A and Kuprin biography summary. Alexander Kuprin short biography

Ivan Bunin was one of the greatest writers in Russian literature.

The childhood of the writer, who was born in Voronezh, in 1870, was spent on the Butyrki farm, near Yelets. Due to a complete incapacity for arithmetic and general ill health, Ivan could not study at the gymnasium and after spending 2 years in the 3rd grade, he receives a home education. His teacher was an ordinary student at Moscow University.

From the end of the 1880s, he began to publish with his provincial poems. The very first story, sent to the magazine "Russian wealth", delighted the publisher Mikhailovsky, the author of one of the classic articles on Leo Tolstoy. Bunin studied at the gymnasium again, but in 1886 he was expelled because he did not keep up. For the next 4 years he lives on his estate, where he is taught by his older brother. In 1889, fate threw him to Kharkov, where he became close to the populists. In 1891 his first work was published - "Poems of 1887-1891". And at the same time, I begin to publish his works, which have gained immense popularity. In 1900, the story "Antonov apples" appears, which depicts Russian estates with their own way of life. This work has become a masterpiece of the latest prose. Literally 3 years later, Bunin was awarded the Pushkin Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Having been unsuccessfully married 2 times, the writer meets Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva in St. Petersburg, who was his wife until his last breath. The honeymoon trip, which took place in eastern countries, was the result of the release of the series of essays "The Shadow of the Bird". When Bunin became a famous and wealthy gentleman in literary circles, he began to travel constantly and spent almost all the cold season on trips to Turkey, Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt, and Syria.

1909 became a special year for Ivan Alekseevich. He was elected an honorary academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. A year later, his first serious work, The Village, was born, where the writer spoke tragically about the catastrophic modernity. Hardly going through the October Revolution, the Bunins went to Odessa, and then emigrated to Constantinople. At first, the writer's life was not going well. He was gradually experiencing a shortage of money. In 1921, the work "Mister from San Francisco" was published, where Bunin shows the meaninglessness of material human existence. But there were also bright days in his life.

The literary fame in Europe was growing, and when the question once again arose about which of the Russian writers would be the first to enter the number of Nobel laureates, his name surfaced by itself. On November 9, 1933, an ode to Bunin was awarded this award. The financial problem has disappeared. Reprints followed. Before the war, the writer lived in peace, but in 1936 he was arrested in Germany and soon released. In 1943 his famous "Dark Alleys" came out. Ivan Alekseevich in the last years of his life worked on the book "Memories". The writer never finished this work. Bunin died on November 8, 1953 in Paris.

Very briefly

On September 7, 1870, the wonderful writer Alexander Kuprin was born. Immediately after birth, he was left without a father who died of a terrible disease. After 4 years, my mother was forced to move to Moscow. Despite her strong love, she sends him to an orphanage school, due to a difficult financial situation.

Later Kuprin was admitted to a military gymnasium, and he remained to live in Moscow. His talent for writing began to unfold during his school years, and he released his first work in 1889, under the title "The Last Debut", but not everyone approved of him and he received a reprimand.

In 1890-1894 he goes to serve near Podolsk. Having finished, he begins to move from city to city and stops at Sevastopol. He did not have a job, so very often there was nothing to eat, despite his service and rank. Despite this Kuprin at this time was developing as a writer, thanks to good relations with I. A. Bunin, A. P. Chekhov and M. Gorky. And he writes several stories that are in great demand and he is awarded the Pushkin Prize.

When the war began, he did not hesitate to volunteer. In 1915 he was forced to leave due to poor health. But even then he managed to do a useful job by organizing a hospital at his home. After that he supported the revolution in 1917 and collaborated with the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. But for some unknown reason, he decides to leave for France and continues his activity there. Then he returns back to the USSR, where he was not so well received. Dies in Leningrad on August 25, 1938.

For kids

Biography of Alexander Kuprin

Alexander Kuprin, one of the most famous writers in Russia, was born in a family far from literature, from the capital. His father, a minor official, died when his son was barely a year old. Together with his mother, the family moved to Moscow, where the future prose writer spent his childhood and youth.

Petersburg glory Kuprin

In St. Petersburg, Alexander Kuprin was too late for this city to fall at his feet at once. The writer was a little over 30. Behind him was not a very successful military career, which ended with the rank of lieutenant, and seven-year ordeals in Kiev. There Kuprin, who had no civilian profession, tried many professions and settled on literature.

Kuprin practically did not write major works by the number of pages. But he always managed to depict the whole world in a story from a couple of book sheets. The writer's plots are original and dramatically tightly cut: no unnecessary words and characters. The reading public immediately noticed accuracy in everything: in descriptions, epithets, meaning. And Petersburg instantly accepted Kuprin.

At the beginning of the 20th century, he was called everywhere, if only he could recite his stories. And the enthusiastic audience filled up the stage with flowers, where Alexander Ivanovich read his stories. Kuprin became a literary star. His Petersburg seems simple and ordinary in appearance, but in Kuprin's stories the city is just a place of action. People who live and work in the northern capital come to the fore.

The main hit of the St. Petersburg literary salons of the early 20th century is the spy story "Headquarters Captain Rybnikov". Kuprin read this work for an encore everywhere: in salons, restaurants, student audiences. Topical themes and impeccable dramatic plot attracted the attention of the public. Kuprin was especially pleased. It was at this time that the writer, who lived in St. Petersburg for a week less than a year, became a candidate for the first State Duma of the Russian Empire.

Relations with the Kuprin government

Kuprin loved his homeland. But the world war that began in 1914 changed him. Now patriotism has become the meaning of his whole life. In the newspapers, the writer campaigned for war loans. And at home, in the Gatchina house, he opened a small military hospital. Kuprin was even called to war, but his health was already weak then. Soon he was discharged.

Returning from the front, Kuprin again began to write a lot. There is more Petersburg in his stories. Alexander Kuprin did not accept the Bolsheviks. They, with their animal desire for power and bestial cruelty, were disgusting to him. According to his views, Kuprin was close to the Social Revolutionaries: not to those who were part of the militant organizations, but to the peaceful socialist revolutionaries.

Kuprin worked as a journalist in Gatchina, but often visited Petrograd. He came to Lenin's reception with a proposal to publish a special newspaper for the village called "Earth". However, the problems of the village were of interest to the Bolsheviks only in words. The newspaper was not founded, and Kuprin was imprisoned for 3 days. Once released, they were included in the list of hostages, that is, on any day they could shoot a bullet in the forehead. Kuprin did not wait and went to the whites.

Emigration of Kuprin

There he did not fight, but was engaged in journalism. But he never stopped writing stories. He settled his characters in Petrograd, which was close to him. Kuprin did not accept the new government at all, called it the Council of Deputies, and was ultimately forced to emigrate.

Soviet propaganda of the emigrant Kuprin destroyed. Political literary critics close to the Kremlin wrote that abroad the once talented Russian writer has fallen into disrepair: he only does what he drinks without restraint and does not write anything. This was not true. Kuprin wrote as much, but the Petersburg scenery in his stories became less and less.

