2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25
The theme of love in Bunin's works for the first time in the history of Russian literature reveals not only the platonic, but also the physical side of love relationships. The writer tries in his work to correlate what is going on in a person’s heart with the requirements that a society places on him, whose life is built on sales and purchase relationships and in which dark wild instincts often come to the fore. Nevertheless, the author deals with the intimate side of relations between people with extraordinary tact.
The theme of love in Bunin's works is the first bold statement that bodily passion does not always come after an impulse of the soul, which sometimes happens in life and vice versa. For example, this happens with the heroes of his story "Sunstroke". Ivan Alekseevich in his creations describes love in all its versatility - either it appears in the guise of great joy, or it turns into a cruel disappointment, it is both spring and autumn in a person's life.
Early creativity
The theme of love in Bunin's works of the early period of his work cannot remain indifferent. The stories "Dawn all night", "InAugust", "Autumn" and several others - very brief, simple, but significant. The feelings experienced by the characters are most often ambivalent. Bunin's characters rarely come to harmonious relations - their impulses disappear much more often, without having time to really arise. However, the thirst for love continues to burn in their hearts. A sad farewell to a beloved ends with daydreams (“In August”), a date leaves a strong imprint in the memory, because it indicates a touch of a real feeling (“Autumn”). And, for example, the heroine of the story “Dawn All Night” is imbued with a premonition of strong love that a young girl is ready to pour out on her future chosen one. However, disappointment comes to young heroes as quickly as the passion itself. Bunin reveals this difference between reality and dreams with extraordinary talent. After the full singing of the nightingales and the spring-like gentle trembling of the night in the garden, the sounds of shots reach Tata through a dream. Her fiancé shoots jackdaws, and the girl suddenly realizes that she is not able to love this ordinary, mundane person.
"Mitina's Love" (1924) - one of Bunin's best works about love
In the 1920s, during the period of the writer's emigration, the theme of love in Bunin's works is enriched with new shades. In his story "Mitya's Love" (1924), the author consistently talks about how the spiritual formation of the protagonist is gradually carried out, how life leads him from love to collapse. The lofty feelings in this story closely echo reality. Mitya's love for Katya and his bright hopes seem to be shattered.a vague feeling of anxiety. A girl dreaming of a career as a great actress finds herself at the epicenter of a fake metropolitan life and cheats on her lover. Even a relationship with another woman - the down-to-earth, albeit prominent Alyonka - failed to alleviate Mitya's spiritual torment. As a result, the hero, unprotected, unprepared to face the cruel reality, decides to lay hands on himself.
The theme of love triangles in the work of I. Bunin
Sometimes the theme of love in Bunin's works is revealed from the other side, they show the eternal problem of love triangles (husband-wife-lover). Vivid examples of such stories can serve as "Caucasus", "Ida", "The most beautiful of the sun." Marriage in these creations becomes an insurmountable barrier to the desired happiness. It is in these stories that the image of love as a "sunstroke" first appears, which finds its further development in the cycle "Dark Alleys".
"Dark Alleys" - the writer's most famous cycle of stories
The theme of love in Bunin's stories of this cycle ("Dark Alleys", "Tanya", "Late Hour", "Rusya", "Business Cards", etc.) is an instant flash, bodily pleasures, to which the heroes pushes genuine hot passion. But it doesn't end there. "Sunstroke" gradually leads the characters to inexpressible selfless tenderness, and then to true love. The author refers to the images of lonely people and ordinary life. And that is why the memories of the past, covered with romantic impressions, seem so wonderful for his heroes. However, even here, after people get closer both spiritually and physically, it is as if nature itself leads them to an inevitable separation, and sometimes to death.
"San Francisco Gentleman" is a bold interpretation of love relationships
The mastery of describing the details of everyday life, as well as touching the living description of love, inherent in all the stories of the cycle, reaches its climax in 1944, when Bunin finishes work on the story "Clean Monday", which tells about the fate of a woman who has passed away from life and love in the monastery.
And the theme of love in Bunin's understanding was revealed especially brightly with the help of the story "The Gentleman from San Francisco". This is a story about the lowest and ugliest manifestations of a distorted great feeling. The falseness, deceit, automatism and lifelessness that caused the inability to love are especially strongly emphasized in the images of the "Mr. from San Francisco".
Bunin himself considered love to be the feeling that frees a person from the captivity of everything superficial, makes him unusually natural and brings him closer to nature.
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