The theme of homeland and love in Bunin's story Clean Monday. Love in the story Clean Monday Bunin essay Clean Monday what kind of love is presented in the story

The story of the great Russian writer Ivan Alekseevich Bunin “Clean Monday” is included in his outstanding book of love stories “ Dark alleys" Like all the works in this collection, this is a story about love, unhappy and tragic. We offer a literary analysis of Bunin's work. The material can be used to prepare for the Unified State Exam in literature in 11th grade.

Brief Analysis

Year of writing– 1944

History of creation– Researchers of Bunin’s work believe that the reason for writing “Clean Monday” for the author was his first love.

Topic – In “Clean Monday” the main idea of ​​the story is clearly visible– this is the theme of the lack of meaning in life, loneliness in society.

Composition– The composition is divided into three parts, in the first of which the characters are introduced, the second part is devoted to events Orthodox holidays, and the shortest third is the denouement of the plot.

Genre– “Clean Monday” belongs to the short story genre.

Direction– Neorealism.

History of creation

The writer emigrated to France, this distracted him from the unpleasant moments in life, and he is working fruitfully on his collection “Dark Alleys.” According to researchers, in the story Bunin describes his first love, where the prototype of the main character is the author himself, and the prototype of the heroine is V. Pashchenko.

Ivan Alekseevich himself considered the story “Clean Monday” one of his best creations, and in his diary he praised God for helping him create this magnificent work.

This is short history creation of the story, year of writing - 1944, the first publication of the short story was in the New Journal in New York City.

Subject

In the story “Clean Monday”, analysis of the work reveals a large love theme problems and ideas for the novella. The work is dedicated to the theme of true love, real and all-consuming, but in which there is a problem of misunderstanding by the heroes of each other.

Two young people fell in love with each other: this is wonderful, since love pushes a person to noble deeds, thanks to this feeling, a person finds the meaning of life. In Bunin's novella, love is tragic, the main characters do not understand each other, and this is their drama. The heroine found a divine revelation for herself, she purified herself spiritually, finding her calling in serving God, and went to a monastery. In her understanding, love for the divine turned out to be stronger than physiological love for her chosen one. She realized in time that by joining her life in marriage with the hero, she would not receive complete happiness. Her spiritual development stands much higher than physiological needs; the heroine has higher moral goals. Having made her choice, she left the bustle of the world, surrendering to the service of God.

The hero loves his chosen one, loves sincerely, but he is unable to understand the tossing of her soul. He cannot find an explanation for her reckless and eccentric actions. In Bunin’s story, the heroine looks like a more alive person; at least somehow, through trial and error, she is looking for her meaning in life. She rushes about, rushes from one extreme to another, but in the end she finds her way.

Main character however, throughout all these relationships, he simply remains an outside observer. He, in fact, has no aspirations; everything is convenient and comfortable for him when the heroine is nearby. He cannot understand her thoughts; most likely, he does not even try to understand. He simply accepts everything that his chosen one does, and that’s enough for him. From this it follows that every person has the right to choose, whatever it may be. The main thing for a person is to decide what you are, who you are, and where you are going, and you shouldn’t look around, fearing that someone will judge your decision. Self-confidence and self-confidence will help you find right decision, and make the right choice.

Composition

The work of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin includes not only prose, but also poetry. Bunin himself considered himself a poet, which is especially felt in his prose story “Clean Monday.” His expressive artistic media, unusual epithets and comparisons, various metaphors, his special poetic style of narration, give this work lightness and sensuality.

The title of the story itself gives great meaning to the work. The concept of “pure” speaks of the purification of the soul, and Monday is a new beginning. It is symbolic that the culmination of events occurs on this day.

Compositional structure The story consists of three parts. The first part introduces the characters and their relationships. Masterful use expressive means gives a deep emotional coloring to the image of the characters and their pastime.

The second part of the composition is more dialogue-based. In this part of the story, the author leads the reader to the very idea of ​​the story. The writer speaks here about the choice of the heroine, about her dreams of the divine. The heroine expresses her secret desire to leave the luxurious social life and retire to the shadow of the monastery walls.

The climax appears the night after Clean Monday, when the heroine is determined to become a novice, and the inevitable separation of the heroes occurs.

The third part comes to the denouement of the plot. The heroine has found her purpose in life; she serves in a monastery. The hero, after separation from his beloved, led a dissolute life for two years, mired in drunkenness and debauchery. Over time, he comes to his senses and leads a quiet, calm life, in complete indifference and indifference to everything. One day fate gives him a chance, he sees his beloved among the novices God's temple. Having met her gaze, he turns around and leaves. Who knows, maybe he realized the meaninglessness of his existence and set off for a new life.

Main characters

Genre

Bunin's work was written in short story genre, which is characterized by a sharp turn of events. This is what happens in this story: the main character changes her worldview and abruptly breaks with her past life, changing it in the most radical way.

The novella was written in the direction of realism, but only the great Russian poet and prose writer Ivan Alekseevich Bunin could write about love in such words.

Work test

Rating analysis

Average rating: 4.3. Total ratings received: 524.

Target: formation of an attitude towards tragic love using the example of the work of I.A. Bunin.

All love is great happiness...

I.A.Bunin

PROGRESS OF THE LESSON

1. Organizational moment

2. Teacher's word

Love is a great mysterious element that transforms a person’s life, giving his destiny uniqueness against the background of everyday history, filling his earthly existence with special meaning. Over the centuries, many word artists have dedicated their works to great feeling. More often, probably, than others, I. A. Bunin addressed this topic, who argued that “all love is great happiness...” (referring to the epigraph).

– Can we agree with this statement? (Undoubtedly, since love is a noble, sublime feeling, bright, spiritualizing a person.)

– Remember the previously studied stories of I.A. Bunin. How were they depicting love? (“Easy Breathing”, “Dark Alleys”, “ Sunstroke", which shows unrequited love, tragic, carnal, ending in separation or death.)

– Then tell me, if love is a bright and sublime feeling, then why is it almost always tragic for I. Bunin? Reflection on this question will form the basis of our work in class.