After 15 years, he wrote a petition to be allowed to return to the USSR. Stalin gave such consent, and Kuprin returned to the places from which he fled during the civil war. In 1937, Kuprin, suffering from cancer, returned to his homeland to die. He died a year later, and the authorities of the country of the Soviets began posthumously to make the writer their own.

It wasn't easy. Kuprin's Petersburg with its people was not superimposed like a transparent tracing paper on the appearance of the city of three revolutions with the name of Lenin. These were two different cities. Whether he recognized the Soviet regime is hard to say for sure. But Kuprin could not live without Russia.

The life and work of Kuprin represent an extremely complex and variegated picture. It is difficult to summarize them. All the experience of life taught him to call for humanity. All the stories and stories of Kuprin have the same meaning - love for a person.

Childhood

In 1870, in the dull and waterless town of Narovchat, Penza province.

Orphaned very early. When he was one year old, his father, a petty clerk, died. There was nothing remarkable in the city, except for the artisans who made sieves and barrels. The kid's life went on without joys, but there were enough resentments. She and her mother went to friends and obsequiously begged for at least a cup of tea. And the "benefactors" stuck out their hand for a kiss.

Wanderings and studies

Mother 3 years later, in 1873, left for Moscow with her son. She was taken to a widow's house, and her son was taken from the age of 6, in 1876 - to an orphanage. Later Kuprin will describe these institutions in the stories "The Runaways" (1917), "Holy Lie", "At rest". These are all stories about people whom life has mercilessly thrown out. This is how the story of Kuprin's life and work begins. It is difficult to tell about this briefly.

Service

When the boy grew up, he was able to be attached first to a military gymnasium (1880), then to a cadet corps and, finally, to a cadet school (1888). The training was free, but painful.

So dragged on the long and bleak 14 war years with their senseless drills and humiliations. The continuation was the adult service in the regiment, which was stationed in small towns near Podolsk (1890-1894). The first story, which will be published by A. I. Kuprin, opening a military theme - "Inquiry" (1894), then "Lilac Bush" (1894), "Night shift" (1899), "Duel" (1904-1905) and others ...

Years of wandering

In 1894 Kuprin resolutely and abruptly changes his life. He retires and lives very poorly. Alexander Ivanovich settled in Kiev and began writing feuilletons for newspapers, in which he paints the life of the city with colorful strokes. But the knowledge of life was lacking. What did he see besides military service? He was interested in everything. And Balaklava fishermen, and Donetsk factories, and the nature of Polissya, and unloading watermelons, and balloon flight, and circus artists. He thoroughly studied the life and everyday life of the people who made up the backbone of society. Their language, jargons and customs. It is almost impossible to briefly convey the life and work of Kuprin saturated with impressions.

Literary activity

It was during these years (1895) Kuprin became a professional writer, constantly publishing his works in various newspapers. He meets Chekhov (1901) and everyone around him. And earlier he became friends with I. Bunin (1897) and then with M. Gorky (1902). One after another, stories come out that make society shudder. Moloch (1896) about the severity of capitalist oppression and the lack of rights of the workers. "Duel" (1905), which cannot be read without anger and shame for the officers.

The writer chastely touches the theme of nature and love. "Olesya" (1898), "Shulamith" (1908), "Garnet Bracelet" (1911) is known all over the world. He knows the life of animals: "Emerald" (1911), "Starlings". Around these years, Kuprin can already support his family for literary earnings and get married. He has a daughter. Then he gets divorced, and in his second marriage he also has a daughter. In 1909 Kuprin was awarded the Pushkin Prize. The life and work of Kuprin, briefly described, can hardly fit into several paragraphs.

Emigration and return home

Kuprin did not accept the October Revolution with the instinct and heart of the artist. He leaves the country. But, being published abroad, he yearns for his homeland. Age and illness fail. Finally, he nevertheless returned to his beloved Moscow. But, having lived here for a year and a half, he, seriously ill, dies in 1938 at the age of 67 in Leningrad. This is how Kuprin's life and work ends. The summary and description do not convey the vivid and rich impressions of his life, reflected in the pages of the books.

About prose and biography of the writer

The essay briefly presented in our article suggests that each master of his own destiny. When a person is born, he is caught up in the stream of life. He brings someone into a stagnant swamp, and so he leaves there, someone flounders, trying to somehow cope with the current, and someone just floats with the current - where he will take it. But there are people to whom Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin belongs, who have stubbornly rowed against the stream all their lives.

Born in a provincial, unremarkable town, he will love it forever and will return to this uncomplicated dusty world of a harsh childhood. The bourgeois and meager Narodchats he will love inexplicably.

Maybe for the carved platbands and geraniums on the windows, maybe for the vast fields, or maybe for the smell of dusty earth nailed down by rain. And maybe this scarcity will pull him in his youth, after the army drill, which he experienced for 14 years, to recognize Russia in all its colors and dialects. Wherever his paths-roads will take him. And in the woods of Polissya, and in Odessa, and to metallurgical plants, and to the circus, and in the skies on an airplane, and to unload bricks and watermelons. A person, full of inexhaustible love for people, for their life, learns everything, and will reflect all his impressions in stories and stories that will be read by contemporaries and which are not outdated even now, a hundred years after they were written.

Can the young and beautiful Shulamith, the beloved of Tsar Solomon, become old, can the forest sorceress Olesya stop loving a timid city dweller, can Sasha, the musician from Gambrinus (1907), stop playing? And Artaud (1904) is still loyal to his masters, who love him endlessly. The writer saw all this with his own eyes and left it to us on the pages of his books, so that we could be horrified by the heavy tread of capitalism in Moloch, the nightmare life of young women in the Pit (1909-1915), the terrible death of the beautiful and innocent Emerald ...

Kuprin was a dreamer who loved life. And all the stories passed through his attentive gaze and sensitive intelligent heart. Maintaining friendship with writers, Kuprin never forgot neither the workers, nor the fishermen, nor the sailors, that is, those who are called ordinary people. They were united by an inner intelligence, which is given not by education and knowledge, but by the depth of human communication, the ability to sympathize, and natural delicacy. He was very upset about emigration. In one of his letters he wrote: "The more talented a person is, the more difficult it is for him without Russia." Not counting himself as a genius, he simply yearned for his homeland and, upon returning, died after a serious illness in Leningrad.

Based on the presented essay and chronology, you can write a short essay "The life and work of Kuprin (briefly)".

Alexander KUPRIN (1870-1938)

1. Youth and early work of Kuprin

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin possessed a bright, original talent, which was highly appreciated by L. Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky. The attractive force of his talent lies in the capacity and vitality of the narrative, in the amusing plots, in the naturalness and ease of language, in vivid imagery. Kuprin's works attract us not only with their artistic skill, but also with their humanistic pathos and enormous love of life.

