The small house where I live in Meshchera deserves a description. This is a former bathhouse, a log hut covered with gray planks. The house is located in a dense garden, but for some reason it is fenced off from the garden by a high palisade. This stockade is a trap for village cats who love fish. Every time I return from fishing, cats of all stripes - red, black, gray and white with tan - lay siege to the house. They scurry around, sit on the fence, on roofs, on old apple trees, howl at each other and wait for the evening. They all look, without looking away, at the kukan with fish - it is suspended from the branch of an old apple tree in such a way that it is almost impossible to get it.
In the evening, the cats carefully climb over the palisade and gather under the kukan. They rise on their hind legs, and make swift and deft swings with their front legs, trying to catch the kukan. From a distance it looks like the cats are playing volleyball. Then some impudent cat jumps up, grabs the fish with a death grip, hangs on it, swings and tries to tear the fish off. The rest of the cats hit each other's whiskered faces out of frustration. It ends with me leaving the bathhouse with a lantern. The cats, taken by surprise, rush to the stockade, but do not have time to climb over it, but squeeze between the stakes and get stuck. Then they flatten their ears, close their eyes and begin to scream desperately, begging for mercy.
In autumn, the whole house is covered with leaves, and in two small rooms it becomes light, like in a flying garden.
The stoves are crackling, there is a smell of apples and cleanly washed floors. The tits sit on the branches, pour glass balls in their throats, ring, crackle and look at the windowsill, where a piece of black bread lies.
I rarely spend the night in the house. I spend most nights at the lakes, and when I stay at home, I sleep in an old gazebo in the back of the garden. It is overgrown with wild grapes. In the mornings the sun hits it through the purple, lilac, green and lemon foliage, and it always seems to me that I wake up inside a lit tree. The sparrows look into the gazebo with surprise. They are deadly busy for hours. They tick on a round table dug into the ground. The sparrows approach them, listen to the ticking with one ear or the other, and then peck the clock hard at the dial.
It’s especially good in the gazebo on quiet autumn nights, when the slow, sheer rain is making a low noise in the garden.
The cool air barely moves the candle tongue. Angular shadows from grape leaves lie on the ceiling of the gazebo. A moth, looking like a lump of gray raw silk, lands on an open book and leaves the finest shiny dust on the page. It smells like rain - a gentle and at the same time pungent smell of moisture, damp garden paths.
At dawn I wake up. The fog rustles in the garden. Leaves are falling in the fog. I pull a bucket of water out of the well. A frog jumps out of the bucket. I douse myself with well water and listen to the shepherd’s horn - he is still singing far away, right on the outskirts.
I go to the empty bathhouse and boil tea. A cricket starts its song on the stove. He sings very loudly and does not pay attention to my steps or the clinking of cups.
It's getting light. I take the oars and go to the river. The chain dog Divny sleeps at the gate. He hits the ground with his tail, but does not raise his head. Marvelous has long been accustomed to my leaving at dawn. He just yawns after me and sighs noisily. I'm sailing in the fog. The East is turning pink. The smell of smoke from rural stoves can no longer be heard. All that remains is the silence of the water and the thickets of centuries-old willows.
Ahead is a deserted September day. Ahead - lost in this huge world of fragrant foliage, grass, autumn withering, calm waters, clouds, low sky. And I always feel this confusion as happiness.
downloadAudio story “My Home” from the book “Meshchora Side” about the beauty of nature, about the wonderful pictures of autumn. “The small house where I live in Meshchora deserves a description. It is a former bathhouse, a log hut, lined with gray planks. The house is located in a dense garden, but for some reason it is fenced off from the garden by a high picket fence... In the evening, the cats carefully climb over the picket fence and gather under the kukan (a string, low with a fish - it is suspended from the branch of an old apple tree)... Some impudent cat jumps up, grabs the kukan with a death grip, hangs on it, swings and tries to tear the fish off. The rest of the cats hit each other in frustration. whiskered faces... I go out with a lantern... The cats rush to the stockade,... squeeze between the stakes and get stuck. Then they cover their ears, close their eyes and begin to scream desperately, asking for mercy.
In autumn, the whole house is covered with leaves, and it becomes light in two small rooms... The stoves crackle, the smell of apples, cleanly washed floors...
I rarely spend the night in the house. I spend most nights on the lakes... And when I stay at home, I sleep in an old gazebo... I douse myself with well water and listen to the shepherd's horn..."
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Slide captions:
Prepared by Khomenko V.G. Primary school teacher at GBOU gymnasium 446, 2012. Presentation for a literary reading lesson for grade 3 in UMK 2100 K. Paustovsky “My Home”
Golden autumn. Vasily Polenov Seasons. November. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Artists, musicians, writers use their secrets to convey the beauty of our nature.
It's a sad time! Ouch charm! Your farewell beauty is pleasant to me - I love the lush decay of nature, the forests dressed in crimson and gold, in their canopies the sound of the wind and fresh breath, and the skies are covered with wavy darkness, and the rare ray of sun, and the first frosts, and the distant threats of gray winter. A.S. Pushkin
In the primordial autumn there is a short but wonderful time - The whole day is like crystal, And the evenings are radiant... The air is empty, the birds are no longer heard, But the first winter storms are still far away And clear and warm azure is pouring onto the resting field... F. Tyutchev
Autumn The lingonberries are ripening, the days have become colder, and the cry of birds makes my heart sadder. Flocks of birds fly away, beyond the blue sea. All the trees shine in a multi-colored dress. The sun laughs less often, There is no incense in the flowers. Soon Autumn will wake up and cry awake. Konstantin Balmont
PAUSTOVSKY KONSTANTIN GEORGIEVICH (1892-1968) “Learn from the heroes of books to love our land - its fields and forests, its cities and factories, its sky, its rivers, its language and art.”
Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky “My House”. Story
Vocabulary work. A palisade fence lined with gray planks, where stakes or boards are located close to each other - often, and the gaps between them are narrow. Trap trap. They put the house under siege, that is, they surround it from all sides. Kukan with fish with all his might Cling in a death grip Caught by surprise A string on which the caught fish is strung unexpectedly, suddenly About a flying garden
Independent reading 1. Read part 2 of the story. Break it down into pictures. 2.Make a plan. 1. Gazebo in the depths of the garden. 2. Night autumn rain. 3. Foggy dawn and invigorating shower. 4. Cricket song. 5. Leaving at dawn. 6.Lost in a huge world.
“The gloomier the clouds were, dragging wet, frayed hems along the ground, the colder the rains, the fresher it became in the heart, the easier the words fell on paper, as if by themselves.” K. Paustovsky F.A. Vasiliev. "Before the rain
Homework: 1. Select musical accompaniment for the story. 2.Draw an illustration for a picture that particularly impressed you. 3.Write quotes that you really liked on the “Autumn” page. 4. Students in column 2 prepare a retelling of part 2 according to plan (6 people, one fragment each) 5. Prepare an expressive reading of the story for the whole class.
Preview:
Literary reading. 3rd grade.
Topic: K. Paustovsky “My Home”.
Target: continue acquaintance with the work of K. Paustovsky,
to develop the ability to determine the genre and theme of a work, learn to analyze the text and draw up a plan.
Learn to see the unusual in ordinary phenomena and objects. Understand the beauty of speech in a work, find expressive means of language in the text.
Work on reading expressiveness.
Progress of the lesson.
Today we continue to get acquainted with the works in the section “Dead time of leaf fall”
SLIDE 1.
We already know that many people love autumn.
Poets, writers, and artists loved autumn.
Consider the painting “Golden Autumn” by Vasily Polenov. Is the beauty of nature in the picture consistent with the poems about autumn that we read in the last lesson?
The musical accompaniment to this film is the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky from the album “Seasons. November". What mood does the painting and music evoke in you?
What means and techniques does the composer use?
What visual media does the artist use?
- Checking homework.
Some of you tried yourself at home as an artist and drew illustrations for poems. Let's see what they came up with.
Many of you have learned your favorite poems about autumn. Justify your choice and read the verse.
SLIDE 2,3,4
What means of artistic representation does the poet use?
Guys, why do they so often talk about nature in poetry? Try to answer this question.
- Introduction to the topic of the lesson.
Nastya, the heroine of our textbook, asked the same question to her dad. Read what dad answered? Reading the author's text on page 178.
Where else can you find a description of nature, according to Nastya’s dad?
Do you agree with his answer?
What's it called? What book is this work from? What literary genre does this work belong to? What do we know about the story?
SLIDE 5
- Working with text before reading.
This is not the first work by K. Paustovsky, which we get acquainted with in class. What do we know about K. Paustovsky, the writer?(Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky is known to many readers. In his works, he cordially and simply, with great warmth, depicted our native nature, our people and our history. His works are autobiographical, the story is told on behalf of the author. K. Paustovsky is a talented writer, a true artist of words Remember how beautifully, like the poet, K. Paustovsky described the residents of the old house, with what subtle humor he spoke about the thief cat, how he helped us discover the beautiful and amazing in the simple and ordinary. His work reveals the relationship between man and nature. He traveled a lot around the country. He died in 1968. He was buried in a cemetery in Tarusa, near a country road, under a green oak tree. Adults and children always come to his grave, all who loved his works.)
The section from which we are reading is dedicated to autumn. How could the story “My House” be included in this section?
SLIDE 6
(Apparently, K. Paustovsky talks about a house in autumn, includes autumn landscapes in the story, etc.)
Look at the illustration for this story and guess who will be the hero of this work? (house and cats)
Soon we will read this story and find out how right you are. There are words and expressions in the story that you may have difficulty understanding.
SLIDE 7
Former bathhouse
Sheathed with plank-
Palisade
Trap-
They take the house under siege -
Kukan with fish-
Death grip-
Taken by surprise-
Flying Garden-
Is it possible now to add anything about the content of the story?
Before we get acquainted with the text, let's read what the authors of the textbook call us to do. From 178.
- Working with text while reading.
Primary reading and title of the 1st part of the story.
The small house where I live in Meshchera deserves a description. (I wonder why? We ask a question, but it does not require an answer.)
This is a former bathhouse, a log hut covered with gray planks. The house is located in a dense garden, but for some reason it is fenced off from the garden by a high picket fence. This stockade is a trap for village cats who love fish.(Can you guess why?.)Every time I return from fishing, cats of all stripes - red, black, gray and white with tan - lay siege to the house. They scurry around, sit on the fence, on the roofs, on old apple trees, howl at each other and wait for the evening. (Why do cats wait for the evening?) They all look, without stopping, at the kukan with fish - it is suspended from the branch of an old apple tree with in such a way that it is almost impossible to get it. (Since “almost” means it’s still possible...)
