The story of I.A. Bunin's "Antonov Apples" refers to one of those of his works, where the writer with sad love recalls the irrevocably gone "golden" days. The author worked in an era of fundamental changes in society: the entire beginning of the twentieth century is covered with blood. It was possible to escape from the aggressive environment only in memories of the best moments.

The idea of ​​the story came to the author in 1891, when he was visiting at the estate with his brother Eugene. The smell of Antonov apples, which filled the autumn days, reminded Bunin of those times when the estates flourished, the landowners did not grow poor, and the peasants were reverent for everything that was lordly. The author was anxious about the culture of the nobility and the old local life, deeply worried about their decline. That is why a cycle of epitaph stories stands out in his work, which tell about a long gone, "dead", but still so dear old world.

The writer nurtured his work for 9 years. For the first time "Antonovskie apples" were published in 1900. However, the story continued to be refined and changed, Bunin polished the literary language, made the text even more imaginative, and removed all unnecessary.

What is the work about?

"Antonov Apples" is an alternation of pictures of the noble life, united by the memories of a lyrical hero. First, he remembers early autumn, a golden garden, picking apples. All this is controlled by the owners who lived in a hut in the garden, organizing a whole fair there on holidays. The garden is filled with different faces of peasants, which amaze with contentment: men, women, children - they are all in the best relations with each other and with the landowners. The idyllic picture is complemented by pictures of nature, at the end of the episode the main character exclaims: "How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world!"

The harvest year in the ancestral village of the protagonist Vyselki pleases the eye: everywhere contentment, joy, wealth, simple happiness of men. The narrator himself would like to be a man, not seeing any problems in this share, but only health, naturalness and closeness to nature, and not at all poverty, lack of land and humiliation. From the peasant, he passes to the noble life of earlier times: serfdom and immediately after, when the landowners still played the main role. An example is the estate of Anna Gerasimovna's aunt, where one felt prosperity, and severity, and serf obedience of servants. The atmosphere at home also seems to have frozen in the past, even talking only about the past, but this also has its own poetry.

Hunting, one of the main entertainments of the nobility, is spoken of separately. Arseny Semenovich, brother-in-law of the protagonist, arranged large-scale hunts, sometimes for several days. The whole house was filled with people, vodka, cigarette smoke, dogs. The conversations and memories of this are noteworthy. The narrator saw these amusements even in a dream, plunging into a doze on soft featherbeds in some corner room under the images. But it is also pleasant to oversleep the hunt, because in the old estate there are books, portraits, magazines around, at the sight of which "sweet and strange melancholy" is seized.

But life has changed, it has become "beggarly", "small-scale". But it also contains remnants of its former greatness¸ poetic echoes of the former noble happiness. So, on the threshold of a century of changes, the landowners have only memories of carefree days.

The main characters and their characteristics

1. Scattered pictures are connected through a lyrical hero who represents the author's position in the work. He appears before us as a person with a fine mental organization, dreamy, receptive, divorced from reality. He lives in the past, grieving for it and not noticing what is really going on around him, including in the village environment.
2. The protagonist's aunt Anna Gerasimovna also lives in the past. Order and neatness reign in her house, antique furniture is ideally preserved. The old woman also talks about the times of her youth, and about her inheritance.
3. Shurin Arseny Semyonovich is distinguished by a young, dashing spirit, in the conditions of a hunt, these reckless qualities are very organic, but what is he like in everyday life, on the farm? This remains a mystery, because in his person the noble culture is poeticized, like that of the past heroine.
4. There are many peasants in the story, but they all have similar qualities: folk wisdom, respect for the landowners, dexterity and thrift. They bow low, run at the first call, in general, maintain a happy noble life.

Problems

The problematic of the story "Antonov Apples" mainly focuses on the theme of impoverishment of the nobility, their loss of their former authority. According to the author, the landlord's life is beautiful, poetic, there is no place for boredom, vulgarity and cruelty in village life, the owners and peasants coexist perfectly with each other and are unthinkable separately. Bunin's poeticization of serfdom is clearly visible, because it was then that these beautiful estates flourished.

Also important is another issue raised by the writer - this is the problem of memory. In a turning point, crisis era, in which the story was written, I want peace, warmth. It is his person who always finds in childhood memories, which are colored with a joyful feeling, from that period only good things usually arise in memory. This is beautiful and Bunin wants to leave forever in the hearts of his readers.

Theme

• The main theme of Bunin's Antonov Apples is the nobility and their way of life. It is immediately clear that the author is proud of his own class, therefore he puts it very high. The village landowners are glorified by the writer also because of their connection with the peasants, clean, highly moral, morally healthy. In rural worries there is no place for blues, melancholy and bad habits. It is in these remote estates that the spirit of romanticism, moral values ​​and concepts of honor are alive.
• The theme of nature occupies an important place. The pictures of the native land are fresh, clean, and respectful. The author's love for all these fields, gardens, roads, estates is immediately visible. In them, according to Bunin, is the real, real Russia. The nature surrounding the lyrical hero truly heals the soul, drives destructive thoughts.

