Bold female images of bunin. Female images in prose I

It is unlikely that anyone will argue that some of the best pages of Bunin's prose are dedicated to a woman. Amazing female characters appear before the reader, in the light of which male images fade. This is especially characteristic of the book "Dark Alleys". Women play a major role here. Men, as a rule, are just a background that sets off the characters and actions of the heroines. Bunin always sought to comprehend the miracle of femininity, the secret of irresistible female happiness. “Women seem mysterious to me. The more I study them, the less I understand, ”he writes such a phrase from Flaubert’s diary. Here we have Nadezhda from the story “Dark Alleys”: “... a dark-haired, also black-browed and also still beautiful woman who looked like an elderly gypsy, with a dark fluff on her upper lip and along her cheeks, entered the room, light on the go, but full , with large breasts under a red blouse, with a triangular, like a goose, belly under a black woolen skirt. With amazing skill, Bunin finds the right words and images. They seem to have color and shape. A few precise and colorful strokes - and before us is a portrait of a woman. However, Nadezhda is good not only outwardly. She has a rich and deep inner world. For more than thirty years, she has kept in her soul love for the master who once seduced her. They met by chance in a “staying room” by the road, where Nadezhda is the hostess, and Nikolai Alekseevich is a traveler. He is not able to rise to the height of her Feelings, to understand why Nadezhda did not marry “with such beauty that ... she had”, how you can love one person all your life. There are many other most charming female images in the book “Dark Alleys”: sweet gray-eyed Tanya, “a simple soul”, devoted to her beloved, ready for any sacrifice for him (“Tanya”); the tall, stately beauty Katerina Nikolaevna, the daughter of her age, who may seem too bold and extravagant (“Antigone”); the simple-hearted, naive Polya, who retained her childish purity of soul, despite her profession (“Madrid”) and so on. The fate of most of Bunin's heroines is tragic. Suddenly and soon, the happiness of Olga Alexandrovna, an officer's wife, is cut short, who is forced to serve as a waitress ("In Paris"), breaks up with her beloved Rusya ("Rusya"), dies from childbirth Natalie ("Natalie"). The ending of another short story in this cycle, Galya Ganskaya, is sad. The hero of the story, the artist, does not get tired of admiring the beauty of this girl. At thirteen, she was "sweet, frisky, graceful ... extremely, a face with blond curls along her cheeks, like an angel's." But time passed, Galya matured: “... no longer a teenager, not an angel, but an amazingly pretty thin girl ... The face under a gray hat is half covered with an ashy veil, and aquamarine eyes shine through it.” Passionate was her feeling for the artist, great and his attraction to her. However, soon he was going to leave for Italy, for a long time, for a month and a half. In vain does the girl persuade her lover to stay or take her with her. Having been refused, Galya committed suicide. Only then did the artist realize what he had lost. It is impossible to remain indifferent to the fatal charm of the Little Russian beauty Valeria (“Zoyka and Valeria”): “... she was very good: strong, fine, with thick dark hair, with velvet eyebrows, almost fused, with formidable eyes the color of black blood, with hot a dark blush on a tanned face, with a bright gleam of teeth and full cherry lips. The heroine of the short story "Camargue", despite the poverty of her clothes and the simplicity of her manners, simply torments men with her beauty. No less beautiful is the young woman from the story "One Hundred Rupees". Her eyelashes are especially good: "... like those heavenly butterflies that so magically flicker on heavenly Indian flowers." When the beauty is reclining in her reed armchair, “measuredly shimmering with the black velvet of her butterfly eyelashes”, waving her fan, she gives the impression of a mysteriously beautiful, unearthly creature: “Beauty, intelligence, stupidity - all these words did not go to her in any way, as they did not go everything human: truly it was as if from some other planet. And what are the astonishment and disappointment of the narrator, and with it ours, when it turns out that anyone who has a hundred rupees in his pocket can possess this unearthly charm! The string of charming female images in Bunin's short stories is endless. But, speaking of the female beauty captured on the pages of his works, one cannot fail to mention Olya Meshcherskaya, the heroine of the story “Light Breath”. What an amazing girl she was! Here is how the author describes it: “At the age of fourteen, with a thin waist and slender legs, her breasts and all those forms were already well outlined, the charm of which the human word had never yet expressed; at fifteen she was already known as a beauty. But the main essence of the charm of Olya Meshcherskaya was not in this. Everyone, probably, had to see very beautiful faces, which you get tired of looking at after a minute. Olya was first of all a cheerful, "live" person. There is not a drop of stiffness, affectation or self-satisfied admiration of her beauty in her: “And she was not afraid of anything - no ink stains on her fingers, no flushed face, no disheveled hair, no knee that became naked when she fell on the run.” The girl seems to radiate energy, the joy of life. However, "the more beautiful the rose, the faster it fades." The ending of this story, like other Bunin novels, is tragic: Olya dies. However, the charm of her image is so great that even now romantics continue to fall in love with him. Here is how K.G. writes about this. Paustovsky: “Oh, if only I knew! And if I could! I would cover this grave with all the flowers that only bloom on earth. I already loved this girl. I shuddered at the irreparability of her fate. I ... naively reassured myself that Olya Meshcherskaya was a Bunin fiction, that only a tendency to a romantic perception of the world makes me suffer because of a sudden love for a dead girl. Paustovsky, on the other hand, called the story “Light Breath” a sad and calm reflection, an epitaph to girlish beauty. On the pages of Bunin's prose there are many lines devoted to sex, a description of a naked female body. Apparently, the writer's contemporaries more than once reproached him for "shamelessness" and base feelings. Here is the rebuke the writer gives to his ill-wishers: “... how I love ... you, “human wives, a network of seduction by man”! This “network” is something truly inexplicable, divine and diabolical, and when I write about it, I try to express it, I am reproached for shamelessness, for low motives ... It is well said in one old book: “The writer has the same full right to be bold in his verbal images of love and its faces, which at all times was provided in this case to painters and sculptors: only vile souls see the vile even in the beautiful ... ”Bunin knows how to speak very frankly about the most intimate, but never crosses the border where there is no place art. Reading his short stories, you do not find even a hint of vulgarity or vulgar naturalism. The writer subtly and tenderly describes love relationships, "Earthly Love." “And how he embraced his wife and he her, her whole cool body, kissing her still wet breasts, smelling of toilet soap, eyes and lips, from which she had already wiped the paint.” ("In Paris"). And how touching are the words of Rus' addressed to her beloved: “No, wait, yesterday we kissed somehow stupidly, now I will kiss you first, only quietly, quietly. And you hug me ... everywhere ... ”(“ Rusya ”). The miracle of Bunin's prose was achieved at the cost of the great creative efforts of the writer. Without this great art is unthinkable. Here is how Ivan Alekseevich himself writes about this: “... that marvelous, indescribably beautiful, something completely special in everything earthly, which is the body of a woman, has never been written by anyone. We need to find some other words." And he found them. Like an artist and sculptor, Bunin recreated the harmony of colors, lines and shapes of a beautiful female body, sang the Beauty embodied in a woman.