In the evening, cats carefully climb over the stockade (Why careful?)and gather under the kukan. They rise on their hind legs and make swift and deft swings with their front legs, trying to catch the kukan. From a distance, it looks like the cats are playing volleyball. Then some impudent cat jumps up, grabs the fish with a death grip, hangs on it, swings and tries to tear the fish off.(Introduced?) The rest of the cats hit each other's whiskered faces out of frustration.(Why do cats hit each other?)It ends with me leaving the bathhouse with a lantern. The cats, taken by surprise, rush to the stockade, but do not have time to climb over it, but squeeze between the stakes and get stuck. Then they flatten their ears, close their eyes and begin to scream desperately, begging for mercy.(Can you imagine? A very bright picture!)
In autumn, the whole house is covered with leaves, and in two small rooms it becomes light, like in a flying garden. (Why does it become light in the house in the fall?? The leaves have fallen, the trees are bare, so it’s lighter.)
The stoves are crackling, there is a smell of apples and cleanly washed floors. Tits sit on branches, pour glass balls in their throats, ring, crackle and look at the windowsill, where there is a slice of black bread. (What smells did you smell in the autumn garden?
What sounds did you hear? Compare expressions:
The stoves are crackling and the tits are chattering, this only happens in the fall. Their singing is different.
- Questions after reading part 1.
What do you think is the mood of the owner of a house in a wooden hut in the autumn?
How would you title the first part? Work in a notebook. Page 29, task 1.
(Desperate neighbors. Besieged hut)
Why does a small house in Meshchera deserve a description? Now can you answer this question?
- Reading part 2.
Imagine autumn pictures, try to feel the author’s mood, the feeling of happiness alone with nature. Try to see ordinary miracles.
The teacher reads the entire 2nd part.
After reading paragraph 2, children are asked to close their eyes and listen to the text accompanied by the sound of rain. Open your eyes at paragraph 3.
SLIDE 8 and 9
Now you yourself will re-read part 2 of the story and try to discuss in pairs how many pictures this part can be divided into. For each painting you come up with, try to give a title.
SLIDE 10
Examination.
How many paintings did you get?
Sound off the first picture. What did you title it? (a plan appears on the board)
Voice over picture 2.
According to this plan, we will now re-read part 2 of the story one more time in order to better understand with the help of what literary techniques the author managed to show the beauty of the autumn nature surrounding his house.
1 picture. Description of a gazebo in the depths of the forest.
What favorite part of the house did K. Paustovsky tell about?
What feeling does a writer have in the morning?
What does it mean that the sun is beating?
Who else visits the writer in the morning?
Explain the expression "mortally occupied"(Very strongly, they are not even afraid of human presence.)
2 picture. Night autumn rain.
Find the epithets. (Sheer rain)
Explain this expression. (Goes absolutely straight)
What is this technique called?
Paustovsky often describes rain in his works, but each time in a new way.
What smells fill the autumn garden?
Picture 3. Foggy dawn and invigorating shower.
How does the writer describe the fog? Read it!
Can the fog rustle?
What technique does Paustovsky use? (personification)
Who did he see in the bucket?
What do villagers call the outskirts?
4 picture Cricket song
Compare the expressions the cricket sings and the horn sings
5 picture. Leaving at dawn.
Why do you think the dog has such an unusual nickname?
What can a dog's sigh tell you?
Explain the expression " The East is turning pink"
Scene 6 - Lost in a huge world.
Why does the narrator call the September day deserted?
What do you think is the secret of this happiness amid the autumn withering?
(He communicates with nature, rests, observes, new thoughts are born to him).
You are absolutely right, and I would like to read the lines of K. Paustovsky, in which he talks about the feeling of autumn:
SLIDE 11
“There were many signs of autumn, but I tried to remember them. One thing I knew for sure was that I would never forget this autumn bitterness, miraculously combined with lightness in my soul and simple and clear thoughts.
The gloomier the clouds were, dragging wet, frayed hems along the ground, the colder the rains, the fresher it became in the heart, the easier, as if by themselves, the words fell on paper.”
What poetic lines do you think are very suitable for part 2 of the story “My House”
"It's a sad time! Ouch charm!
I am pleased with your farewell beauty!...”
A. S. Pushkin
SLIDE 12
Expressive reading of the story “My House”
- General conversation.
What do you think K. Paustovsky puts into the concept of “My Home”? Is it just an old log cabin?
(This is a garden, and a well, and the Wonderful dog, and cats, and curious sparrows, and a gazebo overgrown with grapes, and the nature that he observed and understood... This is the world around him...)
Do you agree with Nastya’s dad’s statement that you can write about the beauty of nature and the feelings it evokes in prose?
- Homework.
SLIDE 13
Those who love to draw will draw an illustration for the painting that particularly impressed you.
Roma, Bogdan and Yana will try to choose musical accompaniment for this story.
Complete the task in the literary notebook under numbers 2 and 4 p. 29
Write down quotes that you especially liked on the AUTUMN page.
Detailed retelling of part 2 according to plan (one fragment at a time) 6 people.
Expressive reading of a story.
10.07.2013 10:35
The small house where I live in Meshchera deserves a description. This is a former bathhouse, a log hut covered with gray planks. The house is located in a dense garden, but for some reason it is fenced off from the garden by a high palisade. This stockade is a trap for village cats who love fish. Every time I return from fishing, cats of all stripes - red, black, gray and white with tan - lay siege to the house. They scurry around, sit on the fence, on roofs, on old apple trees, howl at each other and wait for the evening. They all stare at the kukan with fish - it is suspended from the branch of an old apple tree in such a way that it is almost impossible to get it.
