Of course, first of all, this is a story about love. That young, passionate love, when every moment of meeting with your beloved is sweet and painful (and the story is told from the perspective of the hero, a young rich man, and this detail will be very important in understanding the meaning of the work), when it is impossible, without incredible tenderness, to look at the star marks , left by her heels on the snow, when incomplete intimacy seems ready to drive you crazy and you are all permeated with that “ecstatic despair” that breaks your heart!
Bunin attached particular importance to the writer’s ability to describe the brightest, most frank moments of love. It was to the sharp-sweet moments of rapprochement between a man and a woman that he dedicated the cycle “Dark Alleys,” which was written over 10 years - from the mid-30s to the mid-40s. - and consisting (almost unprecedented in the history of literature!) of 38 short stories, telling only about love, only about meetings, only about partings. And in this sense, “Sunstroke” can be considered as a prelude to this cycle. And as a kind of demand-credo of the writer, one can regard his words in one of the stories: “The writer has the same full right to be bold in his verbal depictions of love and its faces, which at all times was granted in this case to painters and sculptors: only vile souls they see the vile even in the beautiful or the terrible.” Of particular note last words: beautiful and terrible. For Bunin, they are always nearby, inseparable, determining the very essence of life. Therefore, in “Clean Monday” the heroine will also be brought into something like an ecstatic stupor by “beauty and horror” that accompany death, departure to another world, the entire funeral ritual!
However, the above statement by Bunin did not prevent many critics and literary scholars from seeing the influence of Western literature in the frank stories of “Dark Alleys”: after all, this is indeed the case in Russian classical literature scenes of love had never been depicted before (it is known that L.N. Tolstoy preferred to fill an entire line with dots rather than reveal the secret of the closeness of Anna Karenina and Vronsky). For Bunin, there is nothing unworthy or unclean in love (we repeat, in love!). “Love,” as one of his contemporaries wrote, “always seemed to him to be perhaps the most significant and mysterious thing in the world... All love is great happiness...” And the story “ Clean Monday” tells about such a mysterious, great, happily-unhappy love.
And yet this story, although it has all the signs of a love story and its culmination is the night spent by the lovers together (it is important that this is the night of the eve of Lent; Clean Monday comes after Forgiveness Sunday and is the first day of Lent), it is not about this or not only about this.... Already at the very beginning of the story it is directly stated that a “strange love” will unfold before us between a dazzling handsome man, in whose appearance there is even something “Sicilian” (however, he comes only from Penza), and “The Shamakhan queen” (as those around her call the heroine), whose portrait is given in great detail: there was something “Indian, Persian” in the girl’s beauty (although her origins are very prosaic: her father is a merchant of a noble family from Tver, her grandmother is from Astrakhan ). She has “a dark-amber face, magnificent and somewhat ominous hair in its thick blackness, softly shining like black sable fur, eyebrows, black like velvet coal (Bunin’s amazing oxymoron! - M.M.), eyes”, captivating “ velvety crimson lips, shaded with dark down. Her favorite evening outfit is also described in detail: a garnet velvet dress and matching shoes with gold buckles. (Somewhat unexpected in the rich palette of Bunin’s epithets is the persistent repetition of the epithet velvet, which, obviously, should highlight the amazing softness of the heroine. But let’s not forget about “coal,” which is undoubtedly associated with hardness.) Thus, Bunin’s heroes are deliberately likened to each other to a friend - in the sense of beauty, youth, charm, obvious originality of appearance.
However, further Bunin carefully, but very consistently “prescribes” the differences between the “Sicilian” and the “Shamakhan Queen”, which will turn out to be fundamental and ultimately lead to a dramatic denouement - eternal separation. And here lies the difference between the concept of love revealed in “Sunstroke” and the love of the heroes of “Clean Monday”. There, the lack of a future for the lieutenant and the woman in the canvas dress was explained by the incompatibility of the severity of the experiences caused by the “sun” love blow with the everyday life that millions of people live and which will soon begin for the heroes themselves.
“Sunstroke,” according to Bunin, is one of the manifestations of cosmic living life, which they were able to join for a moment. But it can be revealed to a person both in moments of turning to the highest works of art, and through memory, which blurs temporary barriers, and during contact and dissolution in nature, when you feel like a small part of it.
“Clean Monday” is different. Nothing bothers the heroes; they live such a prosperous life that the concept of everyday life is not very applicable to their pastime. It is no coincidence that Bunin literally piece by piece recreates a rich picture of intellectual and cultural life Russia 1911-1912 (For this story, the attachment of events to a specific time is generally very important. Bunin usually prefers greater temporal abstraction.) Here, as they say, on one spot, all the events that during the first one and a half decades of the 20th century are concentrated. excited the minds of the Russian intelligentsia. These are new productions and skits Art Theater; lectures by Andrei Bely, read by him in such an original manner that everyone talked about it; the most popular stylization historical events XVI century - witch trials and V. Bryusov’s novel “Fire Angel”; fashion writers Viennese school“modern” A. Schnitzler and G. Hofmannsthal; works of the Polish decadents K. Tetmaier and S. Przybyszewski; the stories of L. Andreev, who attracted everyone's attention, the concerts of F. Chaliapin... Literary scholars even find historical inconsistencies in the picture of life in pre-war Moscow depicted by Bunin, pointing out that many of the events he cited could not have occurred at the same time. However, it seems that Bunin deliberately compresses time, achieving its utmost density, materiality, and tangibility.
So, every day and evening of the heroes is filled with something interesting - visiting theaters, restaurants. They should not burden themselves with work or study (it is true that the heroine is studying at some courses, but she cannot really answer why she attends them), they are free and young. I would really like to add: and happy. But this word can only be applied to the hero, although he is aware that the happiness of being near her is mixed with torment. And yet for him this is undoubted happiness. “Great happiness,” as Bunin says (and his voice in this story largely merges with the voice of the narrator).
What about the heroine? Is she happy? Isn't it the greatest happiness for a woman to discover that she is loved? more life(“It’s true, how you love me!” she said with quiet bewilderment, shaking her head.”) that she is desired, that they want to see her as a wife? But this is clearly not enough for the heroine! It is she who utters a significant phrase about happiness, which encapsulates an entire philosophy of life: “Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing.” At the same time, it turns out that it was not invented by her, but said by Platon Karataev, whose wisdom her interlocutor also immediately declared “eastern”.
It’s probably worth immediately paying attention to the fact that Bunin, clearly emphasizing the gesture, emphasized how the young man, in response to Karataev’s words cited by the heroine, “waved his hand.” Thus, the discrepancy between the views and perceptions of certain phenomena by the hero and heroine becomes obvious. He exists in the real dimension, in the present time, therefore he calmly perceives everything that happens in him as an integral part of him. Boxes of chocolates are as much a sign of attention for him as a book; In general, he doesn’t care where to go - whether to have dinner at the Metropol, or wander around Ordynka in search of Griboyedov’s house, sit at dinner in a tavern, or listen to the gypsies. He does not feel the surrounding vulgarity, which is wonderfully captured by Bunin both in the performance of the “Polish woman Tranblanc”, when his partner shouts out a meaningless set of phrases as a “goat”, and in the cheeky performance of songs by the old gypsy “with the gray muzzle of a drowned man” and the gypsy woman “with a low forehead under a tar bang.” " He is not very offended by drunk people around, annoyingly helpful sex workers, or the emphasized theatricality in the behavior of people of art. And how the height of discrepancy with the heroine is his consent to her invitation, pronounced in English: “All right!”
All this does not mean, of course, that high feelings are inaccessible to him, that he is unable to appreciate the unusualness and uniqueness of the girl he meets. On the contrary, enthusiastic love clearly saves him from the surrounding vulgarity, and the way with which rapture and pleasure he listens to her words, how he can highlight a special intonation in them, how attentive he is even to little things (he sees a “quiet light” in her eyes, his her “kind talkativeness” pleases her, speaks in his favor. It is not without reason that when he mentions that his beloved may go to a monastery, he, “lost with excitement,” lights a cigarette and almost admits out loud that out of despair he is capable of stabbing someone to death or also becoming a monk. And when something really happens that only arose in the heroine’s imagination, and she decides first to obey, and then, apparently, to take monastic vows (in the epilogue the hero meets her in the Martha and Mary Convent of Mercy) - he first sinks and drinks himself to such an extent that it seems that it is impossible to be reborn, and then, albeit little by little, he “recovers”, returns to life, but somehow “indifferently, hopelessly,” although he sobs, walking through the places where the two of them once visited: He has a sensitive heart: after all, immediately after a night of intimacy, when nothing portends trouble, he feels himself and what happened so strongly and bitterly that the old woman near the Iverskaya Chapel turns to him with the words: “Oh, don’t kill yourself, don’t kill yourself like that!”
