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

The narration is told in the first person: “I remember an early fine autumn”, “I remember a fruitful year”, “Now I see myself again in the village...”. Often a phrase begins with the word “remember.” “I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinning garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness.” The theme of memory in the story is one of the main ones. The memory is so sharp that the narration is often conducted in the present tense: “The air is so clean, as if there was none at all, voices and the creaking of carts are heard throughout the garden,” “there is a strong smell of apples everywhere.” But an acute longing for the past changes time, and the hero-narrator talks about the recent past as if it were distant: “These days were so recent, and yet it seems to me that almost a whole century has passed since then.”

Bunin dwells on the attractive aspects of landowner life: the closeness of nobles and peasants, the fusion of human life with nature, its naturalness. Durable huts, gardens, home comfort, hunting scenes, riotous feasts, peasant labor, reverent communication with books, antique furniture, hospitality with hospitable dinners are lovingly described. Patriarchal life appears in an idyllic light, in its obvious aestheticization and poeticization. The author regrets the lost harmony and beauty, the peaceful passage of days, the prosaic present, where the smell of Antonov apples has faded, where there are no hounds, no servants and no owner himself - the landowner-hunter. What is often remembered is not events and pictures, but impressions: “There are a lot of people - all the people are tanned, with weathered faces... And in the yard a horn is blowing and dogs are howling in different voices... I can still feel how greedily and capaciously the young breast was breathing the cold of a clear and damp day in the evening, when you used to ride with Arseny Semyonych’s noisy gang, excited by the musical gallop of dogs abandoned in the black forest on some Red Hill or Gremyachiy Island, which by its very name excites the hunter.” Changes in reality are obvious - the picture of an abandoned cemetery and the passing of Vyselkovsky inhabitants gives rise to sadness, a feeling of farewell, reminiscent of an epitaph akin to Turgenev’s pages about the desolation of noble nests.

The story does not have a clear plot line; it is made up of a number of “fragmented” pictures, impressions, and memories. Their change reflects the gradual disappearance of the old way of life. Each of these fragments of life has a specific coloring: “A cool garden filled with purple mist”; “Sometimes in the evening, between the gloomy low clouds, the flickering golden light of the low sun would break through in the west.”

Bunin seems to take over the baton from L.N. Tolstoy, idealizing a person living among forests and meadows. He poetizes natural phenomena. God why, along with sadness in the story, there is also a motive of joy, bright acceptance and affirmation of life. Read the descriptions of nature. Forest landscape at the time of hunting, an open field, a panorama of the steppe, sketches of an apple orchard, and the diamond constellation Stozhar. Landscapes are presented in dynamics, in a subtle rendering of colors and author’s moods. Bunin reproduces the change of time of day, the rhythm of the seasons, the renewal of everyday life, the struggle of eras, the unstoppable flight of time, which is associated with Bunin’s characters and the author’s thoughts. In Antonov Apples, Bunin showed not only the elegance of a noble estate, but also the vanished poetry of ancient Russian life - noble and peasant, the way of life on which Russia stood for centuries. The writer revealed the values ​​on which this way of life was based - attachment to the earth, the ability to hear and understand it: “We listen for a long time and distinguish the trembling in the earth. The trembling turns into noise, grows..."

The story is distinguished by its special lyrical emotion, conveyed by the original vocabulary, expressive epithets, rhythm and syntax of Bunin's text. The critic Yu. Aikhenvald noted that Bunin “does not maliciously, but painfully depicts Russian rural poverty... looks back with sadness at the obsolete era of our history, at all these ruined noble nests.” If you remember the beginning of the story, it is full of joyful cheerfulness: “How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world!” Gradually, the intonation changes, nostalgic notes appear: “In recent years, one thing has supported the fading spirit of the landowners - hunting.” In the end, in the description of late autumn there is an outright sadness.

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

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

In his assessment of the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907, Bunin was restrained. Emphasizing his apoliticality, in 1907 he went to travel with his wife, Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, an intelligent and educated woman who became his devoted and selfless friend for life. They lived together for many years, and after Bunin’s death she prepared his manuscripts for publication and wrote a biography, “The Life of Bunin.”

