The main themes of Bunin's works. Philosophical problems of Bunin's works: analysis of creativity
In Bunin's poetry, philosophical lyrics occupied one of the key places. Looking into the past, the writer sought to grasp the “eternal” laws of the development of science, peoples, and humanity. This was the meaning of his appeal to distant civilizations of the past - Slavic and Eastern.
The basis of Bunin's philosophy of life is the recognition of earthly existence as only a part of eternal cosmic history, in which the life of man and humanity is dissolved. His lyrics intensify the feeling of the fatal confinement of human life in a narrow time frame, the feeling of man’s loneliness in the world.
The desire for the sublime comes into contact with the imperfections of human experience. Next to the desired Atlantis, the “blue abyss”, and the ocean, images of the “naked soul” and “night sadness” appear. Conflicting Experiences lyrical hero most clearly manifested in the deeply philosophical motives of dreams and souls. “Bright dream”, “winged”, “intoxicating”, “enlightened happiness” are sung. However, such a sublime feeling carries a “heavenly secret” and becomes “foreign to the earth.”
In prose, one of Bunin’s most famous philosophical works is the story “The Gentleman from San Francisco.” With hidden irony and sarcasm, Bunin describes the main character - a gentleman from San Francisco, without even honoring him with a name. The Master himself is full of snobbery and self-satisfaction. All his life he strived for wealth, setting an example for himself as the richest people in the world, trying to achieve the same prosperity as them. Finally, it seems to him that the set goal is close and, finally, it’s time to relax, live for his own pleasure: “Until this moment, he did not live, but existed.” And the gentleman is already fifty-eight years old...
The hero considers himself the “master” of the situation, but life itself refutes him. Money is a powerful force, but it cannot buy happiness, prosperity, respect, love, life. In addition, there is a force in the world that is beyond the control of anything. This is nature, element. All that rich people, like the gentleman from San Francisco, can do is isolate themselves as much as possible from weather conditions they do not want. However, the elements are still stronger. After all, their lives depend on her favor.
The gentleman from San Francisco believed that everything around him was created only to fulfill his wishes; the hero firmly believed in the power of the “golden calf”: “He was quite generous on the way and therefore fully believed in the care of all those who fed and watered they served him from morning to evening, preventing his slightest desire.” Yes, the wealth of the American tourist, like a magic key, opened many doors, but not all. It could not prolong his life, it did not protect him even after death. How much servility and admiration this man saw during his life, the same amount of humiliation his mortal body experienced after death.
Bunin shows how illusory the power of money is in this world, and how pathetic is the person who bets on it. Having created idols for himself, he strives to achieve the same well-being. It seems that the goal has been achieved, he is at the top, for which he worked tirelessly for many years. What did he do that he left for his descendants? Nobody even remembered his name.
Among civilization, in the everyday bustle, it is easy for a person to lose himself, it is easy to replace real goals and ideals with imaginary ones. But this cannot be done. It is necessary to take care of your soul in any conditions, to preserve the treasures that are in it. Bunin’s philosophical works call us to this. With this work, Bunin tried to show that a person can lose himself, but under any conditions he must retain something more within himself - and this is an immortal soul.
Bunin belongs to the last generation of writers from noble estate, which is closely related to the nature of the central zone of Russia. “Few people can know and love nature like Ivan Bunin can,” wrote Alexander Blok in 1907. It was not for nothing that the Pushkin Prize was awarded to Bunin in 1903 for his collection of poems “Falling Leaves,” glorifying Russian rural nature. In his poems, the poet connected the sadness of the Russian landscape with Russian life into one inseparable whole. “Against the background of a golden iconostasis, in the fire of falling leaves, gilded by sunset, stands an abandoned estate.” Autumn - the “quiet widow” - is in unusual harmony with empty estates and abandoned farmsteads. “The native silence torments me, the nests of my native desolation torment me.” Bunin’s stories, which are similar to poetry, are also imbued with this sad poetry of withering, dying, desolation. Here is the beginning of his famous story “Antonov Apples”: “I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinning garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn flowers.” freshness..." And this smell of Antonov apples accompanies him in all his wanderings and in the capitals of the world as a memory of his Motherland: "But in the evenings,” writes Bunin, “I read old poets, relatives to me in everyday life and in many of my moods, finally , simply by location - central Russia. And the drawers of my table are full of Antonov apples, and the healthy autumn aroma transports me to the village, to the landowners' estates."