I.A. Bunin in literary criticism. Approaches to the analysis of I.A. Bunin. Directions in the field of studying the lyrical hero Bunin, the figurative system of his prose ________________________________________ 3

Female images in the cycle of stories "Dark Alleys" by I.A. Bunin.________8

Conclusion ____________________________________________________________ 15

List of references _________________________________ 17

Part 1.

I.A. Bunin in literary criticism. Approaches to the analysis of I.A. Bunin. Directions in the field of studying the lyrical hero Bunin, the figurative system of his prose.

Conventionally, the spectrum of literary literature dedicated to the work of I.A. Bunin can be divided into several areas

The first is the religious trend. First of all, of course, we mean the consideration of I.A. Bunin in the context of the Christian paradigm. Since the nineties of the twentieth century, this direction has been developing most widely in domestic literary criticism. Like O.A. Berdnikova (1), This direction originates from the publication of the work of I.A. Ilyin "On darkness and enlightenment". The point of view of this author is more philosophical, orthodox than scientific, but it was this work that initiated the criticism of the heritage of I.A. Bunin in the key of Christian philosophy. What, then, is the irreconcilability of Ilyin's point of view on the ordinary reader's point of view? According to the philosopher Ilyin, in Bunin's prose, "an individual rather than a person" (1, p. 280), which does not have a spiritual individuality, acts rather. This point of view echoes the mythological, mythopoetic direction in the field of research of I.A. Bunin, who considers Bunin's hero as a certain philosophical invariant. In general, Yu.M. Lotman (8), comparing the creative and philosophical attitudes of I.A. Bunin and F.M. Dostoevsky.

The religious trend in literary criticism could not but pay attention to the sensual side of Bunin's heroism, the spontaneity and passion of his characters, and at the same time naturalness, naturalness. Bunin's heroes submit to fate, fate, are ready to carry through their entire

Life is one single moment resignedly, humbly, finding in it a kind of meaning, some kind of philosophy of its own. Already these, rather naive and simple, characteristics give reason to consider Bunin's work in a different, but still religious and philosophical aspect, namely, within the framework of Eastern, Buddhist philosophy. The dispute between the Christian and Buddhist views on the person (14) and its relationship with God received its new round in the literary environment of the study of Bunin's prose, and also acquired new ground for reflection. Bunin's journalism, perhaps, gives the first impetus to the question of the philosophical basis of Bunin's prose. In 1937, Bunin wrote the memoir and journalistic work "The Liberation of Tolstoy", where he enters into an argument with a colleague in the chosen business of life, with his main reviewer, a teacher, one of "... those people whose words elevate the soul and make tears even high , and who want to cry in a moment of grief and kiss their hand passionately, like their own father ... ". “In it, in addition to memoirs and discussions about the work, life and personality of the great writer, he expressed long-held thoughts about human life and death, about the meaning of being in an endless and mysterious world. He categorically disagrees with Tolstoy's idea of withdrawal, "liberation" from life. Not departure, not the cessation of existence, but Life, its precious moments that must be opposed to death, to perpetuate all the beauty that a person has experienced on earth - this is his conviction ”(11, p. 10). “There is no happiness in life, there are only lightning bolts of it - appreciate them, live by them” - these are the words of Tolstoy I.A. Bunin will remember all his life, this saying, perhaps for the writer himself, was something like a life credo, and for the heroes of the Dark Alleys cycle, this is both a law and, at the same time, a sentence. Bunin, as you know, considered love to be such lightning bolts of happiness, such beautiful moments that illuminate a person’s life. “Love does not understand death. Love is life, ”Bunin writes out the words of Andrei Bolkonsky from War and Peace. “And implicitly, gradually, unconsciously, however, in a certain