Meaning

Nostalgia is the main feeling that grips both the author and many readers of that time after reading Antonov apples. Bunin is a true artist of words, so his village life is an idyllic picture. The author diligently bypassed all the sharp corners, in his story life is beautiful and devoid of problems, social contradictions, which in reality accumulated by the beginning of the twentieth century and inevitably led Russia to changes.

The meaning of this story by Bunin is to create a picturesque canvas, to plunge into a departed, but alluring world of serenity and prosperity. For many people, a departure from reality has become a way out, but it is short-lived. Nevertheless, "Antonov Apples" is an exemplary work in artistic terms, and you can learn from Bunin the beauty of his style and imagery.

Interesting? Keep it on your wall!

The topic of ruining noble nests at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was one of the most popular. (Remember, for example, the play by A.P. Chekhov "The Cherry Orchard".) For Bunin, it is very close, because his family was among those whose "nests" were ruined. Back in 1891, he conceived the story "Antonovskie Apples", but wrote and published it only in 1900. The story had the subtitle Pictures from the Book of Epitaphs. Why? What did the writer want to emphasize with this subtitle? Perhaps bitterness about the dying "noble nests" dear to his heart ... What is the story about? About autumn, about Antonov's apples - this is a chronicle of the life of nature, marked by months (from August to November). It consists of four small chapters, each dedicated to a specific month and the work that is carried out in the village that month.

The narration is in the first person: "I am reminded of an early mild autumn", "I am reminded of a fruitful year", "Now I see myself in the village again ...". Often a phrase begins with the word "remember." “I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning ... I remember a big, all golden, dried and thinned garden, I remember maple alleys, the delicate scent of fallen leaves and - the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness." The theme of memory in the story is one of the main ones. The memory is so keen that the narration is often conducted in the present tense: "The air is so clean, as if it is not there at all, voices and the creak of carts are heard throughout the garden," "there is a strong smell of apples everywhere." But an acute longing for the past changes the time, and the hero-narrator tells about the recent past as a distant one: “These days were so recently, but meanwhile it seems to me that almost a whole century has passed since then”.

Bunin dwells on the attractive aspects of the landlord's life: the proximity of nobles and peasants, the fusion of human life with nature, its naturalness. Strong huts, gardens, homeliness, hunting scenes, riotous feasts, peasant labor, quivering communication with books, antique furniture, hospitality with hospitable dinners are lovingly described. Patriarchal life appears in an idyllic light, in its obvious aestheticization and poeticization. The author regrets the harmony and beauty that has passed away, about the peaceful flow of days, about the prosaic present, where the smell of Antonov's apples disappears, where there are no hounds, there is no courtyard and the owner himself - the landowner-hunter. Often not events and pictures are recalled, but impressions: “There are many people - all the people are tanned, with weathered faces ... And in the yard the horn blows and howls at the different voices of the dog ... I still feel how greedily and capaciously the young breast was breathing in the cold of a clear and damp day in the evening, when you used to go with a noisy band of Arseny Semyonich, excited by the musical gallop of dogs thrown in the black forest in some Red Bugor or Gremyachy Island, which by its name alone excites the hunter. " The changes in reality are obvious - the picture of an abandoned cemetery and the death of the Vyselkovsky inhabitants give rise to sadness, a feeling of goodbye, resemble an epitaph akin to Turgenev's pages about the desolation of noble nests.

The story does not have a clear plot line, it is composed of a number of "fragmented" pictures, impressions, memories. Their change reflects the gradual disappearance of the old way of life. Each of these fragments of life has a specific color: "A cool garden filled with purple mist"; "Sometimes in the evening, between gloomy low clouds, the trembling golden light of the low sun made its way in the west."

Bunin, as it were, takes over from L.N. Tolstoy, idealizing a person living among forests and meadows. He poeticises natural phenomena. Why God, along with sadness, the story contains the motive of joy, light acceptance and approval of life. Read the descriptions of nature. A forest landscape at the time of the hunt, an open field, a panorama of the steppe, sketches of an apple orchard, the diamond constellation Stozhar. The landscapes are presented in dynamics, in a subtle transfer of colors and author's moods. Bunin reproduces the change of time of day, the rhythm of the seasons, the renewal of everyday life, the struggle of eras, the irrepressible run of time, with which Bunin's characters and author's thoughts are associated. In Antonov Apples, Bunin showed not only the elegiacity of a noble estate, but also the disappeared poetry of the old Russian way of life - noble and peasant, of the way on which Russia stood for centuries. The writer revealed the values ​​on which this way of life was based - attachment to the earth, the ability to hear and understand it: “We listen for a long time and distinguish tremors in the earth. The tremor turns into noise, it grows ... "