Consequently, the height of his feelings and ability to experience are beyond doubt. The heroine herself admits this when, in her farewell letter, she asks God to give him the strength “not to answer” her, realizing that their correspondence will only “uselessly prolong and increase our torment.” And yet the intensity of his mental life cannot be compared with her spiritual experiences and insights. Moreover, Bunin deliberately creates the impression that he, as it were, “echoes” the heroine, agreeing to go where she calls, admiring what delights her, entertaining her with what, as it seems to him, can occupy her in the first place. This does not mean that he does not have his own “I”, his own individuality. He is no stranger to reflections and observations, he is attentive to the changes in his beloved’s mood, and is the first to notice that their relationship is developing in such a “strange” city as Moscow.
But nevertheless, it is she who leads the “party”, it is her voice that is most clearly distinguishable. Actually, the heroine’s fortitude and the choice she ultimately makes become semantic core Bunin's work. It is her deep concentration on something that is not immediately definable, for the time being hidden from prying eyes, that constitutes the alarming nerve of the narrative, the ending of which defies any logical or everyday explanation. And if the hero is talkative and restless, if he can put off a painful decision until later, assuming that everything will be resolved somehow by itself or, in extreme cases, not think about the future at all, then the heroine is always thinking about something of her own, which is only indirect breaks through in her remarks and conversations. She loves to quote Russian chronicles, especially the ancient Russian “The Tale of the Faithful Spouses Peter and Fevronia of Murom” (Bunin incorrectly indicated the name of the prince - Pavel).
She can listen to church hymns. The very vowel sounds of the words of the Old Russian language will not leave her indifferent, and she will repeat them, as if spellbound...
And her conversations are no less “strange” than her actions. She either invites her lover to the Novodevichy Convent, then leads him around Ordynka in search of the house where Griboedov lived (it would be more accurate to say, he visited, because in one of the Horde alleys there was the house of uncle A.S. Griboyedov), then she talks about her visiting an old schismatic cemetery, he confesses his love for Chudov, Zachatievsky and other monasteries, where he constantly goes. And, of course, the most “strange” thing, incomprehensible from the point of view of everyday logic, is her decision to retire to a monastery, to sever all ties with the world.
But Bunin, as a writer, does everything to “explain” this strangeness. The reason for this “strangeness” is the contradictions of the Russian national character, which themselves are a consequence of Rus'’s location at the crossroads of East and West. This is where the story constantly emphasizes the clash between Eastern and Western principles. The author's eye, the narrator's eye, stops at the cathedrals built in Moscow by Italian architects, ancient Russian architecture, who has adopted eastern traditions (something Kyrgyz in the towers of the Kremlin wall), the Persian beauty of the heroine - the daughter of a Tver merchant, reveals a combination of incongruous things in her favorite clothes (either an Astrakhan grandmother's arkhaluk, or a European fashionable dress), in the atmosphere and affections - “Moonlight Sonata” ” and the Turkish sofa on which she reclines. When the Moscow Kremlin clock strikes, she hears the sounds of a Florentine clock. The heroine’s gaze also captures the “extravagant” habits of the Moscow merchants - pancakes with caviar, washed down with frozen champagne. But she herself is not alien to the same tastes: she orders foreign sherry with Russian navazhka.
No less important is the internal contradiction of the heroine, who is depicted by the writer at a spiritual crossroads. She often says one thing and does something else: she is surprised by the gourmandness of other people, but she herself has lunch and dinner with an excellent appetite, then she attends all the newfangled meetings, then she does not leave the house at all, she is irritated by the surrounding vulgarity, but goes to dance the Tranblanc polka, causing everyone’s admiration and applause, delays moments of intimacy with her beloved, and then suddenly agrees to it...
But in the end, she still makes a decision, the only correct decision, which, according to Bunin, was predetermined by Russia - by its entire destiny, its entire history. The path of repentance, humility and forgiveness.
Refusal of temptations (it is not for nothing that, agreeing to intimacy with her lover, the heroine says, characterizing his beauty: “The serpent in human nature, extremely beautiful...” - i.e., she refers to him the words from the legend of Peter and Fevronia - about the intrigues the devil, who sent the pious princess “a flying serpent for fornication”), which appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. before Russia in the form of uprisings and riots and, according to the writer’s conviction, served as the beginning of its “cursed days” - this is what was supposed to provide his homeland with a worthy future. Forgiveness addressed to all those who are guilty is what, according to Bunin, would help Russia withstand the whirlwind of historical cataclysms of the 20th century. The path of Russia is the path of fasting and renunciation. But that didn't happen. Russia has chosen a different path. And the writer never tired of mourning her fate while in exile.
Probably, strict zealots of Christian piety will not consider the writer’s arguments in favor of the heroine’s decision convincing. In their opinion, she clearly accepted him not under the influence of the grace that descended on her, but for other reasons. They will rightly feel that there is too little revelation and too much poetry in her adherence to church rituals. She herself says that her love for church rituals can hardly be considered real religiosity. Indeed, she perceives the funeral too aesthetically (forged gold brocade, a white bedspread embroidered with black letters (air) on the face of the deceased, snow blinding in the cold and the shine of fir branches inside the grave), she listens too admiringly to the music of the words of Russian legends (“I’m re-reading what what I especially liked, until I learn it by heart”), becomes too immersed in the atmosphere that accompanies the service in the church (“the stichera are wonderfully sung there,” “there are puddles everywhere, the air is already soft, my soul is somehow tender, sad...”, “ all the doors in the cathedral are open, ordinary people come and go all day long.”...). And in this, the heroine, in her own way, turns out to be close to Bunin himself, who also in the Novodevichy Convent will see “jackdaws that look like nuns,” “gray coral branches in the frost,” marvelously emerging “on the golden enamel of the sunset,” blood-red walls and mysteriously glowing lamps. By the way, the closeness of the heroines to the writer, their special spirituality, significance and unusualness were immediately noted by critics. Gradually, the concept of “Bunin’s women” is taking root in literary criticism, as bright and definite as “Turgenev’s girls”.
Thus, in choosing the ending of the story, it is not so much the religious attitude and position of Bunin the Christian that is important, but rather the position of Bunin the writer, for whose worldview a sense of history is extremely important. “The feeling of the homeland, its antiquity,” as the heroine of “Clean Monday” says about it. This is also why she abandoned a future that could have turned out happily, because she decided to leave everything worldly, because the disappearance of beauty, which she feels everywhere, is unbearable for her. “Desperate cancans” and frisky Poles Tranblanc, performed by the most talented people of Russia - Moskvin, Stanislavsky and Sulerzhitsky, replaced singing on “hooks” (what is that!), and in the place of the heroes Peresvet and Oslyabi (remember who they are) - “pale from drunk, with large sweat on his forehead”, the beauty and pride of the Russian stage - Kachalov and the “daring” Chaliapin, almost falling off his feet.
Therefore, the phrase: “It’s only in some northern monasteries that this Rus' now remains” - appears quite naturally in the mouth of the heroine. She means the irrevocably disappearing feelings of dignity, beauty, goodness, for which she yearns immensely and which she hopes to find in monastic life.
As we have seen, an unambiguous interpretation of “Clean Monday” is hardly possible. This work is about love, and about beauty, and about the duty of man, and about Russia, and about its fate. This is probably why it was Bunin’s favorite story, the best, according to him, of what he wrote, for the creation of which he thanked God...
Bunin Ivan Alekseevich
Clean Monday
Ivan Bunin
Clean Monday
The Moscow gray winter day was darkening, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the shop windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening Moscow life, freed from daytime affairs, flared up: the cabbies' sleighs rushed thicker and more vigorously, the crowded, diving trams rattled more heavily - in the darkness it was already visible how with a hiss, green stars fell from the wires - dimly blackened passers-by hurried more animatedly along the snowy sidewalks... Every evening my coachman rushed me at this hour on a stretched trotter - from the Red Gate to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior: she lived opposite him; every evening I took her to dinner at Prague, at the Hermitage, at the Metropol, after dinner at the theaters, to concerts, and then to the Yar, to Strelna... How should all this end, I I didn’t know and tried not to think, not to think about it: it was useless - just like talking to her about it: she once and for all averted conversations about our future; she was mysterious, incomprehensible to me, and our relationship with her was strange - we were still not very close; and all this endlessly kept me in unresolved tension, in painful anticipation - and at the same time I was incredibly happy with every hour spent near her.