In the evening, the cats carefully climb over the palisade and gather under the kukan. They rise on their hind legs, and make swift and deft swings with their front legs, trying to catch the kukan. From a distance it looks like the cats are playing volleyball. Then some impudent cat jumps up, grabs the fish with a death grip, hangs on it, swings and tries to tear the fish off. The rest of the cats hit each other's whiskered faces out of frustration. It ends with me leaving the bathhouse with a lantern. The cats, taken by surprise, rush to the stockade, but do not have time to climb over it, but squeeze between the stakes and get stuck. Then they flatten their ears, close their eyes and begin to scream desperately, begging for mercy.
In autumn, the whole house is covered with leaves, and in two small rooms it becomes light, like in a flying garden.
The stoves are crackling, there is a smell of apples and cleanly washed floors. The tits sit on the branches, pour glass balls into their throats, ring, crackle and look at the windowsill, where there is a slice of black bread.
I rarely spend the night in the house. I spend most nights at the lakes, and when I stay at home I sleep in an old gazebo at the bottom of the garden. It is overgrown with wild grapes. In the mornings the sun hits it through the purple, lilac, green and lemon foliage, and it always seems to me that I wake up inside a lit tree. The sparrows look into the gazebo with surprise. They are deadly busy for hours. They tick on a round table dug into the ground. The sparrows approach them, listen to the ticking with one ear or the other, and then peck the clock hard at the dial.
It’s especially good in the gazebo on quiet autumn nights, when the slow, sheer rain is making a low noise in the garden.
The cool air barely moves the candle tongue. Angular shadows from grape leaves lie on the ceiling of the gazebo. A moth, looking like a lump of gray raw silk, lands on an open book and leaves the finest shiny dust on the page.
It smells like rain - a gentle and at the same time pungent smell of moisture, damp garden paths.
At dawn I wake up. The fog rustles in the garden. Leaves are falling in the fog. I pull out a bucket of water from the well. A frog jumps out of the bucket. I douse myself with well water and listen to the shepherd’s horn - he is still singing far away, right at the outskirts.
I go to the empty bathhouse and boil tea. A cricket starts its song on the stove. He sings very loudly and does not pay attention to my steps or the clinking of cups.
It's getting light. I take the oars and go to the river. The chained dog Divny is sleeping at the gate. He hits the ground with his tail, but does not raise his head. Marvelous has long been accustomed to my leaving at dawn. He just yawns after me and sighs noisily.
I'm sailing in the fog. The East is turning pink. The smell of smoke from rural stoves can no longer be heard. All that remains is the silence of the water, thickets, and centuries-old willows.
Ahead is a deserted September day. Ahead - lost in this huge world of fragrant foliage, grass, autumn withering, calm waters, clouds, low sky. And I always feel this confusion as happiness.
Current page: 16 (book has 22 pages total) [available reading passage: 15 pages]
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My home
The small house where I live in Meshchera deserves a description. This is a former bathhouse, a log hut covered with gray planks. The house is located in a dense garden, but for some reason it is fenced off from the garden by a high palisade. This stockade is a trap for village cats who love fish. Every time I return from fishing, cats of all stripes - red, black, gray and white with tan - lay siege to the house. They scurry around, sit on the fence, on roofs, on old apple trees, howl at each other and wait for the evening. They all stare at the kukan* with fish - it is suspended from the branch of an old apple tree in such a way that it is almost impossible to get it.
In the evening, the cats carefully climb over the palisade and gather under the kukan. They rise on their hind legs and make swift and deft swings with their front legs, trying to catch the kukan. From a distance it looks like the cats are playing volleyball. Then some impudent cat jumps up, grabs the fish with a death grip, hangs on it, swings and tries to tear the fish off. The rest of the cats hit each other's whiskered faces out of frustration. It ends with me leaving the bathhouse with a lantern. The cats, taken by surprise, rush to the stockade, but do not have time to climb over it, but squeeze between the stakes and get stuck. Then they flatten their ears, close their eyes and begin to scream desperately, begging for mercy.
In autumn, the whole house is covered with leaves, and in two small rooms it becomes light, like in a flying garden.
The stoves are crackling, there is a smell of apples and cleanly washed floors. The tits sit on the branches, pour glass balls in their throats, ring, crackle and look at the windowsill, where a piece of black bread lies.
I rarely spend the night in the house. I spend most nights at the lakes, and when I stay at home I sleep in an old gazebo at the bottom of the garden. It is overgrown with wild grapes. In the mornings the sun hits it through the purple, lilac, green and lemon foliage, and it always seems to me that I wake up inside a lit tree. The sparrows look into the gazebo with surprise. They are deadly busy for hours. They tick on a round table dug into the ground. The sparrows approach them, listen to the ticking with one ear or the other, and then peck the clock hard at the dial.
It’s especially good in the gazebo on quiet autumn nights, when the slow, sheer rain is making a low noise in the garden.
The cool air barely moves the candle tongue. Angular shadows from grape leaves lie on the ceiling of the gazebo. A moth, looking like a lump of gray raw silk, lands on an open book and leaves the finest shiny dust on the page.
It smells like rain - a gentle and at the same time pungent smell of moisture, damp garden paths.
At dawn I wake up. The fog rustles in the garden. Leaves are falling in the fog. I pull a bucket of water out of the well. A frog jumps out of the bucket. I douse myself with well water and listen to the shepherd’s horn - he is still singing far away, right at the outskirts.
I go to the empty bathhouse and boil tea. A cricket starts its song on the stove. He sings very loudly and does not pay attention to my steps or the clinking of cups.