3. The story “Clean Monday”

I.A. Bunin, developing the theme of love in his early stories, developed it in the works of the later period, creating the cycle “Dark Alleys”.

Student message about the history of creation and the meaning of the “Dark Alleys” cycle.

A collection of love stories with the mysterious title “Dark Alleys” was created during the emigration period of creativity in 1937-1945. mainly in Grasse during the occupation of France. During the war, I. Bunin’s worries about the fate of Russia intensified, which is why he again turns to the Russian theme. The collection includes 38 stories, which create a sketch of the events of Russian life taking place in Russia of the past. This is the only book of its kind in Russian literature where everything is about love. Diary entries indicate that he wrote this book with concentration and selflessness. In his letters, I. Bunin recalled that he re-read N.P. Ogarev, stopping at a line from his poem: “The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around, there was an alley of dark linden trees.” Later he wrote to Teffi that “all the stories in the book are only about love, about its “dark” and most often very gloomy and cruel alleys.” (Deciphering the metaphorical meaning of the statement, i.e. shady, mysterious, inexplicable alleys, according to Yu. Maltsev, about the “tangled labyrinths of love.”)

4. Analytical conversation

– Let’s turn to the artistic world of the story “Clean Monday”, determine the artistic time in the work. The story was written in 1944, but takes us to Moscow at the beginning of the century 1912-1914, in the years preceding World War I, i.e. more than 30 years ago, this is caused primarily by the desire to restore the future by turning to the past. The writer's memory reproduces the smallest details of that era with amazing plastic accuracy.

– What signs of real time can we find in the narrative? (The table is filled in as work progresses.)

– How are the present and the past represented? How do these two worlds interact with each other?

Teacher's word

Against the background of this description, an event takes place in which two people take part - HE and SHE.

– Why doesn’t the author give names to his characters? (To give a generalized meaning, the nomination of heroes is not so important; Bunin explores the culture of Russia, the life of people, their entertainment, everything that occupied their souls, i.e. the spiritual life of people.)

– How do the hero-narrator and heroine perceive these two worlds?
He is a realist, happy with this rich, idle life, loving life. She combines these two worlds: she visits restaurants, skit parties, concerts, but also goes to churches, cemeteries, and is interested in history.

– What kind of lives do the heroes lead? What are they doing? (Every evening they meet and go to a restaurant for dinner, then go either to a concert, or to the theater, or to a lecture. He visits her often. They are immersed in a real semi-bohemian life, but gradually another one appears next to this familiar and sweet life. )

- Describe the hero. (Compiling a syncwine, Figure 2a, b.)
He is a young man, good-looking, even handsome “for some reason with a hot southern beauty, even indecently handsome. And his character is southern, lively, always ready for a happy smile.” The hero is also the narrator who tells the story of his love for Her. He is happy with everything in the relationship. He does not think about what this relationship will lead to; we can say that he has a certain superficial assessment of events, he is carefree, frivolous, and open.

– Describe the heroine.
She is unusual, she has inexplicable contradictions. On the one hand, “it looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no dinners, no theaters, no dinners out of town, although she still had her favorite and least favorite flowers... she read all sorts of books, she loved eat and immediately talked about why people eat in general.” It seemed that she liked the luxurious life: going to restaurants, theaters, concerts. She loved good clothes, velvet, silk, furs. On the other hand, for some reason I took courses, was interested in history, visited churches, the Raskolniche cemetery, etc. The hero admits that she is incomprehensible to him.

– What epithets, in your opinion, will be the main ones? Support with examples from the text. He is happy, in love; She is strange, mysterious, contradictory. “She was mysterious, incomprehensible to me, our relationship was strange... strange love...”
The main thing in the characterization of the hero is love, which gives him exceptional acuteness of sensory perception, through the prism of which the portrait of the heroine and her appearance are presented.

- Let's turn to portrait characteristics heroines. Find repeating details in the portrait. What signs dominate? (In all portrait characteristics of the heroine, the oriental beauty is emphasized: “dark amber face”, “black hair”, “black eyebrows, black eyes”. Epithets “velvet”, “black”, “amber”. In the portrait itself there is a certain mystery, inconsistency, oriental beauty.)

– Why oriental beauty? (Emphasize her unusualness, dissimilarity, difference from others with unearthly charm.)

Teacher's word

Here are three portraits of paintings by the great artist from the 19th – 20th centuries. M. Vrubel. (“Fortune Teller”, “Girl on the Background of a Persian Carpet”, “Lilac”.)

– Compare the paintings, are there any similar features in all these portraits? What details prove this similarity? (The reproductions depict beautiful, young ladies, oriental beauty is manifested in all external characteristics: black hair, black velvet eyelashes, eyebrows, plump lips, an amber face, a certain mystery in expressions, as if they knew some secrets.)

– It seems that I. Bunin painted the portrait of his heroine from the portraits of M. Vrubel. It can be assumed that this is a kind of artistic device: years later, in the hero’s mind, the appearance of his beloved woman is enriched with impressions and associations of the art of the time he remembers.

5. Research activities students

In the symbolic presentation of the heroine, color and light characteristics perform a special artistic function. You are invited to work independently on the options.
Assignment: find out what artistic function color characteristics perform (option 1), option 2 – light characteristics.

Teacher's word

Outwardly, the hero and heroine are a harmonious couple: “both were rich, healthy, young...”. What about internally? (The characters do not understand each other.)

– What prevents the heroes from being together, from being happy? ( It's all about the heroine, her internal discord, her search for herself. The hero does not see this search. He desires her bodily beauty. But her thoughts and feelings were inaccessible to him. “He tried not to think, not to overthink it.” “It’s you who don’t know me,” she says.)

– What are the sources of the heroine’s internal discord and restlessness? (Search for an ideal, lack of harmony, dissatisfaction with life, concern for the soul.)

– How is this search carried out? ( The heroine is looking for herself in the past and in secular entertainment. It is entirely woven from contradictions, tossing between earthly and heavenly, carnal and spiritual.)

