idea and meaning of the story. a. bunina sunstroke? and got the best answer
Answer from Alexey Khoroshev[guru]
The plot of the story is simple, but the subtext is complex, it can be understood at the level of feelings, intuition, memories.
The story "Sunstroke", written in 1925 in the Maritime Alps. This work, as well as "Ida", "The Case of Cornet Elagin", anticipates the collection of short stories "Dark Alleys".
“Every love is a great happiness, even if it is not divided” - this phrase of the writer can be put as an epigraph to all his stories about love. He talked a lot about her, beautiful, incomprehensible, mysterious. But if in the early stories Bunin wrote about tragic unrequited love, then in Sunstroke it is mutual. And yet tragic! Incredible? How can that be? It turns out it can.
The plot of the story is simple. He and she meet on the ship. The meeting is random, warmed up by wine, the warmth of the night, a romantic mood. The heroes, getting off the ship, spend the night in a hotel, and part in the morning. That's all. As you can see, Bunin updates the genre of the story, simplifies the event plot, deprives the story of external entertainment. Behind a very banal plot lies an internal conflict - the conflict of the hero with himself, so Bunin does not pay much attention to events, he writes about feelings. But it is very difficult to look into the soul of a person, into this vast and unknown world, closed from prying eyes. What do we know about heroes? Almost nothing. He, the lieutenant, traveling according to his need, at first does not take this “road adventure” seriously. She leaves home in the morning, where her husband and three-year-old daughter are waiting for her. Is the woman beautiful? Bunin does not offer us a specific portrait of a stranger, but he details it. We see her small strong hand, strong body, her hair, which she fastens with hairpins, we hear her “simple lovely laugh”, we feel the delicate aroma of her perfume.
This is how the image of a mysterious femme fatale is created, as if Bunin wanted to unravel the secret of female charm, which has such a magical effect on a man. And he succeeded. The reader is fascinated by this stranger. He, she, the city - everything is nameless. What is it? Generalization? Or maybe it's not all that important? The important thing is that for the reader they will simply remain a Man and a Woman with a great secret of love. It is important that the city will remain the City of the Sun, happy and unsolved. It is important that Bunin, being a subtle psychologist, allows us to gradually follow the internal state of the hero. Easily and happily, the lieutenant parted with the stranger, carelessly returned to the hotel. But something happened that the lieutenant could not have imagined: his funny adventure was not forgotten! What is it? Love! But how to convey in words what a person can feel on paper? How did Bunin manage to show “all the cataclysms that shake the fragile bodily foundation to the core, when the whole world is transformed in a person’s sensations, when sensitivity to everything around is heightened to the limit?” The writer was able to convey the painful experiences of the hero. Immediately before us is a change in the mood of a man. At first, the lieutenant becomes sad, his heart shrinks with “tenderness". He tries to hide his confusion behind external bravado. Then a kind of dialogue with himself takes place. He tries to laugh, shrug his shoulders, smoke, drive away sad thoughts and ... he cannot. He constantly finds objects reminiscent of a stranger: "a hairpin, a crumpled bed", "an unfinished cup"; he smells her perfume. This is how flour, longing is born. There is no trace of lightness and carelessness!
The system of antonyms proposed by Bunin is aimed at showing what an abyss lay between the past and the present. “The room was still full of her,” her presence was still felt, but already “the room was empty,” “and she was already gone,” “already left,” “she will never see her,” and “you will never say anything again.” The ratio of contrasting sentences that connect the past and the present through memory is constantly visible.
Answer from Makakina[guru]
May garb. Read it and that's all .. Bunin has no veil in his works (almost none) if you read (by the way, not such a great work) you will understand everything yourself!
The story "Sunstroke", Ivan Alekseevich Bunin wrote in 1925, while in the Maritime Alps. This story, like many other works by Bunin written in exile, has a love story. The author in this work shows that mutual feelings can stir up a series of love experiences.