It's getting light. I take the oars and go to the river. The chained dog Divny is sleeping at the gate. He hits the ground with his tail, but doesn't raise his head. Marvelous has long been accustomed to my leaving at dawn. He just yawns after me and sighs noisily.
I'm sailing in the fog. The East is turning pink. The smell of smoke from rural stoves can no longer be heard. All that remains is the silence of the water, thickets, and centuries-old willows.
Ahead is a deserted September day. Ahead - lost in this huge world of fragrant foliage, grass, autumn withering, calm waters, clouds, low sky. And I always feel this confusion as happiness.
Unselfishness
You can write a lot more about the Meshchera region. You can write that this region is very rich in forests and peat, hay and potatoes, milk and berries. But I don't write about it on purpose. Should we really love our land just because it is rich, that it produces abundant harvests and that its natural forces can be used for our well-being!
This is not the only reason we love our native places. We also love them because, even if they are not rich, they are beautiful to us. I love the Meshchersky region because it is beautiful, although all its charm is not revealed immediately, but very slowly, gradually.
At first glance, this is a quiet and unwise land under a dim sky. But the more you get to know it, the more, almost to the point of pain in your heart, you begin to love this ordinary land. And if I have to defend my country, then somewhere in the depths of my heart I will know that I am also defending this piece of land, which taught me to see and understand beauty, no matter how inconspicuous in appearance it may be - this thoughtful forest land, love for who will never be forgotten, just as first love is never forgotten.
Stories
yellow light
I woke up to a gray morning. The room was filled with an even yellow light, as if from a kerosene lamp. The light came from below, from the window, and illuminated the log ceiling most brightly.
The strange light - dim and motionless - was not like sunlight. It was the autumn leaves shining. During the windy and long night, the garden shed its dry leaves; they lay in noisy heaps on the ground and spread a dim glow. From this radiance, people’s faces seemed tanned, and the pages of the books on the table seemed to be covered with a layer of wax.
This is how autumn began. For me it came immediately this morning. Until then, I hardly noticed it: there was still no smell of rotten leaves in the garden, the water in the lakes did not turn green, and the burning frost did not yet lie on the plank roof in the morning.
Autumn came suddenly. This is how a feeling of happiness comes from the most unnoticeable things: from a distant steamship whistle on the Oka River or from a random smile.
Autumn came by surprise and took over the earth: gardens and rivers, forests and air, fields and birds. Everything immediately became autumn.
Tits were scurrying around in the garden. Their scream was like the sound of breaking glass. They hung upside down on the branches and looked out the window from under the maple leaves.
Every morning, migratory birds gathered in the garden, as if on an island. Amidst whistling, squealing and croaking, a commotion arose in the branches. Only during the day was it quiet in the garden: restless birds were flying south.
The leaves have begun to fall. Leaves fell day and night. They either flew obliquely in the wind, or lay vertically in the damp grass. The forests were drizzling with rain of flying leaves. This rain continued for weeks. Only towards the end of September the copses were exposed, and through the thicket of trees the blue distance of the compressed fields became visible.
At the same time, old Prokhor, a fisherman and basket maker (in Solotch, almost all old people become basket makers with age), told me a fairy tale about autumn. Until then, I had never heard this tale; Prokhor must have invented it himself.
“Look around,” Prokhor told me, picking at his bast shoe with an awl, “look closely, dear man, at what every bird or, say, other living creature breathes.” Look, explain. Otherwise they will say: I studied in vain. For example, a leaf falls off in the fall, but people don’t realize that a person is the main defendant in this matter. A man, say, invented gunpowder. The enemy will tear it apart with that gunpowder! I myself also dabbled in gunpowder. In ancient times, the village blacksmiths forged the first gun, filled it with gunpowder, and that gun fell into the hands of a fool. A fool walked through the forest and saw orioles flying under the skies, yellow cheerful birds flying and whistling, inviting guests. The fool hit them with both trunks - and the golden fluff flew to the ground, fell on the forests, and the forests withered, withered and fell overnight. And other leaves, where the bird’s blood got in, turned red and also fell off. I suppose I saw it in the forest - there is a yellow leaf and there is a red leaf. Until that time, all the birds spent the winter with us. Even the crane didn’t go anywhere. And the forests, both summer and winter, were filled with leaves, flowers and mushrooms. And there was no snow. There was no winter, I say. It wasn't! Why the hell did she surrender to us, winter, pray tell?! What's her interest? The fool killed the first bird - and the earth became sad. From that time on, leaf fall, and wet autumn, and leaf-cutting winds, and winters began. And the bird got scared, flies away from us, and took offense at the person. So, dear, it turns out that we have harmed ourselves, and we need not to spoil anything, but to take good care of it.
- What to protect?
- Well, let's say, different birds. Or a forest. Or water, so that there is transparency in it. Take care of everything, brother, otherwise you will be thrown around with earth and thrown to death.
I studied autumn hard and long. In order to truly see something, you need to convince yourself that you are seeing it for the first time in your life. It was the same with autumn. I convinced myself that this autumn was the first and last in my life. This helped me take a closer look at it and see a lot that I had not seen before, when the autumns passed without leaving any trace except the memory of slush and wet Moscow roofs.
I learned that autumn mixed all the pure colors that exist on earth and applied them, as if on a canvas, to the distant expanses of earth and sky.