In his subconscious polemic with Tolstoy, he was born with the idea to write about the highest and most complete, from his point of view, earthly happiness, about his “lightning” “Blessed hours are passing, and it is necessary, necessary ... to save at least something, that is, to oppose death, fading wild rose,” he wrote back in 1924 (the story “Inscriptions”)” (12, p. 10). "An Ordinary Tale", a poem by N.P. Ogarev, after almost two decades, will give the name to the book of love stories, on which Bunin is working in subsequent years.

Of course, it is impossible not to touch on classical literary criticism in this area. Classical in this case means a view of the writer's work from the point of view of autobiography, belonging to any literary movement, the use of one or another literary method, figurative means. Including the historical context, for example, the research of A. Blum (3) and, conversely, the historical and literary position of the author, his predecessors and followers. In general, the synchrony and diachrony of Bunin's work (5, 6, 13, 14).

Also, literary thought did not disregard the stylistic, methodological aspects of I.A. Bunin. The works of L.K. Dolgopolov (5), a literary critic, known primarily as a researcher of the St. Petersburg text in literature, outstanding philologists D.S. Likhachev (8) and Yu.M. Lotman (9) are devoted to the analysis of the style and visual means of the writer, the interpretation of symbols and images of Bunin's prose. In particular, the cycle "Dark Alleys" by Bunin in this direction is considered as a holistic work, united by a number of motives and images, which allows us to speak of this collection, created over several years, precisely as a cycle where the main leitmotif is a romantic image-symbol of dark alleys. , unhappy, even tragic love.

Researcher of creativity I.A. Bunina Saakyants A.A. in the preface to one of the editions of his stories, he gives a classic interpretation of the writer's attitude to the world built in his works: "he feels great sympathy and disposition for the weak, the destitute, the restless." The writer happened to survive the global social upheavals of the 20th century - revolution, emigration, war; to feel the irreversibility of events, to feel the impotence of a person in the whirlpool of history, to know the bitterness of irretrievable losses. All this could not but be reflected in the creative life of the writer. View of A.A. Saakyants is the view of a literary historian, a literary sociologist, so to speak. Sakayants, like many other researchers of Bunin's work, characterizes Bunin's prose from the point of view of the writer's era, speaking of a two-fold feeling that "permeates many of his stories: pity and sympathy for the innocent suffering and hatred for the absurdities and ugliness of Russian life, which gives rise to these sufferings "(13, p. 5). Irina Odoevtseva, a poetess and author of the most interesting memoirs about the poetry of the Silver Age and Russian emigration, characterizes Bunin as a person incredibly sensitive to the manifestation of the vulgarity of human existence (12). Vulgarities in the Chekhovian sense of the word. Therefore, sympathy for the weak, which Sakayants writes about, is expressed rather directly through the plot, at least in the Dark Alleys cycle, and not through dogmatic moralizing, philosophical digressions, or any direct authorial statements. The drama of the stories included in the cycle is in the details, in the fate of the characters. This important aspect of Bunin's perception of reality will still be required to reveal the theme of the embodiment of female images in the Dark Alleys cycle.

Returning to the opinion of contemporaries about I.A. Bunin, it is worth recalling the Blok characterization of Bunin's work. Alexander Blok wrote about "the world of visual and auditory impressions and related experiences" in Bunin's prose. This, in light of the above, is rather curious.

Comment. Blok notes that the world of Bunin's heroes, and perhaps Bunin himself, is responsive to the outside world, first of all, of course, to nature. Many heroes are part of nature, nature itself, naturalness, spontaneity, purity.

Part 2. Female images in the cycle of stories "Dark Alleys" by I.A. Bunin.

The cycle "Dark Alleys" is usually called the "encyclopedia of love." The classical formulation for the classical beginning of the practical part. Nevertheless, love, as already mentioned in the first part of this work, is a cross-cutting theme of the cycle, the main leitmotif. Love is many-sided, tragic, impossible. Bunin himself was sure, especially insisted on this already in the last years of his life, that love is simply doomed to a tragic ending and certainly does not lead to marriage and a happy ending (8). The story of the same name with the cycle opens the collection. And already from the first lines a landscape opens up, not a specific landscape, but a kind of geographical and climatic sketch, a background for the main picture not only of the events of the story, but of the whole life of the main character. “In a cold autumn storm, on one of the big Tula roads, flooded with rain and cut by many black ruts, to a long hut, in one connection of which there was a state postal station, and in the other a private room where you could relax or spend the night, dine or ask a samovar, a tarantass with a half-raised top rolled up with mud, a trio of rather simple horses with their tails tied up from slush” (4, p. 5). And a little later, a portrait of the heroine, Nadezhda: “a dark-haired, also black-browed and also still beautiful woman who looks like an elderly gypsy, with a dark fluff on her upper lip and along her cheeks, light on the go, but plump, with large breasts under a red blouse , with a triangular belly, like that of a goose, under a black woolen skirt" (4, p. 6). O.A. Berdnikova in her work notes that the motive of temptation in Bunin is always associated with dark skin, tan, belonging to a particular nation. "Beautiful beyond her age", similar to a gypsy. This sensual portrait already draws a continuation of the story, hints at the distant past, at a passionate youth. The beauty of the heroine, her strong full-blooded body coexist with enterprise, wisdom and, as a consequence,