For some reason, she took courses, attended them quite rarely, but attended them. I once asked: “Why?” She shrugged her shoulder: “Why is everything done in the world? Do we understand anything in our actions? Besides, I’m interested in history...” She lived alone - her widowed father, an enlightened man of a noble merchant family, lived in retirement in Tver, like all such merchants, he collected something. In the house opposite the Church of the Savior, for the sake of the view of Moscow, she rented a corner apartment on the fifth floor, only two rooms, but spacious and well furnished. In the first, a wide Turkish sofa occupied a lot of space, there was an expensive piano, on which she kept practicing a slow, somnambulistically beautiful beginning." Moonlight Sonata", only one beginning, - on the piano and on the mirror-glass, elegant flowers bloomed in cut vases, - on my order, fresh ones were delivered to her every Saturday, - and when I came to her on Saturday evening, she, lying on the sofa, above which for some reason - then there was a portrait of a barefoot Tolstoy, she slowly extended her hand to me for a kiss and said absently: “Thank you for the flowers...” I brought her boxes of chocolate, new books - Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Tetmeyer, Przybyshevsky - and received the same “thank you” “and an outstretched warm hand, sometimes an order to sit near the sofa without taking off my coat. “It’s not clear why,” she said thoughtfully, stroking my beaver collar, “but it seems nothing can be better than the smell of winter air with which you enter from the yard to the room...” It looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no dinners, no theaters, no dinners out of town, although she still had her favorite and least favorite flowers, all the books, what I brought it to her, she always read it, she ate a whole box of chocolate in a day, she ate as much as me at lunches and dinners, she loved pies with burbot fish soup, pink hazel grouse in deep-fried sour cream, sometimes she said: “I don’t understand how people don’t get tired of this all the time.” life, have lunch and dinner every day,” but she herself had lunch and dinner with a Moscow understanding of the matter. Her obvious weakness was only good clothes, velvet, silk, expensive fur...
We were both rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that people stared at us in restaurants and at concerts. I, being from the Penza province, was at that time handsome for some reason, with a southern, hot beauty, I was even “indecently handsome,” as one once told me famous actor, a monstrously fat man, a great glutton and a clever girl. “The devil knows who you are, some Sicilian,” he said sleepily; and my character was southern, lively, always ready for a happy smile, for a good joke. And she had some kind of Indian, Persian beauty: a dark-amber face, magnificent and somewhat ominous hair in its thick blackness, softly shining like black sable fur, eyebrows, eyes black as velvet coal; the mouth, captivating with velvety crimson lips, was shaded with dark fluff; when going out, she most often put on a garnet velvet dress and the same shoes with gold buckles (and she went to courses as a modest student, ate breakfast for thirty kopecks in a vegetarian canteen on Arbat); and as much as I was inclined to talkativeness, to simple-hearted gaiety, she was most often silent: she was always thinking about something, she seemed to be delving into something mentally; lying on the sofa with a book in her hands, she often lowered it and looked inquiringly in front of her: I saw this, sometimes visiting her during the day, because every month she did not leave the house for three or four days at all, she lay and read, forcing me to sit in a chair near the sofa and read silently.
“You are terribly talkative and restless,” she said, “let me finish reading the chapter...
If I hadn’t been talkative and restless, I might never have recognized you,” I answered, reminding her of our acquaintance: one day in December, when I got to the Art Circle for a lecture by Andrei Bely, who sang it while running and dancing on the stage, I spun and laughed so much that she, who happened to be in the chair next to me and at first looked at me with some bewilderment, also finally laughed, and I immediately turned to her cheerfully.
“That’s all right,” she said, “but still be silent for a while, read something, smoke...
I can't remain silent! You can’t imagine the full power of my love for you! You don't love me!
I present. And as for my love, you know well that besides my father and you, I have no one in the world. In any case, you are my first and last. Is this not enough for you? But enough about that. We can’t read in front of you, let’s drink tea...
And I got up, boiled water in an electric kettle on the table behind the sofa, took cups and saucers from the walnut pile that stood in the corner behind the table, saying whatever came to mind:
Have you finished reading "Fire Angel"?
I finished watching it. It's so pompous that it's embarrassing to read.
Why did you suddenly leave Chaliapin’s concert yesterday?
He was too daring. And then I don’t like yellow-haired Rus' at all.
You don't like everything!
Yes, a lot...
"Strange love!" - I thought and, while the water was boiling, I stood and looked out the windows. The room smelled of flowers, and for me she connected with their smell; outside one window lay low in the distance a huge picture of Moscow across the river, snow-blue; in the other, to the left, part of the Kremlin was visible; on the contrary, somehow too close, the too-new bulk of Christ the Savior loomed white, in the golden dome of which the jackdaws, forever hovering around it, were reflected with bluish spots... “Strange city!” I said myself, thinking about Okhotny Ryad, about Iverskaya, about St. Basil the Blessed - and Spas-on-Bor, Italian cathedrals - and something Kyrgyz in the tips of the towers on the Kremlin walls..."
Arriving at dusk, I sometimes found her on the sofa in only one silk archaluk trimmed with sable - the inheritance of my Astrakhan grandmother, she said - I sat next to her in the semi-darkness, without lighting the fire, and kissed her hands and feet, amazing in their smoothness body... And she did not resist anything, but all in silence. I constantly searched for her hot lips - she gave them, breathing fitfully, but all in silence. When she felt that I was no longer able to control myself, she pushed me away, sat down and, without raising her voice, asked to turn on the light, then went into the bedroom. I lit it, sat on a swivel stool near the piano and gradually came to my senses, cooled down from the hot intoxication. A quarter of an hour later she came out of the bedroom, dressed, ready to leave, calm and simple, as if nothing had happened before:
Where to today? To the Metropol, maybe?
And again we spent the whole evening talking about something unrelated. Soon after we became close, she said to me when I started talking about marriage:
No, I'm not fit to be a wife. I'm not good, I'm not good...
This didn't discourage me. "We'll see from there!" - I said to myself in the hope that her decision would change over time and no longer talked about marriage. Our incomplete intimacy sometimes seemed unbearable to me, but even here, what was left for me except hope for time? One day, sitting next to her in this evening darkness and silence, I grabbed my head:
No, this is beyond my strength! And why, why do you have to torture me and yourself so cruelly!
She said nothing.
Yes, after all, this is not love, not love...
She evenly responded from the darkness:
May be. Who knows what love is?
I, I know! - I exclaimed. - And I will wait for you to find out what love and happiness are!
Happiness, happiness... “Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing.”
What is this?
This is what Platon Karataev told Pierre.
I waved my hand:
Oh, God bless her, with this eastern wisdom!
And again all evening he talked only about strangers - about new production Art Theatre, about Andreev's new story... Once again, it was enough for me that I first sat closely with her in a flying and rolling sleigh, holding her in the smooth fur of a fur coat, then I entered with her into the crowded hall of the restaurant accompanied by a march from “Hades,” I eat and drink next to her, I hear her slow voice, I look at the lips that I kissed an hour ago - yes, I kissed, I told myself, looking at them with rapturous gratitude, at the dark fluff above them, at the garnet the velvet of the dress, on the slope of the shoulders and the oval of the breasts, smelling some slightly spicy smell of her hair, thinking: “Moscow, Astrakhan, Persia, India!” In restaurants outside the city, towards the end of dinner, when the tobacco smoke all around became noisier, she, also smoking and tipsy, would sometimes take me into a separate office, ask me to call the gypsies, and they would come in deliberately noisily. cheekily: in front of the choir, with a guitar on a blue ribbon over his shoulder, an old gypsy in a Cossack with braid, with the gray muzzle of a drowned man, with a head bare like a cast-iron ball, behind him a gypsy singer with a low forehead under tar bangs... She listened songs with a languid, strange smile... At three, at four o'clock in the morning I took her home, at the entrance, closing my eyes in happiness, kissed the wet fur of her collar and in some kind of ecstatic despair flew to the Red Gate. And tomorrow and the day after tomorrow everything will be the same, I thought, still the same torment and all the same happiness... Well, still happiness, great happiness!