Kuprin was born on August 26 (September 7), 1870 in the town of Narovchat, Penza province, in the family of a district clerk. The father died when the child was in his second year. His mother moved to Moscow, where poverty forced her to live in a widow's house, and give her son to an orphanage. The writer's childhood and adolescence passed in closed military-type educational institutions: in a military gymnasium, and then in a cadet school in Moscow. In 1890, after graduating from a military school, Kuprin served in the army with the rank of lieutenant. An attempt to enter the Academy of the General Staff in 1893 was unsuccessful for Kuprin, and in 1894 he retired. The next few years in Kuprin's life were a period of numerous travels and changes in various kinds of activities. He worked as a reporter in Kiev newspapers, served in Moscow in an office, as an estate manager in the Volyn province, as a prompter in a provincial troupe, tried many more professions, met with people of various specialties, views and lives.

Like many other writers, A.I. Kuprin began his creative career as a poet. Among Kuprin's poetic experiments, there are 2-3 dozen good in performance and, most importantly, genuinely sincere in revealing human feelings and moods. This especially applies to his humorous poems - from the prickly "Ode to Katkov", written in adolescence, to numerous epigrams, literary parodies, playful impromptu. Kuprin never stopped writing poetry all his life. However, he found his true calling in prose. In 1889, as a student at a military school, he published his first story "The Last Debut" and was sent to solitary confinement for violating the rules of the school, whose pupils were forbidden to appear in print.

Much has given Kuprin work in journalism. In the 90s, on the pages of provincial newspapers, he published feuilletons, notes, court chronicles, literary critical articles, travel correspondence.

In 1896 Kuprin's first book was published - a collection of essays and feuilletons "Kiev types", in 1897 the book of stories "Miniatures" was published, which included the writer's early stories published in newspapers. The writer himself spoke of these works as "the first childish steps on the literary road." But they were the first school of the future recognized master of the short story and fictional sketch.

2. Analysis of the story "Moloch"

Working in the blacksmith shop of one of the Donbass metallurgical plants introduced Kuprin to work, life and customs of the working environment. He wrote essays on "Yuzovsky Plant", "In the Main Mine", "Rail Rolling Plant". These essays were the preparation for the creation of the story "Molokh", published in the December issue of the magazine "Russian wealth" for 1896.

In Moloch Kuprin mercilessly exposed the inhuman essence of emerging capitalism. The very title of the story is symbolic. Moloch - according to the concepts of the ancient Phoenicians - is the sun god, to whom human sacrifices were brought. It is with him that the writer compares capitalism. Only Moloch capitalism is even more cruel. If one human sacrifice per year was sacrificed to the God-Moloch, then the Moloch-capitalism devours much more. The hero of the story, engineer Bobrov, calculated that at the plant where he serves, every two days of work "devour a whole person." "Damn it! - exclaims the engineer, agitated by this conclusion, in a conversation with his friend Dr. Goldberg. - Do you remember from the Bible that some Assyrians or Moabites made human sacrifices to their gods? But these brazen gentlemen, Moloch and Dagon, would have blushed with shame and resentment in front of the numbers that I just gave. " This is how the image of the bloodthirsty god Moloch appears on the pages of the story, who, like a symbol, passes through the entire work. The story is also interesting because here for the first time in Kuprin's work the image of an intellectual-truth-seeker appears.

Such a seeker of truth is the central hero of the story - engineer Andrei Ilyich Bobrov. He likens himself to a person "who has been flayed alive" - ​​this is a soft, sensitive, sincere person, a dreamer and a lover of truth. He does not want to put up with violence and hypocritical morality that covers up this violence. He stands up for purity, honesty in relations between people, for respect for human dignity. He is sincerely indignant at the fact that the personality is becoming a plaything in the hands of a handful of egoists, demagogues and crooks.

However, as Kuprin shows, Bobrov's protest has no practical way out, because he is a weak, neurasthenic person, incapable of struggle and action. Outbursts of indignation end in him admitting his own powerlessness: "You have neither the determination nor the strength for this ... Tomorrow you will again be prudent and weak." The reason Bobrov is weak is that he feels lonely in his outrage at injustice. He dreams of a life based on pure relationships between people. But how to achieve such a life - he does not know. The author himself does not answer this question.

We must not forget that Bobrov's protest is largely determined by personal drama - the loss of a beloved girl who, seduced by wealth, sold herself to the capitalist and also became a victim of Moloch. All this does not diminish, however, the main thing that characterizes this hero - his subjective honesty, hatred of all kinds of injustice. The end of Bobrov's life is tragic. Broken inwardly, devastated, he ends his life suicide.

The personification of the destructive power of cash is in the story the millionaire Kvashnin. This is a living embodiment of the bloodthirsty god Moloch, which is emphasized by the very portrait of Kvashnin: "Kvashnin was sitting in an armchair with his colossal legs apart and his stomach protruding forward, similar to a Japanese idol of rough work." Kvashnin is the antipode of Bobrov, and he is portrayed by the author in sharply negative tones. Kvashnin goes to any deal with his conscience, to any immoral act, even a crime, in order to satisfy his own. whims and desires. The girl he liked - Nina Zinenko, Bobrov's bride, he makes his kept woman.

The corrupting power of Moloch is especially strongly shown in the fate of people striving to creep into the number of the "chosen ones." Such, for example, is the director of the Shelkovnikov plant, who only nominally manages the plant, obeying in everything the protégé of a foreign company - the Belgian Andrea. Such is one of Bobrov's colleagues - Svezhevsky, who dreams of becoming a millionaire by the age of forty and is ready for anything in the name of this.

The main thing that characterizes these people is immorality, lies, adventurism, which have long become the norm of behavior. Kvashnin himself lies, pretending to be an expert in the business, which he is in charge. Shelkovnikov is lying, pretending that it is he who runs the plant. Nina's mother is lying, hiding the secret of the birth of her daughter. Svezhevsky is lying, and Faya plays the role of Nina's fiancé. Dummy directors, dummy fathers, dummy husbands - such, according to Kuprin, is a manifestation of the general vulgarity, falsity and lies of life, which the author and his positive hero cannot put up with.

The story is not free, especially in the history of the relationship between Bobrov, Nina and Kvashnin, from a touch of melodramatism, the image of Kvashnin is devoid of psychological persuasiveness. And yet Moloch was not an ordinary event in the work of an aspiring prose writer. The search for moral values, a person of spiritual purity, outlined here, will become the main ones for Kuprin's further creativity.

