert, in a foreign land
The pain of the wounds of the cross?
I look forward at the black Crucifixion
Among the roads -
And extends mournful embraces
The deceased God.
Entrance to Jerusalem
"Hosanna! Hosanna! Come
In the name of the Lord!"
And with a furious wheeze in my chest,
With the fire of hell
In sparkling purulent eyes,
Swelling all the veins in the neck,
Screaming more and more menacingly,
The cripple throws himself into the dust
On knees,
Having made his way through the noisy people,
With your mouth wide open,
Chapped and covered in foam,
And arms outstretched in prayer -
Oh vengeance, oh vengeance,
About a bloody feast for all those bypassed by fate -
And You, All-Good, Quiet Evening Light,
You are coming among the deceived mob,
Bowing my sorrowful gaze,
You step on a meek donkey
To the fatal gates - to shame,
Get lost!
*****
Whisper a spell when shining
I managed to catch the falling stars,
But what will change our lot?
All the same swamps, copses,
Still the same midnight, game and wilderness...
And even if God's power
And helped, implemented
The hopes of our dark souls,
So what?
There's no turning back
To what we once lived,
Losses cannot be counted, cannot be forgotten,
Slap from Pilate's soldiers
Nothing can wash away - and nothing can forgive,
How can one not forgive neither torment nor blood,
No trembling on the cross
All those killed in Christ,
How not to accept the coming news
In her disgusting nakedness.
Rooster on a church cross
Swims, swims, runs, runs...
How high he strives,
How smoothly, carefully, easily
And how vastly far away!
He is steeply arched, proud and simple,
The stern raises a long tail...
The whole firmament is running back,
And he goes ahead and continues to sing.
Sings that we live
That we will die, day after day
Years go by, centuries flow by -
It's like a river, like clouds.
Sings that everything is a lie
What was given by fate only for a moment
And my father's house, and my dear friend,
And a circle of children, and a circle of grandchildren,
Sings about what running holds
To the wonderful land of his ark,
That only the sleep of the dead is eternal,
Yes, God's temple, yes the cross, yes it is!
Peter's Memorial Day
"Show off, city Petrov, and stand
Unshakable, like Russia..."
Oh, if only grave bonds
Even for a single earthly moment
The poet and the Tsar have now dissolved!
Where is the City of Peter? And by whose hand
His beauty, his strongholds
And the altars are destroyed?
Abyss, chaos - the kingdom of Satan,
Destroyed by blind elements.
And so he breathed over Russia,
Revolted in God's order and harmony -
And hidden by the accursed abyss
Great and Holy City,
Created by Peter and Pushkin.
And yet it will come, the time will come
And Sundays and activities,
Insight and repentance.
Russia! Remember Peter.
Peter means Stone. Son of the Lord
A temple will be built on Stone
And he will say: “Only to Peter will I give
Dominion over the underworld."
Light
Neither emptiness nor darkness is given to us:
There is light everywhere, eternal and faceless...
It's midnight. Darkness. The silence of the basilica
Take a closer look: it’s not completely dark there,
In the bottomless, black vault above you,
There's a narrow window on the wall,
Distant, barely visible, blind,
Shimmering with mystery into the temple
From night to night for eleven centuries...
And around you? Do you feel these
Crosses on slippery stone floors,
The coffins of the saints, buried under cover,
And the terrible silence of those places,
Filled with an indescribable miracle,
Where is the black altar cross
He raised his heavy arms,
Where is the sacrament of the filial crucifixion
Is God the Father Himself invisibly guarding?
There is some light that the darkness cannot crush.
Against the background of Russian modernism, Bunin's poetry stands out as good old. She continues the eternal Pushkin tradition and in her pure and strict outlines provides an example of nobility and simplicity. Happily old-fashioned and orthodox, the author has no need for "free verse"; he feels at ease, he is not cramped in all these iambs and trochees that the good old time denied us. He accepted the inheritance. He does not care about new forms, since the old is far from being exhausted, and for poetry it is the last words that are not at all valuable. And the dear thing about Bunin is that he is only a poet. He does not theorize, does not classify himself as a member of any school, he has no theory of literature: he simply writes beautiful poetry. And he writes them when he has something to say and when he wants to say it. Behind his poems one senses something else, something more: himself. He has behind the poems, behind the soul.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin. Photo ok. 1890
His lines are of tried and tested ancient coinage; his handwriting is the clearest in modern literature; his drawing is compressed and concentrated. Bunin draws from the unperturbed Kastalsky key. Both internally and externally, his best poems evade prose just in time (sometimes he does not have time to evade); rather, he makes prose poetic; rather, he conquers it and transforms it into poetry, rather than creating poetry as something different and special from it. His verse seemed to have lost its independence, its isolation from everyday speech, but through this it did not become vulgar. Bunin often breaks his line in the middle, ending a sentence where the verse did not end; but as a result, something natural and living arises, and the indissoluble integrity of our word is not sacrificed to versification. It must be said not as a condemnation, but as great praise for him, that even his rhymed poems give the impression of whiteness: he does not boast of rhyme, although he masters it boldly and uniquely - but it is not the center of beauty in his art. Reading Bunin, we are convinced how much poetry there is in our prose and how the ordinary is akin to the sublime. He extracts beauty from everyday life and knows how to find new signs of old objects.
Ivan Bunin. Life and wanderings
He tells himself the poetry of his life, its microscopy, its individual moods. Imbued with the spirit of honesty, he has no fear of prose, no false shame in front of it, and it is so normal for him to compare the wings of gliding seagulls with white eggshells, or to call the clouds shaggy, or with the help of the sun to turn the rough patch of a windmill into gold. Poeticizing the facts, he is not afraid of the old, but not aging values of the world, he does not hesitate to sing what many eyes have already stopped on, what many other people have already sung. Spring, a stream, sunrise, midday, persistent songs of nightingales, doves, his favorite stars, February, April, the “golden iconostasis of sunset” - all this continues to inspire him, all this, seemingly exhausted by his predecessors on different ends of the earth, was waiting for him , exists for him, fresh and bright, not weakened in its pristine purity. True, this same property of Bunin makes the weaker of his poems too indisputable and innately textbook.
The poet is restrained, he does not impose his mental states on nature, he is loving? her for herself: after all, it is not at all necessary that she necessarily and always correspond to something human. Bunin does not want to say more than is true: he, the truthful one, has words that correspond to the phenomena, and that is why you believe him, you don’t doubt him. Careful and chaste, a classic of life, he does not invent, does not compose, and does not introduce himself into places where one can do without him. When he speaks about himself, it is an internal necessity, and the word belongs to him by right.
He does not waste his lyricism in vain; In general, he is not talkative. Having spoken in ungenerous words about something important or accidental, about what happened in nature or in the rooms of the estate, in a strict outline of irreplaceable lines, conveying some eastern legend or parable, he thereby inevitably and, as if not of his own free will, awakens in us a well-known impression, a warm movement of the heart.
He draws facts, and from them beauty itself, organically, is born. And you can call it white, because it is his favorite color; the epithets “white, silver, silvery” are often heard on its light pages. Not only on his window, “silver with frost, as if chrysanthemums were blooming,” but in general his typical poems seem to be covered with frost, and they sometimes evoke the idea of just those captivating patterns that our Russian landscape painter Moroz draws on the glass, and they sometimes they ring like the crystal pendants of that chandelier, which Bunin mentions more than once in his poems.
His poetry is calm, without exclusivity, without events. His life is slow and dull. His heart had already become “sober and colder,” and he was already touched by the first frosts of life. At times he himself resembles the “dream-flower” of his poem: “it is alive, but dry.” This combination of vitality and dryness ultimately leads Bunin to a serious and thoughtful element. His poetry does not burn or burn, there is no pathos in it, but the power of sincerity and truth is inherent in it. So typical of him that he had to give his beloved only a “restrained bow,” while he passionately wanted to cling to her “at least once, just once, with all my heart, in this early, in this sweet hour.” He has great and difficult self-control; but this is not indifference to love - on the contrary, he enthusiastically waits for it and knows how terrible, and creepy, and demanding it is in its very happiness:
Oh, there will be, there will be terrible moments!
And the freshness of wet braids, and the sweetness of young lips
I will, I will drink! I live in passionate hope
Take your whole soul - and give it all to you!
General tranquility, bright autumn, when not only the “chamber of amber” crumbles, but life itself, and with a frozen sadness in her face a girl comes to the fountain, dragging a loose shawl over the leaves, and the days for which “I do not regret anything” run away - This autumnal spirit of Bunin’s poetry somehow does not allow us to talk about what feelings predominate in it, what primarily drives its confident but slow gait. In this poetry, as in autumn, there is no predominance at all.
He agrees to sing an epithalamium to the pure image of the newlywed, only even more embellished and deepened by the rapprochement of wedding and death:
Take it at the appointed hour
A celebration of young life!
Be loved, immaculate:
The dead hour of midnight is near,
Sleep and its darkness are near.
Save the wedding dress,
Save your flowers:
In a life short and sad
Only the beginningless shines,
Immaculate light of love!
But at the same time, bowing the sacrament of marriage before the highest sacrament of love, he triumphs in his lawless victory:
You're a stranger, but you love me
You only love me.
You won't forget me
Until the last day.
You are obedient and modest
I followed him from the crown,
But you bowed your face
He didn't see his face...
He sings both stormy love and its tender silence, and in the same poem both passion burns and the quiet breath of brotherly tenderness is heard:
At a late hour we were with her in the field.
I touched the tender lips trembling.
"I want hugs until it hurts,
Be ruthless and rude to me."
Tired, she asked tenderly:
“Lully, let me rest!
Don't kiss so hard and rebelliously
Lay your head on my chest."
The stars sparkled quietly above us,
There was a subtle smell of fresh dew.
I touched you tenderly with my lips
To hot cheeks and to braids.
And she forgot. Once I woke up
Like a child sighed half asleep,
But, looking at it, she smiled faintly
And again she pressed herself against me.
Night reigned for a long time in the dark field.
For a long time I guarded a sweet dream...
And then on the golden throne,
Shined quietly in the east
It’s a new day, it’s getting cool in the fields
I woke her up quietly
And in the steppe, sparkling and scarlet,
I walked home through the dew.
In view of the same autumnal weakness and tranquility of the middle-aged heart, it cannot be said that the author even pathetically loved nature; he simply notices it, poetically states its great fact, and from his palette takes the right colors and shades for it: “a cool and empty day,” the pinkish ashes of the sky, the sunny chambers of the forest - and even the dream of memories, its distance, turns blue for him. He is a great master of landscape, depicter of nature. How much greenery it has, the breath of the Russian village, how many fields, rye, haymaking; what sweet vapors rush from his grain fields! Although he himself (somehow listlessly and prosaically) says that “it is not the landscape that attracts him, it is not the colors that his greedy gaze will notice, but what shines in these colors - love and the joy of being,” but this is only an unsuccessful commentary on his own artistic text, an optional reference to the poetic page. In fact, he is most committed to the landscape, and autumn is grateful to him that he is an incomparable poet of leaf fall, when
The forest is like a painted tower,
Lilac, gold, crimson,
A cheerful, motley wall
Standing above a bright clearing.