The story is distinguished by a special lyrical emotion, conveyed by a kind of vocabulary, expressive epithets, rhythm and syntax of the Bunin text. Critic Y. Eichenwald noted that Bunin "not gloatingly, but painfully portrays Russian rural poverty ... with sadness looks back at the era of our history, at all these ruined noble nests." If you remember the beginning of the story, then it is full of joyful cheerfulness: "How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world!" Gradually, the intonation changes, nostalgic notes appear: "In recent years, one thing has supported the fading spirit of the landowners - hunting." In the end, in the description of late autumn, there is an outright sadness.

According to the modern literary critic V.A. Keldysh, “the real hero of the story is the magnificent Russian autumn with all its colors, sounds and smells. Contact with nature, giving a sense of joy and fullness of existence - this is the main perspective, the artistic angle of view. "

And yet ... The reading public still perceived Bunin as a poet. In 1909 he was elected an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences: “Of course, as a poet, IA Bunin Academy, - noted the critic A. Izmailov. "As a storyteller, he retains in his writing the same significant tenderness of perception, the same sadness of the soul, experiencing early autumn."

In assessing the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907, Bunin was restrained. Emphasizing his political apathy, in 1907 he left to travel with his wife, Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, an intelligent and educated woman who became his devoted and selfless friend for life. They lived together for many years, and after Bunin's death, she prepared for publication of his manuscript and wrote the biography "Life of Bunin".

In the writer's work, a special place is occupied by essays - "travel poems", born as a result of wanderings in Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Ceylon, India, Turkey, Greece, North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Palestine. "Shadow of the Bird" (1907-1911) - this is the name of the cycle of works in which diary entries, impressions of the places seen, cultural monuments are intertwined with the legends of ancient peoples. In literary criticism, this cycle is called differently - lyric poems, stories, travel poems, travel notes, travel sketches. (Reading these works, ponder what genre definition most fully characterizes the works of Bunin. Why?)

In this cycle, the writer for the first time looked at what was happening around him from the point of view of a "citizen of the world", wrote that "he is doomed to know the melancholy of all countries and all times." This position allowed him to evaluate the events of the beginning of the century in Russia differently.

Larisa Vasilievna TOROPCHINA - teacher of the Moscow gymnasium No. 1549; honored teacher of Russia.

"The smell of Antonov's apples disappears from the manor houses ..."

The cherry orchard is sold, it is no longer there, it's true ...
They forgot about me ...
A.P. Chekhov

Speaking about the cross-cutting topics in the literature, I would like to highlight the topic the extinction of landlord nests as one of the interesting and deep. Considering it, pupils in grades 10-11 turn to the works of the XIX-XX centuries.

For many centuries, the Russian nobility was the stronghold of state power, the ruling class in Russia, the “color of the nation,” which, of course, was reflected in literature. Of course, the characters of literary works were not only honest and noble Starodum and Pravdin, open, morally pure Chatsky, not satisfied with an idle existence in the light of Onegin and Pechorin, who went through many trials in search of the meaning of life Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov, but also rude and ignorant The Prostakovs and Skotinin, who pleases exclusively the “dear little man” Famusov, the projector Manilov and the reckless “historical man” Nozdryov (the latter, by the way, are much more numerous, as in life).

Reading the works of art of the 18th - first half of the 19th century, we see the heroes-masters - whether it is Mrs. Prostakova, accustomed to blind obedience to the will of those around her, or Dmitry Larin's wife, alone, “without asking her husband,” who managed the estate, or “the devil’s fist” Sobakevich, a strong owner, who knew not only the names of his serfs, but also the peculiarities of their characters, their skills and crafts and, with the legitimate pride of a landowner father, praised “dead souls”.

However, by the middle of the 19th century, the picture of Russian life had changed: reforms were ripe in society, and the writers were not slow to reflect these changes in their works. And now the reader is already not confident in themselves the owners of serf souls, who quite recently proudly pronounced: "The law is my desire, the fist is my police," and the confused owner of the Maryino estate Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov, an intelligent, kind-hearted man who turned out to be on the eve of the abolition of the serf rights in a difficult situation, when the peasants almost cease to obey their master, and he can only exclaim with bitterness: "My strength is no more!" True, at the end of the novel, we learn that Arkady Kirsanov, who left in the past the worship of the ideas of nihilism, “became a zealous owner” and the “farm” he created already brings quite a significant income, ”and Nikolai Petrovich“ got into world mediators and is working hard forces ”. As Turgenev says, “their affairs are beginning to get better” - but for how long? Another three or four decades will pass - and the Ranevskys and Gaevs ("The Cherry Orchard" by A.P. Chekhov), the Arsenievs and Khrushchevs ("The Life of Arsenyev" and "Sukhodol" by I.A.Bunin) will come to replace the Kirsanovs. And about these heroes, about their way of life, characters, habits, actions, you can talk in more detail.