Maturity usually comes to a writer as a result of the many-sided experiences of his own life. Kuprin's work confirms this. He felt confident only when he was firmly grounded in reality and portrayed what he knew perfectly. The words of one of the heroes of Kuprin's “Pit”: “By God, I would like to become a horse, plant or fish for a few days, or be a woman and experience childbirth; I would like to live an inner life and see the world through the eyes of every person I meet, ”- they sound truly autobiographical. Kuprin tried, whenever possible, to taste everything, to experience everything for himself. This thirst, inherent in him as a person and as a writer, to be actively involved in everything that is happening around him, led to the appearance already in his early work of works of a wide variety of topics, in which a rich gallery of human characters and types was derived. In the 90s, the writer willingly turns to the depiction of the exotic world of tramps, beggars, homeless people, vagabonds, street thieves. These paintings and images are in the center of such his works as "The Supplicant", "Painting", "Natasha", "Friends", "The Mysterious Stranger", "Horse thieves", "White Poodle". Kuprin showed a steady interest in the life and customs of the acting environment, artists, journalists, writers. Such are his stories "Lidochka", "Lolly", "Experienced Glory", "Allez!"

The plots of many of these works are sad, sometimes tragic. Indicative, for example, is the story "Allez!" - a psychologically capacious work inspired by the idea of ​​humanism. Under the external restraint of the author's narration, the story hides the deep compassion of the writer for man. The orphanage of a five-year-old girl turned into a circus rider, the work of a skillful acrobat under a circus dome full of momentary risk, the tragedy of a girl deceived and insulted in her pure and high feelings and, finally, her suicide as an expression of despair - all this is depicted with Kuprin's inherent insight and skill. It was not without reason that L. Tolstoy considered this story to be one of the best Kuprin creations.

At that time of his formation as a master of realistic prose, Kuprin wrote a lot and willingly about animals and children. Animals in Kuprin's works behave like people. They think, suffer, rejoice, fight against injustice, humanly make friends and value this friendship. In one of the later stories, the writer, referring to his little heroine, will say: “Mind you, dear Nina: we live next to all animals and do not know anything about them at all. We are simply not interested. Take, for example, all the dogs you and I have known. Each has its own special soul, its own habits, its own character. It's the same with cats. It's the same with horses. And birds. Just like people ... ”Kuprin's works contain wise human kindness and love of the humanist artist for all living things and living next to us and around us. These moods permeate all his stories about animals - "White Poodle", "Elephant", "Emerald" and dozens of others.

Kuprin's contribution to children's literature is enormous. He possessed a rare and difficult gift to write about children in a captivating and serious manner, without fake sugaryness and schoolboy didactics. It is enough to read any of his children's stories - "The Wonderful Doctor", "Kindergarten", "On the River", "Taper", "The End of the Tale" and others, and we will make sure that the children are portrayed by a writer with the finest knowledge and understanding of the soul child, with a deep penetration into the world of his hobbies, feelings and experiences.

Invariably defending human dignity and the beauty of a person's inner world, Kuprin endowed his positive heroes - both adults and children - with a high nobility of soul, feelings and thoughts, moral health, and a kind of stoicism. The best that their inner world is rich in is manifested most vividly in their ability to love - disinterestedly and strongly. A collision of love lies at the heart of many Kuprin's works of the 90s: the lyric poem in prose The Centenary, the short stories Stronger than Death, Narcissus, The First Comer, Loneliness, Autumn Flowers, etc.

Asserting the moral value of a person, Kuprin was looking for his positive hero. He found it among people who were not corrupted by selfish morality, living in unity with nature.

The writer contrasted the representatives of the "civilized" society, who had lost their nobility and honesty, with a "healthy", "natural" person from the people.

3. Analysis of the story "Olesya"

It is this idea that forms the basis of a small story."Olesya" (1898). The image of Olesya is one of the most vivid and humane in the rich gallery of female images created by Kuprin. This is a freedom-loving and integral nature, captivating with its external beauty, with an extraordinary mind and noble soul. She is amazingly responsive to every thought, every movement of the soul of a loved one. At the same time, she is uncompromising in her actions. Kuprin shrouds the process of the formation of Olesya's character and even the very origin of the girl in mystery. We don't know anything about her parents. She was raised by a dark, illiterate grandmother. She could not have any inspiring influence on Olesya. And the girl turned out to be so wonderful primarily because, Kuprin convinces the reader, that she grew up in nature.

The story is built on the juxtaposition of two heroes, two natures, two attitudes. On the one hand - an educated intellectual, a resident of a big city Ivan

Timofeevich. On the other hand, Olesya is a person who has not been influenced by urban civilization. Compared to Ivan Timofeevich, a kind but weak man,

"Lazy heart", Olesya rises with nobility, integrity, proud confidence in her inner strength. If Ivan Timofeevich looks bold, humane and noble in his relationship with the woodsman Yermola and the dark, ignorant village people, then in communication with Olesya, the negative sides of his nature are also manifested. True artistic instinct helped the writer to reveal the beauty of the human person, generously gifted by nature. Naivety and imperiousness, femininity and proud independence, “flexible, mobile mind”, “primitive and vivid imagination”, touching courage, delicacy and innate tact, involvement in the innermost secrets of nature and spiritual generosity - these qualities are highlighted by the writer, drawing the charming appearance of Olesya , whole, - original, free nature, which to rare gems "flashed in the surrounding darkness and ignorance.

Showing Olesya's originality and talent, Kuprin proved himself to be a subtle master psychologist. For the first time in his work, he touched those mysterious phenomena of the human psyche, which science still unravels. He writes about the unrecognized forces of intuition, premonitions, about the wisdom of thousands of years of experience that the human mind is capable of assimilating. Explaining the "witchcraft" charms of the heroine, the author expresses the conviction that Olesya had access to "those unconscious, instinctive, foggy, , closed masses of the people, passed on as the greatest secret from generation to generation. "

For the first time in the story, Kuprin's cherished thought is so fully expressed: a person can be wonderful if he develops, and does not destroy, the bodily, spiritual and intellectual abilities given to him from above.

Kuprin considered pure, bright love to be one of the highest manifestations of the truly human in man. In his heroine, the writer showed this possible happiness of free, unrestrained love. The description of the flowering of love and, together with it, the human personality, constitutes the poetic core of the story, its semantic and emotional center. With an amazing sense of tact, Kuprin makes us go through the alarming period of the birth of love, "full of vague, painfully sad feelings", and its happiest seconds of "pure, full of all-consuming delight", and long joyful dates of lovers in a dense pine forest. The world of spring jubilant nature - mysterious and beautiful - merge in the story with an equally wonderful outpouring of human feelings. “For almost a month, the naive charming tale of our love lasted, and to this day, together with the beautiful appearance of Olesya, these blazing evening dawns, these dewy mornings fragrant with lilies of the valley and honey, are hot, languid, lazy July days ... I, as a pagan god or as a young, strong animal, enjoyed the light, warmth, conscious joy of life and calm, healthy, sensual love. " In these heartfelt words of Ivan Timofeevich, the hymn of the author of "living life" himself, its enduring value, its beauty sounds.

The story ends with the separation of the lovers. In such a finale, there is essentially nothing unusual. Even if Olesya had not been beaten by local peasants and left with her grandmother, fearing even more cruel revenge, she would not have been able to unite her fate with Ivan Timofeevich - they are so different people.