Bunin thought a lot about the title of the story. There were two poorly chosen titles for the story, which the author himself considered simple and completely obvious. They did not reflect Bunin's mood, the first reported on the ongoing events, the second indicated the possible name of the heroine. So the writer had the idea of the third and most successful title "Sunstroke". This name simply screamed about the feeling that the main character experienced, such a sudden, vivid feeling that instantly captures a person and, as it were, incinerates him to ashes.
In the work, the author does not give a clear description of the heroes of the story, everything is extremely blurry, no names, no age. In this way, the writer seems to elevate his main characters above the environment, conditions and time. The characters in the story are the lieutenant and his companion. Being previously unfamiliar, after spending one day together, they felt such a sincere, immaculate feeling that they had not experienced before. But on the way, the lovers encountered obstacles and intrigues of fate, they involuntarily said goodbye. Bunin wanted to show that gray everyday life is very harmful for love, they only destroy it.
Bunin tells of a fleeting romance that arose between a lieutenant and a married lady. He delves into all the subtleties of inflamed passion that arose between the heroes, who, after spending the night, without even knowing each other's names, are forced to part. The lieutenant was so subdued by his fellow traveler that after parting he felt melancholy and spiritual emptiness. Sitting in an empty cabin, he felt that he had aged ten years. But the most aggravated his state of confusion and bewilderment. He did not know how to find the lady of his heart and confess to her about his feelings and does not see more life without her.
Bunin's style of narration is very "dense". He is a craftsman of a short genre, in a small volume he manages to fully reveal all the images of his characters and convey the whole essence of his plan and plot.
I. A. Bunin never told about happy love. The story "Sunstroke" is no exception. He believed that the union of souls is a completely different feeling, incommensurable with passion. True love comes and goes as suddenly as a sunstroke.
Option 2
The story "Sunstroke" was written by I. A. Bunin in 1925, during his fruitful work on a whole series of stories on similar topics. This was greatly facilitated by the environment in which the writer lived, the beauty of the surrounding nature of the Alpes-Maritimes.
In this story, Bunin, in a poetic, figurative manner, depicted how easily a feeling of attraction sometimes flares up between a man and a woman, and what a trace or even a scar it can leave in fate. This theme is very consonant with the general mood of the society of that time.
The heroes of the work are nameless, we can only present them in general terms. He is a lieutenant, she is a beautiful stranger. They get to know each other in a light, relaxed atmosphere of a dinner on a ship, go out on deck together. Mutual feeling has already arisen, it pushes the heroes to a reckless act. They are unable to resist him. Both each other and the surrounding world are perceived only by feelings. The hero cannot resist the "little woman" carried away by the "smell of a tan". The heroine feels extraordinary joy, her mood rings with “simple light laughter”. Their actions are impetuous and fast, they rush to possess each other as the only goal in life.
Morning returns to inevitable reality. The heroine is "fresh, as at seventeen, simple, cheerful, and - already reasonable." Interestingly, it is the woman who plays the leading role in this story, and it is she who concludes that everything that happened is a “sunstroke”.
The story is literally saturated with descriptions of landscapes and changes in pictures of the surrounding nature. It seems that nature itself is a participant, the main eyewitness and "censor" of everything that happens to the characters.
If at the beginning of the story we see "a deck flooded with the sun", then all further landscapes are immersed in darkness. The result of the meeting, as a consequence of the "sunstroke" is internal devastation, a feeling of irreparable loss, a painful perception of the immutability of the surrounding world and people. The impossibility of developing further relations is not realized at first, they seem to be in shock from what happened. The stranger "easily" leaves, the lieutenant "easily" sees her off. But both have already undergone a destructive process. Just as the literal sun, capable of warming, can deal a painful blow, so the all-consuming passion is far from true warmth and happiness. It is not surprising that "the lieutenant ... felt ten years older."
In "Sunstroke" Bunin portrayed love as a passion that has no future, which does not illuminate, but strikes the hearts of heroes and anyone can fall under this blow.