Along with the degeneration of the noble nests, the village is also degenerating. In the story "The Village" he describes the courtyard of a rich peasant family and sees "darkness and dirt" - both in the physical, and in the mental, and in moral life". Bunin writes: "The old man is lying there, dying. He is still alive - and already in Sentsy the coffin has been prepared, pies are already being baked for the funeral. And suddenly the old man gets better. Where was the coffin to go? How to justify spending? Lukyan was then cursed for five years for them, lived with reproaches from the world, and starved to death." And here is how Bunin describes the level of political consciousness of the peasants:
Do you know why the court came?
Judge the deputy... They say he wanted to poison the river.
Deputy? Fool, is this really what deputies do?
And the plague knows them...
Bunin’s point of view on the people is polemically pointed against those lovers of the people who idealized the people and flattered them. The dying Russian village is framed by a dull Russian landscape: “White grain rushed askance, falling on a black, poor village, on bumpy, dirty roads, on horse manure, ice and water; the twilight fog hid endless fields, all this great desert with its snows, forests, villages and cities - the kingdom of hunger and death..."
The theme of death will receive varied coverage in Bunin’s work. This is both the death of Russia and the death of an individual. Death turns out to be not only the resolver of all contradictions, but also the source of absolute, purifying power (“Transfiguration”, “Mitya’s Love”).
Bunin’s story “The Gentleman from San Francisco” was understood more deeply by Alexander Tvardovsky: “In the face of love and death, according to Bunin, the social, class, and property lines that separate people are erased by themselves - everyone is equal before them.” Averky from “The Thin Grass” dies in the corner of his poor hut: a nameless gentleman from San Francisco dies having just gotten ready to have a good lunch in the restaurant of a first-class hotel on the warm sea coast. But death is equally terrible in its inevitability when this most famous of Bunin’s stories is interpreted only in the sense of exposure. capitalism and the symbolic harbinger of its death, then they seem to lose sight of the fact that for the author it is much more important to think about the susceptibility of a millionaire to a common end, about the insignificance and ephemeral nature of his power in the face of a mortal outcome that is the same for everyone.”
Death, as it were, allows one to see a person’s life in its true light. Before physical death, the gentleman from San Francisco suffered spiritual death.
“Until the age of 58, his life was devoted to accumulation. Having become a millionaire, he wants to get all the pleasures that money can buy: ... he thought of holding the carnival in Nice, in Monte Carlo, where at this time the most selective society flocks, where Some enthusiastically indulge in car and sailing races, others in roulette, others in what is commonly called flirting, and still others in shooting pigeons, which soar very beautifully from cages over the emerald lawn, against the backdrop of a sea the color of forget-me-nots, and immediately knock white lumps on earth...1 - this is not life, it is a form of life, devoid of internal content. The consumer society has eradicated from itself all the human capacity for Sympathy and condolences. The death of the gentleman from San Francisco is perceived with displeasure, because “the evening was irreparably ruined,” master. the hotel feels guilty, he gives his word that he will take “all measures in his power” to eliminate the trouble. Money decides everything: guests want to have fun for their money, the owner does not want to lose profit, this explains the disrespect for death, and therefore, moral decline of society, dehumanization in its extreme manifestation.
The deadness of bourgeois society is symbolized by “a thin and flexible pair of hired lovers: a sinfully modest girl with drooping eyelashes, with an innocent hairstyle, and a tall young man with black hair, as if glued on, pale with powder, in the most elegant patent leather shoes, in narrow, long coattails, tailcoat - a handsome man, looking like a huge leech." And no one knew how tired this couple was of pretending to be in love. And what stands underneath them, at the bottom of the dark hold. No one thinks about the futility of life in the face of death.