Bunin should not renounce this power of his as a painter, because with it he in no way weakens his own and others’ mood. The greater his merit is that, as we have already said, he does not impose himself on nature, and yet, involuntarily, from the touch of his careful and unerring brush, a natural connection is revealed between the appearance of the landscape and the soul of the poet, between the impassive life of nature and the human heart. And now the star looks like an awakened child:
And like a child after sleep,
The star trembles in the fire of the morning star,
And the wind blows in her eyelashes,
So that she doesn't close them.
Over the lake, over the forest backwater -
Elegant green birch. –
“Oh, girls! How cold it is in spring!
I’m shaking all over from the wind and frost,”
in a kindred rapprochement, nature turns to the intercession of people, all these girls, like the birch tree, protecting their “green ribbons.”
Or, in the lingering melodies of a waltz, for the one whose “petals of her open lips grew cold,”
The shine of chandeliers and the ripple of mirrors
Merged into one crystal mirage -
And the ballroom wind blows,
The warmth of the fragrant fans.
And first love is so combined with this memory of the rain that rushed by, “glassy, rare and vigorous”:
As soon as we reach the thicket,
Everything will calm down... Oh, dewy bush!
Oh, look, happy and brilliant,
And the chill of submissive lips!
Now the poet’s slow heart is stingy with tenderness - all the more precious when the latter nevertheless arises in its gracious inevitability and melts all ice, all alienation. And here we read:
In the forest, in the mountain - a spring alive and clear,
Above the spring - an old cabbage roll
With a blackened popular print icon,
And in the spring there is birch bark.
I do not love, O Rus', your timid
Thousands of years of slavish poverty.
But this cross, but this white ladle...
Humble, dear features!..
“I don’t love”... But is it possible not to love here? For Bunin, the feeling is in no hurry, but it is deep when it comes, when people or nature finally snatch it, ripe, from a hard-to-penetrate chest.
There is no predominance in his poetry, but the “dream flower”, but the yellow sweet clover of drought, but leaf fall in nature and in life cannot give rise to the color of sadness - and so they cast a haze of restrained, noble melancholy over his poems. He then becomes sad when it is impossible not to be sad, when all these feelings are legitimate without dispute. Someone stopped loving him, someone left him, and there is no one to expect dispatches from...
Soon Trinity Day, soon songs, wreaths and mowing...
Everything is blooming and singing, young hopes are melting...
Oh, spring dawns and warm May dews!
Oh, my distant youth!
But he is happy because he is happy because he can still remember the distance, yearn for his youthful spring: after all, the time is coming, that last time, when you no longer regret the lost youth - the last, indifferent old age...
“Smile for me,” deceive me, he asks the leaving woman; and she, perhaps, will give him a “farewell caress” and still leave, and he will be left alone. There will be no despair, there will be no suicide - only autumn will become even more deserted:
And it hurts me to look alone
Into the late afternoon gray darkness.
..................................
Well! I'll light the fireplace, I'll drink,
It would be nice to buy a dog.
And perhaps the very unrequited love already weakens the torment of loneliness. The main thing is to love yourself, to desire this lovely fleeing Vesnyanka. And on the other hand, for sadness to arise, some kind of personal catastrophe is not at all necessary: it is enough that life in its very process is something impoverishing, some kind of irresistible desolation. “This room was once our nursery,” but now mother is no longer there, the spruce tree planted by father is gone, and now no one will respond to the “mad melancholy” of an adult, too old; and the whole house, the whole abandoned and orphaned estate is a ruined nest, and she herself can’t bear to listen to how the dead pendulum sings its depressing departure to her on the long autumn nights. The noble nest, the Turgenev principle, of which there is so much in Bunin’s poems, gave them all the poetry of its elegism - the poetry of an empty room, a sad balcony, a lonely hall, where nature is uniquely reflected, playing on its old floorboards with the rays of its ageless sun, drawing its “ fawn squares." And with the pain of memory, the romance of the heart, an unexpected trembling chord of an old harpsichord sounds - “in this mode, full of sadness, our grandmothers once sang”... In response to all these poems by Bunin about life drying up, about old daguerreotypes, no one’s heart can don’t get overwhelmed by the sorrowful consonance. For we all lose our stars or their reflections in the earth's water:
That star that swayed in the dark water
Under a crooked willow tree in a dead garden, -
The light that flickered in the pond until dawn,
Now I will never find it in heaven.
And where the moment of loneliness is not depicted in this beautiful sunset light, there is despair, hopelessness, black sorrow knocking on the soul - and one cannot read “The Shrub” without emotion, about this blizzard that will “carry us indifferently, like a haystack, like a forgotten sheepfold." And why, why, exhausted from thirst, does the Croat wander far from his native Zagreb with his monkey, why does a teenage gypsy girl sit by the road, next to her dozing father? But “for some reason many such sad childhoods blossomed and will blossom more than once in the desolation of the steppe fields”:
Sleep under the tent, girl!
Wake up - Wake up the sick father, harness -
And again on the road... And for what, who can say?
Life, like a grave in a field, is silent.
And “on the deserted, on the great graveyard of world life,” on this graveyard, to which the author’s poetry often returns, the blizzard of death extinguishes the stars, rings the bells and “flutters its shroud.” However, Bunin portrays death not so much in its tragic guise as in its silence, which brings reconciliation and sadness to a person. Sad memorial services are served, cemeteries are filled with “funeral nonsense,” and it hurts, it hurts—but before the inevitable, the murmur on your lips falls silent, and you bow your knees in prayerful humility, and in your very sadness you find consolation.
Fence, cross, green grave,
Dew, space and silence of the fields. –
Fragrance, ringing censer,
Breath of ruby coals!
Today is a year. The last tunes
Last breath, last incense. –
Bloom, ripen, new crops,
For new harvests! Your turn will come too.
The following poems about death, a poetic dirge, also make an unusually strong impression:
SHORE
Outside the window, a new spring is shining.
And in the hut - your last
Wax candle and plank
Long rook.
They combed their hair, dressed them up, decorated them,
The pale face was covered with a cloth -
And they left, left for the time being
Your mute double.
He has neither a first name nor a patronymic,
No friends, no home, no relatives;
Quiet deathly loneliness
Fatal days.
May he rest in peace, may he rest in peace
In the bosom of unearthly existence!
He will hide in the infinite blue sea
White rook.
Here the simple and solemn rapprochement between the hut and space, the death of the peasant and common existence is irresistibly touching. In the long boat of the coffin, a tired plowman, a tired swimmer, he reached his shore, our common shore - and now he no longer exists, and in the orphanage of death he has neither a name, nor a patronymic, nor a home, nor relatives - the last and great Nothing! But he, this Nothing, was taken into the bosom of the world Everything, and his white boat hid in the blue sea of the world, may he rest in peace, may he rest in the bosom of unearthly existence! – when you read these poems by Bunin, this prayer that sees you off from life to death, you want to cross yourself...
Thus, from the lonely sufferings of the individual, Bunin is brought out by the thought of the eternity of beauty, of the connection of times and worlds, and from his beloved everyday life, from this hall “in the old alleys behind the Arbat” or on Plyushchikha, where “bunnies” run from mirrors carried on the street, his consciousness You are distracted by important and majestic moments, the wisdom of the East, alien mythology - and it’s as if some kind of chariot of humanity is moving in front of you. From the “watch with enamel” and from the “radiant pendulum”, which “arrogantly measured its swing to the case” - from all this everyday life, he imperceptibly, but inevitably comes to think about sundials, about those whose copper dial has already turned green, but whose hand on the dial is “guided by God himself - with the whole universe in harmony.” He knows how to throw away radii from himself, move from the close to the distant, from the human to the divine, he “looks in this world for a combination of the beautiful and the eternal.” True, when he himself speaks about this, when he unnecessarily repeatedly teaches that the whole world is full of beauty, that “there is beauty in everything, beauty,” that the deer “in joyfully bestial swiftness” takes beauty away from the hunter, then it is precisely this kind of persistence that the nakedness of elementary philosophy produces a negative impression. Bunin is a philosopher only where he is not aware of it, where he does not break away from the images. He is not at all alien to serious and sublime thoughts, but unexpected thoughts; and on the contrary, his worldview, deliberately expressed, seems to bring from somewhere far away the cooling breath of banality - and it would be much better if he did not remind that nature is a temple not made by hands of God, and also, on the other hand, that “other there is no happiness in the world,” like, at his abundant “dachas,” “wandering with an open head, watching how the children scattered golden sand in the gazebo.”
But how attractive is his philosophy, which itself flows from poetic contemplation, which has not yet cooled down from direct comprehension! It stands, for example, off the coast of Asia Minor, where the kingdom of the Amazons was:
Were wild
Their riotous fun. A lot of days
Their joyful cries sounded here
And the neighing of bathing horses.
But our century is a moment. And who will point out now,
Where on the sand did they step?
Isn't it the wind among the desert sea?
Isn't it these naked shores?
So everything passes, and “the coastal areas where the Tauro-Scythians roamed are no longer the same,” but in the eternity of love, generations separated by centuries again merge, and into the same ones. Loving female eyes now look at the former stars. And at night, cosmic night, the entire sea is saturated with fine dust of light. Bunin generally believes in the sun and in the sun, in his Balder; he knows that the springs of the universe are inexhaustible and the lamp of the human soul is unquenchable. And even when we burn, our eternal life will not die in us, and the light of the chosen ones, now still “invisible to those who do not see,” will reach the earth after many, many years, just as the stars are the unquenchable light of planets that themselves have long since faded. And, perhaps, not only the chosen ones, but all of us - future stars. In fact, won’t she light up in the sky as a meek and joyful star, who in the “Epitaph” says about herself: “I died as a bride-maid... on an April day I left people, left forever, submissively and silently,” or the one with a coquettishly simple “hairstyle and a cape on her shoulders,” whose portrait is in the chapel above the crypt and whose large clear eyes, in a frame intertwined with crepe, seem to ask: “Why am I in the crypt - at noon, in the summer”? .
Faithful to the sun, caught in his “golden net”, obedient to nature, Bunin does not oppose it: spring tells him about immortality, autumn evokes sad thoughts. He so wonderfully showed that “again, again the soul forgives the fleeting, deceiving year.” The soul forgives nature and fate. It is impossible to resist the “languid hunger” and the call of spring, the bright and tender sky, which promises something, and the poor, trusting heart of a person again expects affection and love, so as not to wait for them again. Bunin’s soul is not only “submissive for a moment,” but in general he is subjugated by the universe, although in certain moments, when “the dead Saturn rises in the east and shines like lead,” the poet no longer has pious thoughts about the Creator-worker, scattering the “fiery grains” of stars in the world, and the reverent condemnation: “Truly your deeds are sinister and cruel, Creator!” This general, only momentarily wavering, submission of Bunin has its source in the already mentioned ability of him to draw at least dark, sad threads between himself and the rest, to conquer centuries and spaces. So far away, near Hebron, he came out from under a black tent, and his soul searched for a long time for at least one close soul in the twilight and repeated “the sweetest of earthly words - Rachel!”
Shined
Silent stars over the old
Forgotten earth... In the grave
Abraham slept with Isaac and Sarah...
And it was dark in the ancient tomb of Rachel.