turns out to be incredibly vulnerable. Hope directly tells her lover that she could never forgive him, she deprives him of the opportunity to repent. This is echoed by the coachman of Nikolai Alekseevich: “And she, they say, is fair to this. But cool! If you don't give it back on time, blame yourself" (4, p. 9).

The heroine of the story "Ballad" appears completely different, "the wanderer Mashenka, gray-haired, dry and fractional, like a girl", holy fool, illegitimate from a deceived peasant woman. The fate of Mashenka is mentioned in passing, as if by chance. She, quite by accident, when telling a ballad about a wolf, mentions the estate where the young master and his wife, who took Mashenka with them, were visiting. The estate is abandoned, and its owner, "grandfather" according to legend, "died a terrible death." At this moment, a loud sound is heard, something has fallen. A terrible story resonates in the outside world, the feedback was noticed in Bunin's work by A. Blok. This story is curious in that a mythical wolf appears here, to which Mashenka prays at the beginning of the story, the intercessor of lovers. It would seem that the wolf gnaws the throat of a hard-hearted father, giving freedom to lovers. It should be noted right away that all the heroines of the stories are united by one form or another of orphanage, which, as was said earlier, was very close to Bunin. Mashenka is an orphan from birth and the holy wolf, saving the lovers, deprives them of their father. The motif of the holy protector of the wolf continues in the final cycle of the short story "Accommodation", framing the collection in its own way. A dog, a wolf tamed for centuries, comes to the defense of a little girl.

After Mashenka, Styopa appears, the heroine's fate is more similar to Nadezhda from the first story. The drama of the story of a deceived girl, on her knees begging to take her with her, humiliating herself in the name of her love, is abruptly interrupted by the phrase "Two days later he was already in Kislovodsk." And nothing more, no grief, no subsequent fate of the heroine. Simple storyline

the sketch itself creates a tragic halo. A special stormy, passionate perception of the course of life and the rejection of sentimental tabloid methods in creativity, characteristic of Bunin, is perhaps most clearly manifested in this story.

And "Step" is replaced by a radically opposite image. Muse, masterful femme fatale, without explanation, without even announcing her plans, leaving the protagonist for the sake of a musician who often visited their house. A completely different image, this is not a weak Masha, not the proud Russian beauty Nadezhda, this is “a tall girl in a gray winter hat, in a gray straight coat, in gray boots, looks point-blank, eyes the color of an acorn, on long eyelashes, on her face and on her hair drops of rain and snow glisten under the hat” (4, p. 28). An interesting detail is the hair, not pitch on the shoulders of Nadezhda, but “rusty hair”, very abrupt, rude speech. She immediately declares to the main character that he is her first love, makes an appointment, orders to buy apples on the Arbat. The hero is perfectly aware of the situation, but is not able to believe his own suspicions. Finally, finding his beloved in the lover's house, he asks for only one last favor - to maintain respect for his suffering - not to call him "you" in front of him. An almost imperceptible phrase, expressing the whole range of emotions of the offended hero, hits the wall of a casually thrown question with a cigarette flying away: "Why?" The cruelty of the Muse is parallel to the cruelty of Styopa's beloved. These two stories are like mirror images of each other. The same reflection draws the image of the emancipe Heinrich: very tall, in a gray dress, with a Greek hairstyle of red-lemon hair, with thin, like an Englishwoman, features, with lively amber-brown eyes ”(4, p. 133).

Not only the tragic fate of the heroine, but also her orphanhood has its mirror image. As mentioned above, orphanhood is a frequent quality of female images in the Dark Alleys cycle. This is often

an inalienable fact of the biography, and not only orphanhood in the literal sense of the word is meant. The heroines become orphans, being left by their husbands or after their death, they become, like small children, defenseless, unable to take care of themselves on their own. The mirror image of orphanhood is indicated in the short story "Beauty". Here, the young wife of a second-married gentleman hides his son from his first marriage in the corner of the living room. It is curious that Bunin writes about the boy not as an orphan, helpless and weak: “and a boy .... He lived a completely independent life, completely isolated from the whole house ... He makes his own bed in the evening, diligently cleans it himself, rolls it up in the morning and takes it into the corridor in his mother's chest ”(4, p53). The beauty of a motherless boy deprives both his father and home, a woman, a weak creature, defenseless, shows such a degree of cruelty. Bunin finds another facet of the female character.