Analysis 3
We don't know anything about the characters in this short story. He is a lieutenant. Judging by the mention of the deserts of Turkestan, it returns from the extreme south of the Russian Empire. She is a young lady who somewhere has a husband and a three-year-old daughter. Of the characters in the story, one can also mention the lackey "in a pink shirt" and a cheerful cabman. In the evening, he drove two people to the hotel, and on the next steamer he brought up one officer in a cab. That's all. The rest of the story space is occupied by a description of the sensations of a young rake in a sun-hot Volga town.
Why didn't she want to continue the journey together? Apparently, she understood the difference between the passion that gripped them, and love. Then the vulgarity of an illegal relationship between a married woman and a young officer would begin. From this we can draw another conclusion: she is older and more experienced. The love adventure will remain a secret, remembering which it will not be so boring for her to while away the winter evenings in some provincial town. And what happened to them will never happen again. Further, if they do not part, "everything will be spoiled."
The lieutenant's throwing around an unfamiliar town deserves a separate discussion. Everything seems to him too ordinary, boring compared to what he just experienced. Perhaps it is too early to call him a rake. The young man is in love. It might be the first time this has happened to him. The sun blinds him, the air chokes him. But he is sincerely mistaken. A beautiful woman gave him a feeling of happiness. And it's good that it's not for long. Now he knows what it is, but has not yet experienced disappointment. She gave him a future.
Probably, the beautiful stranger does not have such a happy family life. Otherwise, she would not have gone to the resort alone. Girls were married early, and she did not have time to experience anything like this before she went down the aisle. That evening, for the first time, she gave vent to her feelings. What gives rise to so many assumptions and impressions after reading just a few pages? After all, the usual everyday situation is described. But the author paid such attention to subtle, seemingly insignificant details that the story, as it were, becomes larger due to this, depicting not a provincial town and two people who accidentally got off the steamer there, but the whole country. One can say about the painting of Bunin, who wrote both the picture and the story at the same time. But on this pictorial canvas, not only the external features of the heroes are visible, but also their subtlest experiences.
Football is one of the most ancient variants of sports. This sport is quite simple and straightforward, but at the present time it is probably one of the most popular variants of sports.
Kuprin's touching story "The Wonderful Doctor" makes the reader plunge into the gloomy atmosphere of poverty, where life is known in completely different colors. In the center of the story is the Mertsalov family, which lives in the basement among the dirt.
The cold winter has ended. Step by step, nature begins to slip. The first signs of the ear of spring - all the gorobtsі sho splashing in the kalyuzhі, as if it were froze. The stench merrily blooms and waving their wings
Many of I. Bunin's works are hymns of true love, which has everything: tenderness, passion, and a feeling of that special connection between the souls of two lovers. Such a feeling is also described in the story "Sunstroke", which the writer considered one of his best works. Pupils get acquainted with him in the 11th grade. We offer to facilitate the preparation for the lesson by using the analysis of the work presented below. The analysis will also help you quickly and efficiently prepare for the lesson and the exam.
Brief analysis
Year of writing- 1925
History of creation- I. Bunin was inspired to write the work by the nature of the Maritime Alps. The story was created at a time when the writer was working on a cycle of works related to love.
Subject- The main theme of the work is true love, which a person feels both in soul and body. In the final part of the work, the motive of separation from a loved one appears.
Composition- The formal organization of the story is simple, but there are certain features. The elements of the plot are placed in a logical sequence, but the work begins with a plot. Another feature is the framing: the story begins and ends with a picture of the sea.
Genre- Story.
Direction- Realism.
History of creation
"Sunstroke" was written by I. Bunin in 1925. It is worth noting that the year of writing coincided with the period when the writer worked on stories dedicated to the theme of love. This is one of the factors that explains the psychological depth of the work.