Thus the world's distances unfolded and then closed again in the poet's unifying heart. It is dear to everything. And that’s why it doesn’t amaze you that Bunin also has exotic motifs, that not only the earth and distant lands, but also the “boa constrictor” of the ocean, with its giant steamers, and all the courage of the sea, the “blue nirvana of the sea,” and the temple of the Sun, and Egyptian sphinxes - everything finds in him a singer and herald. His geography is wide - perhaps too wide, his names too often are alien and alien to the ear - but there is also a center: his poetic individuality, which connects all this different things into one majestic beauty. The past and the present are so combined in Bunin that even nature lies before him, not only the present, but also the old, fairy-tale one - the way it was when the ancient prince galloped through the small forests and the magpie foretold to him the death of his son, when “the sun was cloudy and hot.” It burned like a bird in the ancient wilds,” and the feather grass was spread out in front of Igor’s regiment, and the spear of the dead hero stuck into the mound stuck out into the mound, and Baba Yaga scolded herself:
The devil told you to go to hell with being a servant.
You old fool, foolish bastard!
All this element Vasnetsova close to Bunin too.
The artistic worldview of our poet is slowly being created and put forward, just as his fame slowly came to him. But it has long shown that the most characteristic feature in it is the internal connection of reality and myth, tactile certainty and the limitless. Bunin accepted both of these categories, connected them into one life and, lovingly and attentively approaching the small, thereby included the great. He did not turn away from the most prosaic reality and still became a poet. Frank, free-spirited, in his honest work he did not shame his original talent and did everything he could and can do. Or he can do many things. Both gentle and steel words are obedient to him; a master of a concentrated sonnet, which he carved with a steel blade and at a height, on an emerald ice floe, he is the master of a compressed and deep word, a living example of poetic concentration - and at the same time he knows all the rapturous ipesy and voluptuousness of oriental music, splashes of the “Bakhchisarai Fountain” he conveys in these tender verses:
ROSES SHIRAZ
Sing, nightingale! They are languishing
In tents of patterned mimosas,
There's silver on their eyelashes
Diamonds of languid large tears.
The garden this night is like Irem’s garden;
And voluptuous and pale,
Like in shaknizir - the hiding place of a harem,
The moon looks into the pattern of branches.
The white chalk of the walls is unclear.
But there. where is the light, its atlas
Burns so green and passionately
Like the emerald of a snake's eyes.
Sing, nightingale! Desires languish.
Flowers are silent - they have no words:
Their sweet call is fragrance.
Diamonds of tears - their humility.
Not alien to passion, but more transparent, crystal, icy, Bunin, like the stream of his poem, slowly and steadily came to the sea, to the world sea, which accepted him
Into your blue vastness,
Into your solemn bosom.
In the wondrous poem “Christ,” which is pierced by the light of midday and radiant in its very sounds, he tells how painters walked through the forests of the temple in wide robes, with tassels, into the dome - to heaven; they, together with the painters, sang songs there and painted Christ, who listened to them, and it all seemed to them that
Under these
Will remember simple songs
He is the Threshold in the sun in Nazareth,
Workbench and cube chiton.
For the closest thing to Christ is the everyday tunic and simple songs; That is why Bunin, the singer of simple and beautiful songs, the artist of Russian reality, became close to Palestine, and to Egypt, to religion - to all the beauty and to the entire breadth of the universe. His worthy poetic path led him from the temporary to the eternal, from the near to the distant, from fact to myth. And therefore his wandering, his tireless longing for the seas and lands receives the highest justification, and this poem, one of the most profound in all literature, reaches the utmost heights of religious beauty:
CALL
Like old sailors living in retirement,
Everyone dreams at night, the space is blue
And the nets of unsteady shrouds; as sailors believe,
That their seas call in the hours of night melancholy -
This is what my memories call me:
On new paths, on new wanderings
They order to get up - to those countries, to those seas,
Where would I then drop anchors?
If only I could see the treasured Atlantis,
I will never go back to my native harbors,
But I know that I, in my dying dreams,
Everyone will dream of a network of resin ropes
Over the blue abyss, over the swell of the ocean:
Yes, I will be sensitive to the Captain’s voice!
Yes, if the world is a sea and a certain Captain rules its ships, then among the most sensitive to His voice, among God’s zealous sailors, is the poet Bunin...
Based on articles by the outstanding Russian literary critic Yu. I. Aikhenvald.
V.AKSYONOVA,
With. Miasskoe,
Chelyabinsk region
Studying the lyrics of Ivan Bunin in grades 5–11
In the “Approximate program in literature for a basic secondary school” (grades 5–9) (“Busturbat”, 2000), 10 hours are allocated for the study of the works of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin and poems such as “Dense, green spruce forest” are recommended for reading and study by the road...", "Evening", "Word", "Fairy Tale", "First matinee, silver frost...", "Still cold and cheese..." and others.
Let's analyze how Bunin's works are distributed in literary education programs edited by A.G. Kutuzova, V.Ya. Korovina, T.F. Kurdyumova, and we will offer our own version of studying the lyrics of I.A. Bunin from work experience (see table).
| Class | Program edited by | From work experience | ||
| Kutuzova A.G. | Korovina V.Ya. | Kurdyumova T.F. | ||
| 5 | Poems by I.A. Bunin are recommended for independent reading | “I remember a long winter evening...” | “Childhood”, “Fairy Tale”, “First Nightingale”, “Canary” | “Childhood”, “Fairy Tale”, “The First Nightingale”, “Summer Night”, “I Remember a Long Winter Evening...” |
| 6 | “I remember a long winter evening...”, “Summer night”, “On a window silver with frost...”, “First matinee, silver frost...”, “Plowman”, “Childhood” | “Plowman”, “The old man was blowing at the hut...”, “The hops on the tine are already drying up...” | ||
| 7 | Poems about native nature (including I.A. Bunin) | Lyrics of the early 20th century. I.A. Bunin. "Exile", "The Bird Has a Nest..." | “The bright April evening has burned out...”, “The fields smell of fresh herbs...”, “It’s still cold and cheese...” | |
| 8 | "Feather grass" | “The bird has a nest...” (after studying M.Yu. Lermontov’s poem “Mtsyri”) | ||
| 9 | “The Word”, “Russian Fairy Tale”, “Exile” | “The Lay”, “Feather grass” (after studying “The Lay of Igor’s Campaign”) | ||
| 10 | “Evening”, “And flowers, and bumblebees, and grass, and ears of corn...” (after studying Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'”) | |||
| 11 | Poetry I.A. Bunin (poems not specified) | “Epiphany Night”, “Night”, “Song”, “Loneliness”, “The Last Bumblebee”, “Dog” | “Epiphany Night”, “Night”, “Song”, “Loneliness”, “The Last Bumblebee” | “Epiphany Night”, “Night”, “Leaves are Falling in the Garden...”, “Loneliness”, “Forgotten Fountain” |
And so, in the program edited by A.G. Kutuzov's lyrics by Bunin are studied mainly in the 6th and 11th grades; edited by V.Ya. Korovina - in the 5th, 7th, 11th grades; edited by T.F. Kurdyumova - in the 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th grades. In the proposed system of lessons from grades 5 to 11, we annually turn to the lyrical works of Bunin.
The principle of studying the lyrics of I.A. Bunin - thematic. So, in the center of the conversation about I.A. Bunin in the 5th grade - the writer’s understanding of the world of childhood, his ability to create a special artistic time and space, to reveal the secrets of the human soul. In the 6th grade, we see the world of peasant labor, the village way of life and way of life; students should feel Bunin’s attitude towards his native land. In 7th grade - a lyrical image of living nature, all seasons, the miracle of landscape sketches. In the 8th grade - the theme of the motherland, home, foreign land and bitter loneliness. In 9th grade - reflection on history, memory and the meaning of speech, words in human life. In the 10th grade we will talk about happiness, in the 11th grade we will talk about the essence of human existence, love, and philosophical understanding of the world around us.
In the 8th, 9th, 10th grades we study Bunin’s works in extracurricular reading lessons or during prepared reading of poems we use part of the lessons when we study “Mtsyri” by M.Yu. Lermontov, “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” and Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'.”
Do rock study the lyrics of I.A. Bunin in the 5th grade, we’ll start by working on an excerpt from “The Life of Arsenyev”: “I was born half a century ago, in central Russia, in a village, on my father’s estate... Deserted fields, a lonely estate among them... In winter, the snow is endless sea, in summer - a sea of bread, herbs and flowers. And the eternal silence of these fields, their mysterious silence...
And late in the evening, when the garden was already blackening outside the windows with all its mysterious night blackness, and I was lying in the dark bedroom in my crib, some quiet star kept looking at me through the window, from above...”
The image of a star is also present in the poem “Summer Night,” which will help us begin a dialogue with the writer.
SUMMER NIGHT
“Give me a star,” the sleepy child repeats, “
ah, mommy...” She hugged him and
Sits with him on the balcony, on the steps,
Leading into the garden. And the garden, steppe, deaf,
Walking, getting dark, into the twilight of a summer night,
Along the slope to the beam. In the sky, in the east,
The lonely star turns red.“Give me, mommy...” She with a gentle smile
Looks into the thin face: “What, honey?”
“That star over there...” - “And for what?” - "Play..."
The leaves of the garden are babbling. With a thin whistle
Marmots in the steppe call each other. Child
He sleeps on his mother's knee. And mother
Hugging him, sighing a happy sigh,
Looks with big sad eyes
To a quiet distant star...
Sometimes you are like the twinkling stars!
First of all, let's ask what made a special impression on the guys, how they saw the author and his little hero (even if it was himself as a child). What pleases and surprises him in the world around him?
Invite students to draw a word picture of the poem. Quiet summer night. A white estate with columns, and a deserted steppe garden around it, as if “walking, darkening, into the twilight of a summer night, along the slope to the beam.” Starry sky. The stars twinkle quietly, and in the east “a lonely star blushes.”
Child on mother's lap.
Draw an image of your mother.
This is an image full of love, tenderness, understanding, wisdom and calm (“she looks with a gentle smile...”, “she, hugging him, sits with him on the balcony...”, “what, dear?..”) .
The image of the mother is beautiful, like the bottomless, calm sky. The human soul is so beautiful with love, tenderness, and wisdom.
What do we hear?
“The leaves of the garden are babbling,” a child babbles, a mother and son speak tenderly, marmots whistle subtly in the steppe, a mother sighs happily...
What do you think she sighs about, what she thinks about?
Probably about his son’s future, when he learns that his request is impossible - to get a star from the sky...
Yes, and we feel that the mother’s happy sigh is fraught with anxiety.
The main theme - the theme of childhood - is accompanied by the writer with an anxious motive of expectation of the future. What epithets speak of anxiety?
The star is “distant”, the “deaf” garden is getting dark, the mother looks with sad eyes...
So, the poem “Summer Night” is both the beauty of a landscape sketch, and a memory of childhood, and a thought about the future...
What does the poem “I remember - a long winter evening...” tell us?
I remember a long winter evening,
Twilight and silence;
The light of the lamp is dimly pouring,
The storm is crying at the window.
“My dear,” my mother whispers, “
If you want to take a nap,
To be cheerful and cheerful
Tomorrow morning to be again, -
Forget that the blizzard is howling,
Forget that you are with me
Remember the quiet whisper of the forest
And the mid-day summer heat;
Remember how the birches rustle,
And behind the forest, at the boundary,
Walk slowly and smoothly
Golden waves of rye!”