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

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

Story by I.A. Bunin's “Antonov Apples” is one of those works where the writer with sad love remembers the irretrievably gone “golden” days. The author worked in an era of fundamental changes in society: the entire beginning of the twentieth century was drenched in blood. It was possible to escape from the aggressive environment only by remembering the best moments.

The idea for the story came to the author in 1891, when he was visiting his brother Eugene at the estate. The smell of Antonov apples, which filled the autumn days, reminded Bunin of those times when the estates flourished, and the landowners did not become poor, and the peasants reverently treated everything lordly. The author was sensitive to the culture of the nobility and the old-time way of life, and deeply felt their decline. That is why a cycle of epitaph stories stands out in his work, which tell about the long-gone, “dead”, but still so dear old world.

The writer hatched his work for 9 years. “Antonov Apples” was first published in 1900. However, the story continued to be refined and changed, Bunin polished the literary language, gave the text even more imagery, and removed everything unnecessary.

What is the work about?

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

A fruitful year in the ancestral village of the main character of Vyselka is pleasing to the eye: everywhere there is contentment, joy, wealth, the simple happiness of the men. The narrator himself would like to be a man, not seeing any problems in this lot, but only health, naturalness and closeness to nature, and not at all poverty, lack of land and humiliation. From the peasant life he moves on to the noble life of former times: serfdom and immediately after, when landowners still played the main role. An example is the estate of Aunt Anna Gerasimovna, where prosperity, severity, and serf-like obedience of the servants were felt. The decor of the house also seems to be frozen in the past, even conversations are only about the past, but this also has its own poetry.

Hunting, one of the main entertainments of the nobility, is especially discussed. Arseny Semenovich, the brother-in-law of the main character, organized large-scale hunts, sometimes for several days. The whole house was filled with people, vodka, cigarette smoke, and dogs. The conversations and memories about this are remarkable. The narrator saw these amusements even in his dreams, falling into a slumber on soft feather beds in some corner room under the images. But it’s also nice to sleep through the hunt, because in the old estate there are books, portraits, and magazines all around, the sight of which fills you with “sweet and strange melancholy.”

But life has changed, it has become “beggarly”, “small-scale”. But it also contains remnants of former greatness, poetic echoes of former noble happiness. So, on the threshold of a century of change, the landowners had only memories of carefree days.

The main characters and their characteristics

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

Problems

The problematics of the story “Antonov Apples” mainly focus on the theme of the impoverishment of the nobility, their loss of their former authority. According to the author, the life of a landowner is beautiful, poetic, in village life there is no place for boredom, vulgarity and cruelty, owners and peasants coexist perfectly with each other and are inconceivable separately. Bunin’s poeticization of serfdom also clearly emerges, because it was then that these beautiful estates flourished.

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

Subject

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

Meaning

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

The meaning of this story by Bunin is to create a picturesque canvas, to plunge into a bygone but alluring world of serenity and prosperity. For many people, escapism became a solution, but it was short-lived. Nevertheless, “Antonov Apples” is an exemplary work in artistic terms, and you can learn from Bunin the beauty of his style and imagery.

Interesting? Save it on your wall!

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

C The date the story was written is symbolic: 1900 – turn of the century. It seems to connect the world of past and present.

Sadness for those who are passing away noble nests- the leitmotif not only of this story, but also of numerous poems by Bunin .

"Evening"

We always only remember about happiness.
And nowit's everywhere. Maybe it's
This autumn garden behind the barn
And clean air flowing through the window.

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

The window is open. She squeaked and sat down
There's a bird on the windowsill. And from books
I look away from my tired gaze for a moment.

The day is getting dark, the sky is empty.
The hum of a threshing machine can be heard on the threshing floor...
I see, I hear, I am happy. Everything is in me. (14.08.09)

Questions:

1. Determine the theme of the poem.

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

3. Name emotionally charged epithets.

4. Explain the meaning of the line: “I see, I hear, I’m happy...”.

Pay attention to:

- the objective realities of the landscape picture painted by the poet;

- techniques for “sounding” the landscape;

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

- features of vocabulary (word selection, tropes);

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

- prayers of loneliness of the lyrical hero in the “Bunin” landscape.