1) On Forgiveness Sunday, the heroine suddenly suggests going to the cemetery (Rogozhskoye, schismatic - the center of the Old Believers, a symbol of the eternal Russian “schism”). Here we, together with the hero, learn that she often goes to Kremlin cathedrals and monasteries, and loves to read handwritten chronicles. It seems to her that they only preserved “the feeling of the homeland, its antiquity.” The heroine is trying to find support.

2) Then they go to the next tavern, which personifies the festival of the flesh, the revelry of Maslenitsa on the physical level: food, pancakes “thick, ruddy.” It is noteworthy that they go to the Yegorov tavern for pancakes after visiting the cemetery of the Novo-Devichy Convent, the graves of Ertel and Chekhov.

3) Suddenly, with a quiet light in her eyes, she reads by heart the chronicle legend about the death of the Murom prince Peter and his wife (a reminiscence of “the story of Peter and Fevronia of Murom”). The parallel is important - the motives of fornication and monasticism are intertwined in history. This parallel is especially significant because The legend is quoted by a woman who is forced to constantly fight temptation, imagining her lover as a tempting serpent. On the other hand, quoting, like other ancient realities, creates a feeling of an unshakable foundation that is preserved in the soul of the Russian person.

4) The next day the heroes go to a carnal skit, etc. All these events, the alternation of the carnal and the spiritual, prepare the culminating act, the peak of the characters’ relationship, when she commits her last sin, giving him a moment of pleasure, a moment of carnal love. She dies to earthly, carnal life and goes to a monastery on Clean Monday. (He leaves for Tver, after 2 weeks he writes a letter in which he announces his intention.)

Teacher's word

Sinful Maslenitsa and Forgiveness Sunday are over. Clean Monday has arrived. If we say that the title reflects the theme, idea or problem of the work, then what is the meaning of the title of the story? (The name evokes the category of threshold, a certain border beyond which new life. Having given her lover a moment of carnal love, sacrificing herself, the heroine dies to earthly life and goes into the world of pure spirit. She begins a different life, to which she has been walking for a very long time.)

- Why does the heroine go to the monastery? Give reasons. (The heroine’s decision is a hard-won one; she cannot practically imagine herself in a situation of earthly happiness, since she realizes in advance its impossibility. “Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing.”)

– Therefore, happiness between young people is impossible?

– For whom is love a tragedy? What is the tragedy of heroes? In misunderstanding each other? (For the heroine, meaningful departure to a monastery is not a tragedy; for the hero, the tragedy is parting.)

6. Lesson summary

Researcher N.A. Nikolina argued: “Both the hero and the heroine find themselves above the abyss and seek integrity and overcoming in duality: the hero in the “torment” and “happiness” of earthly love, the heroine in the renunciation of passions and in turning to the eternal.” .

– Do you agree with the scientist’s opinion? The hero says: “Love is still the same torment and the same happiness... still happiness, great happiness...”. Can this love be called happiness? (Having gone through trials and suffering associated with the loss of his beloved, the hero begins to experience the influence of certain irrational forces. The heroine opened the way for him to another world. The hero does not yet realize, but after 2 years he will repeat the route of that long-ago trip and for some reason he will want go to the church of the Marfo-Mariinsky monastery...)
“All love is great happiness, even if it is not shared,” I. Bunin convinces us of this. “For love... is always very short-lived, the stronger and more perfect it is, the sooner it is destined to end. To break off, but not to disappear, but to illuminate the memory and life of a person” (A. Sahakyants).

7. Homework . Assignment with a short, detailed answer “What is the meaning of the ending of the story “Clean Monday”?

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin - greatest writer turn of XIX-XX centuries He entered literature as a poet and created wonderful poetic works. 1895 ...The first story “To the End of the World” is published. Encouraged by the praise of critics, Bunin begins to study literary creativity. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is a laureate of various awards, including laureate Nobel Prize on literature 1933

In 1944, the writer created one of the most wonderful stories about love, about the most beautiful, significant and lofty thing on Earth - the story “Clean Monday”. Bunin said about this story of his: “I thank God that He gave me to write, Clean Monday.”

In the story “Clean Monday,” the psychologism of Bunin’s prose and the peculiarities of “external depiction” were especially clearly manifested.

“The Moscow gray winter day was darkening, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the store windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening life of Moscow, freed from daytime affairs, flared up, the cab sleighs rushed thicker and more vigorously, the crowded, diving trams rattled more heavily - in the darkness it was already visible how the green stars hissed from the wires - the dimly blackened passers-by hurried more animatedly along the snowy sidewalks...” - these are the words with which the author begins his narrative, taking the reader to old Moscow at the beginning of the 20th century. The writer with the greatest detail, without losing sight of the slightest detail, reproduces all the signs of this era. And from the very first lines, the story is given a special sound by the constant mention of details of deep antiquity: about ancient Moscow churches, monasteries, icons (the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the Iveron Church, the Martha and Mary Convent, the icon of the Mother of God of the Three Hands), about the names of outstanding personalities. But next to this antiquity, eternity, we notice signs of a later way of life: the restaurants “Prague”, “Hermitage”, “Metropol”, “Yar”, known and accessible to the wealthiest layers of citizens; books by contemporary authors; “Motla” by Ertel and Chekhov... Judging by how the action unfolds in the story, we can judge that the past for the heroes is extremely clear, the present is vague, and the future is absolutely unclear.

There are two heroes in the story: he and she, a man and a woman. The man, according to the writer, was healthy, rich, young and handsome for some reason with a southern, hot beauty, he was even “indecently handsome.” But the most important thing is that the hero is in love, so in love that he is ready to fulfill any whim of the heroine, just not to lose her. But, unfortunately, he cannot and does not try to understand what is going on in the soul of his beloved: he “tried not to think, not to think about it.” The woman is portrayed as mysterious, enigmatic. She is mysterious, just as the soul of a Russian woman with her spirituality, devotion, selflessness, self-denial is generally mysterious... The hero himself admits: “She was mysterious, strange to me.” Her whole life is woven from inexplicable contradictions and tossing. “It looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no lunches, no theaters, no dinners out of town,” the narrator says, but immediately adds: “Although, nevertheless, she had her favorite flowers and unloved, all the books... she always read, she ate a whole box of chocolate a day, at lunches and dinners she ate no less than me...” When going somewhere, she most often did not know where she would go next, what she would do, in a word, she did not know, with by whom, how and where he will spend his time.