I. Bunin told G. Kuznetsova about the history of creation. After the conversation, the woman wrote the following in her diary: “We talked yesterday about writing and about how stories are born. I.A. (Ivan Alekseevich) it begins with nature, some picture that flashed through the brain, often a fragment. So the sunstroke came from the idea of going out on deck after dinner, from the light into the darkness of a summer night on the Volga. And the end came later
Subject
In "Sunstroke", the analysis of the work should begin with a description of the main problems. The story showed motive, very common both in world and domestic literature. Nevertheless, the author managed to reveal it in an original way, delving into the psychology of the characters.
In the center of the piece subject sincere, passionate love, in the context of which Problems relationships between people, separation of lovers, internal contradiction caused by incompatibility of feelings and circumstances. Issues works based on psychology. The system of images is unbranched, so the reader's attention is constantly focused on two characters - the lieutenant and the beautiful stranger.
The story begins with a description of lunch on the deck of the ship. It was in such conditions that young people met. A spark immediately flew between them. The man offered the girl to run away from strangers. They got off the ship and went to the hotel. When the young people were left alone, the flames of passion immediately engulfed their bodies and minds.
The time at the hotel flew by. In the morning, the lieutenant and the beautiful stranger were forced to part, but it turned out to be very difficult to do this. Young people wonder what happened to them. They assume it was sunstroke. In these arguments lies the meaning of the title of the work. Sunstroke in this context is a symbol of a sudden mental shock, love that overshadows the mind.
Beloved persuades the lieutenant to escort her to the deck. Here the man seems to be struck by sunstroke again, because he allows himself to kiss a stranger in front of everyone. The hero cannot recover for a long time after separation. He is tormented by thoughts that his beloved most likely has a family, so they are not destined to be together. A man tries to write to his beloved, but then he realizes that he does not know her address. In such a rebellious state, the hero spends another night, recent events are gradually moving away from him. However, they do not pass without a trace: it seems to the lieutenant that he has aged ten years.
Composition
The composition of the work is simple, but some features are worth paying attention to. Plot elements are placed in a logical sequence. Nevertheless, the story begins not with an exposition, but with a plot. This technique enhances the sound of the idea. The characters get to know each other, and then we learn more about them. The development of events - a night in a hotel and a morning conversation. The climax is the parting scene between the lieutenant and the stranger. The denouement - the outbreak of love is gradually forgotten, but leaves a deep imprint in the soul of the hero. Such a conclusion provides the reader with the opportunity to draw certain conclusions.
The framing can also be considered a feature of the composition of the work: the story begins and ends with a scene on the deck.
Genre
The genre of I. Bunin's work "Sunstroke" is a story, as evidenced by such signs: a small volume, the main role is played by the storyline of lovers, there are only two main characters. The direction of the story is realism.
Artwork test
Analysis Rating
Average rating: 4.6. Total ratings received: 112.
In the work of I. A. Bunin, perhaps, the theme of love occupies a leading place. Bunin's love is always a tragic feeling that has no hope for a happy ending, it is a difficult test for lovers. This is how it appears to readers in the story "Sunstroke".
Along with the collection of love stories "Dark Alleys", created by Ivan Alekseevich in the mid-1920s, "Sunstroke" is one of the pearls of his work. The tragedy and complexity of the time during which I. Bunin lived and wrote were fully embodied by the writer in the images of the main characters of this work.
The work was published in Sovremennye Zapiski in 1926. Critics accepted the work with caution, skeptically noticing the emphasis on the physiological side of love. However, not all reviewers were so sanctimonious, among them were those who warmly welcomed Bunin's literary experiment. In the context of symbolist poetics, his image of the Stranger was perceived as a mystical mystery of feeling, dressed in flesh and blood. It is known that the author, when creating his story, was impressed by Chekhov's work, so he crossed out the introduction and began his story with a random sentence.
About what?
From the very beginning, the story is intriguing in that the narrative begins with an impersonal sentence: "After dinner, we went ... on deck ...". The lieutenant meets a beautiful stranger on the ship, whose name, like his name, remains unknown to the reader. They both seem to be hit by a sunstroke; passionate, ardent feelings flare up between them. The traveler and his companion leave the ship for the city, and the next day she leaves by boat to her family. The young officer is left all alone and after a while realizes that he can no longer live without that woman. The story ends with the fact that he, sitting under a canopy on the deck, feels ten years older.