The Moscow gray winter day was darkening, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the shop windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening Moscow life, freed from daytime affairs, flared up: the cabbies' sleighs rushed thicker and more vigorously, the crowded, diving trams rattled more heavily - in the darkness it was already visible how with a hiss, green stars fell from the wires - dimly blackened passers-by hurried more animatedly along the snowy sidewalks... Every evening my coachman rushed me at this hour on a stretching trotter - from the Red Gate to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior: she lived opposite him; every evening I took her to dinner at Prague, at the Hermitage, at Metropol, after dinner to theaters, to concerts, and then to Yar, to Strelna... How all this should end, I didn’t know and tried not to think, not to think about it: it was useless - just like talking to her about it: she once and for all averted conversations about our future; she was mysterious, incomprehensible to me, and our relationship with her was strange - we were still not very close; and all this endlessly kept me in unresolved tension, in painful anticipation - and at the same time I was incredibly happy with every hour spent near her.
For some reason, she took courses, attended them quite rarely, but attended them. I once asked: “Why?” She shrugged her shoulder: “Why is everything done in the world? Do we understand anything in our actions? In addition, I am interested in history...” She lived alone - her widowed father, an enlightened man of a noble merchant family, lived in retirement in Tver, collecting something, like all such merchants. In the house opposite the Church of the Savior, for the sake of the view of Moscow, she rented a corner apartment on the fifth floor, only two rooms, but spacious and well furnished. In the first, a wide Turkish sofa occupied a lot of space, there was an expensive piano, on which she kept practicing the slow, somnambulistically beautiful beginning of the “Moonlight Sonata” - only one beginning - on the piano and on the mirror-glass, elegant flowers bloomed in cut vases - on my order fresh ones were delivered to her every Saturday - and when I came to see her on Saturday evening, she, lying on the sofa, above which for some reason hung a portrait of a barefoot Tolstoy, slowly extended her hand to me for a kiss and absentmindedly said: “Thank you for the flowers...” I brought her boxes of chocolate, new books - Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Tetmeier, Przybyszewski - and received the same “thank you” and an outstretched warm hand, sometimes an order to sit near the sofa without taking off my coat. “It’s not clear why,” she said thoughtfully, stroking my beaver collar, “but, it seems, nothing can be better than the smell of winter air with which you enter the room from the yard...” It looked like she didn’t need anything: neither flowers, no books, no dinners, no theaters, no dinners out of town, although she still had flowers that she liked and didn’t like, she always read all the books that I brought her, she ate a whole box of chocolate a day, at lunches and she ate dinners no less than me, loved pies with burbot fish soup, pink hazel grouse in deep-fried sour cream, sometimes she said: “I don’t understand how people won’t get tired of this all their lives, having lunch and dinner every day,” but she herself had lunch and dinner with the Moscow understanding of the matter. Her obvious weakness was only good clothes, velvet, silk, expensive fur...
We were both rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that people stared at us in restaurants and at concerts. I, being from the Penza province, was at that time handsome for some reason with a southern, hot beauty, I was even “indecently handsome,” as one famous actor, a monstrously fat man, a great glutton and a clever man once told me. “The devil knows who you are, some Sicilian,” he said sleepily; and my character was southern, lively, always ready for a happy smile, for a good joke. And she had some kind of Indian, Persian beauty: a dark-amber face, magnificent and somewhat ominous hair in its thick blackness, softly shining like black sable fur, eyebrows, eyes as black as velvet coal; the mouth, captivating with velvety crimson lips, was shaded with dark fluff; when going out, she most often put on a garnet velvet dress and the same shoes with gold clasps (and she went to courses as a modest student, ate breakfast for thirty kopecks in a vegetarian canteen on Arbat); and as much as I was inclined to talkativeness, to simple-hearted gaiety, she was most often silent: she was always thinking about something, she seemed to be delving into something mentally; lying on the sofa with a book in her hands, she often lowered it and looked inquiringly in front of her: I saw this, sometimes visiting her during the day, because every month she did not leave the house for three or four days at all, she lay and read, forcing me to sit in a chair near the sofa and read silently.
“You are terribly talkative and restless,” she said, “let me finish reading the chapter...
If I hadn’t been talkative and restless, I might never have recognized you,” I answered, reminding her of our acquaintance: one day in December, when I got to the Art Circle for a lecture by Andrei Bely, who sang it while running and dancing on the stage, I spun and laughed so much that she, who happened to be in the chair next to me and at first looked at me with some bewilderment, also finally laughed, and I immediately turned to her cheerfully.
“That’s all right,” she said, “but still be silent for a while, read something, smoke...
I can't remain silent! You can’t imagine the full power of my love for you! You don't love me!
I present. And as for my love, you know well that besides my father and you, I have no one in the world. In any case, you are my first and last. Is this not enough for you? But enough about that. We can’t read in front of you, let’s drink tea...
And I got up, boiled water in an electric kettle on the table behind the sofa, took cups and saucers from the walnut pile that stood in the corner behind the table, saying whatever came to mind:
Have you finished reading “Fire Angel”?
I finished watching it. It's so pompous that it's embarrassing to read.
Why did you suddenly leave Chaliapin’s concert yesterday?
He was too daring. And then I don’t like yellow-haired Rus' at all.
You don’t like everything!
Yes, a lot...
"Strange love!" - I thought and, while the water was boiling, I stood and looked out the windows. The room smelled of flowers, and for me she connected with their smell; outside one window lay low in the distance a huge picture of Moscow across the river, snow-blue; in the other, to the left, part of the Kremlin was visible; on the contrary, somehow too close, the too-new bulk of Christ the Savior was white, in the golden dome of which the jackdaws that were always hovering around it were reflected with bluish spots... “Strange city! - I said to myself, thinking about Okhotny Ryad, about Iverskaya, about St. Basil the Blessed. - St. Basil the Blessed - and Spas-on-Bor, Italian cathedrals - and something Kyrgyz in the tips of the towers on the Kremlin walls ... "
Arriving at dusk, I sometimes found her on the sofa in only one silk archaluk trimmed with sable - the inheritance of my Astrakhan grandmother, she said - I sat next to her in the semi-darkness, without lighting the fire, and kissed her hands and feet, amazing in their smoothness body... And she didn’t resist anything, but all in silence. I constantly searched for her hot lips - she gave them, breathing fitfully, but all in silence. When she felt that I was no longer able to control myself, she pushed me away, sat down and, without raising her voice, asked to turn on the light, then went into the bedroom. I lit it, sat on a swivel stool near the piano and gradually came to my senses, cooled down from the hot intoxication. A quarter of an hour later she came out of the bedroom, dressed, ready to leave, calm and simple, as if nothing had happened before:
Where to today? To Metropol, maybe?
And again we spent the whole evening talking about something unrelated. Soon after we became close, she said to me when I started talking about marriage:
No, I'm not fit to be a wife. I'm not good, I'm not good...
This didn't discourage me. “We’ll see from there!” - I said to myself in the hope that her decision would change over time and no longer talked about marriage. Our incomplete intimacy sometimes seemed unbearable to me, but even here, what was left for me except hope for time? One day, sitting next to her in this evening darkness and silence, I grabbed my head:
No, this is beyond my strength! And why, why do you have to torture me and yourself so cruelly!
She said nothing.
Yes, after all, this is not love, not love...
She evenly responded from the darkness:
May be. Who knows what love is?
I, I know! - I exclaimed. - And I will wait for you to find out what love and happiness are!
Happiness, happiness... “Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing.”
What is this?
This is what Platon Karataev told Pierre.
I waved my hand: - Oh, God bless her, with this eastern wisdom!
And again, the whole evening he talked only about strangers - about the new production of the Art Theater, about Andreev’s new story... Again, it was enough for me that first I was sitting closely with her in a flying and rolling sled, holding her in the smooth fur of her fur coat, then I enter with her into the crowded hall of the restaurant accompanied by a march from Aida, eat and drink next to her, hear her slow voice, look at the lips that I kissed an hour ago - yes, I kissed, I told myself, looking at her with rapturous gratitude. them, at the dark fluff above them, at the garnet velvet of the dress, at the slope of the shoulders and the oval of the breasts, smelling some slightly spicy smell of her hair, thinking: “Moscow, Astrakhan, Persia, India!” In restaurants outside the city, towards the end of dinner, when the tobacco smoke all around became noisier, she, also smoking and tipsy, would sometimes take me into a separate office, ask me to call the gypsies, and they would enter deliberately noisily, cheekily: in front of the choir, with a guitar on blue ribbon over his shoulder, an old gypsy in a Cossack with braid, with the gray muzzle of a drowned man, with a head as bare as a cast-iron ball, behind him a gypsy singer with a low forehead under a tar fringe... She listened to the songs with a languid, strange smile... At three, at four o'clock in the morning I took her home, at the entrance, closing my eyes in happiness, kissed the wet fur of her collar and in some kind of ecstatic despair flew to the Red Gate. And tomorrow and the day after tomorrow everything will be the same, I thought - all the same torment and all the same happiness... Well, still happiness, great happiness!