Another portrait is of a girl who makes a living by prostitution. Fields in the short story "Madrid" comes across to the main character on the street, the hero is carried away by her childish spontaneity, completely discouraged by her fate, by the end of the story he is already jealous of her and her clients and decides to pull out this weak, thin creature, which "is not often taken" , from this scary street world. Bunin's bitter smile is visible in the very plot of the heroine's fate, the vulgarity of human life, the absurdity and defenselessness of one tiny creature - to save the girl from selling her body through her purchase, to become her sole owner. One more detail is rather curious. A sign of the times and the biography of Bunin himself - Paulie's sister, Moore, who sheltered the girl after the death of her parents, gave her this profession, lives in marriage with her colleague. So, against the backdrop of an orphan fate, Bunin draws same-sex love and modern customs, which, of course, could not be to Bunin's liking.

The fate of the model Katya, in the story “The Second Coffee Pot”, doomed to wander from one artist to another, is related to the topic, “yellow-haired, short, but fine, still very young, pretty, affectionate” (4, p. 150). A simple, narrow-minded girl, not even aware of her position. To her current almost master, she simply tells about her previous patron:

“No, he was kind. I lived with him for a year, that's how it is with you. He robbed me of all my innocence in the second session. He suddenly jumped up from the easel, threw down his palette with brushes and knocked Mine down onto the carpet. I was scared to the point that

couldn't scream. I grabbed onto his chest, into his jacket, but where are you going! Eyes furious, cheerful ... As if stabbed with a knife.

Yes, yes, you already told me that. Well done. And you

did you still love him?

Of course she did. I was very afraid. He abused me, drunk, God forbid. I am silent, and he: "Katka, be silent!"

Good!" (4, p. 151)

This dialogue paints the character of Katya exactly as the philosopher Ilyin saw Bunin's heroes with a biological, carnal, one might even say biographical individuality, but with a completely erased personality, completely adapted to the circumstances, too frightened to resist. This is confirmed by another biographical fact told by Katya: “Chaliapin and Korovin came from Strelna once in the morning to get drunk, they saw me dragging a boiling bucket samovar to the bar with Rodka-polov, and let’s shout and laugh:“ Good morning, Katya, we want you to be unrestricted, not this bitch

the son of the sexual gave us! "After all, how did you guess that my name is Katya!" (4, p. 151) Katya's life does not belong to her at all, like many heroines,

she is an orphan, she was almost sold to a brothel, but Korovin appears, then Goloushev, as a result, Katya ends up in the same brothel, only among the workshops of artists and sculptors, she is a thing in this world.

"Cold Autumn" is a story written in the first person, from the perspective of a woman. Here, of course, there is no portrait sketch of the heroine. Only her mention of herself during the move: "A woman in bast shoes." The whole heroine is in a monologue about her life, divided by the war into two parts, memories of her husband, who died almost immediately after the start of the war. The speech is restrained, the story seems to be in one breath, the rhythm of the narration slows down only on the memories of the last meeting with her husband:

Having dressed, we went through the dining-room to the balcony, and descended into the garden.

At first it was so dark that I held on to his sleeve. After

black boughs began to appear in the brightening sky, showered

mineral shining stars. He paused and turned to

Look how very special, in autumn, the windows of the house shine. I will be alive, I will always remember this evening ...

I looked and he hugged me in my Swiss cape. I pulled the shawl away from my face, tilted my head slightly so that he kissed me. He kissed me and looked into my face.

How bright the eyes are, he said. -- Are you cold? The air is very wintry. If they kill me, you won't forget me right away, will you?

I thought: “What if they really kill him? and will I really forget him at some point - after all, everything is forgotten in the end?” And hastily answered, frightened by her thought:

Do not say that! I won't survive your death!

And after the end of the dialogue, there is already a weeping phrase about his death and a hasty story about emigration. A completely different heroine. This is not a cheerful Natalie, this is rather a calm Nadezhda, this is not a string of "hysterics" traveling from one story to another, these are not passionate peasant girls with knees tightly covered in leather. A kind of quiet light ideal of femininity. Only it is not at all clear to whom, under what circumstances, this calm voice whispered his fate.

Conclusion

Dark Alleys is a heterogeneous cycle, very diverse, but, nevertheless, gaining integrity by the last story. All the stories of the cycle are flashes, sharp lights visible from the window of the car of the rushing night train. These are flashes of passionate love, dividing all life into two halves, this is remembering happiness, crazy grief, crimes, anything. But this anything is always completely natural, completely human with all the heights of the human soul and its base passions. The heroines of "Dark Alleys" are given either to their feelings or to their fate, and they completely submit to the first and second, with the exception of the heroines of the villains. The line of love forms its second side in the cycle, the mirror reflection - hatred. Passionate love of Nadezhda turns into an eternal, albeit just, resentment. Faithful loving heroines are replaced by insidious traitors. Career women are replaced by weak-willed simple girls, forced to travel from one man to another. Perhaps this is not an encyclopedia of love, but a register of female characters, sincere even in their villainy, impulsive, alluring, hysterical, portly or thin.