First of all, it is necessary to select works of art for conversation: it can be the story "Late Flowers", plays "The Cherry Orchard", "Three Sisters", "Uncle Vanya" by A.P. Chekhov, the novel "The Life of Arseniev", the novellas "Sukhodol", "Antonovskie apples", the stories "Natalie", "Snowdrop", "Russia" by I.A. Bunin. Of these works, you can choose two or three for detailed analysis, while others can be addressed in fragments.

Students analyze "The Cherry Orchard" in the classroom; a lot of literary studies are devoted to the play. And yet everyone - with a careful reading of the text - can discover something new in this comedy. So, speaking about the extinction of the life of the nobility at the end of the 19th century, students notice that the heroes of The Cherry Orchard, Ranevskaya and Gaev, despite the sale of the estate, where the best years of their lives passed, despite the pain and sorrow for the past, are alive and even in the final relatively safe. Lyubov Andreevna, taking fifteen thousand that the Yaroslavl grandmother sent, goes abroad, although she realizes that this money - with her extravagance - will not last long. Gaev also eats up not the last piece of bread: a place in the bank is provided for him; it is another matter whether he, sir, an aristocrat, condescendingly says to a devoted lackey: “You go away, Firs. I'll undress myself, so be it, ”- with the position of“ banker ”. Yes, and always bustling about where to borrow money, impoverished Simeonov-Pischik at the end of the play will perk up: the Englishmen came to his estate and found some kind of white clay in the ground ”and he“ handed them a plot of clay for twenty four years". Now this fussy, simple-minded person even distributes part of his debts (“owes everyone”) and hopes for the best.

But for the devoted Firs, who, after the abolition of serfdom, “did not agree to freedom, remained with the masters” and who remembers the blessed times when cherries from the garden were “dried, soaked, pickled, jam cooked”, life is over: he is not today or tomorrow will die - from old age, from despair, from uselessness to anyone. His words sound bitter: “They forgot about me ...” The gentlemen, like old Firs, abandoned the old cherry orchard, left what, according to Ranevskaya, was her “life”, “youth”, “happiness”. The former serf, and now the new master of life, Yermolai Lopakhin, has already “grabbed hold of an ax in the cherry orchard”. Ranevskaya cries, but does nothing to save the garden, the estate, and Anya, a young representative of the once rich and noble noble family, leaves her native place even with joy: “What have you done to me, Petya, why I no longer like the cherry orchard, like before?" But “loving do not renounce”! It means that she did not love so much. It is bitter that it is so easy to leave what once was the meaning of life: after the sale of the cherry orchard, “everyone calmed down, even cheered up ... in fact, now everything is fine”. And only the author's remark in the finale of the play: sounding lonely and sad”(Italics mine. - L.T.) - says that sad becomes Chekhov himself, as if warning his heroes against forgetting their former life.

What happened to the characters in Chekhov's drama? Analyzing their life, characters, behavior, students come to the conclusion: this degeneration, not moral (“dumblings” - nobles, in essence, are not bad people: kind, unselfish, ready to forget the bad, to help each other in some way), not physical (the heroes - everyone except Firs - are alive and well), but rather - psychological, consisting in the absolute inability and unwillingness to overcome difficulties sent by fate. Lopakhin's sincere desire to help the "dullards" is broken against the sheer apathy of Ranevskaya and Gaev. “I have never met such frivolous people as you, gentlemen, such non-business, strange,” - he states with bitter bewilderment. And in response he hears the helpless: "Dachas and summer residents - it's so vulgar, I'm sorry." As for Ani, here it is probably more appropriate to talk about rebirth, about the voluntary abandonment of previous life values. Is it good or bad? Chekhov, a sensitive, intelligent person, does not give an answer. Time will show…

Zh al and other Chekhov's heroes, smart, decent, kind, but completely incapable of active creative activity, of survival in difficult conditions. After all, when Ivan Petrovich Voynitsky, a nobleman, the son of a privy councilor, who spent many years "like a mole ... within four walls" and meticulously collecting income from the estate of his late sister in order to send
money to her ex-husband, Professor Serebryakov, exclaims in despair: “I am talented, smart, brave ... If I lived normally, then Schopenhauer, Dostoevsky could come out of me ...” - then you don't really believe him. What prevented Voinitsky from living a full life? Probably the fear of plunging into the maelstrom of events, the inability to deal with difficulties, an inadequate assessment of reality. After all, he, in fact, made himself an idol from Professor Serebryakov (“all our thoughts and feelings belonged to you alone ... we pronounced your name with reverence”), and now he reproaches his son-in-law for ruining his life. Sonya, the daughter of a professor, who after the death of her mother formally owns the property, cannot defend his rights to it and only begs his father: “You must be merciful, dad! Uncle Vanya and I are so unhappy! ” So what prevents you from being happy? I think it's still the same mental apathy, softness, which prevented Ranevskaya and Gaev from saving the cherry orchard.