The story of two lovers unfolds against the backdrop of the magnificent nature of Polissya. The Kuprin landscape is not only extremely picturesque, rich, but also unusually dynamic. Where another, less subtle artist would have depicted the tranquility of a winter forest, Kuprin notes movement, but this movement emphasizes the silence even more clearly. "From time to time a thin twig fell from the top and it was extremely clearly heard how it, falling, with a slight crackle, touched other branches." Nature in a story is a necessary element of content. She actively influences the thoughts and feelings of a person, her paintings are organically connected with the movement of the plot. Static winter pictures of nature at the beginning, at the moment of the hero's loneliness; stormy spring, coinciding with the inception of a feeling of love for Olesya; a fabulous summer night in the moments of the highest happiness of lovers; and, finally, a cruel thunderstorm with hail - these are the psychological accompaniments of the landscape, helping to reveal the idea of ​​the work. The light fairytale atmosphere of the story does not fade even after the dramatic denouement. Gossip and gossip, the vile persecution of the bailiff fade into the background, the wild reprisals of Perebrod women over Olesya after she visited the church are obscured. Over everything insignificant, petty and evil, earthly love, even though sadly ending, real, big, wins. The final touch of the story is characteristic: a string of red beads left by Olesya at the corner of the window frame in a hastily abandoned wretched hut. This detail gives compositional and semantic completeness to the work. A string of red beads is the last tribute to Olesya's generous heart, the memory of "her tender, generous love."

"Olesya", perhaps more than any other work of the early Kuprin, testifies to the deep and diverse connections of the young writer with the traditions of Russian classics. So, researchers usually recall Tolstoy's "Cossacks", which are based on the same task: to depict a person who has not been touched or spoiled by civilization, and to put him in contact with the so-called "civilized society." At the same time, it is easy to find a connection between the story and the Turgenev line in Russian prose of the 19th century. They are brought together by the opposition of a weak-willed and indecisive hero and a heroine who is bold in her actions, completely devoted to the feeling that gripped her. And Ivan Timofeevich involuntarily reminds us of the heroes of Turgenev's stories "Asya" and "Spring Waters".

According to its artistic method, the story "Olesya" is an organic combination of romanticism with realism, ideal and real-life. The romanticism of the story is manifested primarily in the disclosure of the image of Olesya and in the depiction of the beautiful nature of Polesie.

Both of these images - of nature and Olesya - are merged into a single harmonious whole and cannot be thought in isolation from each other. Realism and romanticism in the story complement each other, appear in a kind of synthesis.

"Olesya" is one of those works in which the best features of Kuprin's talent were revealed to the fullest. Masterful sculpting of characters, subtle lyricism, vivid pictures of eternally living, renewing nature, inextricably linked with the course of events, with the feelings and Experiences of the heroes, the poeticization of a great human feeling, a consistently and purposefully developing plot - all this puts Olesya among the most significant works of Kuprin ...

4. Analysis of the story "Duel"

The beginning of the 900s is an important period in Kuprin's creative biography. During these years he became acquainted with Chekhov, the story "In the Circus" was approved by L. Tolstoy, he became closely related to Gorky and the publishing house "Knowledge". Ultimately, it was Gorky, his help and support, that Kuprin owes much to the completion of work on his most important work, a story. The Duel (1905).

In his work, the writer refers to the image of the military environment so familiar to him. In the center of "Duel", as in the center of the story "Moloch", there is the figure of a man who, in Gorky's words, has become "sideways" to his social environment. The plot of the story is based on the conflict between Lieutenant Romashov and the surrounding reality. Like Bobrov, Romashov is one of the many cogs in a social mechanism that is alien and even hostile to him. He feels like a stranger among the officers, he differs from them primarily in his humane attitude towards the soldiers. Like Bobrov, he painfully experiences abuse of a person, humiliation of his dignity. “It is dishonorable to beat a soldier,” he declares, “you cannot beat a person who not only cannot answer you, but does not even have the right to raise his hand to protect himself from a blow. Doesn't even dare to turn her head away. That's shameful!". Romashov, like Bobrov, is weak, powerless, is in a state of painful split, internally contradictory. But unlike Bobrov, depicted as an already fully formed personality, Romashov is given in the process of spiritual development. This gives his image an inner dynamism. At the beginning of the service, the hero is full of romantic illusions, dreams of self-education, a career as a General Staff officer. Life shatters these dreams mercilessly. Shocked by the failure of his half-company on the parade ground during the inspection of the regiment, he travels around the city until nightfall and unexpectedly meets his soldier Khlebnikov.

The images of the soldiers do not occupy such a significant place in the story as the images of the officers. But even the episodic figures of the "lower ranks" are remembered for a long time by the reader. This is Romashova's orderly Gaynan, and Arkhipov, and Sharafutdinov. The close-up is highlighted in the story by Private Khlebnikov.

One of the most exciting scenes in the story and, as K. Paustovsky justly remarked, "one of the best ... in Russian literature" is the night meeting at the railroad bed of Romashov with Khlebnikov. Here the plight of the downtrodden Khlebnikov and the humanism of Romashov, who sees in the soldier first of all a person, is revealed with the utmost completeness. The hard, joyless fate of this unfortunate soldier shocked Romashov. A deep spiritual break occurs in him. Since that time, Kuprin writes, "his own fate and the fate of this ... downtrodden, tortured soldier are somehow strange, kindred close ... intertwined." What is Romashov thinking about, what new horizons are opening up before him when, rejecting the life he has lived until now, he begins to reflect on his future?

As a result of intense reflections on the meaning of life, the hero comes to the conclusion that "there are only three proud vocations of man: science, art and a free man." Remarkable are these inner monologues of Romashov, in which such basic problems of the story are posed as the relationship between the individual and society, the meaning and purpose of human life, etc. Romashov protests against vulgarity, against dirty "regimental love". He dreams of a pure, sublime feeling, but his life ends early, absurdly and tragically. The love affair accelerates the denouement of the conflict between Romashov and the environment he hates.

The story ends with the death of the hero. Romashov was defeated in an unequal struggle against the vulgarity and stupidity of army life. Having made his hero see the light, the author did not see those specific ways in which the young man could move on and realize the found ideal. And no matter how much Kuprin suffered for a long time working on the finale of the work, he did not find another convincing end.

Kuprin's excellent knowledge of army life was clearly manifested in the image of the officer environment. The spirit of careerism, the inhuman treatment of the soldiers, and the squalor of spiritual interests reign here. Considering themselves to be people of a special breed, the officers look at the soldiers as if they were cattle. One of the officers, for example, beat his orderly in such a way that "the blood was not only on the walls, but also on the ceiling." And when the orderly complained to the company commander, he sent him to the sergeant-major and "the sergeant-major beat him on his blue, swollen, bloody face for another half hour." One cannot calmly read those scenes of the story, which describe how they mock a sick, beaten, physically weak soldier Khlebnikov.