Main characters and their characteristics
- She is. From the story, you can learn that this woman had a family - a husband and a three-year-old daughter, to whom she returned on a steamer from Anapa (probably from vacation or treatment). The meeting with the lieutenant became for her a "sunstroke" - a fleeting adventure, a "clouding of her mind." She does not tell him her name and asks him not to write to her in her city, as she understands that what happened between them is only a momentary weakness, and her real life is completely different. She is beautiful and charming, her charm lies in the mystery.
- The lieutenant is an ardent and impressionable man. For him, a meeting with a stranger was fatal. He only managed to truly realize what had happened to him after the departure of his beloved. He wants to find her, return her, because he was seriously carried away by her, but it's too late. The misfortune that can happen to a person from an overabundance of the sun, for him was a sudden feeling, true love, which made him suffer from the realization of the loss of his beloved. This loss had a profound effect on him.
Issues
- One of the main problems in the story "Sunstroke" of this story is the problem of the essence of love. In the understanding of I. Bunin, love brings a person not only joy, but also suffering, making him feel unhappy. The happiness of short moments later results in the bitterness of separation and painful parting.
- From this follows another problem of the story - the problem of the short duration, the fluctuation of happiness. And for the mysterious stranger, and for the lieutenant, this euphoria was short-lived, but in the future they both "remembered this moment for many years." Short moments of delight are accompanied by long years of longing and loneliness, but I. Bunin is sure that it is thanks to them that life acquires meaning.
Subject
The theme of love in the story "Sunstroke" is a feeling full of tragedy, mental anguish, but at the same time it is filled with passion and ardor. This great, all-consuming feeling becomes both happiness and grief. Bunin's love is like a match that rapidly flares up and dies out, and at the same time it suddenly strikes, like a sunstroke, and can no longer leave its imprint on the human soul.
Meaning
The point of Sunstroke is to show readers all the facets of love. It arises suddenly, lasts a little, passes hard, like a disease. It is both beautiful and painful at the same time. This feeling can both elevate a person and completely destroy him, but it is precisely this feeling that can give him those bright moments of happiness that color his faceless everyday life and fill his life with meaning.
Ivan Alexandrovich Bunin in the story "Sunstroke" seeks to convey to readers his main idea that ardent and strong emotions do not always have a future: love fever is fleeting and like a powerful shock, but this is what makes it the most wonderful feeling in the world.
Interesting? Save it on your wall!Russian literature has always been distinguished by extraordinary chastity. Love, in the view of a Russian person and a Russian writer, is primarily a spiritual feeling. The attraction of souls, mutual understanding, spiritual community, similarity of interests have always been more important than the attraction of bodies, the desire for physical intimacy. The latter, in accordance with Christian dogmas, was even condemned. L. Tolstoy administers a strict trial over Anna Karenina, no matter what various critics say. In the traditions of Russian literature, there was also an image of women of easy virtue (remember Sonechka Marmeladova) as pure and immaculate creatures, whose soul is in no way affected by the “costs of the profession”. And in no way could a short-term connection, a spontaneous rapprochement, a carnal impulse of a man and a woman to each other be welcomed and not justified. A woman who embarked on this path was perceived as a creature either frivolous or desperate. In order to justify Katerina Kabanova in her actions and see in her betrayal of her husband an impulse for freedom and a protest against oppression in general, N.A. Dobrolyubov in his article “A Ray of Light in a Dark Kingdom” had to involve the entire system of social relations in Russia! And of course, such a relationship has never been called love. Passion, attraction at its best. Ho not love.
Bunin fundamentally rethinks this "scheme". For him, the feeling that suddenly arises between random fellow travelers on the ship turns out to be as priceless as love. Moreover, it is love that is this heady, selfless, suddenly arising feeling, causing association with a sunstroke. He is convinced of this. “Soon it will be released,” he wrote to his friend, “the story “Sunstroke”, where I again, as in the novel“ Mitina Love ”, in“ The Case of Cornet Elagin ”, in“ Ida ”,“ I talk about love.