The writer tells us quite fully about her origins and her current activities. But in describing the heroine’s life, Bunin very often uses indefinite adverbs (for some reason there was a portrait of a barefoot Tolstoy hanging above her sofa).

All a woman’s actions are spontaneous, irrational and at the same time as if planned. On the night of Clean Monday, she gives herself to the hero, knowing that in the morning she will go to the monastery, but whether this departure is final is also unclear. Throughout the entire story, the author shows that the heroine does not feel comfortable anywhere, she does not believe in the existence of simple earthly happiness. “Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing,” she quotes Platon Karataev.

The emotional impulses of the heroes of “Clean Monday” often defy logical explanation. It seems as if both the man and the woman have no control over themselves, are not able to control their feelings.

The story centers on the events of Forgiveness Sunday and Clean Monday. Forgiveness Sunday is a religious holiday revered by all believers. They ask each other for forgiveness and forgive their loved ones. For the heroine, this is a very special day, not only a day of forgiveness, but also a day of farewell to worldly life. Clean Monday is the first day of Lent, on which a person is cleansed of all filth, when the joy of Maslenitsa gives way to introspection. This day becomes a turning point in the hero's life. Having gone through the suffering associated with the loss of his beloved, the hero experiences the influence of surrounding forces and realizes everything that he had not noticed before, being blinded by his love for the heroine. Two years later, the man, remembering the events of days long gone, will repeat the route of their long-standing joint trip, and “for some reason” he will really want to go to the church of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. What unknown forces draw him towards his beloved? Does he strive for the spiritual world into which she goes? We don’t know this, the author does not lift the veil of secrecy for us. He only shows us humility in the hero’s soul; their last meeting ends with his humble departure, and not with the awakening of his former passions.

The future of the heroes is unclear. Besides everything, the writer does not even directly indicate anywhere that the nun the man met is his former lover. Only one detail - dark eyes - resembles the appearance of the heroine. It is noteworthy that the heroine goes to the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. This monastery is not a monastery, but the Church of the Intercession of Our Lady on Ordynka, which had a community of secular ladies who took care of the orphans who lived at the church and those wounded in the First World War. And this service in the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God, perhaps, is a spiritual insight for the heroine of “Clean Monday”, because it was the Immaculate Heart of the Mother of God who warned the world against war, death, blood, orphanhood...

Option 1 2012: 02/25/2012: 21.41

Option 6: 02/25/2012: 21.38

Option 7: 02/25/2012: 21.38 The theme of love in I. Bunin’s story “”

Love theme - eternal theme. Poets and writers of different times turned to it, and each tried to interpret this multifaceted feeling in their own way.

Bunin gives his vision of the theme in the cycle of stories “Dark Alleys.” The collection includes thirty-eight stories, all of them are about love, but none of them creates a feeling of repetition, and after reading all the works of the cycle there is no feeling of exhaustion of the theme.

At the center of the story “Clean Monday” is a mysterious and enigmatic love story. Its heroes are a young couple of lovers. Both of them are “rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants and at concerts those around them watched them go. But inner world the characters are not so similar.

He is blinded by his love. Every Saturday he brings flowers to his beloved, every now and then pampers her with boxes of chocolate, tries to please her with new books he brought, every evening he invites her to a restaurant, then to the theater, or to some party. Completely absorbed in the feeling of adoration, he cannot and does not really try to understand what complex inner world lies behind the beautiful appearance of the one he fell in love with. Repeatedly he thinks about the unusualness and strangeness of their relationship, but never once puts an end to these thoughts. “Strange love!” he notes. Another time he says: “Yes, after all, this is not love, not love.... He is surprised why she “once and for all turned away conversations about their future, he is surprised at how she perceives his gifts, how she behaves in moments of rapprochement. Everything about her is a mystery to him.

The image of the hero is devoid of that psychological depth, which the heroine is endowed with. There is no logical motivation in her actions. Every day visiting those establishments where a young lover invites her, she one day notices that she wants to go to the Novo Maiden Convent, because “all taverns are taverns. The hero has no idea where such thoughts come from, what they mean, what suddenly happened to his chosen one. Later she declares that there is nothing to be surprised about, that he simply does not know her. It turns out that she often visits the Kremlin cathedrals, and this happens when her lover “doesn’t drag her to restaurants. There, and not in entertainment venues, she finds a sense of harmony and peace of mind. She loves “Russian chronicles, Russian legends, and her stories about this are full of depth. She says that she is not fit to be a wife. Reflecting on this, she quotes Platon Karataev. But the hero still cannot understand what is going on in her soul, he is “indescribably happy with every an hour spent near her and that's it.

As in the other stories of the “Dark Alleys” series, Bunin does not show in “Clean Monday” love that develops into a state of lasting earthly happiness. Love here also does not end with a happy marriage, and we do not find the image of a woman-mother here. The heroine, having entered into a physically intimate relationship with her beloved, silently leaves, begging him not to ask anything, and then informs him by letter of her departure to the monastery. She rushed for a long time between the momentary and the eternal, and on the night of Clean Monday, surrendering to the hero, she made her final choice. On Clean Monday, the first day of fasting, a person begins to cleanse himself of everything bad. This holiday became a turning point in the relationship between the heroes.

Love in "Clean Monday" is happiness and torment, great secret, an incomprehensible mystery. This story is one of the pearls of Bunin's work, captivating the reader with its rare charm and depth.

Pure love in the story by I.A. Bunin "Clean Monday"

Man, like no other earthly creature, is lucky to have reason and the ability to choose. A person chooses his whole life. Having taken a step, he is faced with a choice: to the right or to the left - where to go next. He takes another step and chooses again, and so he walks until the end of the path. Some walk faster, others slower, and the result is different: you take a step and either fall into a bottomless abyss, or end up with your foot on an escalator in the sky. A person is free to choose his job, passions, hobbies, thoughts, worldviews, love. Love can be for money, for power, for art, it can be ordinary, earthly love, or it can happen that above all, above all feelings, a person places love for his homeland or for God.