And advice to a friend
I listened trustingly
And, surrounded by dreams,
I started to forget myself.
Together with the quiet sleep merged
Lulling dreams -
Whisper of ripening ears
And the indistinct noise of birches...
This is a poem about childhood. It also contains the image of a beautiful tender mother and the image of a child. Only the child has already matured, something is bothering him, he cannot sleep, probably the howl of the blizzard scares him.
And in this poem, not one picture is painted, but two - a picture of a winter evening and a picture of “summer midday heat.” Find more images contrasted in this poem.
Evening - morning; crying - fun; the blizzard howls with hostility - the mother lovingly persuades and advises; twilight - gold of rye; The light of the lamp is dimming - the sunlight...
The author feels all the colors and sounds of nature. He manages to talk about the lyrical hero with such amazing brightness that we begin to feel unity with nature: the noise of birches, the whisper of ears of corn, and the warm gentle wind swaying the golden waves of rye - everything merges with the quiet sleep of the lyrical hero.
Do you, together with the lyrical hero, hear the noise of birches, the whisper of ears of corn? How is this achieved in the poem?
Yes, by repetition of consonant sounds (alliteration) - w, f, h, s, sch, h.
Find lines that start the same. This is anaphora. Why does the author use it? Anaphora helps to feel the fluency of speech, resembles lullabies, calms the baby...
Forget... Remember... Forget... Remember...
These are antonyms; they help to draw an image more clearly, enhance the impression, and make the poem easier to remember.
Bunin used many artistic means when creating this poem to convey to us the feelings of childhood - joy and anxiety, love and tenderness, beauty and charm...
Let's turn to the poem "Childhood".
CHILDHOOD
The hotter the day, the sweeter it is in the forest
Breathe in the dry, resinous aroma,
And I had fun in the morning
Wander through these sunny chambers!
Shine everywhere, bright light everywhere,
The sand is like silk... I’ll cling to the gnarled pine
And I feel: I’m only ten years old,
And the trunk is a giant, heavy, majestic.
The bark is rough, wrinkled, red,
But it’s so warm, so warmed up by the sun!
And it seems that the smell is not pine,
And the heat and dryness of sunlight.
What picture from his childhood does the poet remember?
A picture of a hot summer day in a “sweet” forest, where there is a “dry resinous aroma”, where “sand is like silk”, where there is fun, where “there is sparkle everywhere, bright light everywhere”.
The sensations of childhood are sensations of light, warmth, fun, happiness. Even the rough bark is “so warm, so warmed by the sun...”
The poem exudes warmth, kindness, and a fairy tale. As children, we all love fairy tales, perhaps because they contain kindness and miracles.
What is wonderful, fabulous about this poem?
Sunny chambers, silk sand, harmony of joy and happiness, warmth and light, beauty and love.
Let's compare this poem with the poem "Fairy Tale".
...And I dreamed that we, like in a fairy tale,
We walked along deserted shores
Over the wild blue seaside,
In a deep forest among the sands.It was a bright summer afternoon,
It was a hot day and illuminated
The whole forest was the sun, and from the sun
Filled with cheerful sparkle.The shadows lay in patterns
On the warm pink sand,
And the blue sky above the forest
He was pure and joyfully high.The mirror reflection of the sea played
In the tops of the pines, and flowed
Along the bark, dry and hard,
Resin, clearer than glass...I dreamed of the northern sea,
Deserted forest lands...
I dreamed of the distance, I dreamed of a fairy tale -
I dreamed of my youth.
How are these works similar?
In both poems, the lyrical hero walks in the forest on a hot summer day, where everything is illuminated by the sun, where the forest is filled with a cheerful shine, where the resin on the pine trees is amber and “transparent than glass.”
How are they different?
In the poem “Fairy Tale,” the hero is more mature, he is not alone, “she” appears, with whom the lyrical hero walks “along the deserted shores over the wild blue seaside.” And besides the image of the forest, the image of the northern sea also appears.
The mirror reflection of the sea played
In the tops of the pine trees...
Why did Bunin call the poem “Fairy Tale”?
The beauty of the painted picture is fabulous; the luminous afternoon is wonderful, the warm pink sand and the patterns on it are amazing; the blue sky is joyfully high; The mirror surface of the sea, its spaciousness, its distance fascinates.
The lyrical hero is not alone, he is young, in love and happy.
For us, readers, this poem reveals vast artistic spaces, the depth of the universe and the human soul.
We find out the role of fiction and the role of memory in poems about childhood.
Bunin remembers the feelings of childhood - light, kindness, warmth, care, tenderness, love that surrounded him.
The sunny chambers are fantastic, the pink sand is like silk, the cheerful shine, the patterns, the wild Lukomorie.
The work of the wonderful poet I.A. Bunin is a whole world, each poem is a part of this world. All the poems we read are about childhood, the lyrical hero of which - the child - grew up, his image became richer and more diverse, he was vigilant and sensitive to the world around him, he learned about this world, and knowledge of the world for a child is both joy and anxiety, and mystery.
Bunin seems to be telling us: what a miracle it is to live, to grow up, what a joy it is to be alone with nature, to see the beauty of the sea and the forest, the fields and meadows, the forest and the steppe...
In the poetic world of Bunin lives the soul of a child who never tires of learning the secrets of the universe, enjoying life, and loving the beauty of nature.
In the 5th grade, we became acquainted with the poetic world of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, his poems about childhood, about the recesses of the human soul. Remember what the concept of “poetic world” means. This means that the poet’s work is a whole world, rich and diverse. And at the same time, the poetic world is a self-portrait of the poet. Only this portrait reflects not the external features of a person, but the internal ones, which we call the soul. In lyric poetry, the main person is the poet himself. However, in addition to the author’s “I,” Bunin’s lyrics are inhabited by a string of various people: plowmen, loaders, raftsmen, rafting timber, fishermen, sailors...
Bunin's broad sympathies for working people are known. For him, happiness is to see peaceful peasant labor, joy is to hear “the hum of a threshing machine on the threshing floor,” “the sound of a roller and an ax,” “the noise of a mill,” “the creaking of a coulter in a spring furrow...”.
Today in class we will get acquainted with three poems by I.A. Bunin about the life of the village, about people working on the land, but we will structure our work as in the 5th grade. I will give you cards with these poems printed on them. And you will try to come up with a name for them yourself and pick up the missing epithets, and only then we will read them expressively and complete the tasks of the didactic material for each poem.
In weak classes, this work can be given in variants.
Option I.
Light and pale blue sky,
Fields in spring haze. Wet steam
I cut it - and they climb onto the rootstocks
Layers of the earth, a priceless gift from God.Hurrying along the furrow after the coulters,
I leave soft traces -
So good with bare feet
Step onto the velvet of the warm furrow!
Exercise 1. What sounds are repeated in the first stanza? And in other stanzas?
The repetition of consonant sounds is called alliteration. The poem repeats the sound [ l], 11 times - [?], and [ and] And [ w] - ? What do these sounds convey? Do you hear the rustling, rustling of layers of earth, the gentleness, softness of the walking plow, the crumbling of the furrow under the bare feet of the plowman?
Exercise 2. Find words with figurative meanings. Correct the errors in the table.
Exercise 3. Fill in the blanks in the text.
The lyrical hero of the poem is surrounded by tender ____________ nature, where there is a pale blue sky, _______________ haze of the first leaves and shoots, and the sea of black soil is lilac-blue.
I.A. Bunin glorifies in the poem “_______” the generosity of nature and the joy of labor on earth. Land is a priceless ___________ gift. She is velvety, warm, generous, and working with her is a great happiness.
Exercise 4. Read the epic “Volga and Mikula Selyaninovich” yourself and compare these two works. What are their similarities?
Exercise 5. Test.
1. The poet uses rhyme in the poem:
2. The poet used a rhyme:
3. The poem is written:
4. The repetition of consonant sounds is called:
Option II.
The hops are already drying up on the meadow
Behind the farmsteads on the melon fields,
In the cool rays of the sun
Bronze melons turn red.The bread has already been brought, and in the distance,
Over the old steppe hut,
Sparkles with a golden patch
Wing on a gray windmill.
(1903)
Lexical work
Hop- a climbing plant with long thin stems.
Tyn- fence, palisade.
Bakhcha- a plot sown with watermelons and melons.
Windmill- windmill.
Didactic material
Exercise 1. Pick up the missing epithets. Analyze whether your epithets coincide with Bunin’s?
The hops are already drying up on the meadow
Behind the farmsteads on the melon fields,
In the cool rays of the sun
The __________ melons are turning red.The bread has already been brought, and in the distance,
Over the old steppe hut,
Sparkles with _______ patch
Wing on a gray windmill.
Exercise 2.
a) Draw in words what the poet depicted in the poem?
b) Complete the picture. What grows near the house?
c) What colors would you use to depict:
drying hops -
mill -
d) Why would two colors be needed to depict a mill? Which?
e) What season did the poet depict in the poem? Prove your opinion.
Exercise 3. Come up with a title for this poem. What is reflected in your title - the theme or idea of the work?
Exercise 4. The same beginning of two or more adjacent sentences is called anaphora, which Bunin uses in this poem:
The hops are already drying up...
The bread has already been delivered...
Remember the poems that also have anaphora. Whose poem is this?
The sky was already breathing in autumn,
The sun shone less often...
Exercise 5. Test.
1. What is landscape?
2. In the line “The wing on the gray windmill sparkles with a golden patch”:
3. Find the correct lexical interpretation of the word “bread” in the poem:
Exercise 6. Fill in the blanks in the text.
In the landscape of I.A. Bunin has a lot of bright colors (they turn red [ which?- bronze] melons, sparkles [ how?- gold] windmill wing), because the poem depicts autumn, and autumn [ what?- generous] with paints. Of course, Bunin admires the generosity and beauty of autumn nature, but the main thing for the poet is the happiness of seeing the fruits of human labor (hops, melons in the melon patch, bread has been brought in, the mill is working), human happiness is in peaceful labor, in abundance.
Option III.
An old woman in a black scaffold whitewashed her hut with chalk
And she outlined the windows with a blue border.
And the house grew younger - it blushed, it became ashamed -
And the wiped window sparkled festively.
(1903)
Lexical work
Threshing- extracting seed grains from ears by beating them with an iron flail.
winnow- clean the threshed grain from chaff and debris on a winnowing fan or tossing it with a wooden shovel.
Barn floor- platform for threshing compressed bread.
Plakhta- a skirt made of handicraft Ukrainian fabric.
Hut- in the south of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus - a peasant house.
Saint Spas- a church holiday at the end of summer.
blush- blush, turn red.
Exercise 1. Exact word.
Find the missing words. If the words you choose do not coincide with Bunin’s, think about why the poet chose this particular color, this action.
The old man at the hut was winnowing, throwing a shovel,
Just in time for the Holy Savior, having finished threshing.
An old woman in a ___________ block was whitewashing the hut with chalk
And she lined the windows with a border of _____________________.And the sun, turning pink, set in the steppe dust,
And the shadows of the feet lay in pillars on the threshing floor,
And the house grew younger - it glowed, _______________ -
And the wiped window sparkled festively.