Returning to the review of literary thought presented in the first part, we can say that from the point of view of the religious and philosophical concept, the heroines are heterogeneous, some, as the example of Katya has already been given, really do not have a personal individuality, which, for example, cannot be said about the strict , but fair Nadezhda or the heroine of the story "Cold Autumn". Some of them have a natural, sensual, again tanned, swarthy attractiveness, others, on the contrary, are pale, thin, sometimes hysterical, eccentric, insidious. The former, as a rule, become victims of passions, the latter, according to the logic of the world, in the opposite way bear a kind of retribution. One way or another, the heroines of the cycle carry echoes of the biography of Bunin himself, if we talk about historical and biographical discourse. Life, the time of the royal landowner

Collapsing Russia, the first world, post-revolutionary emigration, all this is reflected in the fate of the heroines. Bunin's own, personal tragedies, one way or another, look through the fate of the women he invented.

List of used literature

Berdnikova O.A. Motives of temptation in the work of I.A. Bunin in the aspect of Christian anthropology. Electronic resource. / Berdnikova O.A., text data, 2010. Access mode - ftp://lib.herzen.spb.ru/text/berdnikova_12_85_279_288.pdf
Blok A. Collected Works. M., 2000.
Blum A. Grammar of love. // A. Blum "Science and Life", 1970 Electronic resource. / Blum A., text data, 2001. Access mode - http://lib.ru/BUNIN/bunin_bibl.txt
Bunin I.A. Dark alleys. SPb., 2002.
Bunin I.A. Collected works in 2 T.- T.2. M., 2008.
Dolgopolov, L.K. The story "Clean Monday" in the works of I. Bunin of the emigrant period Text. / OK. Dolgopolov // At the turn of the century: About Rus. lit. k. 19 - n. 20th century - L., 1977.
I.A. Bunin: pro et contra / Comp. B.V. Averin, D. Riniker, K.V. Stepanova, comment. B.V. Averina, M.N. Virolainen, D. Rinikera, bibliogr. T.M. Dvinyatina, A.Ya. Lapidus Text. - St. Petersburg, 2001.
Kolobaeva, L.A. "Clean Monday" by Ivan Bunin Text. / L.A. Kolobaeva // Rus. literature. - M., 1998. - N 3.
Likhachev, D.S. "Dark Alleys" Text. D.S. Likhachev // Star. - 1981.-№3.
Lotman, Yu.M. Two oral stories of Bunin (to the problem of Bunin and Dostoevsky) Text. / Yu.M. Lotman // On Russian Literature. Articles and research 1958-1993. - St. Petersburg, 1997.
Odoevtseva, I. On the banks of the Seine. Text. / I. Odoevtseva - M.: Zakharov, 2005.
Saakyants A. About I.A. Bunin and his prose. // Stories. Moscow: Pravda, 1983.
Smirnova, A.I. Ivan Bunin // Literature of the Russian Diaspora (1920-1999): textbook. Manual Text. / Under the general editorship of A.I. Smirnova. - M., 2006.
Smolyaninova, E.B. "Buddhist theme" in the prose of I.A. Bunin (The story "The Cup of Life") Text. / E.B. Smolyaninova // Rus. lit. - 1996. - No. 3.

Bunin always sought to comprehend the miracle of femininity, the secret of irresistible female happiness. “Women seem mysterious to me. The more I study them, the less I understand" - such a phrase is written by

It's from Flaubert's diary.

With amazing skill, Bunin finds the right words and images. They seem to have color and shape. A few precise and colorful strokes - and before us is a portrait of a woman. However, Nadezhda is good not only outwardly. She is rich and

Deep inner world. For more than thirty years, she has kept in her soul love for the master who once seduced her. They met by chance in a “staying room” by the road, where Nadezhda is the hostess, and Nikolai Alekseevich is a traveler. He is not able to rise to the height of her Feelings, to understand why Nadezhda did not marry “with such beauty that ... she had”, how you can love one person all your life.

There are many other most charming female images in the book “Dark Alleys”: sweet gray-eyed Tanya, “a simple soul”, devoted to her beloved, ready for any sacrifice for him (“Tanya”); the tall, stately beauty Katerina Nikolaevna, the daughter of her age, who may seem too bold and extravagant (“Antigone”); the simple-hearted, naive Polya, who retained her childish purity of soul, despite her profession (“Madrid”) and so on.

The fate of most of Bunin's heroines is tragic. Suddenly and soon, the happiness of Olga Alexandrovna, an officer's wife, is cut short, who is forced to serve as a waitress ("In Paris"), breaks up with her beloved Rusya ("Rusya"), dies from childbirth Natalie ("Natalie").

The ending of another short story in this cycle, Galya Ganskaya, is sad. The hero of the story, the artist, does not get tired of admiring the beauty of this girl. At thirteen, she was "sweet, frisky, graceful ... extremely, a face with blond curls along her cheeks, like an angel's." But time passed, Galya matured: “... no longer a teenager, not an angel, but an amazingly pretty thin girl ... The face under a gray hat is half covered with an ashy veil, and aquamarine eyes shine through it.” Passionate was her feeling for the artist, great and his attraction to her. However, soon he was going to leave for Italy, for a long time, for a month and a half. In vain does the girl persuade her lover to stay or take her with her. Having been refused, Galya committed suicide. Only then did the artist realize what he had lost.