Bunin's interpretation of the theme of love is connected with his idea of Eros as a powerful elemental force - the main form of manifestation of cosmic life. It is tragic in its essence, as it turns a person upside down, dramatically changes the course of his life. Much in this respect brings Bunin closer to Tyutchev, who also believed that love does not so much bring harmony into human existence as it reveals the "chaos" lurking in it. But if Tyutchev was nevertheless attracted by the “union of the soul with the soul of his own”, which ultimately resulted in a fatal duel, if in his poems we see unique individuals who initially, even striving for this, are not able to bring happiness to each other, then Bunina is not concerned about the union of souls. Rather, he is shocked by the union of bodies, which in turn gives rise to a special understanding of life and another person, a feeling of indestructible memory, which makes life meaningful, and in a person shows his natural beginnings.
It can be said that the whole story “Sunstroke”, which, as the writer himself admitted, grew out of one mental “idea of going on deck ... from the light into the darkness of a summer night on the Volga”, is devoted to a description of this immersion in darkness, which the lieutenant is experiencing who lost his random lover. This immersion in darkness, almost “insanity” takes place against the backdrop of an unbearably stuffy sunny day, filling everything around with penetrating heat. All descriptions are literally overflowing with burning sensations: the room where random fellow travelers spend the night is “hotly hot during the day by the sun”. And the next day begins with a "sunny, hot morning." And later, “everything around was flooded with a hot, fiery ... sun.” And even in the evening, heat spreads in the rooms from the heated iron roofs, the wind raises thick white dust, the huge river glistens under the sun, the distance of water and sky shines dazzlingly. And after the forced wanderings around the city, the shoulder straps and buttons of the lieutenant's tunic “burned so much that they could not be touched. The band of the cap was wet with sweat inside, his face was on fire...”.
The sunshine, the blinding whiteness of these pages should remind readers of the “sunstroke” that overtook the heroes of the story. This is at the same time immeasurable, sharpest happiness, but it is still a blow, albeit a “sunny”, i.e. painful, twilight state, loss of reason. Therefore, if at first the epithet solar is adjacent to the epithet happy, then later on the pages of the story there will appear “a joyful, but here it seems to be an aimless sun.”
Bunin very carefully reveals the ambiguous meaning of his work. He does not allow the participants in a short-term romance to immediately understand what happened to them. The heroine pronounces the first words about some kind of “eclipse”, “sunstroke”. Later, he will repeat them in bewilderment: “Indeed, it’s like some kind of “sunstroke”. But she still talks about it without thinking, more concerned about ending the relationship right away, because it may be “unpleasant” for her to continue it: if they go together again, “everything will be spoiled”. At the same time, the heroine repeatedly repeats that this has never happened to her, that what happened on her own day is incomprehensible, incomprehensible, unique. But the lieutenant, as it were, passes her words past her ears (later, however, with tears in his eyes, perhaps only in order to revive her intonation, he repeats them), he easily agrees with her, easily takes her to the pier, easily and Carelessly returns to the room where they had just been together.
And now the main action begins, because the whole story of the rapprochement of two people was only an exposition, only preparation for the shock that happened in the soul of the lieutenant and which he immediately cannot believe. First, it is about the strange feeling of the emptiness of the room, which struck him when he returned. Bunin boldly collides antonyms in sentences to sharpen this impression: “The number without her seemed somehow completely different than it was with her. He was still full of her - and empty ... She still smelled of her good English cologne, her unfinished cup was still standing on the tray, but she was already gone. And in the future, this contrast - the presence of a person in the soul, in memory and his real absence in the surrounding space - will intensify with every moment. In the soul of the lieutenant, a feeling of wildness, unnaturalness, implausibility of what happened, intolerable pain from loss is growing. The pain is such that it must be saved at all costs. There is no salvation in anything. And every action only brings him closer to the thought that he cannot “get rid of this sudden, unexpected love” in any way, that his memories of what he experienced, “about the smell of her suntan and canvas dress”, about “a lively, simple and cheerful sound” will forever haunt him. her voices." Once F. Tyutchev begged:
Oh Lord, give me burning suffering
And dispel the deadness of my soul:
You took it, but the flour of remembrance,
Leave living flour to me for her.