Officers live wildly and hopelessly in everyday life. Captain Pliva, for example, in his 25 years of service has not read a single book or a single newspaper. Another officer, Vetkin, says with conviction: "Thinking is not supposed to be done in our business." The officers spend their free time on drunkenness, card games, brawls in brothels, fights among themselves and on stories about their love affairs. The life of these people is a miserable, thoughtless vegetation. It, as one of the characters in the story says, "is monotonous, like a fence, and gray, like a soldier's cloth."

This, however, does not mean that Kuprin, as some researchers argue, deprives the officers of the story of glimpses of all humanity. The essence of the matter is that in many officers - in the regiment commander Shulgovich, and in Bek-Agamalov, and in Vetkin, and even in captain Sliva, Kuprin notes positive qualities: Shulgovich, having reprimanded the embezzler-officer, immediately gives him money. Vetkin is a kind and good friend. Not a bad person, in fact, and Bek-Agamalov. Even Plum, a stupid campaigner, is impeccably honest with the soldiers' money passing through his hands.

The point, therefore, is not that we are faced with only geeks and moral monsters, although there are such characters among the characters in the story. And the fact is that even people endowed with positive qualities, in an atmosphere of musty life and dull monotony of life, lose their will to resist this swamp, sucking in their souls and gradually degrade.

But, as one of the then critics N. Ashe-shov wrote about Kuprin's story "The Swamp", filled with a close circle of thoughts, "a man dies in a swamp, a man must be resurrected." Kuprin peers into the very depths of human nature and tries to notice in people those precious seeds of the soul that have yet to be nurtured, humanized, cleansed of bad deposits from scale. This feature of Kuprin's artistic method was sensitively noted by the pre-revolutionary researcher of the writer's work F. Batyushkov: properties fit in one and the same person, and that life will become wonderful when a person is free from all prejudices and prejudices, becomes strong and independent, learns to subordinate the conditions of life, and begins to create his own way of life. "

Nazansky occupies a special place in the story. This is an off-plot character. He does not take any part in the events, and should, it would seem, be perceived as an episodic character. But the significance of Nazansky is determined, firstly, by the fact that it was Kuprin who put the author's arguments into his mouth, summing up the criticism of army life. Secondly, the fact that it is Nazansky who formulates positive answers to the questions that Romashov has. What is the essence of Nazansky's views? If we talk about his critical statements about the life and life of former colleagues, then they go along with the main problems of the story, and in this sense they deepen its main theme. He inspiredly prophesies the time when “a new radiant life” will come “far from our dirty, smelly campsites”.

In his monologues, Nazansky glorifies the life and power of a free person, which is also a progressive factor. However, Nazansky combines correct thoughts about the future and criticism of the army order with individualistic and egoistic sentiments. A person, in his opinion, should live only for himself, regardless of the interests of other people. “Who is dearer and closer to you? Nobody, - he says to Romashov. - You are the king of the world, his pride and adornment ... Do what you want. Take whatever you like ... Whoever can prove to me with clear persuasiveness what I have to do with this - damn him! - to my neighbors, with a vile slave, with an infected, with an idiot? .. And then, what interest will make me break my head for the happiness of the people of the 32nd century? " It is easy to see that Nazansky here rejects Christian mercy, love for one's neighbor, the idea of ​​self-sacrifice.

The author himself was not satisfied with the image of Nazansky, and his hero Romashov, listening attentively to Nazansky, far from always shares his point of view, and even more so follows his advice. Both Romashov's attitude to Khlebnikov and the rejection of his own interests in the name of the happiness of his beloved woman - Shurochka Nikolaeva - indicate that Nazansky's preaching of individualism, stirring up Romashov's consciousness, does not, however, touch his heart. If anyone implements the principles preached by Nazansky in the story, without realizing, of course, this is Shurochka Nikolaeva. It is she who dooms to death in the name of her own selfish, selfish goals Romashov, who is in love with her.

The image of Shurochka is one of the most successful in the story. Charming, graceful, she stands head and shoulders above the rest of the officers' ladies of the regiment. Her portrait, painted by a lover Romashov, captivates with the hidden passion of her nature. Maybe that's why Romashov is drawn to her, that's why Nazansky loved her, because she has that healthy, vital, strong-willed principle, which both friends so lacked. But all the extraordinary qualities of her nature are aimed at achieving selfish goals.

In the image of Shurochka Nikolaeva, an interesting artistic solution is given to the strength and weakness of the human personality, of female nature. It is Shurochka who accuses Romashov of weakness: in her opinion, he is pathetic and weak-willed. What is Shurochka herself?

This is a lively mind, an understanding of the vulgarity of life around her, a desire to break free to the top of society by all means (her husband's career is a step towards this). From her point of view, everyone around is weak people. Shurochka knows for sure what she wants and will achieve her goal. A strong-willed, rationalistic principle is clearly expressed in it. She is the opponent of sentimentality, in herself she suppresses that which can interfere with the goal set by her - all heart impulses and affections.

Twice, as from weakness, she refuses love - first from the love of Nazansky, then Romashov. Nazansky accurately captures the duality of nature in Shurochka: "passionate heart" and "dry, selfish mind."

The cult of evil volitional power characteristic of this heroine is something unprecedented in the female character, in the gallery of Russian women depicted in Russian literature. This cult is not approved, but debunked by Kuprin. It is regarded as a perversion of femininity, the principles of love and humanity. Masterfully, at first as if by accidental strokes, and then more and more distinctly, Kuprin emphasizes in the character of this woman such a trait, at first not noticed by Romashov, as spiritual coldness and callousness. For the first time, he catches something alien and hostile to himself in Shurochka's laughter at the picnic.

"There was something instinctively unpleasant in this laughter, which smelled cold in Romashov's soul." At the end of the story, in the scene of the last rendezvous, the hero experiences a similar, but significantly intensified sensation when Shurochka dictates his terms of the duel. "Romashov felt something secret, smooth, slimy creeping between them invisibly, which smelled of cold on his soul." This scene is complemented by the description of Shurochka's last kiss, when Romashov felt that "her lips are cold and motionless." Shurochka is calculating, selfish and in her ideas does not go further than the dream of the capital, of success in high society. To make this dream come true, she ruins Romashov, by any means trying to win a secured place for herself and for her limited, unloved husband. In the finale of the work, when Shurochka deliberately does his pernicious deed, persuading Romashov to fight Nikolayev in a duel, the author shows the unkindness of the power imprisoned in Shurochka, opposing Romashov's "humane weakness" to it.

"Duel" was and remains an outstanding phenomenon of Russian prose at the beginning of the 20th century.

During the first Russian revolution, Kuprin was in the democratic camp, although he did not take a direct part in the events. At the height of the revolution in the Crimea, Kuprin observed a revolutionary ferment among the sailors. He witnessed the massacre of the rebel cruiser "Ochakov" and - he himself took part in the rescue of the few surviving sailors. Kuprin told about the tragic death of the heroic cruiser in his essay "Events in Sevastopol", for which the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Chukhnin, ordered the writer to be expelled from the Crimea.