Many works by I.A. Bunin and the entire cycle of stories are devoted to the theme of love." Dark alleys". “All the stories in this book are only about love, about its “dark” and most often very gloomy and cruel alleys,” Bunin wrote in one of his letters. Bunin himself considered this book the most perfect in craftsmanship. Bunin sang not platonic, but sensual love surrounded romantic aura. Love, in Bunin’s understanding, is contraindicated in everyday life, any duration, even in a desired marriage; it is an insight, a “sunstroke”, often leading to death. He describes love in all its states, where it barely dawns and will never come true ("Old Port"), and where it languishes unrecognized ("Ida"), and where it turns into passion ("The Killer"). Love captures all thoughts, all spiritual and physical potentials of a person - but this state cannot last long. So that love does not fizzle out, does not exhaust itself, it is necessary to separate - and forever. If the heroes themselves do not do this, then rock and fate intervene in their lives: one of the lovers dies. The story "Mitya's Love" ends with the hero's suicide. Death here is interpreted as the only possibility of liberation from love.
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Ivan Alekseevich Bunin (1870-1953) is called “the last classic.” In his stories, novellas, and poems, Bunin shows the whole range of problems of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. The themes of his works are so diverse that they seem to be life itself.
main topic early 1900s - the theme of Russia's fading patriarchal past. The most vivid expression of the problem of a change of system, the collapse of all foundations noble society we see in the story "Antonov apples". Bunin regrets Russia's fading past, idealizing the noble way of life. Bunin’s best memories of his former life are saturated with the smell of Antonov apples. He hopes that together with the dying noble Russia The roots of the nation will still remain in its memory.
In the mid-1910s, the themes and problems of Bunin's stories began to change. He moves away from the topic of Russia's patriarchal past to criticism of bourgeois reality. A striking example of this period is his story "Mr. from San Francisco".
Bunin's collection “Dark Alleys” is entirely dedicated to love. Most of the stories were written during World War II in Grasse, France, amid the “dark, pleading wail of a siren” and the “very loud rumble and hum” of airplanes. According to V.N. Muromtseva, the writer’s wife, while working on a book about love, found it easier to “endure the unbearable.” Apparently, only by thinking about the eternal (namely, love is eternal), a person can worthily survive the transitory, even such a terrible transitory as war.
The theme of love is interpreted in different ways in Bunin’s stories, but in this interpretation, one can undoubtedly find common features. Thus, in the collection there is not a single story where the relationship between a girl and a young man ended in marriage. The writer depicts not ordinary earthly desires, not just the need to continue the race, but a real miracle - that high feeling called love. In Bunin's love, as in life, there is always tragedy. After all, love is too strong a shock to last long. Maybe that's why the heroes of his stories break up or even die. But love remains in their hearts forever.
All works in the collection are united by the motif of memories of youth and homeland.
Story "Dark alleys", which gave the collection its title, was written, as Bunin himself admitted, “very easily, unexpectedly.”
The story of the relationship between Nadezhda and Nikolai Alekseevich, the heroes of the story “Dark Alleys,” is simple, like life itself. Thirty years later, people met who once loved each other very much. She is the owner of a “private room” at the post station, he is a “slender old military man” who stopped in the autumn bad weather to rest and have lunch. The owner of the warm and tidy room turned out to be Nadezhda, “a beautiful woman beyond her age,” dark-haired, “with dark fluff on her upper lip.” She recognized her former lover immediately and said that she did not get married because she had loved him all her life, despite the fact that he “heartlessly” abandoned her. I was never able to forgive. Nikolai Alekseevich married, as it seemed to him, for love, but he was not happy: his wife left him, cheating on the one who “loved her madly,” his son grew up to be a “scoundrel” and a “spendthrift.”