The very first words of the work“...I remember an early fine autumn”immerse us in the world of the hero’s memories, and plot begins to develop as a chain of sensations associated with them.
lack of plot, i.e. event dynamics. WITHplot of the storylyrical , that is, based not on events (epic), but on the experience of the hero.

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

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

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

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

• In the first chapter:« In the dark, in the depths of the garden - fairytale picture: As if in a corner of hell, the hut is burning with a crimson flame. surrounded by darkness, and someone’s black silhouettes, as if carved from ebony wood, are moving around the fire, while giant shadows from them walk through the apple trees.” .
• In the second chapter:“Almost all the small foliage has flown off the coastal vines, and the branches are visible in the turquoise sky. Water under the vines became transparent, icy and as if heavy... When you used to drive through the village on a sunny morning, you kept thinking about what was good mow, thresh, sleep on the threshing floor in blankets, and on holiday to rise with the sun..." .
• In the third:« The wind tore and tore the trees for days on end, the rains watered them from morning to night... the wind did not let up. It disturbed the garden, tore up a continuous stream of human smoke running from the chimney, and again caught up with the ominous strands of ash clouds. They ran low and fast - and soon, like smoke, they clouded the sun. Its shine has faded, the window was closing into the blue sky, and in the garden it became deserted and boring, and more and more often the rain began to fall..."
• And in the fourth chapter : “The days are bluish and cloudy... All day long I wander through the empty plains...” .

Conclusion
The description of autumn is conveyed by the narrator through color and sound perception. Reading the story, it’s as if you yourself smell apples, rye straw, fragrant smoke from a fire...
The autumn landscape changes from chapter to chapter: colors fade, sunlight becomes less. That is, the story describes the autumn of not one year, but several, and this is constantly emphasized in the text: “I remember a fruitful year”; “These were so recent, and yet it seems that almost a whole century has passed since then.”.

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

• Composition
  

The story consists of four chapters:

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

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

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

• Way of life and nostalgia for the past

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

• Organization of space and time

The very date the story was writtensymbolic . It is this date that helps to understand why the story begins (“...I remember an early fine autumn”) and ends (“I covered the path with white snow...”). In this way, a kind of “ring” is formed, which makes the narrative continuous. In fact, the story, like eternal life itself, is neither begun nor finished. It sounds in the space of memory, since it embodies the soul of man, the soul of the people.

My gates opened wide,

Covered the path with white snow...

• Smell, color, sound...

“strongly smells the fragrant smoke of cherry branches”,

“rye aroma of new straw and chaff”,

“the smell of apples, and then others: old mahogany furniture, dried linden blossoms, which have been lying on the windows since June...”,

“These books, similar to church breviaries, smell wonderful... Some kind of pleasant sour mold, ancient perfume...”,

“smell of smoke, housing”,“the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness”,

“The ravines smell strongly of mushroom dampness, rotten leaves and wet tree bark”.

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

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

But with a change in the worldview, the colors of the surrounding world also change, colors gradually disappear from it: “The days are bluish and cloudy... All day long I wander through the empty plains”, “low gloomy sky”, “gray master”. Halftones and shades (“turquoise”, “lilac” and others), present in the first parts of the work, are replaced by contrast of black and white(“black garden”, “the fields are sharply turning black with arable land... the fields will turn white”, “snowy fields”).

Visual images in the work are as clear and graphic as possible: “the black sky is lined with fiery stripes by falling stars”, “the small foliage has almost all flown off the coastal vines, and the branches are visible in the turquoise sky”, “the liquid blue sky shone coldly and brightly in the north above the heavy lead clouds”, “the black garden will shine through cold turquoise sky and obediently wait for winter... And the fields are already sharply turning black with arable land and brightly green with overgrown winter crops.”

Similar “cinematic” an image built on contrasts creates in the reader the illusion of an action taking place before our eyes or captured on the artist’s canvas:

“In the darkness, in the depths of the garden, there is a fabulous picture: as if in a corner of hell, a crimson flame is burning near a hut, surrounded by darkness, and someone’s black silhouettes, as if carved from ebony wood, are moving around the fire, while giant shadows are moving from them on apple trees. Either a black hand several arshins in size will fall across the entire tree, then two legs will clearly appear - two black pillars. And suddenly all this will slide from the apple tree - and the shadow will fall along the entire alley, from the hut to the gate itself...”