Exercise 2. Choose a title for this poem:
"The Old Man and the Old Woman";
"Holy Savior";
"Happiness".
Explain your choice. What is reflected in your title: the theme of the work or its idea?
Exercise 3.
a) Name what colors you would need if you were painting this picture.
b) Tell me, what would you hear if you approached the fence of this hut? What can you compare the noise of falling grain to?
c) Think about what grows near the hut: what trees, shrubs, flowers?
d) What else can you see in the courtyard of the house?
Exercise 4. Match these words with words with opposite lexical meanings:
getting younger -
festive -
Is there an antithesis in this poem?
Exercise 5. Fill in the blanks in the text.
In the poem by I.A. Bunin painted an everyday picture of peasant labor: _____________ and _______________ huts. And behind this everyday peasant labor, a festive, bright canvas emerges. The grain thrown by _______________ turns pink-gold in the rays of the setting sun. And the house shines with _______________ windows and shines with _______________ whiteness after whitewashing.
Exercise 6. Test.
1. In the line “And the shadows of the feet lay in pillars on the threshing floor,” the author resorted to:
2. In the line “And the hut grew younger - blushed, was ashamed” is used:
3. Find a metaphor:
4. Determine the rhyme:
From a poem about native nature. For example: “The bright April evening has burned out...”, “In the fields 
smells like fresh herbs...", "First matinee, silver frost...", "Still cold and cheese...".
For Bunin, nature is a healing and beneficial force that gives a person everything: joy, wisdom, beauty, a sense of the infinity, diversity and integrity of the world, a sense of one’s unity, kinship with it.
Happiness, according to Bunin, is complete merging with nature. It is accessible only to those who have penetrated its secrets, who are attentive, who “see and hear.” But Bunin’s vision and hearing were special. Throughout his life, the poet deepened and refined his sense of belonging to the natural world. His lyrical calendar of nature affirms the unique value of every minute lived by a person under the open sky. Let's hurry after the poet into the field, into the forest, into the grove... Let's see the world of nature through his eyes, let's try to feel the harmony of this world.
Imagine yourself in an April grove.
A cold twilight lay over the meadows.
The rooks are sleeping; distant noise of the stream
In the darkness it mysteriously died out.But fresh smells like greenery
Young frozen black soil,
And flows cleaner over the fields
Starlight in the silence of the night.Through the hollows, reflecting the stars,
The pits shine with quiet water,
Cranes calling to each other
They move in a cautious crowd.And spring in the green grove
Waiting for dawn, holding his breath, -
He listens sensitively to the rustling of trees,
Looks vigilantly into the dark fields.
(1892)
Spring. Evening. Cold dusk. But why do we still feel comfortable in these spring meadows, in the grove, in the field?
Starlight streams over the fields, and on the earth there is also starlight:
Through the hollows, reflecting the stars,
The pits shine with quiet water.
Yes, we are, as it were, in a necklace of stars, and we are not alone:
And spring in the green grove
Waiting for dawn, holding his breath...
“The cranes... are moving in a crowd...” “The rooks are sleeping...”
What do we hear?
A mysterious silence surrounds us: the distant sound of the stream has died down, even spring is holding its breath... But still we can hear the rustling of trees, the cries of cranes, the quiet splash of water...
How many colors does Bunin use when painting this spring picture?
The combination of light and dark colors is the main palette of the landscape; against its background is the green color of winter crops, groves and, of course, the attire of spring itself. And all this in the fusion of “the light of stars and the sparkle of water.”
How do you breathe in the atmosphere of this poem? Why?
Thanks to the magic of poetry, we, remaining in the field where spring vigilantly looks, see summer around us.
The fields smell like fresh herbs,
Meadows cool breath!
From hayfields and oak forests
I catch a fragrance in it.The wind will blow and freeze...
And over the fields the distance grows dark,
And the cloud grows because of them,
It blocked out the sun and turned blue.Unexpected lightning game,
Like a sword flashing for a moment,
Suddenly it lights up from behind the hill -
And again darkness and languor...How mysterious you are, thunderstorm!
How I love your silence
Your sudden shine, -
Your crazy eyes!
(1901)
What does Bunin sing in this poem?
Summer, the fragrance of hayfields and oak forests, meadows, the freshness of grass and a summer thunderstorm.
What attracts the poet to a summer thunderstorm?
Mystery, languor, “unexpected lightning play, like a sword flashing for an instant.”
How does Bunin convey the admiration of the lyrical hero?
Epithets: mysterious, unexpected...
Comparison: lightning game like a sword...
Personification: thunderstorms “crazy eyes”, “the wind will freeze”.
Metaphors: breath of the meadows, catching the fragrance.
Anaphora (in the last stanza):
Your sudden shine, -
Your crazy eyes!
The poet does not talk about thunderclaps, but we hear them. Why?
Bunin uses alliteration to R- 12 sounds. This fills the text of the poem with sharp, loud sounds, reminding us of the sound of thunder.
The poem can be divided into three parts: in the first stanza - the enjoyment of the summer fragrance of fields, oak forests, meadows; in the second and third - a description of the pre-storm state of nature (the wind freezes, the distance darkens, a cloud grows, covers the sun, lightning illuminates the darkness, in all the languor...), in the last stanza - an outburst of feelings of the lyrical hero.
How mysterious you are, thunderstorm!
How I love your silence
Your sudden shine, -
Your crazy eyes!
Let's meet autumn in the garden.
First matinee, silver frost!
Silence and ringing cold at dawn.
The wheel tracks turn green with a fresh shine
In the silver expanse, in the yard.I'll go to the cold naked garden -
His outfit is scattered all over the ground.
The sky shines with turquoise, and in the garden
Nasturtiums burn with a red flame.The first matinee is a harbinger of winter days.
But the sky shines brighter from above,
The heart became both sober and colder.
But the late flowers glow like flames.
(1903)
What mood does this poem evoke?
Frost always invigorates, so the mood becomes joyful and upbeat.
And who felt not only the cheerfulness, energy, beauty of this landscape, but also anxiety? Why?
An alarming and mysterious feeling arises because in each stanza words with the root “cold” are repeated: “cold at dawn”, “cold naked garden”, “the heart has become colder”.
But there is so much beauty in nature that it overcomes anxiety: “silver frost”, “turquoise sky”, “red nasturtiums”, “late flowers are blooming”; the lyrical hero walks along the earth, “dressed in the attire of a garden” - a soft multi-colored carpet of leaves.
And the metaphorical comparison in the last two stanzas:
Nasturtiums burn with a red flame...
.....................................................
But like a flame the late flowers glow -
reminds of warmth, summer, bright sun.
What else is unusual about this poem?
“The tracks of the wheels turn green with a fresh shine...”; “ringing cold”; “on the silver expanse.”
These metaphors create the visibility and tangibility of Bunin’s images of nature. And again the magic - we were left in the garden, and around us it was already winter, February.
It's also cold and cheese
February air, but above the garden
The sky is already looking with a clear gaze,
And God’s world is getting younger.Transparently pale, like in spring,
The snow of the recent cold is shedding,
And from the sky to the bushes and puddles
There is a blue reflection.I can’t stop admiring how they shine through
Trees in the bosom of the sky,
And it’s sweet to listen by the balcony,
Like bullfinches ringing in the bushes.No, it’s not the landscape that attracts me,
It’s not the colors that the greedy gaze will notice,
And what shines in these colors:
Love and joy of being.
(1901)
How do you feel “love and joy of being” in this February landscape by Bunin?
It’s winter, but we feel the approach of spring and warmth, although “the February air is cold and damp.” The cold has already passed - the snow is “tearing”, “God’s world is getting younger”, the sky is looking with a “clear gaze”...
What does the lyrical hero admire?
The blue reflection of the “clear gaze” of the sky on everything, the trees “in the bosom of the sky”, the elusive signs of spring, “God’s world”. It is in this expectation of warmth, renewal, “youth” of God’s world that there is “love and joy of being.”
The poet Nikolai Rylenkov said: “Sometimes Bunin is called a cold master. This is a complete misunderstanding." Try to prove N. Rylenkov’s thought.
Conclusion of the lesson. Reading poetry by I.A. Bunin about nature, we feel how captivating the change of seasons is, how beautiful the fields, forests, groves, gardens are, through which spring, summer, autumn, winter pass, changing. This is love and the joy of being. Nature is even more beautiful if the music of words that are understandable to everyone, permeated with light and warmth, is inspired by a person, a poet, whose heart “longs for the shine of the day and happiness.”
After studying the poem “Mtsyri” by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov, we read the poem by I.A. Bunin "The bird has a nest...".
The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole.
How bitter it was for the young heart,
When I left my father's yard,
Say goodbye to your home!The beast has a hole, the bird has a nest.
How the heart beats, sadly and loudly,
When I enter, being baptized, into someone else's rented house
With his already old knapsack!
(25.06.22)
What unites Lermontov's poem and Bunin's poem?
The theme of loneliness, homelessness, foreign land and homesickness. And also memories of their home, their father’s yard, and everything foreign surrounds the heroes: a foreign country, strange people, a strange house, a strange monastery...
How does Bunin create a feeling of hopelessness of the lyrical hero?
Epithets “bitter”, “sorrowful”, “decrepit”. Comparing a person with a bird and an animal that has a nest and a hole.
Why did the poet change the word order in the repetition of the first line? Read without changing the word order. What do you hear?
You can hear crying, complaining, lamenting. And when the order of words changes, not only bitterness is felt, but also protest and anger.
The octave alternates long and short lines. What does this achieve?
Facts are stated in long lines: “the bird has a nest...”, “I was leaving my father’s yard...”, “the beast has a hole...”, “I enter, crossing myself, into someone else’s rented house...” . And in short lines - feelings bursting from the depths of the soul: “how bitter...”, “forgive...”, “how the heart beats sadly and loudly...”.
Isolation from the homeland makes a person suffer, fills his soul with bitterness, pain, and loneliness.
After studying “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” we will read the poems of I.A. Bunin "The Lay" and "Feather grass".
A meeting with Bunin's lyrics opens up new horizons of poetic worldview for ninth-graders: images of the Motherland, nature, revelation of the soul of the lyrical hero. We read the lines of the “Lay”, written at a time of difficult trials.
The tombs, mummies and bones are silent, -
Only the word is given life:
From ancient darkness, on the world graveyard,
Only the Letters sound.And we have no other property!
Know how to take care
At least to the best of my ability, in days of anger and suffering,
Our immortal gift is speech.
(1915)
What is this poem about?
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, creator of spiritual culture, master of words, bequeaths us to cherish “our immortal gift - speech.”
What is the power of Bunin’s conviction?
First, in truth: nine centuries have passed, and we are reading “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” learning about life in the 12th century, about the people of that time, culture, way of life, social structure, spiritual development...
Secondly, in Bunin’s skill: in the softness of his advice, which he achieves by using the modal particle same and the use of a compound verbal predicate instead of a simple predicate in the form of the imperative mood (compare: know how to take care - take care); the gentleness and unobtrusiveness of Bunin’s advice is achieved by using the subordinate clause of concession: “at least to the best of our ability...”; the persuasiveness of the verse is also heard in the repetition of the limiting particle only in the second and fourth lines of the first stanza, it is achieved by using an impersonal sentence with a predicate, an expressed negative word No, the use of antonyms: They are silent and sound, life is a graveyard...