And the Prozorov sisters, the general's daughters, throughout the play (“Three Sisters”), like an incantation, repeating: “To Moscow! To Moscow! To Moscow! " Irina is going to leave, but in the finale of the play she is still here, in this “philistine, despicable life”. Will he leave? Chekhov puts an ellipsis ...

If Chekhov's heroes-nobles are passive, but at the same time they are kind, intelligent, benevolent, then the heroes of I.A. Bunin are subject degeneration both moral and physical. Students, of course, will remember the characters of the piercingly tragic story "Sukhodol": the crazy grandfather Pyotr Kirillych, who “was killed ... by his illegitimate son Gervaska, a friend of the father's” of the young Khrushchevs; the wretched, hysterical aunt Tonya, who had gone mad “from unhappy love”, “who lived in one of the old courtyard huts near the impoverished Sukhodolsk estate”; the son of Peter Kirillych - Peter Petrovich, in whom the courtyard Natalia fell selflessly in love and who exiled her for this “into exile, to the farm S O shki "; and Natalia herself, the foster sister of another son of Pyotr Kirillych - Arkady Petrovich, whose father was “driven into the soldiers” by the “lordly Lord Khrushchevs”, and “the mother was in such awe that her heart broke at the sight of the dead turkeys”. It is amazing that at the same time the former serf does not hold a grudge against the owners, moreover, she believes that “it was simpler, kinder than the Sukhodol masters in the whole universe”.

As an example of a consciousness mutilated by serfdom (after all, the unfortunate woman literally sucked in slavish obedience with her mother's milk!), The students will cite an episode when a half-mad young lady, to whom Natalya is assigned to “be a member,” “brutally and with pleasure tore her hair out” just for the fact that the maid “awkwardly pulled” the stocking from the lady’s leg. Natalia kept silent, did not resist the attack of unreasonable rage, and only, smiling through her tears, decided for herself: “It will be difficult for me”. How not to remember Firs ("The Cherry Orchard"), forgotten by everyone in the bustle of departure, as a child rejoicing that his "lady ... has arrived" from abroad, and on the verge of death (in the literal sense of the word!) Who is not grieving about himself, but that “Leonid Andreevich… didn't put on a fur coat, he went in an overcoat,” but he, the old lackey, “didn't even look”!

Working with the text of the story, students will note that the narrator, who undoubtedly has the features of Bunin himself, a descendant of a once noble and wealthy, and by the end of the 19th century, a completely impoverished noble family, recalls the former Sukhodol with sadness, because for him and for all the Khrushchevs, "Sukhodol was a poetic monument of the past." However, the young Khrushchev (and with him, of course, the author himself) is objective: he also talks about the cruelty with which the landowners unleashed their anger not only on the servants, but also on each other. So, according to the recollections of the same Natalya, in the estate "they sat down at the table ... with arapniks" and "not a day passed without a war! They were all hot - pure gunpowder. "

Yes, on the one hand, the narrator says, “there was a charm ... in the ruined Sukhodol estate”: it smelled of jasmine, the elderberry and euonymus were thriving in the garden, “the wind, running through the garden, brought ... a silky rustle of birches with satin-white trunks speckled with black ... the green-gold oriole cried out sharply and joyfully "(remember Nekrasov's" there is no disgrace in nature "), and on the other hand, a" nondescript "dilapidated house instead of a burnt down" grandfather's oak "house, several old birches and poplars left over from the garden," overgrown with wormwood and podbekolnik "barn and glacier. Everything is in ruin, desolation. A sad impression, and after all, once, according to legend, the young Khrushchev, his great-grandfather, notices, “a rich man, only in his old age moved from Kursk to Sukhodol”, did not like the Sukhodol wilderness. And now his descendants are doomed to vegetate here almost in poverty, although before “money, according to Natalia, did not know what to do”. “Fat, small, with a gray beard,” the widow of Pyotr Petrovich, Klavdia Markovna, spends time knitting “cotton socks”, and “Aunt Tonya” in a torn dressing gown, put directly on her naked body, with a high slab on her head, dirty rag ”, looks like Babu Yaga and is a truly pitiful sight.