I saw foliage, not only gold and purple, but also scarlet, violet, brown, black, gray and almost white. The colors seemed especially soft because of the autumn haze that hung motionless in the air. And when it rained, the softness of the colors gave way to brilliance. The sky, covered with clouds, still provided enough light for the wet forests to burn in the distance like crimson fires. In the pine thickets, birch trees sprinkled with gold leaf trembled from the cold. The echo from the blows of the ax, the distant hooting of women and the wind from the wings of a flying bird shook off this foliage. There were wide circles of fallen leaves around the trunks. The trees began to turn yellow from below: I saw aspens, red at the bottom and still completely green at the tops.
One autumn I was riding a boat along Prorva. It was noon. The low sun hung in the south. Its slanting light fell on the dark water and reflected from it. Stripes of solar reflections from the waves raised by the oars ran rhythmically along the banks, rising from the water and dying out in the tops of the trees. Stripes of light penetrated the thicket of grass and bushes, and for an instant the shores flashed with hundreds of colors, as if a sunbeam were striking a placer of multi-colored ore. The light revealed either black shiny stems of grass with orange dried berries, then fiery caps of fly agarics, as if splashed with chalk, then ingots of compacted oak leaves and the red backs of ladybugs.
Often in the fall I would closely watch the falling leaves to catch that imperceptible split second when a leaf leaves the branch and begins to fall to the ground. But I didn’t succeed for a long time. I've read in old books about the sound of falling leaves, but I've never heard that sound. If the leaves rustled, it was only on the ground, under a person’s feet. The rustling of leaves in the air seemed as implausible to me as stories about hearing grass sprouting in the spring.
I was, of course, wrong. Time was needed so that the ear, dulled by the grinding of city streets, could rest and catch the very pure and precise sounds of the autumn earth.
One late evening I went out into the garden, to the well. I placed a dim kerosene bat lantern on the frame and took out some water. Leaves were floating in the bucket. They were everywhere. There was no way to get rid of them anywhere. Brown bread from the bakery was brought with wet leaves stuck to it. The wind threw handfuls of leaves on the table, on the bed, on the floor, on the books, and it was difficult to walk along the paths of the garden: you had to walk on the leaves, as if through deep snow. We found leaves in the pockets of our raincoats, in our caps, in our hair—everywhere. We slept on them and were thoroughly saturated with their smell.
There are autumn nights, deaf and silent, when there is no wind over the black wooded edge and only the watchman's beater can be heard from the village outskirts.
It was just such a night. The lantern illuminated the well, the old maple under the fence and the nasturtium bush tousled by the wind in the yellowed flowerbed.
I looked at the maple and saw how a red leaf carefully and slowly separated from the branch, shuddered, stopped in the air for an instant and began to fall obliquely at my feet, slightly rustling and swaying. For the first time I heard the rustling of a falling leaf - a vague sound, like a child's whisper.
Night stood over the silent land. The outpouring of starlight was bright, almost unbearable. The autumn constellations shone in the bucket of water and in the small window of the hut with the same intense intensity as in the sky.
The constellations of Perseus and Orion passed their slow path over the Earth, trembled in the water of lakes, dimmed in the thickets where wolves slumbered, and were reflected on the scales of fish sleeping on the shallows in Staritsa and Prorva.
By dawn, Sirius was lighting up green. His low fire always got entangled in the willow foliage. Jupiter was setting in the meadows over black haystacks and damp roads, and Saturn was rising from the other side of the sky, from forests forgotten and abandoned by man in the fall.
The starry night passed over the earth, dropping cold sparks of meteors, in the rustle of reeds, in the tart smell of autumn water.
At the end of autumn I met Prokhor on Prorva. Gray-haired and shaggy, covered in fish scales, he sat under the willow bushes and fished for perches. From the looks of it, Prokhor was a hundred years old, no less. He smiled with his toothless mouth, pulled out a fat, crazy perch from his wallet and patted it on its fat side - he boasted of his catch.
Until evening we fished together, chewed stale bread and talked in low voices about the recent forest fire.
It began near the village of Lopuhi, in a clearing where the mowers had forgotten the fire. There was a dry wind blowing. The fire quickly moved north. He was moving at a speed of twenty kilometers per hour. It hummed like hundreds of airplanes flying low over the ground.
In the sky, overcast with smoke, the sun hung like a crimson spider on a dense gray web. The smoke was corroding my eyes. A slow rain of ash fell. It covered the river water with a gray coating. Sometimes birch leaves fell from the sky, turned to ash. They crumbled into dust at the slightest touch.
At night, a gloomy glow swirled in the east, cows mooed sadly through the courtyards, horses neighed, and white flares flashed on the horizon - these were Red Army units extinguishing the fire, warning each other about the approaching fire.
We returned from Prorva in the evening. The sun was setting behind the Oka. Between us and the sun lay a dim silver stripe. This sun was reflected in the thick autumn cobwebs that covered the meadows.
During the day, cobwebs flew through the air, became entangled in uncut grass, and stuck like yarn to oars, faces, fishing rods, and the horns of cows. It stretched from one bank of the Prorva to the other and slowly braided the river with light and sticky nets. In the morning, dew settled on the web. Covered with cobwebs and dew, the willows stood under the sun, like fairy-tale trees transplanted to our lands from distant countries.
On each web sat a small spider. He weaved a web while the wind carried him above the ground. He flew tens of kilometers on the web. It was a spider migration, very similar to the autumn migration of birds. But until now no one knows why spiders fly every autumn, covering the ground with their finest yarn.
At home, I washed the cobwebs from my face and lit the stove. The smell of birch smoke mixed with the smell of juniper. An old cricket sang and mice crawled under the floor. They stole rich supplies into their holes: forgotten crackers and cinders, sugar and petrified pieces of cheese.