It is impossible to remain indifferent to the fatal charm of the Little Russian beauty Valeria (“Zoyka and Valeria”): “... she was very good: strong, fine, with thick dark hair, with velvet eyebrows, almost fused, with formidable eyes the color of black blood, with hot a dark blush on a tanned face, with a bright gleam of teeth and full cherry lips. The heroine of the short story "Camargue", despite the poverty of her clothes and the simplicity of her manners, simply torments men with her beauty. No less beautiful is the young woman from the story "One Hundred Rupees". Her eyelashes are especially good: "... like those heavenly butterflies that so magically flicker on heavenly Indian flowers." When the beauty is reclining in her reed armchair, “measuredly shimmering with the black velvet of her butterfly eyelashes”, waving her fan, she gives the impression of a mysteriously beautiful, unearthly creature: “Beauty, intelligence, stupidity - all these words did not go to her in any way, as they did not go everything human: truly it was as if from some other planet. And what are the astonishment and disappointment of the narrator, and with it ours, when it turns out that anyone who has a hundred rupees in his pocket can possess this unearthly charm!

But the main essence of the charm of Olya Meshcherskaya was not in this. Everyone, probably, had to see very beautiful faces, which you get tired of looking at after a minute. Olya was first of all a cheerful, "live" person. There is not a drop of stiffness, affectation or self-satisfied admiration of her beauty in her: “And she was not afraid of anything - no ink stains on her fingers, no flushed face, no disheveled hair, no knee that became naked when she fell on the run.” The girl seems to radiate energy, the joy of life. However, "the more beautiful the rose, the faster it fades." The ending of this story, like other Bunin novels, is tragic: Olya dies. However, the charm of her image is so great that even now romantics continue to fall in love with him. Here is how K.G. writes about this. Paustovsky: “Oh, if only I knew! And if I could! I would cover this grave with all the flowers that only bloom on earth. I already loved this girl. I shuddered at the irreparability of her fate. I ... naively reassured myself that Olya Meshcherskaya was a Bunin fiction, that only a tendency to a romantic perception of the world makes me suffer because of a sudden love for a dead girl.

Paustovsky, on the other hand, called the story “Light Breath” a sad and calm reflection, an epitaph to girlish beauty.

Bunin knows how to speak very frankly about the most intimate, but he never crosses the line where there is no place for art. Reading his short stories, you do not find even a hint of vulgarity or vulgar naturalism. The writer subtly and tenderly describes love relationships, "Earthly Love." “And how he embraced his wife and he her, her whole cool body, kissing her still wet breasts, smelling of toilet soap, eyes and lips, from which she had already wiped the paint.” ("In Paris").

And how touching are the words of Rus' addressed to her beloved: “No, wait, yesterday we kissed somehow stupidly, now I will kiss you first, only quietly, quietly. And you hug me ... everywhere ... ”(“ Rusya ”).

The miracle of Bunin's prose was achieved at the cost of the great creative efforts of the writer. Without this great art is unthinkable. Here is how Ivan Alekseevich himself writes about this: “... that marvelous, indescribably beautiful, something completely special in everything earthly, which is the body of a woman, has never been written by anyone. We need to find some other words." And he found them. Like an artist and sculptor, Bunin recreated the harmony of colors, lines and shapes of a beautiful female body, sang the Beauty embodied in a woman.

The work of I. A. Bunin is a major phenomenon in Russian literature of the 20th century. His prose is marked by lyricism, deep psychologism, as well as philosophy. The writer has created a number of memorable female images.

The woman in the stories of I. A. Bunin is, first of all, loving. The writer sings of maternal love. This feeling, he argues, is not given to go out under any circumstances. It does not know the fear of death, overcomes serious illnesses and sometimes turns ordinary human life into a feat. Sick Anisya in the story "Merry Yard" goes to a distant village to see her son, who left his home long ago.

The mother went to the miserable hut of a lonely son and, not finding him there, died. The death of his mother was followed by the suicide of his son, who despaired of the stupid life. Rare in their emotional strength and tragedy, the pages of the story, however, strengthen faith in life, because, speaking of maternal love, they elevate the human soul.

A woman in Bunin's prose embodies true life in its organic and natural nature.

A typical example is the story "The Cup of Life", which reveals the meaning of its title with all its content. It's just that physical existence, no matter how long it may be, has no price, the "cup of life" is its spirituality, love above all. The image of a woman whose inner world is filled with a joyful and holy feeling is touching, Horizontov is ugly with his prudence of all actions. His "philosophy" was that all the powers of man should be expended in prolonging his physical existence.

Alexandra Vasilievna is sure that she would not regret anything for one - even the last - date with her beloved. I. A. Bunin does not hide his compassion for a woman in whose heart “distant, not yet decayed love” has been preserved.

It is the woman who penetrates the true nature of the feeling of love, comprehends its tragedy and beauty. For example, the heroine of the story "Natalie" says: "Is there an unhappy love?.. Doesn't the most mournful music in the world give happiness?"