The heroes of Bunin do not need to conjure - the “torment of remembering” is always with them. The writer perfectly depicts that terrible feeling of loneliness, rejection from other people, which the lieutenant experienced, pierced by love. Dostoevsky believed that such a feeling can be experienced by a person who has committed a terrible crime. Such is his Raskolnikov. What crime did the lieutenant commit? Only that he was overwhelmed by “too much love, too much happiness”!? However, this is what immediately distinguished him from the mass of ordinary people living an ordinary, unremarkable life. Bunin deliberately picks out individual human figures from this mass in order to clarify this idea. Here, at the entrance of the hotel, a cab stopped and simply, carelessly, indifferently, calmly sitting on the box, smokes a cigarette, and another cab driver, taking the lieutenant to the pier, says something cheerfully. Here the women and men at the bazaar are energetically inviting buyers, praising their goods, and satisfied newlyweds look at the lieutenant from photographs, a pretty girl in a wrinkled cap and some military man with magnificent sideburns, in a uniform decorated with orders. And in the cathedral the church choir sings “loudly, cheerfully, resolutely.”
Of course, the fun, carelessness and happiness of others are seen through the eyes of the hero, and, probably, this is not entirely true. But the fact of the matter is that from now on he sees the world just like that, imbued with people who are not “hit” by love, “torturously envy”. After all, they really do not experience that unbearable torment, that incredible suffering that does not give him a moment of peace. Hence his sharp, some kind of convulsive movements, gestures, impetuous actions: “quickly got up”, “hurriedly walked”, “stopped in horror”, “began to stare intently”. The writer pays special attention to the gestures of the character, his facial expressions, his views (for example, an unmade bed repeatedly falls into his field of vision, possibly still keeping the warmth of their bodies). Also important are his impressions of being, the sensations uttered aloud by the most elementary, but therefore striking phrases. Only occasionally does the reader get the opportunity to learn about his thoughts. This is how Bunin's psychological analysis is built, at the same time both secret and explicit, some kind of "super-obvious".
The culmination of the story can be considered the phrase: “Everything was fine, there was immense happiness in everything, great joy; even in this heat and in all the smells of the marketplace, in all this unfamiliar town and in this old county hotel, there was this joy, and at the same time, the heart was simply torn to pieces. It is even known that in one of the editions of the story it was said that the lieutenant "had a persistent thought of suicide." Thus, a dividing line is drawn between the past and the present. From now on, he exists, “deeply unhappy”, and some of them, others, happy and contented. And Bunin agrees that “everything everyday, ordinary is wild, scary” to the heart, which was visited by great love - that “new ... strange, incomprehensible feeling”, which this unremarkable person “could not even imagine in himself”. And mentally the hero dooms his chosen one to a “lonely life” in the future, although he knows perfectly well that she has a husband and daughter. But the husband and daughter are present in the dimension of “ordinary life”, just as simple, unpretentious joys remain in “ordinary life”. Therefore, for him, after parting, the whole world around turns into a desert (not without reason in one of the phrases of the story - on a completely different occasion - the Sahara is mentioned). “The street was completely empty. The houses were all the same, white, two-story, merchants ... and it seemed that there was not a soul in them. The room breathes with the heat of “light-bearing (and therefore colorless, blinding! - M.M.) and now completely empty, silent ... world”. This “silent Volga world” comes to replace the “immeasurable Volga expanse”, in which she, beloved, the only one, disappeared, disappeared forever. This motif of the disappearance and at the same time the presence in the world of a human being living in human memory is very reminiscent of the intonation of Bunin's story “Light Breath” -
about the chaotic and unrighteous life of the young schoolgirl Olya Meshcherskaya, who possessed this most inexplicable “light breath” and died at the hands of her lover. It ends with these lines: "Now this light breath has again dissipated in the world, in this cloudy sky, in this cold spring wind."