So January and February passed, Maslenitsa came and went. On Forgiveness Sunday, she ordered me to come to her at five o’clock in the evening. I arrived, and she met me already dressed, in a short astrakhan fur coat, astrakhan hat, and black felt boots.
Everything is black! - I said, entering, as always, joyfully.
Her eyes were gentle and quiet.
After all, tomorrow is already clean Monday,” she answered, taking it out of her astrakhan muff and giving me her hand in a black kid glove. - “Lord, master of my belly...” Do you want to go to the Novodevichy Convent?
I was surprised, but hastened to say:
“Well, it’s all taverns and taverns,” she added. - Yesterday morning I was at the Rogozhskoye cemetery...
I was even more surprised:
To the cemetery? For what? Is this the famous schismatic?
Yes, schismatic. Pre-Petrine Rus'! Their archbishop was buried. And just imagine: the coffin is an oak block, as in ancient times, the gold brocade seems to be forged, the face of the deceased is covered with white “air”, sewn with large black script - beauty and horror. And at the tomb there are deacons with ripidae and trikiria...
How do you know this? Ripids, trikiriyas!
It's you who don't know me.
I didn't know you were so religious.
This is not religiosity. I don’t know what... But I, for example, often go in the mornings or evenings, when you don’t drag me to restaurants, to the Kremlin cathedrals, and you don’t even suspect it... So: deacons - what kind of deacons! Peresvet and Oslyabya! And on two choirs there are two choirs, also all Peresvets: tall, powerful, in long black caftans, they sing, calling to each other - first one choir, then the other - and all in unison, and not according to notes, but according to “hooks”. And the inside of the grave was lined with shiny spruce branches, and outside there was frost, sun, blinding snow... No, you don’t understand this! Let's go...
The evening was peaceful, sunny, with frost on the trees; on the bloody brick walls of the monastery, jackdaws chattered in silence, looking like nuns, and the chimes played subtly and sadly every now and then in the bell tower. Creaking in silence through the snow, we entered the gate, walked along the snowy paths through the cemetery - the sun had just set, it was still quite light, the branches in the frost were wonderfully drawn on the golden enamel of the sunset like gray coral, and mysteriously glowed around us with calm, sad lights unquenchable lamps scattered over the graves. I followed her, looking with emotion at her little footprint, at the stars that her new black boots left in the snow - she suddenly turned around, feeling it:
It's true how you love me! - she said with quiet bewilderment, shaking her head.
We stood near the graves of Ertel and Chekhov. Holding her hands in her lowered muff, she looked for a long time at the Chekhov grave monument, then shrugged her shoulder:
What a nasty mixture of Russian leaf style and the Art Theater!
It began to get dark and freezing, we slowly walked out of the gate, near which my Fyodor was obediently sitting on a box.
“We’ll drive around a little more,” she said, “then we’ll go eat the last pancakes at Yegorov’s... But it won’t be too much, Fedor, right?”
I'm listening, sir.
Somewhere on Ordynka there is a house where Griboyedov lived. Let's go look for him...
And for some reason we went to Ordynka, drove for a long time along some alleys in the gardens, were in Griboyedovsky Lane; but who could tell us which house Griboedov lived in - there wasn’t a soul passing by, and who of them could need Griboyedov? It had long since gotten dark, the frost-lit windows behind the trees were turning pink...
There is also the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent here,” she said.
I laughed:
Back to the monastery again?
No, that's just me...
On the ground floor of Yegorov's tavern in Okhotny Ryad it was full of shaggy, thickly dressed cab drivers cutting up stacks of pancakes, doused in excess with butter and sour cream; it was steamy, like in a bathhouse. In the upper rooms, also very warm, with low ceilings, the Old Testament merchants washed down fiery pancakes with grainy caviar with frozen champagne. We went into the second room, where in the corner, in front of the black board of the icon of the Mother of God of Three Hands, a lamp was burning, we sat down at a long table on a black leather sofa... The fluff on her upper lip was frosted, the amber of her cheeks turned slightly pink, the blackness of the paradise completely merged with the pupil, - I couldn’t take my enthusiastic eyes off her face. And she said, taking a handkerchief from her fragrant muff:
Fine! There are wild men below, and here are pancakes with champagne and the Mother of God of Three Hands. Three hands! After all, this is India! You are a gentleman, you cannot understand this whole Moscow the way I do.
I can, I can! - I answered. - And let's order lunch strong!
How do you mean “strong”?
This means strong. How come you don't know? "Gyurgi's speech..."
How good! Gyurgi!
Yes, Prince Yuri Dolgoruky. “Gyurga’s speech to Svyatoslav, Prince of Seversky: “Come to me, brother, in Moscow” and ordered a strong dinner.”
How good. And now only this Rus' remains in some northern monasteries. Yes, even in church hymns. I recently went to the Conception Monastery - you can’t imagine how wonderfully the stichera are sung there! And in Chudovoy it’s even better. I last year I kept going there on Strastnaya. Oh, how good it was! There are puddles everywhere, the air is already soft, my soul is somehow tender, sad and all the time this feeling of the homeland, its antiquity... All the doors in the cathedral are open, all day long ordinary people come and go, all day long the service... Oh, I’ll go somewhere to a monastery, to some very remote one, in Vologda, Vyatka!
I wanted to say that then I too would leave or kill someone so that they would drive me to Sakhalin, I lit a cigarette, lost in excitement, but a policeman in white pants and a white shirt, belted with a crimson tourniquet, approached and respectfully reminded:
Sorry, sir, smoking is not allowed here...
And immediately, with special obsequiousness, he began quickly:
What would you like with the pancakes? Homemade herbalist? Caviar, salmon? Our sherry is exceptionally good for ears, but for navazhka...
And to the sherry,” she added, delighting me with her kind talkativeness, which did not leave her all evening. And I was already absent-mindedly listening to what she said next. And she spoke with a quiet light in her eyes:
I love Russian chronicles, I love Russian legends so much that I keep re-reading what I especially like until I know it by heart. “There was a city in the Russian land called Murom, and a noble prince named Paul reigned in it. And the devil introduced a flying serpent to his wife for fornication. And this serpent appeared to her in human nature, extremely beautiful...”
I jokingly made scary eyes:
Oh, what a horror!
She continued without listening:
This is how God tested her. “When the time came for her blessed death, this prince and princess begged God to repose before them on one day. And they agreed to be buried in a single coffin. And they ordered to carve two grave beds in a single stone. And they clothed themselves, at the same time, in monastic robes...”
And again my absent-mindedness gave way to surprise and even anxiety: what’s wrong with her today?
And so, that evening, when I took her home at a completely different time than usual, at eleven o’clock, she, saying goodbye to me at the entrance, suddenly detained me when I was already getting into the sleigh:
Wait. Come see me tomorrow evening no earlier than ten. Tomorrow is the “cabbage party” of the Art Theater.
So? - I asked. - Do you want to go to this “cabbage party”?
But you said that you don’t know anything more vulgar than these “cabbages”!
And now I don’t know. And still I want to go.
I mentally shook my head - all quirks, Moscow quirks! - and cheerfully responded:
Ol right!
At ten o'clock in the evening the next day, having gone up in the elevator to her door, I opened the door with my key and did not immediately enter from the dark hallway: behind it it was unusually light, everything was lit - chandeliers, candelabra on the sides of the mirror and a tall lamp under the light lampshade behind the head of the sofa, and the piano sounded the beginning of the “Moonlight Sonata” - increasingly rising, sounding the further, the more languid, more inviting, in somnambulist-blissful sadness. I slammed the hallway door - the sounds stopped and the rustling of a dress was heard. I entered - she stood straight and somewhat theatrically near the piano in a black velvet dress, which made her look thinner, shining with its elegance, the festive headdress of her jet-black hair, the dark amber of her bare arms, shoulders, the tender, full beginning of her breasts, the sparkle of diamond earrings along her slightly powdered cheeks, coal velvet eyes and velvety purple lips; At her temples, black shiny braids curled in half-rings toward her eyes, giving her the look of an oriental beauty from a popular print.