The story “Clean Monday” tells us about a completely different love, thanks to which this story seems to stand apart, differing both in theme and meaning from all of Bunin’s love-romantic works.

The story takes place in 1913. A kind, handsome and frivolous young man shares his memories here. The young people met one day at a lecture in a literary and artistic circle and fell in love with each other.

In this story the heroine is nameless. And this also makes sense to the writer: the name is not important, the name is for the earth, and God knows everyone even without a name. Bunin calls the heroine - she.

From the very beginning she was strange, silent, unusual, as if alien to the whole world around her, looking through it, “I kept thinking about something, it was as if I was mentally delving into something; lying on the sofa with a book in her hands, she often lowered it and looked questioningly in front of her.” It was like she was from another world.

And at the same time, she indulged in social entertainment and allowed the man to caress her. Even stranger was the parallel fascination with restaurants and theatrical “cabbage shows.” She read a lot, went to the theater, had lunch, dinner, went for walks, and attended courses.

But she was always drawn to something lighter, intangible, to faith, to God, and just as the Church of the Savior was close to the windows of her apartment, so God was close to her heart. She often went to churches, visited monasteries and old cemeteries.

But at the beginning of Lent, on Clean Monday, the heroine finally gives in to the young handsome man who is passionately in love with her. But what next? And then everything is the same: it won’t get any better. The completeness of happiness in earthly life is unattainable, the ideal of love is impossible - then everything will go on as the fading of the experience. There is only one way out: to cut everything off on takeoff, anticipating the fall. The monastery, the pacification of passions, is clearly not a joke.

IN last days she drank the cup of worldly life to the bottom, forgave everyone on Forgiveness Sunday and was cleansed from the ashes of this life on Clean Monday.

“No, I’m not fit to be a wife.” She knew from the very beginning that she could not be a wife. She is destined to be an eternal bride, the bride of Christ. It seems to her that she has found her love, chosen her path.

But even after hiding in the monastery, she continues to suffer there from the unattainable. The story doesn’t say anything about this, but in its final lines we feel it when, describing the young nuns in white robes, the young man’s gaze fell on one of them - the one who “suddenly raised her head, covered with a white scarf, blocking the candle with her hand, and fixed her dark eyes on the darkness.” Why into the darkness? After all, the temple was illuminated with candles. Apparently, Bunin’s darkness is emptiness, it is the wrong path.

And now we understand: this is not faith, or rather, not only faith, but, most likely, fear of reality. After all, love is not just passion, not just a feeling, but also responsibility, a heavy burden. “No, I’m not fit to be a wife.” The heroine of the story runs away to a monastery because she cannot, does not know how to bear all the hardships of life that love imposes. Therefore, the monastery for her is an escape from life.

The story is masterfully and concisely written. Each stroke has an obvious and hidden meaning. What is the heroine’s latest, sophisticated, secular, black-velvet outfit with her hairstyle like a Shamakhan queen worth? An unexpected and revealing combination. The girl constantly follows different paths, vividly reminiscent of the differences surrounding her. That's how symbolic meaning female image. He combines a craving for spiritual achievement and all the wealth of the world, doubts, sacrifice and longing for an ideal.

There is another meaning in the story of the author's reflections. The eternal contradictions of human, more specifically, female nature, love, sublime and earthly, sensual, determined the heroine’s trials. Her courage and ability to go through all the prohibitions and temptations help to reveal the mysterious, irresistible power of instinct. But the warmer and more sympathetic the author’s attitude towards the young woman is, the more she resists completely natural, although painful for her, attractions.

// / The theme of love in Bunin’s story “Clean Monday”

One of the most frequent themes raised in Russian and world literature is the theme of love. The theme of the relationship between a man and a woman, the theme of their feelings and emotional experiences. Many writers and poets wrote about love, and each in his own way tried to show and explain this multifaceted feeling. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was no exception and also shared with us his thoughts on this issue.

The author’s love work is reflected in the collection “Dark Alleys”. This collection consists of 38 stories dedicated to the theme of love. Each of the stories presented is original in its own way. When reading them, we will not come across two identical stories, but after reading them all, we understand that the theme of love is so diverse and multifaceted that we can write about it forever.

The story "" reveals to us a love story between two people. Bunin does not name their names, simply saying - He and She. The heroes of this work were young people who lived in abundance and prosperity. They had everything you wanted. They dined in restaurants, attended theaters, social evenings, and were the center of everyone's attention and admiration. But despite such external similarity and unity, the main characters of the story differed from each other in their inner world.

He was "blind" to his beloved. Every day I tried to please her, inviting her to restaurants, to social evenings, to the theater. On weekends He spoiled her with “fresh” flowers, sweets, new literature. He was blinded by his feelings for her. Feelings of love did not allow him to look into her inner world and understand its versatility. She remained a mystery to him. More than once he was perplexed by her behavior, by their relationship, without ever trying to understand it. He once said about their relationship: “Strange love!” He is surprised by her behavior in moments of intimacy; he does not understand why she constantly rejects conversations about their future.

Bunin does not endow his hero with the depth of emotional experiences that he gives to his heroine. She indifferently accepts all gifts and visits entertainment venues. One day She decides to declare that she wants to visit the Novodevichy Convent, because she is already extremely tired of restaurants. The main character does not understand such thoughts and conversations of his beloved. It turns out that He does not know her at all. Her passion for Russian legends and Russian chronicles becomes a real discovery for him. In her free time from entertainment events, She goes to the Kremlin cathedrals. But all these stories are alien to him; it is important for him to be close to his beloved and enjoy every minute spent with her.

Bunin's love lyrics are characterized by the fact that the author does not show us further development love relationship between two people. They do not end with a happy marriage or a strong family. The main character of “Clean Monday”, sharing a bed with the main character, left without saying a word. She sent him a letter in which she asked him not to look for her and said that she had gone to a monastery. For a long time she could not make a choice between pleasure and harmony. And only Clean Monday finally determined the choice of the main character and became decisive in their relationship.