“The cool silence of the morning is broken only by a well-fed blackbirds clucking... voices and the booming sound of apples being poured into measures and tubs,”

“We listen for a long time and notice trembling in the ground. The trembling turns into noise, grows, and now, as if already outside the garden, the noisy beat of the wheels is rapidly beating out, thundering and knocking, the train is rushing... closer, closer, louder and angrier... And suddenly it starts subside, stall, as if going into the ground...”,

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

“you can hear how the gardener carefully walks through the rooms, lighting the stoves, and how the firewood crackles and shoots,” can be heard “How carefully... a long convoy creaks along the high road”, people's voices are heard. At the end of the story one hears more and more insistently “pleasant sound of threshing”, And “the monotonous cry and whistle of the driver” merge with the roar of the drum. And then the guitar is tuned, and someone starts a song that everyone picks up “with sad, hopeless daring”.

“with pleasure you feel the slippery leather of the saddle under you”,
“thick, rough paper”

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

Thus, noting the hero’s instant sensations from contact with the outside world, Bunin strives to convey all that “deep, wonderful, inexpressible that is in life”: “How cold, dewy, and how good it is to live in the world!”

The hero in his youth is characterized by an acute experience of joy and fullness of being: “My chest breathed greedily and capaciously,” “you keep thinking about how good it is to mow, thresh, sleep on the threshing floor in the sweepers...”

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

It’s not just the old way of life that is dying—an entire era of Russian history is dying, the noble era poeticized by Bunin in this work. By the end of the story it becomes more and more clear and persistent motif of emptiness and cold.

This is shown with particular force in the image of a garden, once “big, golden” filled with sounds, aromas, now - “chilled overnight, naked”, “blackened”, as well as artistic details, the most expressive of which is the found “in the wet leaves, a cold and wet apple was accidentally forgotten”, which “for some reason it will seem unusually tasty, not at all like the others.”

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

“Then you’ll get to work on the books – your grandfather’s books in thick leather bindings, with gold stars on morocco spines... Nice... notes in their margins, large and with round soft strokes made with a quill pen. You unfold the book and read: “A thought worthy ancient and new philosophers, the color of reason and feelings of the heart”... and you involuntarily become carried away by the book itself... And little by little a sweet and strange melancholy begins to creep into your heart...

...And here are magazines with the names of Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, lyceum student Pushkin. And with sadness you will remember your grandmother, her polonaises on the clavichord, her languid reading of poetry from “Eugene Onegin.” And the old dreamy life will appear before you...”

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

Answer

Larisa Vasilievna TOROPCHINA - teacher at Moscow gymnasium No. 1549; Honored Teacher of Russia.

“The smell of Antonov apples disappears from the landowners’ estates...”

The Cherry Orchard has been sold, it’s no longer there, it’s true...
They forgot about me...
A.P. Chekhov

Speaking about cross-cutting themes in literature, I would like to highlight the theme fading of the landowners' nests as one of the interesting and deep ones. Looking at it, students in grades 10–11 turn to the works of the 19th–20th centuries.

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

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

However, by the middle of the 19th century, the picture of Russian life had changed: reforms were ripe in society, and writers were not slow to reflect these changes in their works. And here before the reader are no longer self-confident owners of serf souls, who just recently proudly said: “The law is my desire, the fist is my police,” and the confused owner of the Maryino estate, Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov, an intelligent, kind-hearted man who found himself on the eve of the abolition of serfdom rights in a difficult situation, when the peasants almost cease to obey their master, and he can only exclaim with bitterness: “I have no more strength!” True, at the end of the novel we learn that Arkady Kirsanov, who left the worship of the ideas of nihilism in the past, “has become a zealous owner” and the “farm” he created is already generating quite a significant income, and Nikolai Petrovich “has become a global mediator and is working hard strength." As Turgenev says, “their affairs are beginning to improve” - but for how long? Another three to four decades will pass - and the Kirsanovs will be replaced by the Ranevskys and Gaevs (“The Cherry Orchard” by A.P. Chekhov), the Arsenyevs and the Khrushchevs (“The Life of Arsenyev” and “Sukhodol” by I.A. Bunin). And we can talk about these heroes, their way of life, characters, habits, and actions in more detail.