Now, if I were a singer and sang on the stage,” she said, looking at my confused face, “I would respond to applause with a friendly smile and slight bows to the right and left, up and to the stalls, and I would imperceptibly but carefully push away with my foot a train so as not to step on it...
At the "cabbage party" she smoked a lot and kept sipping champagne, looked intently at the actors, with lively cries and choruses portraying something as if Parisian, at the big Stanislavsky with white hair and black eyebrows and the thick-set Moskvin in pince-nez on his trough-shaped face - both with deliberate With seriousness and diligence, falling backwards, they performed a desperate cancan to the laughter of the audience. Kachalov came up to us with a glass in his hand, pale from hops, with heavy sweat on his forehead, on which a tuft of his Belarusian hair hung, raised his glass and, looking at her with feigned gloomy greed, said in his low actor’s voice:
Tsar Maiden, Queen of Shamakhan, your health!
And she smiled slowly and clinked glasses with him. He took her hand, drunkenly fell towards her and almost fell off his feet. He managed and, gritting his teeth, looked at me:
What kind of handsome guy is this? I hate it.
Then the organ wheezed, whistled and thundered, the barrel organ skipped and stomped its polka - and a small Sulerzhitsky, always in a hurry and laughing, flew up to us, gliding, bending over, feigning Gostiny Dvor gallantry, he hastily muttered:
Allow me to invite Tranblanc to the table...
And she, smiling, got up and, deftly, with a short stamp of her feet, sparkling with earrings, her blackness and bare shoulders and arms, walked with him among the tables, followed by admiring glances and applause, while he, raising his head, shouted like a goat:
Let's go, let's go quickly
Polka dance with you!
At three o'clock in the morning she stood up, closing her eyes. When we got dressed, she looked at my beaver hat, stroked the beaver collar and went to the exit, saying either jokingly or seriously:
Of course he is beautiful. Kachalov said the truth... “The serpent is in human nature, extremely beautiful...”
On the way she was silent, bowing her head from the bright moonlit snowstorm flying towards her. For a full month he dived in the clouds above the Kremlin - “some kind of glowing skull,” she said. The clock on the Spasskaya Tower struck three, and she also said:
Which ancient sound, something tin and cast iron. And just like that, with the same sound, three o’clock in the morning struck in the fifteenth century. And in Florence there was exactly the same battle, it reminded me of Moscow...
When Fyodor besieged at the entrance, she lifelessly ordered:
Let him go...
Amazed, - she never allowed her to go up to her at night, - I said in confusion:
Fedor, I will return on foot...
And we silently reached up in the elevator, entered the night warmth and silence of the apartment with hammers clicking in the heaters. I took off her fur coat, slippery from the snow, she threw a wet down shawl from her hair onto my hands and quickly walked, rustling her silk petticoat, into the bedroom. I undressed, entered the first room and, with my heart sinking as if over an abyss, sat down on the Turkish sofa. Her steps could be heard behind the open doors of the illuminated bedroom, the way she, clinging to the stilettos, pulled her dress over her head... I stood up and went to the doors: she, wearing only swan slippers, stood with her back to me, in front of the dressing table, combing the black threads of long hair hanging along the face with a tortoiseshell comb.
“He kept saying that I don’t think much about him,” she said, throwing the comb on the mirror-glass, and, throwing her hair over her back, turned to me: “No, I thought...
At dawn I felt her movement. I opened my eyes and she was staring at me. I rose from the warmth of the bed and her body, she leaned towards me, quietly and evenly saying:
This evening I'm leaving for Tver. For how long, only God knows...
And she pressed her cheek to mine - I felt her wet eyelash blink.
I'll write everything as soon as I arrive. I will write everything about the future. Sorry, leave me now, I'm very tired...
And she lay down on the pillow.
I dressed carefully, timidly kissed her hair and tiptoed out onto the stairs, already brightening with a pale light. I walked on foot through the young sticky snow - there was no longer a blizzard, everything was calm and already visible far along the streets, there was a smell of snow and from the bakeries. I reached Iverskaya, the inside of which was burning hotly and shining with whole bonfires of candles, stood in the crowd of old women and beggars on the trampled snow on my knees, took off my hat... Someone touched me on the shoulder - I looked: some most unfortunate old woman was looking at me, wincing from pitiful tears.
Oh, don't kill yourself, don't kill yourself like that! Sin, sin!
The letter I received about two weeks after that was brief - an affectionate but firm request not to wait for her any longer, not to try to look for her, to see: “I won’t return to Moscow, I’ll go to obedience for now, then maybe I’ll decide to take monastic vows... Let God will give me the strength not to answer me - it is useless to prolong and increase our torment..."
I fulfilled her request. And for a long time he disappeared into the dirtiest taverns, became an alcoholic, sinking more and more in every possible way. Then he began to recover little by little - indifferently, hopelessly... Almost two years have passed since that clean Monday...
In the fourteenth year, under New Year, it was the same quiet, sunny evening as that unforgettable one. I left the house, took a cab and went to the Kremlin. There he went into the empty Archangel Cathedral, stood for a long time, without praying, in its twilight, looking at the faint shimmer of the old gold iconostasis and the tombstones of the Moscow kings - stood, as if waiting for something, in that special silence of an empty church when you are afraid to breathe in her. Coming out of the cathedral, he ordered the cab driver to go to Ordynka, drove at a pace, as then, along dark alleys in gardens with windows illuminated under them, drove along Griboedovsky Lane - and kept crying and crying...
On Ordynka, I stopped a cab at the gates of the Marfo-Mariinsky monastery: there were black carriages in the courtyard, the open doors of a small illuminated church were visible, and the singing of a girls’ choir flowed sadly and tenderly from the doors. For some reason I definitely wanted to go there. The janitor at the gate blocked my path, asking softly, pleadingly:
You can't, sir, you can't!
How can you not? Can't go to church?
You can, sir, of course you can, I just ask you for God’s sake, don’t go, there right now Grand Duchess Elzavet Fedrovna and Grand Duke Mitriy Palych...
I handed him a ruble - he sighed sadly and let it pass. But as soon as I entered the courtyard, icons and banners, carried in their arms, appeared from the church, behind them, all in white, long, thin-faced, in a white trim with a gold cross sewn on it on the forehead, tall, slowly, earnestly walking with lowered eyes , with a large candle in her hand, the Grand Duchess; and behind her stretched the same white line of singers, with candle lights on their faces, nuns or sisters - I don’t know who they were or where they were going. For some reason I looked at them very carefully. And then one of those walking in the middle suddenly raised her head, covered with a white scarf, blocking the candle with her hand, and fixed her dark eyes on the darkness, as if right at me... What could she see in the darkness, how could she feel my presence? I turned and quietly walked out of the gate.
“The cemetery of everything that once lived...”
It is impossible not to notice that Bunin’s entire story “Clean Monday” is literally permeated with contrasts - deliberate, sharp and sometimes merciless to the reader. The gas in the lanterns was lit coldly - the shop windows were illuminated warmly, “she” studied at courses - but rarely attended them, in the evenings she put on a velvet dress and shoes with gold buckles - and during the day she went as a modest student and had breakfast for thirty kopecks in a vegetarian canteen, the Italian cathedrals of the Kremlin - and something Kyrgyz in the points of its towers... Black passers-by, black hair, black fur, black eyes, black boots, everything black, black glove, black ligature, black caftans, black board, black sofa, black paradise, black dress, black braids, black eyebrows, sparkling with their blackness, black threads, black carriages - all in white, white trim, white string, white boards, white bulk Christ the Savior, white “air”, white trousers and a white polo shirt, white hair (but also black eyebrows!) Stanislavsky.
Bunin’s entire story is permeated with enormous tension, a feeling of something unsteady, something temporary, some kind of feast during the plague, as if something was about to happen, because to live the way his main characters live is to live like this for a long time impossible.
In all the later stories from the series “ Dark alleys", in addition to the main heroes, another one is invisibly present, the most important one - this is Bunin himself, cut off from Russia, suffering and endlessly lonely. Without remembering this and trying to read “Clean Monday” simply as some kind of story about “strange love”, we will understand little.
Well, yes, of course... the love described in “Clean Monday” is, to say the least, “strange.” And is this love? You involuntarily remember the still very young Olya Meshcherskaya with her “light breathing” - the heroine story of the same name Bunina, who “seemed the most carefree, the happiest” to everyone around her, who seemed to flutter through life with such a feeling that she “will live endlessly.” In another of his stories, “Chang’s Dreams,” the writer puts the following lines into the mouth of one of the characters:
Chang, this woman will not love you and me! Yes, brother, women's souls who are always languishing with some kind of sad thirst for love and who, as a result, never love anyone. […] Who will solve them? To each his own, Chang...