This, it seems, is the whole story, in which nothing can be corrected. And is it necessary to change anything? Does this make sense? Bunin does not give answers to such questions. We don’t know what happened in the former lives of our heroes. However, it seems that at that time Nikolai Alekseevich’s relationship with the beautiful serf Nadezhda seemed like a slight flirtation. Even now he is perplexed: “What nonsense! This same Nadezhda is not the innkeeper, but my wife, the mistress of my St. Petersburg house, the mother of my children?”
Nadezhda has nothing left in her life except memories of her first love, although she lives strong and “gives money in interest.” She is respected for her fairness, her straightforwardness, her intelligence.
Nikolai Alekseevich left, unable to cope with the surging feelings, remembering the magical poems that he once read to his beloved: “The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around, there were dark linden alleys...”.
This means that the mark on the soul remained quite deep, the memories did not recede. And who isn’t flattered to be the only one in life? The splinter in my heart is firmly lodged, now forever. How else? After all, it turned out that more love never happened. The chance is given only once. They had to take advantage of it, perhaps by going through a break with family, misunderstanding and condemnation from friends, and maybe even giving up their career. All this is within the capabilities of a real Man, capable of loving and protecting his Woman. For such a person there are no class differences; he does not accept the law of society as mandatory, but challenges it.
But our hero can neither understand nor appreciate his actions, so repentance does not occur. But love lives in the heart of Nadezhda, who does not stoop to reproaches, complaints, or threats. She is full of human dignity and grateful to fate, which gave her, at the end of her days, a meeting with the one whom she once called “Nikolenka,” to whom she gave “her beauty, her fever.”
True love demands nothing in return, asks for nothing. “Love is beautiful,” because only love can be answered with love...
“Pines” 1901 - the first step in the controversy: the image of a snow-covered village where Mitrofan dies - “to live as a farm laborer of life.”
The denunciation of the foundations of an inhuman, ugly system is combined here with an acute premonition of the inevitable catastrophe of a society based on violence and enslavement, with the expectation of formidable social upheavals. The poverty and suffering of the enslaved people, trampled under the heel of the English “kulturtragers”, are expressively depicted by Bunin in the story "Brothers." The work was the result of the author's vivid impressions when he visited Ceylon in 1911.
The images depicted here of a cruel, jaded Englishman and a young “native” - a rickshaw puller, in love with a beautiful girl from his region - are contrasting. One after another, episodes of the colonialists' inhumane abuse of the local population pass: the father of the hero of the story dies after overworking himself at an overworking job, the young rickshaw driver's fiancee ends up in a brothel, and he himself, tormented by unbearable mental pain, commits suicide on a deserted ocean shore. The name “brothers” sounds ironic and angry in relation to the oppressor and his slave.
Not satisfied with the external picture of events, Bunin strives to show the psychology of the oppressor. The Englishman, returning from Ceylon, reflects on his role. The author forces him to admit that he brings grief, hunger and crime with him to all the lands where the greedy will of the colonizer takes him...
“in Africa,” he says, “I killed people, in India, robbed by England, and therefore, partly by me, I saw thousands dying of hunger, in Japan I bought girls as monthly wives, in China I beat defenseless monkey-like old men on the heads with a stick, in Java and Ceylon he drove rickshaws until his death rattle.”
In the spirit of abstract humanism, Bunin reflects on the brotherhood of people, on the violation of high moral laws by representatives of that inhuman order in which one “brother” kills another. But this abstract moral idea is artistically overcome by a vivid social denunciation, and the concrete depiction of the disastrous consequences of colonialism in a country that could become an earthly paradise gives the work a great social resonance, determines its effectiveness and strength not only for the distant pre-October years, but also for modern times .
Works by I.A. Bunin are filled with philosophical issues. The main issues that concerned the writer were questions of death and love, the essence of these phenomena, their influence on human life.