In “Clean Monday” Bunin showed us love as a feeling, as a test, as great mystery of the universe.

Direction "Love"

Sample essays in the direction of “Love”

Composition

The theme of love in I. Bunin’s story “Clean Monday”

The theme of love is an eternal theme. Poets and writers of different times turned to it, and each tried to interpret this multifaceted feeling in their own way.

I. A Bunin gives his vision of the topic in the cycle of stories “Dark Alleys”. The collection includes thirty-eight stories, all of them are about love, but none of them creates a feeling of repetition, and after reading all the works in the cycle there is no feeling of exhaustion of the topic.

At the center of the story “Clean Monday” is a mysterious and mysterious love story. Its heroes are a young couple of lovers. Both of them are “rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants and at concerts” those around them watched them go. But the inner world of the heroes is not so similar.

He is blinded by his love. Every Saturday he brings flowers to his beloved, every now and then pampers her with boxes of chocolate, tries to please her with new books he brought, every evening he invites her to a restaurant, then to the theater, or to some party. Completely absorbed in the feeling of adoration, he cannot and does not really try to understand what complex inner world lies behind the beautiful appearance of the one he fell in love with. Repeatedly he thinks about the unusualness and strangeness of their relationship, but never once puts an end to these thoughts. "Strange love!" - he remarks. Another time he says: “Yes, after all, this is not love, not love...”. He is surprised at why she “once and for all stopped talking about their future”; he is surprised at how she perceives his gifts, how she behaves in moments of rapprochement. Everything about her is a mystery to him.

The image of the hero is devoid of the psychological depth that the heroine is endowed with. There is no logical motivation in her actions. Every day visiting those establishments where a young lover invites her, she one day notices that she wants to go to the Novodevichy Convent, because “it’s all taverns and taverns.” The hero has no idea where these thoughts come from, what they are for, what suddenly happened to his chosen one. And a little later she declares that there is nothing to be surprised about, that he simply does not know her. It turns out that she often visits the Kremlin cathedrals, and this happens when her lover “doesn’t drag” her to restaurants. There, and not in entertainment venues, she finds a sense of harmony and peace of mind. She loves “Russian chronicles, Russian legends” and her stories about this are filled with depth. She says she is not fit to be a wife. Thinking about happiness, quotes Platon Karataev. But the hero still cannot understand what is going on in her soul, he is “indescribably happy with every hour spent near her” and that’s all.

As in the other stories of the “Dark Alleys” series, Bunin does not show in “Clean Monday” love that develops into a state of lasting earthly happiness. Love here also does not end with a happy marriage, and we do not find the image of a woman-mother here. The heroine, having entered into a physically intimate relationship with her beloved, silently leaves, begging him not to ask anything, and then informs him by letter of her departure to the monastery. She rushed for a long time between the momentary and the eternal and, on the night of Clean Monday, surrendering to the hero, she made her final choice. On Clean Monday, the first day of fasting, a person begins to cleanse himself of everything bad. This holiday became a turning point in the relationship between the heroes.

Love in “Clean Monday” is happiness and torment, a great mystery, an incomprehensible riddle. This story is one of the pearls of Bunin's work, captivating the reader with its rare charm and depth.

The fate of the hero in "Clean Monday" is pushed aside, as if covered by something more significant, which inspired us from the fate of the heroine. We clearly felt that it was not for nothing and not by chance that Bunin prepared such an unexpected ending for stories about love - renunciation of “worldly” affairs and departure to the monastery. And one more feature strikes the eye when getting acquainted with this Bunin masterpiece - the complete absence of fictitious names. Not names at all and not only the names of the main characters, which is typical of most stories about love, but fictitious names, which cannot but give the impression of a kind of demonstrativeness. There is only one fictitious name in the story - the name of an incidental person, Fyodor, the main character's coachman. All other names belong to real persons.

These are either the authors of fashionable works (Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Tetmeyer, Przybyszewski); or fashionable Russian writers of the beginning of the century (A. Bely, Leonid Andreev, Bryusov); or genuine figures of the Art Theater (Stanislavsky, Moskvin, Kachalov, Sulerzhitsky); or Russian writers of the last century (Griboyedov, Ertel, Chekhov, L. Tolstoy); or heroes of ancient Russian literature (Peresvet and Oslyabya, Yuri Dolgoruky, Svyatoslav Seversky, Pavel Muromsky); the characters of “War and Peace” are mentioned in the story - Platon Karataev and Pierre Bezukhov; Chaliapin's name was mentioned once; The real name of the owner of the tavern in Okhotny Ryad, Yegorov, has been revealed.

In such an environment, deliberately nameless heroes act, pushed into a certain chronological frame. At the end of the story, Bunin even pinpoints the year in which the action takes place, although the chronological discrepancy between the facts mentioned in the story immediately catches the eye (obviously, chronological accuracy was the last thing on his mind). Bunin calls the time of action of his story the spring of the thirteenth year? approaching the end of the story, the hero casually remarks: “Almost two years have passed since that clean Monday... In the fourteenth year, under New Year, it was the same quiet, sunny evening..." Clean Monday is the first Monday after Maslenitsa, therefore, the action takes place in early spring (late February - March).

The last day of Maslenitsa is “Forgiveness Sunday”, on which people “forgive” each other for insults, injustices, etc. Then comes “Clean Monday” - the first day of fasting, when a person, cleansed of filth, enters a period of strict performance of rituals, when Maslenitsa festivities end and the fun is replaced by the rigor of life’s routine and self-focus. On this day, the heroine of the story finally decided to go to the monastery, parting with her past forever. But all these are spring rites. Counting back “almost two years” from the end of 1914, we get the spring of 1913.

The story was written exactly thirty years after the events described, in 1944, a year before the end of the Second World War. Obviously, according to Bunin, Russia has again found itself at some important historical milestone, and he is busy thinking about what now awaits his homeland along its path. He turns back, trying, within the confines of a short story, to reproduce not only the diversity, but the diversity and “restlessness” of Russian life, the general feeling of an impending catastrophe. He brings together facts that were actually separated by several years in order to further strengthen the impression of the diversity of Russian life at that time, the diversity of faces and people who had no idea what a great test history was preparing for them.