The story “Chang's Dreams” (like the story “Easy Breathing”) was written in 1916, when it was still possible to calmly talk about the “oddities of love.” But, although the heroes of “Clean Monday” live and suffer at about the same time, Bunin wrote his story many, many years later, and he already knew everything that would happen to them, to his heroes, in their very near future. future.
Sending the heroine of his story to look for the meaning and truth of life at the Marfo-Mariinskaya Convent of Mercy, Bunin knew perfectly well what would happen next. Just a couple of years later, in July 1918, Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna, founder of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent and one of the most outstanding women in the history of Russia - the one from Bunin “all in white, long, thin-faced, in a white trim with a gold cross sewn on it”- was thrown alive into a mine and for several days then slowly died there from hunger and wounds...
Elizaveta Fedorovna and the sisters of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent (left).
The last lifetime photograph of Elizaveta Feodorovna (right)
Bunin called his story “Clean Monday.” Clean Monday is the very first day of Lent. Moreover, this is the strictest, most “clean” day of fasting, when believers strive to keep themselves in both bodily and spiritual purity, refusing not only food, but also other pleasures of life. And it is precisely on this day that the heroine of Bunin’s story, as if with some kind of daring challenge, with some kind of even cynicism, does everything the opposite: she drinks champagne with pleasure at the “cabbage”, rollickingly dances the “Tranblanc pole”, and then gives herself up for the first time - and yet it is given without love! - to his stunned fan...
One can talk a lot about the “oddities of love”, forgetting that a person lives and loves not in emptiness. “This is not religiosity. I don't know what...", - says the heroine of Bunin’s story about herself. Yes, she is not religious. This is what it is: this is her instinctive attempt by all means to prevent the encroaching and clearly felt spiritual emptiness. The very next day she will go to her father, to Tver, and then she will seem to be at the other pole - with Elizaveta Feodorovna, among the sisters of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent.
But Bunin in 1944 knows very well that she will not be able to escape. What will happen to her next? Will she be exiled to Turkestan, like some sisters of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent? Or he will grow it together with other sisters - but just near Tver! - vegetables, getting food for yourself? Or, perhaps, in the 20s, the fate of another Olga awaits her - the heroine of the novel by Anatoly Mariengof, which he ironically called “The Cynics”:
Vladimir, do you believe in anything?
It seems not.
Stupid... The Samoyed who prays to the stump of a stump is smarter than you...
She lit a new cigarette. Which one?
-...and me...
She eats smoke with big, masculine sips:
Whatever you want, just believe!
And very quietly:
“Easy Breathing” from 1916 is simply a story about a “strange” woman, outside of any time. “Clean Monday” of 1944 is also a story about time, mercilessly grinding people’s destinies. About time, which for the Russian writer Ivan Bunin seemed to stop with the collapse of that world, that Russia, which he knew well and loved endlessly.
From his diary entries from the same 1944:
The nights are starry, clear, cold. Whatever you remember (and fragments of memory every minute), everything is painful, sad. Sometimes I sleep 9 hours or more. And almost every one. morning, as soon as you open your eyes, there is some kind of sadness - aimlessness, the end of everything (for me).
I looked through my notes about the former Russia. I keep thinking, if I live long enough, I’ll get to Russia! Why? The old age of the survivors (and the women with whom I once lived), the cemetery of everything that I once lived with...
There is one amazing scene in the story “Clean Monday”. Early in the morning, after that very “sinful” night they spent together, the hero returns to his home. And everything seems to be calm, and nothing is known yet: well, she will go to her Tver - but not forever...
And suddenly someone touched him on the shoulder. “Some unfortunate old woman looked at me, wincing with pitiful tears: “Oh, don’t kill yourself, don’t kill yourself like that! Sin, sin!. “The most unfortunate old woman” - and suddenly she felt sorry for him, this young, handsome, rich and strong man, for whom everything in life, it would seem, was still ahead...
Marfo-Mariinskaya Convent in 1915
The sisters of the Martha and Mary Convent were not nuns in the full sense of the word. They did not take monastic vows and, in principle, could return, could later get married and have children. It was not easy for the hero of the story to part with his beloved. But having completely accidentally found her later in the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent, he - as if knowing in advance what fate was in store for her, and for him, and for their entire “Russian world” - only silently “turned and quietly walked out of the gate”…
Valentin Antonov
“Clean Monday” I.A. Bunin considered his best work. Largely due to its semantic depth and ambiguity of interpretation. The story occupies an important place in the “Dark Alleys” cycle. The time of its writing is considered to be May 1944. During this period of his life, Bunin was in France, far from his homeland, where the Great Patriotic War was going on.
In this light, it is unlikely that the 73-year-old writer devoted his work only to the theme of love. It would be more correct to say that through the description of the relationship between two people, their views and worldviews, the truth is revealed to the reader modern life, its tragic background and the urgency of many moral problems.
At the center of the story is the story of a relationship quite wealthy men and women who develop feelings for each other. They have an interesting and pleasant time visiting restaurants, theaters, taverns, and many others. etc. The narrator and the main character in one person are drawn to her, but the possibility of marriage is immediately ruled out - the girl clearly believes that she is not suitable for family life.
One day on the eve of Clean Monday on Forgiveness Sunday, she asks to pick her up a little earlier. After which they go to the Novodevichy Convent, visit the local cemetery, walk among the graves and remember the funeral of the archbishop. The heroine understands how much the narrator loves her, and the man himself notices the great religiosity of his companion. The woman talks about life in a monastery and herself threatens to go to the most remote of them. True, the narrator does not attach much importance to her words.
The next day in the evening, at the girl’s request, they go to a theatrical skit. A rather strange choice of place - especially considering that the heroine does not like and does not recognize such gatherings. There she drinks champagne, dances and has fun. After which the narrator brings her home at night. The heroine asks the man to come up to her. They are finally getting closer.
The next morning the girl reports that she is leaving for Tver for a while. After 2 weeks, a letter arrives from her in which she says goodbye to the narrator and asks not to look for her, since “I won’t return to Moscow, I’ll go to obedience for now, then maybe I’ll decide to take monastic vows.”
The man fulfills her request. However, he does not disdain spending time in dirty taverns and taverns, indulging in an indifferent existence - “he got drunk, sinking in every possible way, more and more.” Then he comes to his senses for a long time, and two years later he decides to go on a trip to all the places that he and his beloved visited on that Forgiveness Sunday. At some point, the hero is overcome by a kind of hopeless resignation. Arriving at the Marfo-Maryinsky monastery, he finds out that there is a service going on there and even goes inside. Here in last time the hero sees his beloved, who is participating in the service along with other nuns. At the same time, the girl does not see the man, but her gaze is directed into the darkness, where the narrator stands. After which he quietly leaves the church.
Story composition
The composition of the story is based on three parts. The first serves to introduce the characters, describe their relationships and pastimes. The second part is dedicated to the events of Forgiveness Sunday and Clean Monday. The shortest, but semantically important third part completes the composition.
Reading the works and moving from one part to another, one can see the spiritual maturation of not only the heroine, but also the narrator himself. At the end of the story, we are no longer a frivolous person, but a man who has experienced the bitterness of parting with his beloved, capable of experiencing and comprehending his actions of the past.
Considering that the hero and the narrator are one person, you can see changes in him even with the help of the text itself. The hero's worldview changes radically after a sad love story. Talking about himself in 1912, the narrator resorts to irony, showing his limitations in the perception of his beloved. Only physical intimacy is important, and the hero himself does not try to understand the woman’s feelings, her religiosity, outlook on life, and much more. etc.
In the final part of the work we see a narrator and a man who understands the meaning of the experience. He evaluates his life retrospectively and the overall tone of writing the story changes, which speaks of the inner maturity of the narrator himself. When reading the third part, one gets the impression that it was written by a completely different person.
By genre features Most researchers classify “Clean Monday” as a short story, because at the center of the plot there is a turning point that forces a different interpretation of the work. We are talking about the heroine leaving for a monastery.
Novella I.A. Bunin is distinguished by a complex spatiotemporal organization. The action takes place at the end of 1911 - beginning of 1912. This is supported by the mention of specific dates and textual references to real historical figures who were known and recognizable at the time. For example, the heroes first meet at a lecture by Andrei Bely, and at a theatrical skit the artist Sulerzhitsky appears before the reader, with whom the heroine dances.