In full accordance with the contrast of the individual existence of a grain of sand (such a definition suggests itself!) And the boundless world, a collision of times so significant for Bunin's concept of life arises - the present, present, even momentary time and eternity, into which time develops without it. The word never begins to sound like a refrain: “he will never see her again”, “never tell” her about his feelings. I would like to write: “From now on, my whole life is forever, until your grave ...” - but you cannot send a telegram to her, since the name and surname are unknown; I’m ready to die even tomorrow in order to spend a day together today, to prove my love, but it’s impossible to return my beloved ... At first, it seems unbearable for the lieutenant to live without her only an endless, but a single day in a dusty town forgotten by God. Then this day will turn into flour "the uselessness of all future life without her."
The story has, in fact, a circular composition. At the very beginning of it, a blow is heard on the pier of the moored steamer, and at the end the same sounds are heard. Days passed between them. One day. Ho, in the view of the hero and the author, they are separated from each other by at least ten years (this figure is repeated twice in the story - after everything that happened, after realizing his loss, the lieutenant feels “ten years older”!), but in fact, by eternity. Another person is riding on the ship again, having comprehended some of the most important things on earth, having joined her secrets.
What is striking in this story is the sense of the materiality of what is happening. Indeed, it seems that such a story could be written by a person who only really experienced something similar, remembered both the lonely hairpin forgotten by his beloved on the night table, and the sweetness of the first kiss, which took his breath away. Ho Bunin sharply objected to identifying him with his heroes. “I have never told my own novels ... and“ Mitina Love ”and“ Sunstroke ”are all fruits of the imagination,” he was indignant. Rather, in the Maritime Alps, in 1925, when this story was written, he imagined the shining Volga, its yellow shoals, oncoming rafts and a pink steamer sailing along it. All the things he was never meant to see. And the only words that the author of the story utters “on his own behalf” are the words that they “remembered this moment for many years later: neither one nor the other had ever experienced anything like this in their entire lives.” The heroes, who are no longer destined to see each other, cannot know what will happen to them in that “life” that will arise outside the narrative, what they will feel afterwards.
In a purely “dense”, material manner of narration (it was not for nothing that one of the critics called what came out from under his pen “brocade prose”) it was precisely the worldview of the writer who thirsted through memory, through touching the subject, through the trace left by someone (when Having visited the Middle East, he was glad that he saw in some dungeon a “living and clear footprint” left five thousand years ago) to resist the destructive action of time, to triumph over oblivion, and therefore over death. It is memory in the writer's mind that makes a person like God. Bunin proudly said: "I am a man: like a god, I am doomed / To know the longing of all countries and all times." So a person who has recognized love, in the artistic world of Bunin, can consider himself a deity, to whom new, unknown feelings are revealed - kindness, spiritual generosity, nobility. The writer speaks of the mysteriousness of the currents that run between people, binding them into an indissoluble whole, but at the same time he persistently reminds us of the unpredictability of the results of our actions, of the “chaos” that hides under a decent existence, of the quivering caution that such a fragile organization requires, like human life.
Bunin's work, especially on the eve of the cataclysm of 1917 and emigration, is imbued with a sense of catastrophism, which awaits both the passengers of the Atlantis and selflessly devoted lovers, who are nevertheless bred by life circumstances. But the anthem of love and joy of life will sound no less loudly in it, which can be available to people whose heart has not grown old, whose soul is open to creativity. But in this joy, and in this love, and in the self-forgetfulness of creativity, Bunin saw the danger of a passionate attachment to life, which can sometimes be so strong that his heroes choose death, preferring eternal oblivion to the acute pain of pleasure.