1913 is the last pre-war year in Russia. This year is what Bunin chooses as the time for the action of the story, despite its obvious discrepancy with the details of the Moscow life described. In the minds of the people of that era who lived through it, this year generally grew into a historical milestone of enormous significance. Standing at the window in the heroine’s apartment, the hero reflects on Moscow, looking at the opening view, the central part of which is the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the Kremlin wall: “Strange city!” I said to myself, thinking about Okhotny Ryad, about Iverskaya, about St. Basil’s. - St. Basil and Savior on Bor, Italian cathedrals - and something Kyrgyz in the tips of the towers on the Kremlin walls..." An important and telling reflection. This is a kind of result that Bunin comes to as a result of many years of observations of the “East-West” features of the appearance of Russia.

From the story “The Bonfire,” written in 1902, to “Clean Monday” (1944), Bunin is accompanied by the idea that his homeland, Russia, is a strange but clear combination of two layers, two cultural ways - “Western” and "Eastern", European and Asian. The idea that Russia, in its appearance, as well as in its history, is located somewhere at the intersection of these two lines of world historical development - this idea runs like a red thread through all fourteen pages of Bunin’s story, which, contrary to the original impression, lies a complete historical concept that touches on the most fundamental aspects of Russian history and the character of the Russian person for Bunin and the people of his era.

In the numerous hints and half-hints with which the story abounds, Bunin emphasizes the duality, contradictory nature of the way of Russian life, the combination of the incongruous. In the heroine’s apartment there is a “wide Turkish sofa”, next to it is an “expensive piano”, and above the sofa, the writer emphasizes, “for some reason there was a portrait of a barefoot Tolstoy.” A Turkish sofa and an expensive piano are East and West, barefoot Tolstoy is Russia, Rus' in its unusual, “clumsy” and eccentric appearance that does not fit into any framework. The hero of the story, “coming from the Penza province,” that is, from the very heart of provincial Russia, is handsome, as he himself says about himself, with “southern, hot beauty,” even “indecently handsome,” as “one famous actor” put it. , who added: “The devil knows who you are, some kind of Sicilian.”

The Sicilian comes from the Penza province! The combination is incredible, unusual, but hardly accidental in the context of the story. Finding herself on the evening of “Forgiveness Sunday” at the Yegorov tavern, famous for its pancakes, the heroine says, pointing to the icon of the Mother of God of Three Hands hanging in the corner: “Good! There are wild men below, and here are pancakes with champagne and the Mother of God of Three Hands. Three hands! After all, this is India !" The same duality is emphasized here by Bunin: “wild men” - on the one hand, “pancakes with champagne” - on the other, and next to it is Rus', but again extraordinary, as if correlated with the appearance of the Christian Mother of God, reminiscent of the Buddhist Shiva .

Like a pendulum, the narrative in “Clean Monday” deviates, now towards Europe, now towards Asia, now towards the West, now towards the East, somewhere in the middle, in the very center, denoting an elusive feature, line, point of Russia. Hearing the chime of the clock on the Spasskaya Tower of the Kremlin, the heroine notes: “What an ancient sound, something tin and cast iron. And just like that, with the same sound, three o’clock in the morning struck in the fifteenth century. And in Florence there is exactly the same chime, it there reminded me of Moscow..." And everything in Moscow is like in Europe, like in Asia, like in Italy, like in India.

How densely everything is intertwined and rich in this story! Here every word is calculated, every insignificant detail is taken into account and carries a semantic load. Griboyedov, who was included in the story because he, Russian by origin, but European by education and culture, died in Asia - in Persia, at the very moment when he was busy developing a project by which it would be possible to connect Europe with Asia through Russia and Transcaucasia. And he died terribly, brutally killed by an enraged crowd of Persians. Persia, the constantly emphasized Persian beauty of the heroine, has a very special character in the story. symbolic meaning something menacing, spontaneously passionate. Then Ordynka itself, where Griboedov’s house is found, is nothing more than a former Tatar settlement (Ordynka - horde - Horde). And, finally, Egorov’s tavern in Okhotny Ryad (a purely Russian establishment!), where, however, they serve not just pancakes, but with champagne, and in the corner hangs an icon of the Virgin Mary with three hands...

The most significant and profound indicator of this two-sidedness (or, rather, bifurcation) of the historical process, in the power of which, according to Bunin, Russia found itself, is the heroine herself in the story. The duality of her appearance is so persistently emphasized by the writer that in the end the question arises: isn’t there some kind of hidden, not directly expressed, but perhaps main idea story? The heroine's father is "an enlightened man of a noble merchant family, who lived in retirement in Tver." At home, the heroine wears a silk archaluk trimmed with sable: “The inheritance of my Astrakhan grandmother,” she explains (although, we note in parentheses, no one asks her about this).

So, the father is a Tver merchant, the grandmother is from Astrakhan. Russian and Tatar blood merged in the veins of this young woman. Looking at her lips, “at the dark fluff above them, at the garnet velvet of the dress, at the slope of her shoulders and the oval of her breasts, smelling some slightly spicy smell of her hair,” the hero thinks: “Moscow, Astrakhan, Persia, India!” Moreover, the distribution of shades here is such that what is Russian and Tver is hidden inside, dissolved in the mental organization, while the appearance is entirely given over to the power of Eastern heredity.

And the hero himself, on whose behalf the story is told, never tires of emphasizing that the beauty of his beloved “was somehow Indian, Persian”: “... a dark-amber face, magnificent and somewhat ominous hair in its thick blackness, softly shining, like black sable fur, eyebrows, eyes as black as velvet coal; her captivating velvety-crimson lips were shaded with dark down; when going out, she most often wore a garnet velvet dress and the same shoes with gold clasps..."