First of all, you should select works of art for conversation: this could be the story “Belated Flowers”, the plays “The Cherry Orchard”, “Three Sisters”, “Uncle Vanya” by A.P. Chekhov, the novel “The Life of Arsenyev”, the stories “Sukhodol”, “Antonov Apples”, the stories “Natalie”, “Snowdrop”, “Rus” by I.A. Bunina. Of these works, you can select two or three for detailed analysis, while others can be approached in fragments.

Students analyze “The Cherry Orchard” in class; a lot of literary studies have been devoted to the play. And yet, everyone - with a careful reading of the text - can discover something new in this comedy. Thus, speaking about the fading life of the nobility at the end of the 19th century, students notice that the heroes of “The Cherry Orchard” Ranevskaya and Gaev, despite the sale of the estate where they spent the best years of their lives, despite the pain and sorrow of the past, are alive and even in the end relatively prosperous. Lyubov Andreevna, having taken the fifteen thousand that her Yaroslavl grandmother sent, goes abroad, although she understands that this money - given her extravagance - will not last long. Gaev, too, is not finishing his last piece of bread: he is guaranteed a place in the bank; it’s another matter whether he, the master, the aristocrat, can handle it, condescendingly telling the devoted lackey: “You go away, Firs. So be it, I’ll undress myself,” with the position of “bank clerk.” And, always fussing about where to borrow money, the impoverished Simeonov-Pishchik will perk up at the end of the play: “the English came to his estate and found some white clay in the ground” and he “rented them a plot of clay for twenty four years". Now this fussy, simple-minded man even distributes part of the debts (“owes everyone”) and hopes for the best.

But for the devoted Firs, who, after the abolition of serfdom, “did not agree to freedom, remained with the masters” and who remembers the blessed times when cherries from the garden were “dried, soaked, pickled, made jam,” life is over: he is not today or tomorrow will die - from old age, from hopelessness, from being useless to anyone. His words sound bitter: “They forgot about me...” The gentlemen abandoned him, like old man Firs, and the old cherry orchard, leaving what, according to Ranevskaya, was her “life”, “youth”, “happiness”. The former serf and now the new master of life, Ermolai Lopakhin, has already “taken an ax to the cherry orchard.” Ranevskaya cries, but does nothing to save the garden, the estate, and Anya, a young representative of a once rich and noble noble family, leaves her native place even with joy: “What have you done to me, Petya, why do I no longer love the cherry orchard, like before?" But “they do not renounce in love”! So, she didn’t love her that much. It’s bitter that they so easily leave what was once the meaning of life: after the sale of the cherry orchard, “everyone calmed down, even became happier... in fact, everything is fine now.” And only the author’s remark at the end of the play: “Among the silence, a dull knock on wood is heard, sounding lonely and sad” (italics mine. - L.T.) - says that sad becomes Chekhov himself, as if warning his heroes against forgetting their former life.

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

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

And the Prozorov sisters, the general’s daughters, repeat throughout the entire play (“Three Sisters”), like a spell: “To Moscow! To Moscow! To Moscow!”, their desire to leave the dull provincial town is never realized. Irina is about to leave, but at the end of the play she is still here, in this “philistine, despicable life.” Will he leave? Chekhov puts an ellipsis...