The poet himself left us magnificent examples of mastery of words. We read “Feather grass” expressively.
Why make noise, why ring just now before the dawns? (“The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”)
I. What makes noise and rings before dawn?
What does the wind sway in a dark field?The night gets cold before dawn,
Dry grass whispers vaguely, -
Their sweet sleep is disturbed by the wind.
Dropping low over the fields,
Over the mounds, over the sleepy graves,
Dusk hangs in the dark beams.
A pale day has dawned over the darkness,
And the stormy dawn began to smoke...The night gets cold before dawn,
The beams shone with a gray haze...
Or is it the military camp turning white?
Or the free wind is blowing again
Above deep sleeping shelves?
Isn't it a feather grass, old and sleepy,
He swings, he swings and he swings,
The Polovtsian vezhi sways
And it runs and rings with ancient reality?II. Rainy day. The road is whimsical
Goes off into the distance. All around is steppe and steppe.
The grass rustles drowsily and lazily,
Silent graves guard chain
Among the bread it turns mysteriously blue,
The eagles are screaming, the desert wind is blowing
In the pensive, yearning fields,
Yes, the shadow from the nomadic clouds darkens.And the path runs... Isn’t this the same path,
Where did Igor's convoys pass?
To the blue Don? Isn't it in these places,
In the dead of night, wolves howled in the ravines,
And during the day eagles on slow wings
They saw him off in the boundless steppe
And they called a gang of dogs for bones,
Threatening him with great misfortune?
- Hey, respond, gray steppe eagle!
Answer me, wild and sad wind!...The steppe is silent. One feather grass is sleepy
It rustles, bending in an even line...
Did you feel the spirit of the ancient “Word...”?
Written in the early period of Bunin’s work (1894), the poem amazes with the maturity of feelings and thoughts, the beauty of verse and rhythm, the sense of native history and literature, and the richness of vocabulary.
F. Stepun in an article for the collected works of A.I. Bunin (Paris, 1929) rightly notes: “The more closely you read Bunin’s poems, the more deeply you feel... their piercing lyricism and deep philosophy...”
Let’s read the lines of Bunin’s “Feather grass” and think about the questions:
1. What images arise in our minds when reading a poem?
First of all, these are images of the steppe and feather grass, “old and sleepy”; the wind that “shakes, tilts and shakes” the feather grass, sways the Polovtsian vezhas (tents, nomadic tents) and “runs and rings with ancient reality.”
The past and the present seem to have converged in the artistic time and space of the poem. Hence the question:
Isn't this the right way?
Where did Igor's convoys pass?
To the blue Don?
2. How do you understand the meaning of using an epigraph?
The epigraph is taken from “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” and is almost repeated in the first line of the poem. This is a question to which the entire poem is the answer. In it we discern Bunin’s sense of memory, history, nature, a sense of past and new “great troubles.”
3. Determine the theme of the poem. This, of course, is the theme of the native land, thoughts about past battles in the “dark field”, about those regiments, the memory of which remained in Russian souls, in Russian history, about Russian rivers and roads (“And the way runs”), about the inexorability of time .
4. Explain the meaning of the title.
Feather grass is an image of the steppe, its beauty, wind, whispering dry grasses, the connection of times.
5. Name the figures of speech that you remember, emotionally charged epithets.
We pay attention to the verbs that are repeated, as in Russian folklore: noise-ringing, running-ringing; to the appeal-exclamation: “Hey, respond, gray steppe eagle!”; to unusual epithets: “pale day”, “rainy dawn”, “gray haze”, “boundless steppes”, “thoughtful, melancholy fields”, “violent and melancholy wind”. But the essence is not only in the emotionality and brightness of the images, but in this general picture of the steppe, will, memory of the past and a stormy day today.
6. How did the theme of the native land, its history, nature, life, past and present affect the poetics of the poem?
The abundance of questions is striking, starting with the epigraph. There are seven of them in the first and second parts of the poem. They are deeply philosophical and reflective, and therefore the tone of the poem is slow, unhurried, contemplating. Silences serve the same purpose - there are five of them in the poem (for example: “And the path runs...”).
7. What can be associated with the feeling of a kind of “expansion of time” in the poem?
It arises immediately - when reading the epigraph and then the lines about the wind. Together with the poet, we comprehend the connection between the past and the present, the images of the military camp, the Polovtsian tents, and the second part, as it were, connects the past and the present with the images of the road, the Don, the wind and the eagle...
After studying the poem by N.A. Nekrasov “Who Lives Well in Rus'” in a lesson preparing for a home essay about happiness, we read poems by I.A. Bunin "And flowers, and bumblebees, and grass, and ears of corn...", "Evening".
And flowers, and bumblebees, and grass, and ears of corn,
And the azure and the midday heat...
The time will come - the Lord will ask the prodigal son:
“Were you happy in your earthly life?”And I’ll forget everything - I’ll only remember these
Field paths between ears and grasses -
And from sweet tears I won’t have time to answer,
Falling to the merciful knees.
(14.07.18)
How is the philosophical problem of human happiness solved in this poem by I.A. Bunin?
Happiness, according to Bunin, is in communication with nature, in harmony with it, in the pleasure of seeing the azure sky, wildflowers, emerald grass, golden ears...
Happiness is simply walking along field paths “between the ears of grain and grass.”
Happiness is in the blissful silence of the field, in the aroma of ripe ears of corn and haymaking, in the midday heat, in the whisper of the breeze...
What do you hear in the polysyndeton at the beginning of the poem?
Polyunion conveys the flood of feelings of the lyrical hero. It seems that he will non-stop, excitedly list everything that brings joy, gives pleasure, peace of mind, gives happiness.
Do you believe that the lyrical hero was happy in “earthly life”? Why?
The sincerity of his feelings is not conveyed in words, his feelings overwhelm him:
And I won’t have time to answer because of sweet words,
Falling to the merciful knees.
The poem is permeated by a feeling of beauty, a feeling of happiness... What other feeling have we not talked about?
About the feeling of gratitude to the Creator.
When a person’s life has a lot of problems, suffering, when there is no peace, no wealth, no mutual love, when you are lonely and it seems to you that you are the most unhappy person on earth, you begin to grumble or, even worse, curse this difficult earthly life.. Remember that you have priceless riches - air, land, water, sky, forests, lakes, sea, steppe, field, river... Remember what peace of mind and tranquility the sound of the sea surf, birdsong, the light of a strawberry meadow bring , rustle of golden ears.
A person who loves nature and understands its beauty is a happy person.
We read the poem “Evening”.
We always only remember about happiness.
And happiness is everywhere. Maybe it's
This autumn garden behind the barn
And clean air flowing through the window.
The cloud rises and shines. For a long time
I'm watching him... We see little, we know,
And happiness is given only to those who know.The window is open. She squeaked and sat down
There's a bird on the windowsill. And from books
I look away from my tired gaze for a moment.The day is getting dark, the sky is empty.
The hum of a threshing machine can be heard on the threshing floor...
I see, I hear, I am happy. Everything is in me.
(14.08.09)
How do you understand this last one - “Everything is in me”?
Everything in a person: kindness and anger, love and discoveries, heaven and hell. “Everything about me” truly speaks for itself. What an abyss of wisdom is contained in this phrase! The volume and depth of meaning is similar to biblical wisdom: “The Kingdom of God is within you.”
Let's think about the questions:
1. Determine the theme of the poem. What does it have in common with the poem “And flowers, and bumblebees, and grass, and ears of corn...”?
2. What images in the poem surprised you and why?
3. How is the sense of time and space conveyed in the poem?
4. Name emotionally charged epithets.
5. Explain the meaning of the line: “I see, I hear, I am happy...”.
In the 11th grade, the understanding of I.A.’s lyrics is enriched. Bunin, the understanding of the image of the lyrical hero develops, knowledge about the main themes and images of the poet’s poetic world is generalized and systematized.
The poetic world of Bunin
Practical lesson on studying the lyrics of I.A. Bunina in 11th grade
To study this topic, students receive homework on options.
Based on the analysis of Bunin’s poem, highlight the most significant, stable features of the “Bunin” landscape. Pay attention to:
Subject realities of the landscape picture painted by the poet;
Techniques for “sounding” the landscape;
The colors used by the poet, the play of light and shadow;
Features of vocabulary (word selection, tropes);
Favorite images of his poetry (images of the sky, wind, steppe);
Prayers of loneliness of the lyrical hero in the “Bunin” landscape.
The lesson begins with students reading their favorite poems by I.A. Bunin, then the teacher’s introductory speech.
Poetry I.A. Bunin - truly “the high thrill of joining the spiritual life, to beauty.” Creations of true talent do not age. Bunin's lyrics make the best strings of the heart tremble. What image appears before your eyes when you think about his poetry?
An endless steppe landscape... A painted tower of a Russian forest... A garden noisy from a sudden downpour... A forgotten fountain surrounded by swirling golden leaves... And flowers, and bumblebees, and grass, and ears of corn...
A. Blok wrote about Bunin: “The integrity and simplicity of Bunin’s poems and worldview are so valuable and one-of-a-kind that from his first book we must recognize his right to one of the main places among modern Russian poetry... So know and love nature , as Bunin can do, few people can.”
Bunin's poetry represents a special reality, a special beautiful world. If you carefully read the poet’s poems, they can remain in the soul for the rest of your life, making it more receptive to the great joy of life.
“Poetry lives a long time,” said Bunin, “and the longer it goes on, the stronger it gets.”
His poetry - honey accumulated in the invisible honeycomb of the soul - becomes sweeter and more healing.
After this laconic introduction, the guys begin to share their observations about the poetic world of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin.
The first is about the main themes of the poet’s lyrics.
Undoubtedly, this is beauty, beauty both in nature and in the soul of the lyrical hero, their harmony, fusion.
I submit at this hour
To the gentle peace of the night...
I'm looking for combinations in this world
Beautiful and eternal...
It's warm and drowsy in the field,
And there is happy laziness in the heart...
Nature is an integral part of all Bunin's poems; just as in life, it surrounds us, pleases us with beauty, heals us from pain, saves us from loneliness, teaches us wisdom. Masterpieces of landscape sketches in the poet’s poems “The bright April evening has burned out...”, “October dawn”, “It gets brighter every day...”, “In the steppe”, in the poem “Falling Leaves”.
Tell us about the lyrical hero of Bunin's poetry.
In the wonderful temple of nature, the lyrical hero is most often alone.
Leaves are falling in the garden
Couple spinning after couple...
Lonely I wander
Along the leaves in the old alley...
("Leaves are falling in the garden")I'm alone, and there's darkness and fields all around,
And there is not a sound in the vastness...
("Slope")I walk alone along a forest path,
And in the blue of the evening above me
A star sparkles like a bright tear...
("The storm has passed...")
The motif of loneliness in Bunin's lyrics is rooted in the feelings of childhood and youth. Remember the biography of the poet, prove this idea.
Yes, he spent his childhood in the wilderness, in the steppe and did not graduate from high school... Bunin recalled: “I grew up without peers, in my youth I didn’t have them either... Everyone at this time learns something somewhere, and there, everyone in their environment, they meet, they converge, but I didn’t study anywhere, I didn’t know any environment.”