5. Essays "Listrigones"

Kuprin suffered the defeat of the revolution very hard. But in his work he continued to remain in the position of realism. With sarcasm, he portrays the philistine in his stories as a force that restrains the spiritual growth of a person, distorts the human personality.

Kuprin, as before, opposes the ugly "dead souls" to ordinary people, proud, cheerful, cheerful, living a difficult, but spiritually rich, meaningful work life. These are his essays on the life and work of the Balaklava fishermen under the general title Listrigones (1907-1911) (Listrigones - mythical people of giants-cannibals in Homer's poem "The Odyssey"). In "Listrigons" there is no protagonist moving from one essay to another. But certain figures are still highlighted in them. Such are the images of Yura Paratino, Kolya Kostandi, Yura Kalitanaki and others. Before us are natures that have been shaped over the centuries by the life and profession of a fisherman. These people are the embodiment of activity. And, moreover, the activity is deeply human. Disunity and selfishness are alien to them.

Fishermen go to their hard work in artels, and joint hard work develops solidarity and mutual support in them. This work requires will, cunning, resourcefulness. People are harsh, courageous, risk-loving people admire Kuprin, because there is much in their characters that the reflective intelligentsia lacks. The writer admires their hoarse will and simplicity. The solid and courageous characters of the fishermen, the writer claims, are the result of the fact (that they, like Olesya, are children of nature, live far away from the spoiled "civilized" world. The Listrigons, like the story "Olesya", represent the method is a fusion of realism and romanticism.In a romantic, upbeat style, the writer depicts everyday life, work, and especially the characters of the Balaklava fishermen.

During these years Kuprin created two wonderful works about love - "Shulamph" (1908) and "Garnet Bracelet" (1911). Kuprin's interpretation of this topic appears especially significant in comparison with the depiction of women in anti-realistic literature. A woman who has always personified all the best and brightest in the Russian people among classic writers, during the years of reaction, under the pen of some fiction writers, she turned into an object of lustful and coarse desires. This is how a woman is depicted in the works of A. Kamensky, E. Nagrodskaya, A. Verbitskaya and others.

In contrast to them, Kuprin sings love as a powerful, tender and uplifting feeling.

6. Analysis of the story "Shulamith"

According to the brightness of colors, the power of poetic embodiment, the story"Shulamith" occupies one of the first places in the writer's work. This patterned tale, imbued with the spirit of Eastern legends, about the joyful and tragic love of a poor girl for the king and sage Solomon, is inspired by the biblical Song of Songs. The plot of "Shulamith" is to a great extent a product of Kuprin's creative imagination, but he drew colors and moods from this biblical poem. However, this was not a simple borrowing. Very boldly and skillfully using the technique of stylization, the artist strove to convey the pathetic, melodious, solemn system, the stately and full of energy sound of ancient legends.

Throughout the story, there is a contrast between light and dark, love and hate. The love of Solomon and Sulamith is described in light, festive colors, in a soft combination of colors. Conversely, the feelings of the cruel queen Astiz and the royal bodyguard Eliava in love with her are devoid of a sublime character.

Passionate and pure, light love is embodied in the image of Sulamith. The opposite feeling - hatred and envy - is expressed in the image of Astiz, rejected by Solomon. Shulamith brought great and bright love to Solomon, which fills her completely. Love worked a miracle with her - she opened the beauty of the world to the girl, enriched her mind and soul. And even death cannot defeat the power of this love. Shulamith dies with words of gratitude for the supreme happiness given to her by Solomon. The story "Shulamith" is especially remarkable as a glorification of a woman. The sage Solomon is beautiful, but even more beautiful in her half-childish naivety and selflessness is Shulamith, who gives her life for her beloved. The words of Solomon's farewell to Shulamith contain the secret meaning of the story: “As long as people love each other, as long as the beauty of soul and body is the best and sweetest dream in the world, until then, I swear to you, Shulamith, your name is in for many centuries it will be pronounced with affection and gratitude. "

The legendary plot "Sulamith" opened unlimited opportunities for Kuprin to sing about love strong, harmonious and free from any everyday conventions and everyday obstacles. But the writer could not limit himself to such an exotic interpretation of the theme of love. He persistently searches in the most real, everyday reality for people possessed by the highest feeling of love, capable of rising, at least in dreams, above the surrounding prose of life. And, as always, he turns his gaze to the common man. This is how the poetic theme of the "Garnet Bracelet" arose in the writer's creative mind.

Love, in Kuprin's view, is one of the eternal, inexhaustible and not fully known sweet secrets. In it, the personality of a person, his character, capabilities and talents are manifested most fully, deeply and versatile. It awakens in a person the best, most poetic sides of his soul, raises above the prose of life, activates spiritual forces. “Love is the brightest and most complete reproduction of my I. Not in strength, not in dexterity, not in mind, not in talent, not in voice, not in colors, not in gait, not in creativity is individuality expressed. But in love ... A person who died for love dies for everything, ”Kuprin wrote to F. Batyushkov, revealing his philosophy of love.

7. Analysis of the story "Garnet bracelet"

Narrative in a story"Garnet bracelet" opens with a sad picture of nature, in which alarming notes are caught: "... From morning till morning it was raining without ceasing, fine as water dust ... then a fierce hurricane blew from the north-west, from the steppe," which took human lives. The lyrical landscape "overture" precedes the story of a romantically sublime, but unrequited love: a telegraph operator Zheltkov fell in love with a married aristocrat, unattainable for him, Princess Vera Sheina, writes her tender letters, not hoping for an answer, considers the moments when secretly , in the distance, can see the beloved.

As in many other stories by Kuprin, the "Garnet Bracelet" is based on a real fact. There was a real prototype of the main character of the story, Princess Vera Sheina. This was the mother of the writer Lev Lyubimov, the niece of the famous "legal Marxist" Tugan-Baranovsky. There was actually a telegraph operator Zholtov (Zheltkov's prototype). Lev Lyubimov writes about this in his memoirs "In a Foreign Land". Taking an episode from life, Kuprin imagined it creatively. The feeling of love is affirmed here as a real and high life value. “And I want to say that people in our time have forgotten how to love. I don’t see real love, ”one of the characters, an old general, states sadly. The story of the life of a "little man", into which love entered, which is "strong as death", love - "a deep and sweet secret" - refutes this statement.

In the image of Zheltkov, Kuprin shows that ideal, romantic love is not an invention; not a dream, not an idyll, but a reality, although rarely encountered in life. The portrayal of this character has a very strong romantic start. We know almost nothing about his past, about the origins of the formation of his character. Where and how could this “little man” receive such an excellent musical education, cultivate in himself such a developed sense of beauty, human dignity and inner nobility? Like all romantic heroes, Zheltkov is lonely. Describing the character's appearance, the author draws attention to the features inherent in natures with a fine mental organization: “He was tall, thin, with long, fluffy soft hair ... very pale, with a gentle girlish face, blue eyes and a stubborn child's chin with a dimple in the middle ". This external originality of Zheltkov further emphasizes the richness of his nature.