The time range of a small work is quite wide. There are three specific dates: 1912 - the time of the plot events, 1914 - the date last meeting heroes, as well as a certain “today” of the narrator. The entire text is filled with additional time references and references: “the graves of Ertel, Chekhov”, “the house where Griboyedov lived”, pre-Petrine Rus' is mentioned, Chaliapin’s concert, the schismatic Rogozhskoe cemetery, Prince Yuri Dolgoruky and much more. It turns out that the events of the story fit into the general historical context and turn out to be not just a specific description of the relationship between a man and a woman, but represent an entire era.
It is no coincidence that a number of researchers call to see in the heroine the image of Russia itself, and to interpret her act as the author’s call not to follow a revolutionary path, but to seek repentance and do everything to change the life of the whole country. Hence the title of the short story “Clean Monday”, which, as the first day of Lent, should become the starting point on the path to better things.
Main characters in the story “Clean Monday” there are only two. This is the heroine and the narrator himself. The reader never learns their names.
At the center of the work is the image of the heroine, and the hero is shown through the prism of their relationship. The girl is smart. He often says philosophically wisely: “Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing.”
Opposite essences coexist in the heroine; there are many contradictions in her image. On the one hand, she likes luxury, social life, visiting theaters and restaurants. However, this does not interfere with the internal craving for something different, significant, beautiful, religious. She is interested in literary heritage, not only domestic, but also European. He often quotes famous works of world classics, and talks about ancient rites and funerals in hagiographic literature.
The girl categorically denies the possibility of marriage and believes that she is not fit to be a wife. The heroine is looking for herself, often in thought. She is smart, beautiful and wealthy, but the narrator was convinced every day: “it looked like she didn’t need anything: no books, no lunches, no theaters, no dinners outside the city...” In this world she is constantly and to some extent pores pointlessly searching for oneself. She is attracted to luxurious fun life, but at the same time she is disgusted with her: “I don’t understand how people won’t get tired of this all their lives, having lunch and dinner every day.” True, she herself “had lunch and dinner with a Moscow understanding of the matter. Her obvious weakness was only good clothes, velvet, silk, expensive fur...” It is precisely this contradictory image of the heroine that I.A. creates. Bunin in his work.
Wanting to find something different for herself, she visits churches and cathedrals. The girl manages to break out of her usual environment, albeit not thanks to love, which turns out to be not so sublime and omnipotent. Faith and withdrawal from worldly life help her find herself. This act confirms the strong and strong-willed character of the heroine. This is how she responds to her own thoughts about the meaning of life, understanding the futility of the one she leads into secular society. In a monastery, the main thing for a person becomes love for God, service to him and people, while everything vulgar, base, unworthy and ordinary will no longer bother her.
The main idea of the story by I.A. Bunin "Clean Monday"
In this work, Bunin brings to the fore the history of the relationship between two people, but the main meanings are hidden much deeper. It is impossible to interpret this story unambiguously, since it is simultaneously dedicated to love, morality, philosophy, and history. However, the main direction of the writer’s thought comes down to questions of the fate of Russia itself. According to the author, the country must be cleansed of its sins and reborn spiritually, as the heroine of the work “Clean Monday” did.
The Moscow gray winter day was darkening, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the shop windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening Moscow life, freed from daytime affairs, flared up: the cab sleighs rushed thicker and more vigorously, the crowded, diving trams rattled more heavily - in the dusk it was already visible how with a hiss, green stars fell from the wires, - dimly blackened passers-by hurried more animatedly along the snowy sidewalks... Every evening at this hour my coachman rushed me on a stretched trotter - from the Red Gate to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior: she lived opposite him; every evening I took her to dinner at Prague, at the Hermitage, at Metropol, after dinner at the theaters, to concerts, and then to the Yar in Strelna... I didn’t know how all this was going to end and I tried not to to think, not to think out: it was useless - just like talking to her about it: she once and for all averted conversations about our future; she was mysterious, incomprehensible to me, and our relationship with her was strange - we were still not very close; and all this endlessly kept me in unresolved tension, in painful anticipation - and at the same time I was incredibly happy with every hour spent near her.
For some reason, she took courses, attended them quite rarely, but attended them. I once asked: “Why?” She shrugged her shoulder: “Why is everything done in the world? Do we understand anything in our actions? In addition, I am interested in history...” She lived alone - her widowed father, an enlightened man of a noble merchant family, lived in retirement in Tver, collecting something, like all such merchants. In the house opposite the Church of the Savior, for the sake of the view of Moscow, she rented a corner apartment on the fifth floor, only two rooms, but spacious and well furnished. In the first, a wide Turkish sofa occupied a lot of space, there was an expensive piano, on which she kept practicing the slow, somnambulistically beautiful beginning of the “Moonlight Sonata” - only one beginning - on the piano and on the mirror-glass, elegant flowers bloomed in cut vases, - in my opinion according to the order, fresh ones were delivered to her every Saturday - and when I came to see her on Saturday evening, she, lying on the sofa, above which for some reason hung a portrait of a barefoot Tolstoy, slowly extended her hand to me for a kiss and absentmindedly said: “Thank you for the flowers... “I brought her boxes of chocolate, new books - Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Tetmeier, Przybyszewski - and received the same “thank you” and an outstretched warm hand, sometimes an order to sit near the sofa without taking off my coat. “It’s not clear why,” she said thoughtfully, stroking my beaver collar, “but, it seems, nothing can be better than the smell of winter air with which you enter the room from the yard...” It looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no dinners, no theaters, no dinners out of town, although she still had flowers that she liked and didn’t like, she always read all the books that I brought her, she ate a whole box of chocolate a day, at dinners and at dinners she ate no less than me, she loved pies with burbot fish soup, pink hazel grouse in deep-fried sour cream, sometimes she said: “I don’t understand how people won’t get tired of this all their lives, having lunch and dinner every day,” but she herself had lunch and dinner with Moscow understanding of the matter. Her obvious weakness was only good clothes, velvet, silk, expensive fur...
We were both rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that people stared at us in restaurants and at concerts. I, being from the Penza province, was at that time handsome for some reason with a southern, hot beauty, I was even “indecently handsome,” as one famous actor, a monstrously fat man, a great glutton and a clever man once told me. “The devil knows who you are, some Sicilian,” he said sleepily; and my character was southern, lively, always ready for a happy smile, for a good joke. And she had some kind of Indian, Persian beauty: a dark-amber face, magnificent and somewhat ominous hair in its thick blackness, softly shining like black sable fur, eyebrows, eyes black as velvet coal; the mouth, captivating with velvety crimson lips, was shaded with dark fluff; when going out, she most often put on a garnet velvet dress and the same shoes with gold buckles (and she went to courses as a modest student, ate breakfast for thirty kopecks in a vegetarian canteen on Arbat); and as much as I was inclined to talkativeness, to simple-hearted gaiety, she was most often silent: she was always thinking about something, she seemed to be delving into something mentally; lying on the sofa with a book in her hands, she often lowered it and looked inquiringly in front of her: I saw this, sometimes visiting her during the day, because every month she did not leave the house for three or four days at all, she lay and read, forcing me to sit in a chair near the sofa and read silently.
“You are terribly talkative and restless,” she said, “let me finish reading the chapter...
“If I hadn’t been talkative and restless, I might never have recognized you,” I answered, reminding her of our acquaintance: one day in December, when I got to the Art Circle for a lecture by Andrei Bely, who sang it, Running and dancing on the stage, I was spinning and laughing so much that she, who happened to be in the chair next to me and at first looked at me with some bewilderment, also finally laughed, and I immediately turned to her cheerfully.
“That’s all right,” she said, “but still be silent a little, read something, smoke...
- I can’t remain silent! You can’t imagine the full power of my love for you! You don't love me!
- I can imagine. And as for my love, you know well that besides my father and you, I have no one in the world. In any case, you are my first and last. Is this not enough for you? But enough about that. We can’t read in front of you, let’s drink tea...
And I got up, boiled water in an electric kettle on the table behind the sofa, took cups and saucers from the walnut pile that stood in the corner behind the table, saying whatever came to mind:
– Have you finished reading “Fire Angel”?
- I finished watching it. It's so pompous that it's embarrassing to read.
– Why did you suddenly leave Chaliapin’s concert yesterday?
- He was too daring. And then I don’t like yellow-haired Rus' at all.