I woke up late at night. The second roosters were crowing, the fixed stars were shining in their usual places, and the wind was carefully rustling over the garden, patiently waiting for dawn.
Watercolor paints
When the word “Motherland” was uttered in front of Berg, he grinned. He didn't understand what this meant. The homeland, the land of the fathers, the country where he was born - in the end, does it matter where a person was born? One of his comrades was even born in the ocean on a cargo ship between America and Europe.
“Where is this man’s homeland? – Berg asked himself. “Is the ocean really this monotonous plain of water, black from the wind and oppressing the heart with constant anxiety?”
Berg saw the ocean. When he studied painting in Paris, he happened to visit the banks of the English Channel. The ocean was not akin to him.
Land of the fathers! Berg felt no attachment either to his childhood or to the small Jewish town on the Dnieper, where his grandfather went blind while using grit and a shoe awl.
I always remembered my hometown as a faded and poorly painted picture, thickly covered with flies. He was remembered as dust, the sweet stench of garbage dumps, dry poplars, dirty clouds over the outskirts, where soldiers - defenders of the fatherland - were drilled in the barracks.
During the Civil War, Berg did not notice the places where he had to fight. He shrugged his shoulders mockingly when the fighters, with a special light in their eyes, said that they would soon recapture their native lands from the whites and water their horses with water from their native Don.
- Chatter! – Berg said gloomily. “People like us do not and cannot have a homeland.”
- Eh, Berg, you crack soul! – the soldiers answered with heavy reproach. - What kind of fighter and creator of new life are you when you don’t love the earth, eccentric! And also an artist!
Maybe that’s why Berg wasn’t good at landscapes. He preferred portraits, genres and, finally, posters. He tried to find the style of his time, but these attempts were full of failures and ambiguities.
The years passed over the Soviet country like a wide wind - wonderful years of work and overcoming. Over the years, we have accumulated experience and traditions. Life was turning, like a prism, with a new facet, and in it, old feelings were refracted freshly and at times not quite understandably for Berg: love, hatred, courage, suffering and, finally, a sense of the Motherland.
One day in early autumn, Berg received a letter from the artist Yartsev. He invited him to come to the Murom forests, where he spent the summer. Berg was friends with Yartsev and, in addition, did not leave Moscow for several years. He went.
At a remote station behind Vladimir, Berg switched to a narrow-gauge train.
August was hot and windless. The train smelled of rye bread. Berg sat on the footboard of the carriage, breathing greedily, and it seemed to him that he was breathing not air, but amazing sunlight.
Grasshoppers screamed in the clearings overgrown with white dried carnations. The stations smelled of unwise wildflowers.
Yartsev lived far from the deserted station, in the forest, on the shore of a deep lake with black water. He rented a hut from a forester.
Berg was driven to the lake by the forester’s son, Vanya Zotov, a stooped and shy boy.
The cart knocked on the roots and creaked in the deep sand. Orioles whistled sadly in the copses. A yellow leaf occasionally fell onto the road. Pink clouds stood high in the sky above the tops of the mast pines.
Berg was lying in the cart, and his heart was beating dullly and heavily.
“It must be from the air,” thought Berg.
Lake Berg suddenly saw through the thicket of thinned forests. It lay obliquely, as if rising towards the horizon, and behind it, thickets of golden birch trees were visible through the swampy darkness. A haze hung over the lake from recent forest fires. Dead leaves floated across the tar-black, transparent water.
Berg lived on the lake for about a month. He was not going to work and did not take any oil paints with him. He brought only a small box with a French watercolor by Lefranc, preserved from Parisian times. Berg treasured these paints very much.
For whole days he lay in the clearings and looked at the flowers and herbs with curiosity. He was especially struck by the euonymus: its black berries were hidden in a corolla of carmine petals. Berg collected rosehips and fragrant junipers, long pine needles, aspen leaves, where black and blue spots were scattered across the lemon field, fragile lichens and wilting cloves. He carefully examined the autumn leaves from the inside out, where the yellowness was slightly touched by a light leaden frost.
Olive swimming beetles were running in the lake, fish were playing with dim lightning, and the last lilies lay on the quiet surface of the water, as if on black glass.
On hot days, Berg heard a quiet trembling ringing in the forest. The heat rang, dry grass, beetles and grasshoppers rang. At sunset, flocks of cranes flew over the lake to the south, and Vanya said to Berg every time:
“It seems like the birds are abandoning us, flying to the warm seas.”
For the first time, Berg felt a stupid insult: the cranes seemed to him to be traitors. They abandoned without regret this deserted, forested and solemn region, full of nameless lakes, impassable thickets, dry foliage, the measured hum of pine trees and air smelling of resin and swamp mosses.
- Weirdos! - Berg noted, and the feeling of resentment for the forests becoming empty every day no longer seemed funny and childish to him.
Berg once met Grandma Tatyana in the forest. She trudged in from afar, from Zaborye, to pick mushrooms.
Berg wandered with her through the thickets and listened to Tatyana’s leisurely stories. From her he learned that their region - the wilderness - had been famous since ancient times for its painters. Tatyana told him the names of famous artisans who painted wooden spoons and dishes with gold and cinnabar*, but Berg never heard these names and blushed.
Berg spoke little. Occasionally he exchanged a few words with Yartsev. Yartsev spent whole days reading, sitting on the shore of the lake. He didn't want to talk either.
It started raining in September. They rustled in the grass. The air became warmer from them, and the coastal thickets smelled wildly and pungently, like wet animal skin.