Even the storyteller's father, a “carefree man” for whom “no attachments seemed to exist,” is grieving at the loss of the former wealth and power of his family, complaining until his death: “Alone, Khrushchev is now left in the world. And that one is not in Sukhodol! " Of course, “the power of ... ancient nepotism is immensely great,” it is hard to talk about the death of loved ones, but both the narrator and the author are sure: a series of ridiculous deaths in the estate is predetermined. And the end of the “grandfather” from Gervasius’s hand (the old man slipped from the blow, “waved his hands and just hit his temple on the sharp corner of the table”), and the mysterious, incomprehensible death of the intoxicated Pyotr Petrovich, returning from his mistress from Lunevo (or really “the horse killed ... attached ”, or who is from the courtyard, embittered at the master for the beatings). The family of the Khrushchevs, once remembered in the chronicles and given to the Fatherland "and stewards, and governors, and eminent men", ended. There was nothing left: "no portraits, no letters, not even simple accessories ... everyday life."

G orek and the finale of the old Sukhodol house: it is doomed to slow dying, and the remains of the once magnificent garden were cut down by the last owner of the estate, the son of Pyotr Petrovich, who left Sukhodol and entered the railway as a conductor. How similar to the death of the cherry orchard, with the only difference that in Sukhodol everything is simpler and more terrible. The “smell of Antonov's apples” has disappeared from the landowners' estates forever, life has gone. Bunin writes with bitterness: "And sometimes you think: yes it is enough, did they live in the world?"

In the story “ Antonov apples”I.A. Bunin recreates the world of a Russian estate.

C ama the date of writing the story is symbolic: 1900 - the turn of the century... It kind of connects the world of the past and the present.

Sadness about the receding noble nests- the leitmotif of not only this story, but also numerous poems by Bunin .

"Evening"

We always only remember about happiness.
Waityou are everywhere. Maybe it
This autumn garden behind the barn
And clean air pouring through the window.

In the bottomless sky with a light white edge
A cloud rises, shines. For a long time
I follow him ... We see little, we know
And happiness is given only to those who know.

The window is open. Squeaked and sat down
There is a bird on the windowsill. And from books
I look away for a moment, tired.

The day is getting dark, the sky is empty.
The rumble of a thresher is heard in the threshing floor ...
I see, I hear, I'm happy. Everything is in me. (14.08.09)

Questions:

1. Determine the theme of the poem.

2. How is the feeling of time and space conveyed in the poem?

3. What are the emotionally charged epithets?

4. Explain the meaning of the line: "I see, I hear, I'm happy ...".

Pay attention to:

- subject realities of the landscape painting painted by the poet;

- techniques for “sounding” the landscape;

- the colors used by the poet, the play of light and shadow;

- vocabulary features (word selection, trails);

- favorite images of his poetry (images of the sky, wind, steppe);

- prayers of loneliness of the lyric hero in the "Bunin" landscape.

The very first words of the work"... I am reminded of an early fine autumn"plunge us into the world of the hero's memories, and plot begins to develop as a chain of sensations associated with them.
lack of plot, i.e. event dynamics. WITHsouthwest of the storylyrical , that is, based not on events (epic), but on the experience of the hero.

The story contains poeticization of the past. However, the poetic vision of the world does not conflict with the reality of life in Bunin's story.

The author speaks with undisguised admiration of autumn and village life, making very accurate landscape sketches.

Bunin makes in the story not only landscape, but also portrait sketches. The reader meets many people whose portraits are painted very accurately, thanks to epithets and comparisons:

lively girls-one-yard,
lordly in their beautiful and rough, savage costumes
boys in white dress shirts
old men... tall, big and white as a harrier

• In the first chapter:« In the dark, deep in the garden - fabulous picture: exactly in the corner of hell, a crimson flame is burning in a hut. surrounded by darkness, and someone's black, like carved out of ebony silhouettes move around the fire, while giant shadows from them walk over the apple trees " .
• In the second chapter:“Almost all of the small foliage has flown from the coastal vines, and the twigs are visible in the turquoise sky. Water under the willows became transparent, icy and as if heavy... When you used to drive around the village on a sunny morning, you keep thinking about what is good mow, thresh, sleep on the threshing floor in omets, and on a holiday to rise with the sun ... " .
• In the third:« The wind tore and ruffled the trees all day long, rains poured them from morning to night ... the wind did not subside. He agitated the garden tore up the stream of human smoke continuously running from the chimney and again caught up with the ominous mists of ash clouds. They ran low and fast - and soon, like smoke, clouded the sun. His shine was extinguished the window was closing into the blue sky, and in the garden it became deserted and boring, and more and more often began to sow rain ... ".
• And in the fourth chapter : "The days are bluish, cloudy ... All day I wander across the empty plains ..." .

Output
The description of autumn is conveyed by the narrator through color and sound perception. Reading the story, you yourself feel the smell of apples, rye straw, fragrant smoke of a fire ...
The autumn landscape changes from chapter to chapter: colors fade, there is less sunlight... That is, the story describes the fall of not one year, but several, and this is constantly emphasized in the text: "I am reminded of a fruitful year"; "These were so recently, and yet it seems that almost a century has passed since then.".