If Chekhov's noble heroes are passive, but at the same time kind, intelligent, and benevolent, then the heroes of I.A. Bunin susceptible degeneration, both moral and physical. Students, of course, will remember the characters of the piercingly tragic story “Sukhodol”: the crazy grandfather Pyotr Kirillich, who “was killed ... by his illegitimate son Gervaska, a friend of the father” of the young Khrushchevs; gone crazy “from unhappy love,” the pitiful, hysterical Aunt Tonya, “who lived in one of the old courtyard huts near the impoverished Sukhodolsk estate”; the son of Pyotr Kirillich - Pyotr Petrovich, with whom the courtyard Natalya selflessly fell in love and who exiled her for this “into exile, to the farm C O shki"; and Natalya herself, the foster sister of Pyotr Kirillich’s other son, Arkady Petrovich, whose father was “driven into becoming a soldier by the Khrushchevs,” and whose “mother was in such trepidation that her heart broke at the sight of the dead turkey poults.” It is amazing that at the same time, the former serf does not hold a grudge against her owners, moreover, she believes that “there were no simpler, kinder Sukhodol gentlemen in the entire universe.”

As an example of a consciousness disfigured by serfdom (after all, the unfortunate woman absorbed slavish obedience literally with her mother’s milk!), students will cite an episode when a half-crazed young lady, to whom Natalya was assigned to “consist”, “cruelly and with pleasure tore her hair” just because the maid “clumsily pulled” the stocking from the lady’s leg. Natalya remained silent, did not in any way resist the attack of unreasonable rage and only, smiling through her tears, determined for herself: “It will be difficult for me.” How can one not remember Firs (“The Cherry Orchard”), forgotten by everyone in the turmoil of his departure, as a child rejoicing that his “mistress... has arrived” from abroad, and on the verge of death (in the literal sense of the word!) lamenting not for himself, but about the fact that “Leonid Andreich... didn’t put on a fur coat, he went in a coat,” and he, the old footman, “didn’t even look”!

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

Yes, on the one hand, says the narrator, “there was charm... in the ruined Sukhodolsk estate”: it smelled of jasmine, elderberry and euonymus grew rapidly in the garden, “the wind, running through the garden, brought... the silky rustle of birches with satin-white trunks speckled with niello ... the green-golden oriole cried out sharply and joyfully” (remember Nekrasov’s “there is no ugliness in nature”), and on the other hand, a “nondescript” dilapidated house instead of the burnt “grandfather’s oak house”, several old birches and poplars left over from the garden, “overgrown with wormwood and beetroot” barn and glacier. There is devastation and desolation everywhere. A sad impression, but once upon a time, according to legend, the young Khrushchev noted that his great-grandfather, “a rich man, only moved from Kursk to Sukhodol in his old age,” did not like the Sukhodol wilderness. And now his descendants are doomed to vegetate here almost in poverty, although before “they didn’t know what to do with the money,” according to Natalya. “Fat, small, with a gray beard,” the widow of Pyotr Petrovich Klavdiya Markovna spends her time knitting “thread socks,” and “Aunt Tonya” in a torn robe, put directly on her naked body, with a high shlyk on her head, constructed “from some kind of dirty rag”, looks like Baba Yaga and is a truly pathetic sight.

Even the narrator’s father, a “carefree man” for whom “there seemed to be no attachments,” grieves the loss of the former wealth and power of his family, complaining until his death: “Alone, only Khrushchev is now left in the world. And even that one is not in Sukhodol!” Of course, “the power of... ancient family is immensely great,” it’s hard to talk about the death of loved ones, but both the narrator and the author are sure: a series of absurd deaths on the estate are predetermined. And the end of “grandfather” at the hands of Gervasy (the old man slipped from the blow, “waved his arms and just hit his temple on the sharp corner of the table”), and the mysterious, incomprehensible death of the intoxicated Pyotr Petrovich, returning from his mistress from Lunev (or did the horse really kill ... attached”, or one of the servants, embittered at the master for beatings). The Khrushchev family, once mentioned in chronicles and which gave the Fatherland “stewards, governors, and eminent men,” has ended. There was nothing left: “no portraits, no letters, not even simple accessories... household items.”

The ending of the old Sukhodol house is also bitter: it is doomed to slowly die, and the remains of the once luxurious garden were cut down by the last owner of the estate, the son of Pyotr Petrovich, who left Sukhodol and became a conductor on the railway. How similar it is to the death of the cherry orchard, with the only difference that in Sukhodol everything is simpler and more terrible. The “smell of Antonov apples” disappeared forever from the landowners’ estates, life was gone. Bunin writes bitterly: “And sometimes you think: come on, did they even live in the world?”