The poet had nature as an interlocutor and friend since childhood. And the lyrical hero of his works is attentive to the world around him, subtly feels nature, empathizes with it. Now he is in the amber surroundings of a “chilled” garden, now in a birch forest, “where birds sing,” now in a “sweet forest,” now “slumbering over the Dnieper near a wide reach,” but most often, “among the steppe, space and heaven.” .
It's sad here. We are waiting for the dark time,
When the gray fog spends the night in the steppe,
When the dawn barely turns white in the darkness
And only the hillocks turn black through the fog.
But I love nomadic birds
Native steppes. Poor villages -
My homeland.
("In the steppe")
What does the image of the steppe mean in Bunin’s poetry?
This is his homeland, fatherland, this is a symbol of the Russian expanse, probably, the breadth of the Russian soul...
Or maybe freedom from everything petty and vain...
Steppe and sky...
One of the main images of Bunin's poetry is the sky. Light, pale, vague, flowing, clear, high, wondrous; It’s fun to think about him, you can’t stop looking at him.
In the bottomless sky with a light white edge
The cloud rises and shines.
I've been following him for a long time...
("Evening")There is a highway ahead, a cart,
The old dog at the wheel -
Freedom is ahead again,
Steppe, space and heaven.
("Gypsy")
Heaven is joy (“... only heaven - only joy I carried in my soul for a whole century”).
The sky is the human soul in its highest, best moments (“Summer Night”).
You are beautiful, human soul! to the sky,
Bottomless, calm, night,
Sometimes you are like the twinkling of stars.
Steppe, sky, silence...
The image of silence is closely connected with the images of the sky and steppe.
Why do you think Bunin is so attracted to silence, silence, wilderness?
Noise and bustle interfere with thinking, reflecting... They distract from the main thing - from spiritual life... It is also better to remember in silence...
And in the silence you will hear something that would drown out the noise:
Far, far away in silence
The bell sings, dying...
.......................................................
There is winter peace on the threshing floors and in the garden
Calm reigns grandfather's buildings...
(“Freshing every day...”)
The bright April evening has burned out,
A cold twilight lay across the meadows,
The rooks are sleeping, distant noise flow
In the dark mysteriously stalled.But fresh smells like greenery
Young frozen black soil,
And flows cleaner over the fields
Starlight in silence at night.
(“The April winter evening has burned out...”)
IN silence village nights
And in silence autumn midnight
Remember the songs that the nightingale sang,
Remember the summer nights...
(“Asters are falling in the gardens...”)
So, in silence we hear a raindrop and a flock of cranes, the play of a nightingale and the sound of the wind.
Silence and wind
Are they contrasted in Bunin's poetry?
Most likely no. In silence, in silence, even when there is no sound, Bunin always listens to the wind, listens to how it sings, hums, whispers, and even calls him, wakes him up:
Hey, wake up, wind! Bring up the blizzard
Smell the blizzard, white in the snow,
Sound like drifting snow, spin in the steppe,
Shout instead of singing: “Shame, don’t sleep!”
And there is wind in the field. Cold day
Moody and fresh and all day long
I wander in the free steppe,
Far from villages and villages.And, lulled by a horse's step,
With joyful sadness I listen,
Like the wind with a monotonous ringing
He hums and sings into the gun barrels.
(“No birds are visible...”)Why does my soul hurt?
Who is sad, feeling sorry for me?
The wind moans and dusts
Along the birch alley...
(“Why does my soul hurt...”)The wind carries me into the distance,
My song rings loudly,
The heart passionately awaits life,
He asks for happiness.
("Leaves are falling in the garden...")
What does the image of the wind symbolize in Bunin’s poetry?
This is a symbol of worrying, beating, restless philosophical thought...
Maybe it's the rebelliousness of his feelings?
The restlessness of his lonely soul or his unsleeping conscience?
Throughout his life, Bunin deepened and refined his sense of organic involvement in the natural world, understood in a broad, universal or, as they now more often say, cosmic sense. He was convinced: “Every slightest movement of air is a movement of our own destiny.” His lyrical calendar of nature affirms the unique value of every minute lived under the open sky.
Each season has its own palette
Spring - “in the blue dope”, “in the green grasses”, “in the white apple blossoms”, in the lilac-blue sea of chernozem...
In the summer - “the whole field is golden, the heat and dryness of sunlight”, “the azure of the midday heat”, “there is shine everywhere, bright light everywhere”, the forest is “filled with a cheerful shine”, “saffron light floats over the field”, “golden showers”.
In autumn - “the forest looks like a painted tower, lilac, gold, crimson”, “the sky shines with turquoise, and in the garden the nasturtiums burn with a red flame.”
In winter - “forests in pearly frost”, “deep fluffy snow”, “silver-blue light, like in a fairy tale, pours over you onto the frosty snow from the sky”, “and the snow smokes with phosphorus”, “glimmers tenderly”.
Bunin the artist's palette is rich, bright, luminous, generous. In all the variety of Bunin’s colors, the radiance of gold and azure, all their shades and tints, stands out.
Between the golden leaves of birch trees
Our gentle sky is shining...
And in the distance, on the golden stubbles
There is fog, transparent and azure.
But the poet is not always so wasteful, sometimes he is both stingy and thrifty - he limits himself to two or three colors, draws black and white engravings. He really loves the contrasting combination of dark, gloomy, black and light, silver, white, foggy, starry radiance:
And in the black arable lands the snow turns white...
The night sky is low and black -
Only in the depths, where the Milky Way turns white,
Its mysterious bottom shines through,
And it burns with the cold of the constellations...
("Frost Breath")I'm looking for combinations in this world
Beautiful and eternal. In the distance
I see the night: sands among silence
And starlight over the darkness of the earth.
("Night")
Noble are the shimmers of darkness and light in Bunin’s poetic world, but still all his poetry is open to solar, lunar, and starry brilliance. Glow, sparkle, flicker, light, fire, flashes...
On the black velvet fabric of Bunin’s poetry, colored with the diamond shine of a birch forest, sea-wave emeralds, where “in the distance, pearls and opals flow along golden yahonts...”, “flowers, and bumblebees, and grass, and ears of corn” are lovingly embroidered. , “apple trees in white curly flowers”, “and the moon in the clouds”, “and foggy-bright stars”.
On it “the peacock’s tail burns, trembles and shines with hundred-colored diamonds!” - this is a wonderful metaphor about the dawn.
Name more metaphors from the ones written out at home.
There are gray catkins on birch trees
And branches of weeping lace.
("From the window...")
The balcony is open, the flower garden is burned by frost,
The faded garden was devastated by the rains.
("Pigeons")
On the window, silver with frost,
The chrysanthemums bloomed overnight...
("On the window")
Bunin’s personifications are also interesting:
And then on the golden throne
Shined quietly in the east
New day...
(“At a late hour we were...”)And, like a child after sleep,
The star trembles in the fire of the morning star,
And the wind blows in her eyelashes,
So that she doesn't close them.
("Green color")
Read the personifications and comparisons that struck you from the poems of I.A. Bunina.
How mysterious you are, thunderstorm!
How I love your silence
Your sudden shine, -
Your crazy eyes.
("The fields smell...")The wind staggers in the dry weeds
And he whispers something, as if in oblivion.
("Tramps")
And the night, descending from the mountains, enters as if into a temple,
Where the gloomy choir sings...
("Twilight")
A tired whirlwind of a hissing snake
It slides and burns with its dry fire.
("Frost Breath")It seems to me that the moon will become numb:
It's like she grew up from the bottom
And blushes like an antediluvian lily.
("Crimson sad moon...")
“I see, I hear, I’m happy. Everything is in me,” wrote Bunin. Tell us what else you see, hear, feel, what aromas you inhale while reading the poet’s poems?
(Checking homework.)
Conclusion. Reading poems by I.A. Bunin, we inhale the “faded aroma of aspen trees”, “the sweet smell of rye”, we feel the “cool breath of the meadows”, “the mushroom dampness in the ravines”, “the fragrance of the garden”, “the fragrant languor of hay”... We rejoice at meeting a timid flock of pigeons , “sparkling with snowy whiteness,” with a mighty thin-legged deer, with a dog “with golden eyes”...
In the world of his poetry, “nightingales sing all night,” and “cranes call to each other,” “since dawn, the cuckoo across the river cuckoos loudly in the distance,” “eagles scream in the foggy steppe,” “seagulls swing with cries,” “orioles chatter carelessly.” ...
And we will certainly hear, while reading his poems, “the hum of a threshing machine on the threshing floor”, “the sound of a roller and an ax, the noise of a mill”, “the creaking of a coulter in a spring furrow”...
Happiness, according to Bunin, is complete merging with nature, it is peaceful work on one’s native generous land. He considered himself one of the happy ones, because “happiness is given only to those who know.”
Bunin's poetry teaches you to see, hear, understand, love the world, life, your native land, its beauty - and be happy. His poetry is “a spring, alive and sonorous”, “living water”...
The poetic world of Bunin in the poem “The Forgotten Fountain”
We read the poem “The Forgotten Fountain.”
The palace of amber crumbled, -
The alley leading to the house runs from end to end.
Cold breath of September
The wind blows through the empty garden.He sweeps the fountain with leaves,
He flutters them, suddenly swooping down,
And, like a frightened flock of birds,
They circle among empty meadows.Sometimes a girl comes to the fountain,
Dragging a loose shawl through the leaves,
And he doesn’t take his eyes off him for a long time.There is a frozen sadness in her face,
For whole days she wanders like a ghost,
And the days fly by... They don't feel sorry for anyone.
(1902)
What is your first impression of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin’s sonnet?
Delight.
I was struck by the miracle of the sketches and the beauty of the painting.
And I felt the depth of the tragedy...
I caught the musicality and melodiousness. I have a feeling of harmony.
Beauty, ringing, fabulous, embraces us from the first lines of the poem: “The palace of amber crumbled...” When you hear the word “palace,” you imagine a magnificent, magnificent building, a palace. We are accustomed to the phrase “royal palace,” but here it is amber. It’s not only more wonderful, but also closer, closer, because it’s a lovely autumn forest, a garden where a girl wanders, where we love to wander.
Very beautiful, but why does a slight sadness arise? 
The palace has crumbled, and the “cold breath of September” reigns in the empty garden.
Beauty under your feet. And the alley is no longer affectionately cozy, but the wind “seems through.”
And also sadness from the empty, quiet fountain, which is swept away by the wind with its leaves. After all, a fountain in summer is crystal splashes shimmering like a rainbow in the sun. He beckoned, gave joy, fun, pleasure. This discrepancy between the dull autumn fountain and the summer memory of it also causes a slight sadness.
In addition to the girl, the heroes of this poem are also the wind and time. Tell us about them.
The wind is both sad and playful, caring and troublesome, and even kind. He seems to understand our sadness, and here in front of us are amber splashes of leaves, which he flutters, “suddenly flying in.” But this lasts only one moment, and, “like a frightened flock of birds,” they leave the forgotten fountain.
And time is indifferent and even harsh and merciless.
How does your mood change when reading a sonnet? Why?
The slight sadness inspired by autumn turns into bitter, burning sadness when “a girl comes to the fountain.”