• Compare the description of the golden autumn in Bunin's story with the painting by I. Levitan.

• Composition
  

The story is divided into four chapters:

I. In a thinned out garden. At the hut: at noon, on a holiday, at night, late at night. Shadows. Train. Shot. II. Village in a good year. At my aunt's estate. III. Hunt before. Bad weather. Before leaving. In the black forest. In the estate of a bachelor landowner. For old books. IV. Small-scale life. Threshing in riga. Hunt now. In the evening in a remote farm. Song.

Each chapter is a separate picture of the past, and together they form a whole world that the writer admired so much.

This change of pictures and episodes is accompanied by successive references to changes in nature - from Indian summer to the onset of winter.

• The way of life and n ostalgia for the past

Vasily Maksimov "Everything is in the past" (1889)

• Organization of space and time

The very date of writing the storysymbolic ... It is this date that helps to understand why the story begins. (“... I remember an early fine autumn”) and ends ("White snow covered the way-road ..."). Thus, a kind of "ring" is formed, which makes the narrative continuous. In fact, the story, like eternal life itself, is neither begun nor finished. It sounds in the space of memory, since the soul of a person, a dushan people, is embodied in it.

Opened my gates wide

White snow covered the way-road ...

• Smell, color, sound ...

"Pulls tightly with the fragrant smoke of cherry twigs",

“Rye aroma of new straw and chaff”,

“The smell of apples, and then others: old mahogany furniture, dried lime color, which has been on the windows since June ...”,

"These books, similar to church missal books, smell nice ... Some kind of pleasant sour mold, old perfume ...",

"Smell of smoke, shelter","The delicate aroma of fallen leaves and - the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness",

"Smells strong from ravines of mushroom dampness, rotted leaves and wet tree bark".

“Big, all golden ... garden”, “golden city of grain”, “golden frames”, “golden light of the sun”.

The semantics of this image are extremely extensive: this is the direct meaning ("Golden frames"), and fall foliage color designation, and transmission the emotional state of the hero, the solemnity of the minutes of the evening sunset, and a sign of abundance(grains, apples), once inherent in Russia, and a symbol of youth, the “golden” period of the hero's life. NS piet "gold" Bunin refers to the past tense, being a characteristic of noble, outgoing Russia. The reader associates this epithet with another concept: "golden age" Russian life, a century of relative prosperity, abundance, solidity and solidity of being. This is how I.A. Bunin's century is leaving.

But with a change in the perception of the world, the colors of the surrounding world also change, colors gradually disappear from it: “The days are bluish, cloudy ... All day I wander across the empty plains"," Low gloomy sky ", "Gray master". Halftones and shades ("Turquoise", "lilac" and others), present in the first parts of the work, are replaced contrast of black and white(“Black garden”, “fields are turning black with arable lands ... fields will turn white”, “snowy fields”).

Visual images in the work are as clear-cut and graphic as possible: “The black sky is traced with fiery stripes of shooting stars”, “the small foliage has almost all flown from the coastal vines, and twigs are visible in the turquoise sky”, “the liquid blue sky shone cold and brightly in the north above heavy leaden clouds”, “the black garden will see through on cold turquoise sky and humbly wait for winter ... And the fields are already sharply turning black with arable land and bright green with sprouted winter crops ”.

A similar “cinematic” an image based on contrasts creates for the reader the illusion of an action taking place before the eyes or captured on the artist's canvas:

“In the dark, in the depths of the garden, there is a fabulous picture: as if in a corner of hell, a crimson flame, surrounded by darkness, burns near the hut, and someone's black silhouettes, as if carved from ebony, move around the fire, while gigantic shadows from them are walking on apple trees. Either a black hand of several arshins will lie all over the tree, then two legs will be clearly drawn - two black pillars. And suddenly all this slides from the apple tree - and the shadow will fall along the entire alley, from the hut to the very gate ... "

“The cool silence of the morning is broken only by the well-fed clucking of thrushes... voices and the resounding thud of apples poured into measures and tubs ”,

“We listen for a long time and discern a tremor in the ground. The trembling turns into noise, it grows, and now, as if already behind the garden, the noisy beat of the wheels is quickly knocked out, thundering and pounding, the train rushes ... closer, closer, louder and angrier ... And suddenly it starts die down, go deaf, as if going into the ground ... ”,

“A horn blows in the yard and howl at different voices dogs",

“you can hear how the gardener walks carefully through the rooms, lighting the stoves, and how the firewood crackles and shoots ”, is heard "How carefully it creaks ... a long train along the high road", the voices of people sound. At the end of the story, one can hear more and more insistently "Pleasant threshing noise", and "Monotonous cry and whistle of the driver" merge with the rumble of a drum. And then the guitar tunes in and somebody starts a song that everyone picks up "With sad, hopeless prowess".