Bunin comes to the fore comes an appeal to the eternal themes of love, death and nature. Bunin has long been firmly established as one of the greatest stylists in Russian literature. His work clearly demonstrated elusive artistic precision and freedom, imaginative memory, knowledge of the folk language, excellent visual ability, and verbal sensuality. All these features are inherent not only in his poetry, but also in his prose. In the pre-revolutionary decade, prose came to the fore in Ivan Bunin’s work, incorporating the lyricism organically inherent in the writer’s talent. This is the time of the creation of such masterpieces as the stories "Brothers", "Mr. from San Francisco", "Chang's Dreams". Literary historians believe that these works are closely connected stylistically and ideologically, together making up a kind of artistic and philosophical trilogy.
The story "Chang's Dreams"" was written in 1916. The very beginning of the work ("Does it matter who you talk about? Everyone living on earth deserves it") is inspired by Buddhist motifs, because what is in these words if not a reference to the chain of births and deaths, into which any living creature is drawn - from an ant to a person? And now the reader, from the first lines, is internally prepared for the alternations of the present and memories in the story.
And this is the plot of the work. During the voyage, the captain of one of the Russian ships bought a red puppy with intelligent black eyes from an old Chinese man. Chang (that was the dog's name) becomes the owner's only listener during a long journey. The captain talks about what he is like happy man, because he has an apartment in Odessa, a beloved wife and daughter. Then everything in his life collapses, as the captain realizes that the wife he longs for with all his soul does not love him. Without a dream, without hope for the future, without love, this person turns into a bitter drunkard and eventually dies. The main characters of the work are the captain and his faithful dog Chang. It is interesting to observe the changes occurring with the captain throughout his life, to observe how his idea of happiness changes. While sailing on a ship, he says: “But how magnificent life is, my God, how magnificent!” Then the captain loved, he was all in this love and therefore happy. “Once upon a time there were two truths in the world, constantly replacing each other: the first was that life is unspeakably beautiful, and the other was that life is conceivable only for crazy people.” Now, after the loss of love, after disappointment, the captain has only one truth, the last one. Life seems to him like a boring winter day in a dirty tavern. And people... “They have neither God, nor conscience, nor a reasonable purpose for existence, nor love, nor friendship, nor honesty - not even simple pity.”
Internal changes also affect the external image of the hero. At the beginning of the story, we see the happy captain, “blurred and shaved, fragrant with the freshness of cologne, with a raised German mustache, with a shining gaze of keen light eyes, in everything tight and snow-white.” Then he appears before us as a dirty drunkard living in a vile attic. As a comparison, the author cites the attic of his artist friend, who had just discovered the truth of life. The captain has dirt, cold, sparse, ugly furnishings, the artist has cleanliness, warmth, comfort, antique furniture. All this is done in order to contrast these two truths and show how awareness of one or the other affects the external image of a person. The abundance of details used in the work creates the emotional coloring and atmosphere necessary for the reader. For the same purpose, a dual composition of the story was created. Two parallels are clearly visible. One is today's world in which there is no happiness, the other is happy memories. But how does communication occur between them? The answer is simple: this is exactly why the image of a dog was needed. Chang is the thread that connects reality with the past through his dreams. Chang is the only one in the story who has a name. The artist is not only nameless, but also silent. The Woman is completely revealed from some kind of book mists: wondrous “in her marble beauty” Changa Bunin imparts a feeling of “beginningless and endless world that is inaccessible to Death,” that is, a feeling of authenticity - the inexpressible third truth . The captain is consumed by death, but Chang does not lose his Chinese name and remains unsteady now, for he, according to Bunin, meekly follows “the innermost commands of Tao, as some sea creature follows them.”