In the stories of I. A. Bunin, it is the woman who keeps love alive and incorruptible, carries it through all the trials of life. Such, for example, is Hope in the story "Dark Alleys". Having fallen in love once, she lived this love for thirty years and, having accidentally met her lover, she says to him: “Just as I didn’t have anything more precious than you at that time, so I didn’t have it later either.” It is unlikely that the heroes are destined for a new meeting. However, Nadezhda understands that love will forever be remembered: "Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten." These words contain both forgiveness and light sadness.

Love and separation, life and death are eternal themes that sound heartfelt in the prosaic work of I. A. Bunin. All these themes are connected with the image of a woman, touchingly and enlightenedly recreated by the writer.

It is unlikely that anyone will argue that some of the best pages of Bunin's prose are dedicated to the Woman. Amazing female characters appear before the reader, in the light of which male images fade. This is especially characteristic of the book "Dark Alleys". Women play a major role here. Men, as a rule, are just a background that sets off the characters and actions of the heroines.

Here we have Nadezhda from the story “Dark Alleys”: “... a dark-haired, also black-browed and also still beautiful woman who looked like an elderly gypsy, with a dark fluff on her upper lip and along her cheeks, light on the go, entered the room, but full, with large breasts under a red blouse, with a triangular belly, like that of a goose, under a black woolen skirt. With amazing skill, Bunin finds the right words and images. They seem to have color and shape. A few precise and colorful strokes - and before us is a portrait of a woman. However, Nadezhda is good not only outwardly. She has a rich and deep inner world. For more than thirty years, she has kept in her soul love for the master who once seduced her. They met by chance in the "intern room" by the road, where Nadezhda is the hostess, and Nikolai Alekseevich is a traveler. He is not able to rise to the height of her feelings, to understand why Nadezhda did not marry "with such beauty that she ... had", how you can love one person all your life.

The finale of another short story in this cycle, Galya Ganskaya, is sad. The hero of the story, the artist, does not get tired of admiring the beauty of this girl. At thirteen, she was "sweet, frisky, graceful ... extremely, a face with blond curls along her cheeks, like an angel's." But time passed, Galya matured: “... no longer a teenager, not an angel, but an amazingly pretty thin girl ... The face under a gray hat is half covered with an ashy veil, and aquamarine eyes shine through it.” Passionate was her feeling for the artist, great and his attraction to her. However, soon he was going to leave for Italy, for a long time, for a month and a half. In vain does the girl persuade her lover to stay or take her with her. Having been refused, Galya committed suicide. Only then did the artist realize what he had lost.

Her eyelashes are especially good: "... like those heavenly butterflies that so magically flicker on heavenly Indian flowers." When the beauty is reclining in her reed chair, “measuredly shimmering with the black velvet of her butterfly eyelashes”, waving her fan, she gives the impression of a mysteriously beautiful, unearthly creature: “Beauty, intelligence, stupidity - all these words did not go to her, as they did not go everything human: truly it was as if from some other planet. And what are the astonishment and disappointment of the narrator, and with it ours, when it turns out that anyone who has a hundred rupees in his pocket can possess this unearthly charm!

The string of charming female images in Bunin's short stories is endless. But, speaking of the female beauty captured on the pages of his works, one cannot fail to mention Olya Meshcherskaya, the heroine of the story “Light Breath”. What an amazing girl she was! Here is how the author describes it: “At the age of fourteen, with a thin waist and slender legs, her breasts and all those forms were already well outlined, the charm of which the human word had never yet expressed; at fifteen she was already known as a beauty. But the main essence of the charm of Olya Meshcherskaya was not in this. Everyone, probably, had to see very beautiful faces, which you get tired of looking at after a minute. Olya was first of all a cheerful, "live" person. There is not a drop of stiffness, affectation or self-satisfied admiration of her beauty in her: “But she was not afraid of anything - no ink spots on her fingers, no flushed face, no disheveled hair, no knee that became naked when she fell on the run.” The girl seems to radiate energy, the joy of life. However, "the more beautiful the rose, the faster it fades." The ending of this story, like other Bunin novels, is tragic: Olya dies. However, the charm of her image is so great that even now romantics continue to fall in love with him. Here is how K.G. writes about this. Paustovsky: “Oh, if only I knew! And if I could! I would cover this grave with all the flowers that only bloom on earth. I already loved this girl. I shuddered at the irreparability of her fate. I ... naively consoled myself with the fact that Olya Meshcherskaya is Bunin's fiction, that only a penchant for a romantic perception of the world makes me suffer because of a sudden love for a dead girl.

Paustovsky, on the other hand, called the story “Light Breath” a sad and calm reflection, an epitaph to girlish beauty.

On the pages of Bunin's prose there are many lines devoted to sex, a description of a naked female body. Apparently, the writer's contemporaries more than once reproached him for "shamelessness" and base feelings. Here is the rebuke the writer gives to his ill-wishers: “... how I love ... you, “human wives, a network of seduction by man”! This “network” is something truly inexplicable, divine and diabolical, and when I write about it, I try to express it, I am reproached for shamelessness, for base motives... It is well said in one old book: “The writer has the same full right to be bold in their verbal images of love and its faces, which at all times was provided in this case to painters and sculptors: only vile souls see the vile even in the beautiful ... "