"With pleasure you feel the slippery skin of the saddle",
"Thick, rough paper"

“All through and through pink boiled ham with peas, stuffed chicken, turkey, pickles and red kvass - strong and sweet, sweet ...”,
"... a cold and wet apple ... for some reason it will seem unusually tasty, not at all like the others."

Thus, noting the hero's instant sensations from contact with the outside world, Bunin seeks to convey all that "Deep, wonderful, inexpressible that is in life": "How cold, dewy, and how good it is to live in the world!"

A hero in his youth is characterized by an acute experience of joy and fullness of being: "My chest breathed eagerly and deeply", "you keep thinking about how well it is to mow, thresh, sleep on the threshing floor in omelets ..."

However, in the artistic world of Bunin, the joy of life is always combined with the tragic consciousness of its finitude. And in “Antonovskiye Apples” the motive of extinction, the dying of everything that is so dear to the hero, is one of the main ones: "The smell of Antonov's apples disappears from the landowners' estates ... The old people in Vyselki were overwhelmed, Anna Gerasimovna died, Arseny Semyonich shot himself ..."

It is not just the old way of life that is dying - an entire epoch of Russian history, the noble era, poeticized by Bunin in this work, is dying. By the end of the story, it becomes more and more distinct and persistent motive of emptiness and cold.

This is shown with particular force in the image of a garden, once "Big, golden", filled with sounds, aromas, now - "Chilled over the night, naked", "blackened", as well as artistic details, the most expressive of which is the found "Accidentally forgotten cold and wet apple in wet foliage" which “For some reason it will seem unusually tasty, not at all like the others”.

This is how, at the level of personal feelings and experiences of the hero, Bunin depicts the process taking place in Russia degeneration of the nobility, bringing with it irreparable losses in spiritual and cultural terms:

"Then you will start reading books - grandfather's books in thick leather bindings, with golden stars on morocco spines ... Good ... notes in their margins, large and with round soft strokes made with a goose pen. You unfold the book and read:“ A thought worthy ancient and new philosophers, the color of reason and feelings of the heart ”... and involuntarily you will be carried away by the book itself ... And little by little a sweet and strange longing begins to creep into your heart ...

... But the magazines with the names of Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, Lyceum student Pushkin. And with sadness you will remember your grandmother, her polonaises on the clavichord, her languid reading of poetry from Eugene Onegin. And the old dreamy life will rise before you ... "

Treasured alleys of noble nests. These words from K. Balmont's poem "In Memory of Turgenev" perfectly convey the mood of the story "Antonov apples". Apparently, it is no coincidence that on the pages of one of his first stories, the very date of creation of which is extremely symbolic, I.A. Bunin recreates the world of a Russian estate. It is in it, according to the writer, that the past and the present, the history of the culture of the golden age and its fate at the turn of the century, family traditions of the noble family and individual human life are united. Sadness about the noble nests receding into the past is the leitmotif of not only this story, but also numerous poems, such as “A high white hall, where a black piano is ...”, “Into the living room through the garden and dusty curtains ...”, “On a quiet night, a late month came out ... ". However, the leitmotif of decline and destruction is overcome in them “not by the theme of liberation from the past, but on the contrary, by the poeticization of this past that lives in the memory of culture ... Bunin's poem about the estate is characterized by picturesqueness and at the same time inspired emotionality, sublimity and poetry of feeling. The estate becomes for the lyrical hero an integral part of his individual life and at the same time a symbol of the homeland, the roots of the clan ”(L. Ershov).
The play "The Cherry Orchard" is Chekhov's last dramatic work, a sad elegy about the passing times of "noble nests". In a letter to N.A. Chekhov confessed to Leikin: “I am terribly in love with everything that is called an estate in Russia. This word has not yet lost its poetic connotation. " Everything connected with the estate life was dear to the playwright; it symbolized the warmth of family relations, to which A.P. Chekhov. And in Melikhovo, and in Yalta, where he happened to live.
The image of the cherry orchard is the central image in Chekhov's comedy; it is represented by the leitmotif of various time plans, involuntarily connecting the past with the present. But the cherry orchard is not just a background of current events, it is a symbol of life in the estate. The fate of the estate organizes the play by plot. Already in the first act, immediately after the meeting of Ranevskaya, a discussion of the salvation of the mortgaged estate from the auction begins. In the third act the estate is sold, in the fourth - the farewell to the estate and the past life.
The cherry orchard not only represents the estate: it is a beautiful creation of nature, which must be preserved by man. The author pays great attention to this image, which is confirmed by the detailed remarks and replicas of the heroes. The whole atmosphere that is associated in the play with the image of the cherry orchard serves to assert its enduring aesthetic value, the loss of which cannot but impoverish the spiritual life of people. That is why the image of the garden is included in the title.

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