Let's try to understand the philosophical problems of the work. What is a sense of life? Is human happiness possible? In connection with these questions, the image of “distant hard-working people” (Germans) appears in the story. Using their lifestyle as an example, the writer talks about possible ways of human happiness. Labor to live and reproduce without experiencing the fullness of life. These same “hard-working people” are the epitome. Endless love, which is hardly worth devoting yourself to, since there is always the possibility of betrayal. The embodiment is the image of the captain. The path of eternal thirst for search, in which, however, according to Bunin, there is also no happiness. What is it? Perhaps in gratitude and loyalty? This idea is conveyed by the image of a dog. Through the real unsightly facts of life, a dog's faithful memory breaks through, when there was peace in the soul, when the captain and the dog were happy. Thus, the story "Chang's Dreams" is primarily a philosophical work of the turn of the century. It discusses such eternal themes, like love and death, speaks of the fragility of happiness built only on love, and the eternity of happiness based on fidelity and gratitude. In my opinion, Bunin’s story is very relevant today. The problems raised in the work found a lively response in my soul and made me think about the meaning of life. After all, the generation to which I belong lives during a transitional period in history, when people tend to take stock and think about the future. It may help that reading this work will dispel our internal subconscious fear of it. After all, there are eternal truths in the world that are not subject to any influence or change.
The theme of death is explored most deeply by Bunin in his story “The Man from San Francisco” (1915). In addition, here the writer tries to answer other questions: what is a person’s happiness, what is his purpose on earth.
The main character of the story - a gentleman from San Francisco - is full of snobbery and complacency. All his life he strived for wealth, setting famous billionaires as an example for himself. Finally, it seems to him that the goal is close, it’s time to relax, live for his own pleasure - the hero goes on a cruise on the ship “Atlantis”.
He feels like the “master” of the situation, but that’s not the case. Bunin shows that money is a powerful force, but it is impossible to buy happiness, prosperity, life with it... The rich man dies during his brilliant journey, and it turns out that no one needs him dead. He is transported back, forgotten and abandoned by everyone, in the hold of the ship.
How much servility and admiration this man saw during his life, the same amount of humiliation his mortal body experienced after death. Bunin shows how illusory the power of money is in this world. And the person who bets on them is pathetic. Having created idols for himself, he strives to achieve the same well-being. It seems that the goal has been achieved, he is at the top, for which he worked tirelessly for many years. What did you do that you left for your descendants? Nobody even remembered his name.
Bunin emphasizes that all people, regardless of their condition or financial situation, are equal before death. It is she who allows you to see the true essence of a person. Physical death is mysterious and mysterious, but spiritual death is even more terrible. The writer shows that such a death overtook the hero much earlier, when he devoted his life to accumulating money.
The theme of beauty and love in Bunin’s work is represented by very complex and sometimes contradictory situations. For a writer, love is madness, a surge of emotions, a moment of unbridled happiness, which ends very quickly, and only then is realized and understood. Love, according to Bunin, is a mysterious, fatal feeling, a passion that completely changes a person’s life.
This is exactly what the lieutenant met with a beautiful stranger in Sunstroke" It was a moment of happiness that cannot be returned or resurrected. When she leaves, the lieutenant sits “under the canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older,” for this feeling suddenly arose and suddenly disappeared, leaving a deep wound in his soul. But still love is a great happiness. According to Bunin, this is the meaning of human life
RESPONSE PLAN
You should add one of the realistic stories to your answer. We listened to the following stories as messages: “Konovalov”, “Passion-Faces”, “The Orlov Spouses”.
Themes and ideological and artistic originality of I. A. Bunin’s work.
RESPONSE PLAN
1. A word about the writer’s work.
2. The main themes and ideas of I. A. Bunin’s prose:
a) the theme of the passing patriarchal past (“Antonov Apples”);
b) criticism of bourgeois reality (“Mr. from San Francisco”);
c) the system of symbols in I. A. Bunin’s story “The Gentleman from San Francisco”;
d) the theme of love and death (“Mr. from San Francisco”, “Transfiguration”, “Mitya’s Love”, “Dark Alleys”).
3. I. A. Bunin - laureate Nobel Prize.
1. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin (1870-1953) is called “the last classic.” Bunin's reflections on the deep processes of life result in a perfect artistic form, where the originality of the composition, images, and details are subordinated to the intense author's thought.