At night, the rains slowly rustled through the forests along remote roads leading to no one knows where, along the plank roof of the lodge, and it seemed that they were destined to drizzle all autumn over this forested country.
Yartsev got ready to leave. Berg got angry. How could you leave in the midst of this extraordinary autumn?! Berg now felt Yartsev’s desire to leave the same way he once felt the flight of the cranes - it was betrayal. Why? Berg could hardly answer this question. A betrayal of forests, lakes, autumn, and finally, a warm sky drizzling with frequent rain.
“I’m staying,” Berg said sharply. - You can run, this is your business, but I want to write this fall.
Yartsev left. The next day Berg woke up to the sun. There was no rain. Light shadows of branches trembled on the clean floor, and a quiet blue shone behind the door.
Berg encountered the word “radiance” only in the books of poets; he considered it pompous and devoid of clear meaning. But now he understood how accurately this word conveys that special light that comes from the September sky and sun.
The web flew over the lake, every yellow leaf on the grass glowed with light, like a bronze ingot. The wind carried the smells of forest bitterness and withering herbs.
Berg took paints and paper and, without even drinking tea, went to the lake. Vanya transported him to the far shore.
Berg was in a hurry. The forests, illuminated obliquely by the sun, seemed to him like piles of light copper ore. The last birds whistled thoughtfully in the blue air, and the clouds dissolved in the sky, rising to the zenith.
Berg was in a hurry. He wanted to give all the power of the colors, all the skill of his hands and keen eye, all that was trembling somewhere in his heart to this paper, in order to depict at least a hundredth part of the splendor of these forests, dying majestically and simply.
Berg worked like a man possessed, singing and shouting. Vanya had never seen him like this. He watched Berg's every move, changed his paint water and handed him porcelain cups with paint from a box.
A dull twilight passed like a sudden wave through the foliage. The gold was fading. The air grew dim. A distant, menacing murmur swept from edge to edge of the forests and froze somewhere above the burnt areas. Berg didn't turn around.
- The storm is coming! – Vanya shouted. - We need to go home!
“An autumn thunderstorm,” Berg answered absentmindedly and began to work even more feverishly.
Thunder split the sky, the black water trembled, but the last reflections of the sun still wandered in the forests. Berg was in a hurry.
Vanya pulled his hand:
- Look back. Look, what fear!
Berg didn't turn around. With his back he felt that wild darkness and dust were coming from behind - leaves were already flying like a shower, and, fleeing the thunderstorm, frightened birds were flying low over the small forest.
Berg was in a hurry. There were only a few strokes left.
Vanya grabbed his hand. Berg heard a rushing roar, as if the oceans were coming at him, flooding the forests.
Then Berg looked back. Black smoke fell onto the lake. The scaffolding swayed. Behind them, like a lead wall, the rain roared, cut by cracks of lightning. The first heavy drop clicked on my hand.
Berg quickly hid the sketch in a drawer, took off his jacket, wrapped it around the drawer, and grabbed a small box of watercolors. Water spray hit my face. The wet leaves swirled like a snowstorm and blinded my eyes.
Lightning split a nearby pine tree. Berg went deaf. A downpour fell from the low sky, and Berg and Vanya rushed to the shuttle.
Wet and shivering from the cold, Berg and Vanya reached the lodge an hour later. At the gatehouse, Berg discovered a missing box of watercolors. The colors were lost - Lefranc's magnificent colors! Berg searched for them for two days, but, of course, found nothing.
Two months later in Moscow, Berg received a letter written in large, clumsy letters.
“Hello, Comrade Berg! – Vanya wrote. – Write down what to do with your paints and how to deliver them to you. After you left, I looked for them for two weeks, searched everything until I found them, but I caught a bad cold - because it was already raining - I got sick and couldn’t write to you earlier. I almost died, but now I’m walking, although I’m still very weak. Dad says that I had inflammation in my lungs. So don't be angry.
Send me, if possible, a book about our forests and all kinds of trees and colored pencils - I really want to draw. Our snow has already fallen and melted, and in the forest, under some tree, you look and there is a hare sitting. We will be looking forward to seeing you in our native places in the summer.
I'm staying Vanya Zotov»
Along with Vanya’s letter they brought a notice about the exhibition: Berg was supposed to participate in it. He was asked to tell us how many of his things he would exhibit and under what name.
Berg sat down at the table and quickly wrote:
“I’m exhibiting only one watercolor sketch I made this summer - my first landscape.”
It was midnight. Shaggy snow fell outside on the window sills, glowing with magical fire - the reflection of street lamps. In the next apartment someone was playing a Grieg sonata* on the piano. The clock on the Spasskaya Tower struck steadily and far away. Then they started playing “Internationale”*.
Berg sat smiling for a long time. Of course, he will give Lefranc’s paints to Vanya.
Berg wanted to trace by what elusive ways a clear and joyful feeling of his homeland appeared in him. It matured for years, decades of revolutionary years, but the final impetus was given by the forest edge, autumn, the cries of cranes and Vanya Zotov. Why? Berg could not find the answer, although he knew that it was so.
“Oh, Berg, you crack soul! – he remembered the words of the fighters. “What kind of fighter and creator of new life are you when you don’t love your land, you weirdo!”
The fighters were right. Berg knew that he was now connected with his country not only with his mind, not only with his devotion to the revolution, but with all his heart, as an artist, and that love for the Motherland made his smart but dry life warm, cheerful and a hundred times more beautiful, than before.