She looks like a ghost, a shadow: fun, happiness have left her, only the frozen memory of love, a memory in which something dear has been preserved connected with this fountain - “And for a long time she does not take her eyes off it.”
What associations do you have?
A forgotten fountain is a forgotten love.
- “The cold breath of September” and the icy cold in the soul of a lonely, probably abandoned lover...
The chamber of amber crumbled - the girl’s happiness was gone.
What expressive detail helps us understand the immensity of the lyrical heroine’s suffering?
- “...Dragging a fallen shawl through the leaves...” - the pain and suffering in her soul are so great that they shackled her, she does not notice the cold, or maybe she does not even have the strength to throw the fallen shawl over her shoulders...
Yes, her wound is so deep that time has no power over it. Time, which, as the saying goes, is the best healer, is merciless here: “And the days fly by... They don’t feel sorry for anyone.”
Let's summarize. The motif of a mercilessly tragic time, the world in which man lives, is woven into a wonderfully fairy-tale picture of nature. The beauty of a garden, even an empty one, a through alley, a fountain with amber splashes of autumn leaves, is like a golden frame framing the most precious feeling - love and its eternal companion - separation.
Didactic material for lessons on studying the lyrics of I.A. Bunina in 11th grade
Questions and tasks
1. Group Bunin’s poems according to thematic principles. Which poems would you classify simultaneously into two or more groups? Why?
“Word”, “Evening”, “The day will come, I will disappear...”, “The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole...”, “And flowers, and bumblebees, and grass, and ears of corn...” , “Childhood”, “In a country chair, at night, on the balcony”, “Motherland”, “Fairy Tale”, “I remember a long winter evening...”, “On a window silver with frost...”, “Forgotten fountain ", "Dog", "It's still cold and damp...", "Dense green spruce forest by the road...", "Leaf fall".
2. Name several historical figures that are mentioned in Bunin’s lyrical works.
3. The quotes below are the second lines from Bunin’s poems. Remember the first line of each piece and its title.
...Purple, gold, crimson...
...You look with golden eyes...
...Walked along the deserted shores...
...Breathe in the dry, resinous aroma...
...And happiness is everywhere. Maybe it...
4. Edit the lines below from Bunin’s work, eliminating unnecessary (“non-Bunin”) definitions. Justify the basic principles of your editorial work. Remember the names of these works.
a) A long winter evening, the quiet whisper of the forest and the midday summer heat, golden waves of rye, dirty streets, shops, bridges, the indistinct noise of birches, a radiant afternoon, with some kind of joyless melancholy, resin, more transparent than glass, the whole forest was... filled with cheerful sparkle.
b) Warm sunny April, dark blue forests, emerald glaciers, greenish skies, the beauty of these pure colors, with the stigma of an unsociable, deadening winter.
5. Give a historical and cultural commentary on the following lines from Bunin’s poems:
6. The left column shows the names of the poetic works of I.A. Bunin, on the right - genres. Match the title of the work and its genre.
7. Bunin the poet repeatedly depicted snakes: “The Snake” (1906), “The Blue Sky Has Opened...” (1901), “The Snake” (1917), “Hummingbird” (1907), “At the Hut” (1903). What event in the poet’s life is associated with the appearance of the image of a snake in his works? How does this relate to the poet’s will, according to his wife?
8. Using the rhymes from the initial stanza, guess Bunin’s poems. Is it possible to say that rhyme sets the semantic vector of the poem?
a) in the boundless sea - in the steppe expanse;
b) in the forest - in the morning;
c) skyship;
d) on the balcony - calm.
9. In the given quotations, insert the required one in place of the missing definition or comparison, choosing it from those given in brackets. By what signs do you find the Bunin version?
10. Imagine that you need to write dictionary entries “Wind”, “Sky”, “Shine”, “Silence” for the “Bunin Language Dictionary”. What is the meaning of these words in Bunin's poetic dictionary? What is the content of each concept in different contexts?
11. Identify the artistic means of expression used by the poet to create the image:
c) “Old apple tree.” “All covered in snow, curly, fragrant.”
d) Autumn sings and wanders invisibly through the forests.
Sound recording
Oxymoron
Epithets
Personification
Metaphor
Literature
1. History of Russian literature: In 4 volumes. Literature of the late XIX - early XX centuries / Ed. K.D. Muratova. L.: Nauka, 1985. T. 4.
2. Bunin I.A. Poems. M.: Fiction, 1985.
3. Kondratyeva A.A. Studying the lyrics of Ivan Bunin. 11th grade // Literature at school. 1999. No. 1.
4. Shushakova G.V.“And happiness is everywhere...” The path to Bunin. 11th grade // Literature at school. 1999. No. 1.
5. Bogdanova O.Yu. Meeting with Bunin’s work at school // Literature at school. 1999. No. 7.
6. Baboreko A.K. I.A. Bunin. Materials for biography. 1870–1917. M., 1983.
7. Mikhailov O.N. Strict talent. I.A. Bunin. M., 1876.
8. Collected works of I.A. Bunina: In 9 vols. M., 1965–1967.
9. Kuznetsova G. Grasse diary. M., 1995.
10. Muromtseva-Bunina V.N. Bunin's life: Conversations with memory. M., 1989.
11. Smirnova A.A. I.A. Bunin. Life and art. M., 1995.
The hotter the day, the sweeter it is in the forest
Breathe in the dry, resinous aroma,
And I had fun in the morning
The bark is rough, wrinkled, red,
But how warm, how warm everything is warmed by the sun!
And it seems that the smell is not pine,
And the heat and dryness of a sunny summer.
School analysis of I. A. Bunin’s poem “Childhood”
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin's poem "Childhood" was written in adulthood and contains memories from the poet's childhood. The author is the hero of the work. Plunging into memories, he shares with readers feelings that are very dear to him.
The poem is filled with vivid impressions of communicating with nature.
The peculiarity of this work is its fascinating plot. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin walks in the forest. A feeling of nostalgia takes him back to his childhood, when as a boy he often walked among the tall pines.
Telling the story of a trip to the forest, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin uses the means of artistic representation. His speech remains simple, accessible, and at the same time the poet decorates his story with unusual words.
The metaphor that appears in the first quatrain conveys the poet’s mood. He talks about the richness and beauty of nature, comparing the forest to a palace:
And I had fun in the morning
Wander through these sunny chambers!
Now, when a young man who has discovered his talent as a poet comes to the forest again, he can convey sweet moments of communication with nature. These feelings make him go back to the past:
Shine everywhere, bright light everywhere,
The sand is like silk... I’ll cling to the gnarled pine
And I feel: I’m only ten years old,
And the trunk is a giant, heavy, majestic.
The device of antithesis used in the third quatrain speaks of the strength of the poet’s connection with his native land. He is not saddened by the roughness of the pine bark. He is full of bright experiences, noticing how beautiful everything around him is.
The idea of this work is to show the untouched beauty of nature. Let many events happen in a person’s life, he grows up, learns a lot about the world around him, makes new acquaintances, and becomes part of society. But with him remain sweet dreams of a cozy corner of nature, where there is summer, heat, tall pine trees and a pleasant warm aroma.
Composition
The creative path of I. A. Bunin began with poetry. It was in the lyrics that the distinctive aspects of his talent, the characteristic features of Bunin the artist, were revealed. His poems contain a motif of harmony and optimism, acceptance of this life and its laws. Bunin is confident that only in unity with nature, in merging with it, can one feel one’s connection with common life and understand God’s plan.
This is confirmed by the poem “The Last Bumblebee”. The very title of the work sets us up for a lyrically sad wave, introducing notes of withering, farewell and death, which then, as the poem progresses, will receive their full development.
This work consists of three stanzas, each of which can be considered a separate compositional part. It seems to me that the first stanza serves as an introduction - it talks about the psychological state of the lyrical hero, outlines the course of his thoughts:
Why are you flying into human habitation?
And it’s like you’re pining for me?
The bumblebee in this context helps to convey the state of the hero, who perceives this insect as a kind of symbol of mourning, departure, death: “a black velvet bumblebee,” “mournfully humming.” We see that the lyrical hero is sad. About what or who? We learn about this only at the end of the poem. In the meantime, he encourages his imaginary interlocutor to enjoy the last beautiful days:
Outside the window there is light and heat, the window sills are bright,
The last days are serene and hot,
Fly, sound your horn - and in a dried-up Tatar,
On a red pillow, fall asleep.
And, having caught and enjoyed the farewell notes of warmth and light, fall asleep, fall asleep forever. It is interesting that the description of the flower here is reminiscent of the description of the coffin: “in a dried tartar, on a red pillow.”
The second quatrain is full of bright colors and tones. They contrast with the theme of decay that is clearly evident here. And from this contrast, death seems to us even more sad and painful, even more unexpected.
The third stanza reveals this theme to the end, bringing it to its logical conclusion:
It is not given to you to know human thoughts,
That the fields have long been empty,
That soon a gloomy wind will blow into the weeds
Golden dry bumblebee!
It is here that the reasons for the sadness of the lyrical hero are revealed to us, his sad reflections on the transience of life, its fleetingness and frailty. Very soon the brightness of the colors will be replaced by a gloomy autumn with a piercing and cold wind. And the bumblebee, an integral part of the bright summer, joy and happiness, will be destroyed by the harsh and ruthless forces of nature.
Likewise, happiness, according to the lyrical hero, is very short-lived and fragile. It can disappear at any moment, leaving only bitter regret and severe pain. Moreover, life itself disappears as soon as it begins.
And the saddest and most terrible thing is that it begins to disappear in its very prime - death creeps up unexpectedly and hits right on target: “The last days are serene and hot.”
“The Last Bumblebee” is rich in artistic expression. In my opinion, first of all, it is worth paying attention to metaphors. The very title of the poem is metaphorical: the last bumblebee personifies the transience of life and everything connected with it - happiness, joy, warmth, light. In addition, in the description of this insect metaphors are used: “humming with a melodious string”, “sleep in a dried Tatar”; epithets: “velvet bumblebee”, “mournfully humming”, “in a Tatar coat, on a red pillow, sleep”, “gloomy wind”, “golden mantle”.
The entire poem is structured as a dialogue with a mute interlocutor - a bumblebee. The questions and exclamations of the lyrical hero are addressed to him, which we can consider rhetorical: “Why do you fly into human habitation And seem to be yearning for me?”, “That the gloomy wind will soon blow away the golden dry bumblebee into the weeds!” In addition, all the verbs in the poem indicate its dialogical nature: they have the form of the 2nd person, singular.
The poem also uses phonetic means of artistic expression. They convey the “mournful hum” of a bumblebee - using dissonance using hissing and voiced consonants:
Black velvet bumblebee, golden mantle,
Mournfully humming with a melodious string,
Why are you flying into human habitation...
They also help to “hear” the whistle of the autumn wind - “That soon the gloomy wind of the golden dry bumblebee will blow away into the weeds!” - with the help of whistling and hissing consonants.
Thus, Bunin’s poem “The Last Bumblebee” is an example of the poet’s philosophical lyrics. The philosophical theme of the transience of life and the omnipotence of death is touched upon here. It is precisely the fact that life is so short that should push us, according to the author, to love our earthly existence even more, to enjoy every moment of it.