2. In his stories, novellas, and poems, Bunin shows us the whole range of problems of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. The themes of his works are so diverse that they seem to be life itself. Let's trace how the themes and problems of Bunin's stories changed throughout his life.
a) The main theme of the early 1900s is the theme of the passing patriarchal past of Russia. We see the most vivid expression of the problem of a change of system, the collapse of all the foundations of noble society in the story “Antonov Apples.” Bunin regrets Russia's fading past, idealizing the noble way of life. Bunin’s best memories of his former life are saturated with the smell of Antonov apples. He hopes that, along with the dying out of noble Russia, the roots of the nation will still be preserved in its memory.
b) In the mid-1910s, the themes and problems of Bunin's stories began to change. He moves away from the theme of Russia's patriarchal past to a critique of bourgeois reality. A striking example of this period is his story “The Master from San Francisco.” With the smallest details, mentioning every detail, Bunin describes the luxury that represents the true life of the gentlemen of modern times. At the center of the work is the image of a millionaire who doesn’t even have his own name, since no one remembered it - and does he even need it? This is a collective image of the American bourgeoisie. “Until the age of 58, his life was devoted to accumulation. Having become a millionaire, he wants to get all the pleasures that money can buy: ... he thought of holding the carnival in Nice, in Monte Carlo, where at this time the most selective society flocks, where some enthusiastically indulge in automobile and sailing races, others roulette, others to what is commonly called flirting, and fourth to shooting pigeons, which soar very beautifully from cages over the emerald lawn, against the backdrop of a sea the color of forget-me-nots, and immediately hit the ground with white lumps...” - this is a life devoid of internal content . The consumer society has erased everything human in itself, the ability for empathy and condolences. The death of the gentleman from San Francisco is perceived with displeasure, because “the evening was irreparably ruined,” the hotel owner feels guilty, and gives his word that he will take “all measures in his power” to eliminate the trouble. Money decides everything: guests want to have fun for their money, the owner does not want to lose profit, this explains the disrespect for death. Such is the moral decline of society, its inhumanity in its extreme manifestation.
c) There are a lot of allegories, associations and symbols in this story. The ship "Atlantis" acts as a symbol of civilization; The gentleman himself is a symbol of the bourgeois well-being of a society where people eat deliciously, dress elegantly and do not care about the world around them. They are not interested in him. They live in society as if in a case, closed forever to people of another circle. The ship symbolizes this shell, the sea symbolizes the rest of the world, raging, but in no way touching the hero and others like him. And nearby, in the same shell, are the people who control the ship, working hard at the gigantic firebox, which the author calls the ninth circle of hell.
There are many biblical allegories in this story. The hold of a ship can be compared to the underworld. The author hints that the gentleman from San Francisco sold his soul for earthly goods and is now paying for it with death.
Symbolic in the story is the image of a huge, rock-like devil, who is a symbol of the impending catastrophe, a kind of warning to humanity. It is also symbolic in the story that after the death of the rich man, the fun continues, absolutely nothing has changed. The ship sails in the opposite direction, only this time with the rich man’s body in a soda box, and ballroom music thunders again “among the mad blizzard sweeping over the ocean that was buzzing like a funeral mass.”
d) It was important for the author to emphasize the idea of the insignificance of human power in the face of the same mortal outcome for everyone. It turned out that everything accumulated by the master has no meaning before that eternal law to which everyone, without exception, is subject. Obviously, the meaning of life is not in acquiring wealth, but in something else that cannot be assessed monetaryly or aesthetic wisdom. The theme of death receives varied coverage in Bunin’s work. This is both the death of Russia and the death of an individual. Death turns out to be not only the resolver of all contradictions, but also the source of absolute, purifying power (“Transfiguration”, “Mitya’s Love”).
Another of the main themes of the writer’s work is the theme of love. The cycle of stories “Dark Alleys” is devoted to this topic. Bunin considered this book the most perfect in artistic skill. “All the stories in this book are only about love, about its “dark” and most often very gloomy and cruel alleys,” wrote Bunin. The collection “Dark Alleys” is one of latest masterpieces great master.
3. In the literature of Russian abroad, Bunin is a star of the first magnitude. After being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1933, Bunin became a symbol of Russian literature throughout the world.