This is an oriental beauty in all the splendor of her non-Russian, non-Slavic beauty. And when she “in a black velvet dress” appeared at the skit party of the Art Theater and “pale from drunkenness,” Kachalov came up to her with a glass of wine and, “looking at her with feigned gloomy greed,” said to her: “The Tsar-Maiden, the Shamakhan Queen, your health!" - we understand that it was Bunin who put into his mouth his own concept of duality: the heroine is, as it were, both the “Tsar-Maiden” and the “Shamakhan Queen” at the same time. In Pushkin’s “The Tale of the Golden Cockerel,” which Bunin is guided by, it is said differently: “maiden, Shamakhan queen.” It’s just that “maiden” or “tsar-maiden” are different things; in the first case there is semantic and stylistic neutrality, in the second there is a clear orientation towards Slavic folklore. But in Bunin’s heroine, at least in her appearance, there is nothing of the “Tsar Maiden”, that is, of a Russian, Slavic, folklore root.

A very important dialogue, and it is important primarily for its hidden allegory. Indeed, where did Eastern wisdom come from here? After all, there is nothing specifically oriental either in the appearance of Platon Karataev, or in the content of his speeches, or in the above proverb. We can consider his surname Karataev to be eastern - Tatar, which is truly of Tatar origin.

- the first writer in Russia to be awarded the Nobel Prize. This is a man with a difficult life, who had a talent for writing works, including those on love themes. Moreover, Bunin can be confidently called a writer of stunning talent regarding everything related to love. He knew how to very subtly and accurately convey the feelings of the characters and their state of mind during the period of love. Bunin managed to touch on frank topics, revealing intimate human experiences that we can trace, for example, in Bunin’s story Clean Monday. Let's make this piece.

Brief analysis of the story

In grade 11, we studied Bunin's work Clean Monday, written by the author in 1944. This story, like many others that were written between 1937 and 1944, was included in the book Dark Alleys. Here we also see a flashback motif, where the narrator takes the reader to the capital. He is handsome and young, and met an equally beautiful heroine. The author does not give them names, but this does not prevent us from enjoying a love story that began beautifully and ended quickly.

Analyzing Bunin's story Clean Monday, I would like to note that when getting acquainted with the work, the reader encounters such famous personalities, like Andrei Bely, who gives a lecture, where the heroes meet. Here we see Stanislavsky and Moskovin at the next skit. The story contains the name of a famous theatrical figure Sulerzhitsky and other famous people of that time. The main character falls in love with a woman and is ready to do anything for her. She turned out to be a mystery. Her actions were inexplicable, irrational and spontaneous. The main character of the story immediately stands out among other representatives of the fair sex. She takes courses, not understanding why she needs this study. The girl is educated, smart, but very distant. At the same time, she knows how to live, enjoying reading, food and entertainment.

The characters love each other, but as the narrator notes, their love is somehow strange. He seems to foresee a quick end to their relationship, because the girl does not allow them to develop. The heroine interrupts all conversations about the wedding and constantly says that she is not meant to be a wife. We see that she likes the idle life, but at the same time she wants something else.

And so, on Clean Monday, having decided to surrender completely to the feelings of love, the heroes spend the night together. This was not only their first night of love, but also their last. After the night, the young man found a note in which he learned that his beloved had decided to go to a monastery.

It was a terrible shock for him; he was going through the breakup painfully and became an alcoholic. On New Year's Eve, he wanted to walk along the same roads along which he and his beloved wandered. Walking like this, he approached the monastery. Entering the church, he accidentally saw his lady of his heart. I saw it and immediately ran out. This was their last meeting.

The theme of love in Bunin's story Clean Monday

After reading Ivan Bunin's work Clean Monday, we became acquainted with the story of a mysterious love. This feeling was both happiness and torment, and a great mystery, and an unsolved riddle. The story introduced us to young lovers, beautiful couple, which everyone paid attention to. However, these were different people, with different inner worlds. The hero in love looked after him beautifully, gave gifts, took her to clubs and restaurants, and was so blinded by love that he did not try to examine the inner world of his heroine. Only occasionally did he notice their strange relationship, even calling their love strange. Meanwhile, he didn’t even try to figure out the problem. Absorbed in the adoration of his beloved, he did not consider the complex, multifaceted world of his chosen one.

The girl also loved the young man, but at the same time she was attracted spiritual world. For a long time she could not understand what was more important to her, the eternal or the momentary. Only after a night of love, on Clean Monday, the girl decided everything for herself and left silently, without saying goodbye. Later she will answer in a letter that she has decided to become a nun.

Reading Clean Monday, you understand that there is some kind of barrier of misunderstanding between the characters. The problem was that their love had no depth. The hero, having surrounded his beloved with attention, did not know her inner world and spiritual desires. The girl herself managed to understand that social life is petty and insignificant. So she chose love for God, sacrificing romantic attraction to a man.

As we see, this time love does not end with the happiness of the two heroes. And there is neither a wedding nor a created family. However, there is love - mysterious, enigmatic, incomprehensible. And this is the charm of Bunin’s story.

Main characters

There are only two main characters in the story Clean Monday. They are nameless. Just him and her.

He is a young, rich nobleman who fell in love main character story. His love was sincere and strong. He was ready to seal the relationship by marriage. But the heroine constantly avoided answering. He is afraid to look into the future and lives in the present, while feeling a certain detachment from his chosen one. He suffers from this incompleteness of reciprocal feelings, but he begins to suffer even more when he finds out that the girl has become a nun. He becomes an alcoholic and cannot find peace.

She is rich, beautiful, loves secular society And beautiful life. At the same time he behaves very strangely. The reader will find out the reason later. Her detachment was due to the search for her self. In the end, the girl makes her choice, drowning out her earthly feelings.

The meaning of the story

If we talk about the meaning of Bunin's story Clean Monday, then everything is very complicated. As for me, the meaning of the story is as follows. The author tried to show the reader that not only the feeling of love, but also the state of the soul is important in life. To achieve true happiness, you have to stop before moral choice. Many of us make the wrong choices and are afraid to admit it to ourselves. But others, like the heroine of the story, find strength and are not afraid to change their destiny.

“Clean Monday” essay based on the story by I. Bunin

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