The plot of the plot is the receipt by Princess Vera on her birthday of another letter from Zheltkov and an unusual gift - a pomegranate bracelet (“five crimson bloody fires trembling inside five pomegranates”). "Precisely blood!" - thought Vera with unexpected anxiety. Outraged by Zheltkov's intrusiveness, Vera's brother Nikolai Nikolaevich and her husband, Prince Vasily, decide to find and "teach a lesson" to this, from their point of view, "impudent".

The scene of their visit to Zheltkov's apartment is the culmination of the work, therefore the author dwells on it in such detail. At first, Zheltkov is shy in front of the aristocrats who have visited his poor home, and feels guilty without guilt. But as soon as Nikolai Nikolaevich hinted that in order to "enlighten" Zheltkov "he would resort to the help of the authorities, the hero literally transforms. It is as if another person appears before us - defiantly calm, not afraid of threats, with a sense of his own dignity, realizing his moral superiority over his uninvited guests. The "little man" straightens himself so spiritually that Vera's husband begins to feel involuntary sympathy and respect for him. He tells his brother-in-law

About Zheltkov: “I see his face, and I feel that this person is not capable of deceiving or knowingly lying. And really, think, Kolya, is he really to blame for love and is it possible to control such a feeling as love ... I feel sorry for this man. And I am not only sorry, but now, I feel that I am present at some tremendous tragedy of my soul ... "

The tragedy, alas, did not hesitate to come. Zheltkov gives himself so much to his love that without it life for him loses all meaning. And therefore he commits suicide, so as not to interfere with the princess's life, so that "nothing temporary, vain and worldly does not disturb" her "beautiful soul." Zheltkov's last letter raises the theme of love to the highest tragedy. Dying, Zheltkov thanks Vera for the fact that she was for him "the only joy in life, the only consolation, the only thought."

It is important that with the death of the hero does not die, a great feeling of love. His death spiritually resurrects Princess Vera, reveals to her the world of feelings that she has never known before. It seems to be internally liberated, acquires the great power of love, inspired by the lost, which sounds like the eternal music of life. It is no coincidence that the epigraph to the story is Beethoven's second sonata, the sounds of which crown the finale and serve as a hymn of pure and selfless love.

Zheltkov seemed to foresee that Vera would come to say goodbye to him, and through the landlady bequeathed her to listen to Beethoven's sonata. In unison with the music in the soul of Vera, the death words of a man who loved her selflessly sound: “I remember every step you take, your smile, the sound of your gait. Sweet sadness, quiet, beautiful sadness is wrapped around my last memories. But I will not hurt you. I leave alone, in silence, it was so pleasing to God and fate. "Hallowed be thy name."

In the sad hour of my death, I pray only to you. Life could be wonderful for me too. Don't grumble, poor heart, don't grumble. In my soul I call for death, but in my heart I am full of praise to you: "Hallowed be thy name."

These words are a kind of akathist for love, the refrain of which is a line from a prayer. It is rightly said: "The lyrical musical ending of the story affirms the high power of love, which made it possible to feel its greatness, beauty, selflessness, attracting another soul to itself for a moment."

And yet, "Garnet Bracelet" does not leave such a light and inspired impression as "Olesya". K. Paustovsky subtly noted the special tonality of the story, saying about it: “the bitter charm of the Garnet Bracelet”. This bitterness lies not only in the death of Zheltkov, but also in the fact that his love concealed, along with inspiration, a certain limitation, narrowness. If for Olesya love is a part of being, one of the constituent elements of the multicolored world around her, then for Zheltkov, on the contrary, the whole world narrows only to love, which he confesses in his dying letter to Princess Vera: “It happened,” he writes, “that I am not interested in anything in life: neither politics, nor science, nor philosophy, nor concern for the future happiness of people - for me all life is only in you. " It is quite natural that the loss of a loved one becomes the end of Zheltkov's life. He has nothing else to live with. Love did not expand, did not deepen his connections with the world, but on the contrary, narrowed them. Therefore, the tragic ending of the story, along with the hymn of love, contains another, no less important idea: one cannot live with love alone.

8. Analysis of the story "The Pit"

In the same years Kuprin conceived a large artistic canvas - a story"Pit" , on which he worked with long interruptions in the years 1908-1915. The story was a response to a series of erotic works that relished perversion and pathology, and to numerous debates about the emancipation of sexual passions, and to specific disputes about prostitution, which has become a sick phenomenon of Russian reality.

The humanist writer dedicated his book to "Mothers and Youth." He tried to influence the unclouded consciousness and morality of young people, mercilessly telling about what base things are happening in brothels. In the center of the narrative is the image of one of these "houses of tolerance" where philistine morals triumph, where Anna Markovna, the owner of this institution, feels like a sovereign ruler, where Lyubka, Zhenechka, Tamara and other prostitutes - "victims of social temperament" - and where they come to pull these victims from the bottom of this stinking swamp young intellectuals - truth-seekers: student Likhonin and journalist Platonov.

The story contains many vivid scenes, where the life of nightlife "in all its everyday simplicity and everyday efficiency" is recreated calmly, without strain and loud words. But in general, it did not become Kuprin's artistic success. Stretched out, loose, overloaded with naturalistic details, The Pit caused the dissatisfaction of both many readers and the author himself. The final opinion about this story in our literary criticism has not yet been formed.

And yet "The Pit" should hardly be regarded as an absolute creative failure of Kuprin.

One of the undoubted, from our point of view, the merits of this work is that Kuprin looked at prostitution not only as a social phenomenon (“one of the most terrible ulcers of bourgeois society,” we have been accustomed to assert for decades), but also as a phenomenon of a complex biological order. The author of Yama tried to show that the fight against prostitution rests on global problems associated with a change in human nature, which is fraught with millennial instincts.

In parallel with work on the story "The Pit" Kuprin is still working hard on his favorite genre - the story. Their topics are varied. With great sympathy, he writes about poor people, their mutilated lives, about abused childhood, recreates pictures of philistine life, castigates the bureaucratic nobility, cynical businessmen. His stories of these years "Black Lightning" (1912), "Anathema" (1913), "Elephant Walk" and others are colored with anger, contempt and at the same time love.

The eccentric, fanatic of business and unmercenary Turchenko, towering above the bourgeois quagmire, is akin to Gorky's purposeful heroes. No wonder the leitmotif of the story is the image of black lightning from Gorky's "Song of the Petrel." And in terms of the strength of its denunciation of provincial philistines, Black Lightning echoes Gorky's Okurov cycle.

Kuprin followed the principles of realistic aesthetics in his work. At the same time, the writer willingly used the forms of artistic convention. Such are his allegorical and fantastic stories "Dog Happiness", "Toast", extremely saturated with figurative symbolism of the works "Dreams", "Happiness", "Giants". His fantastic stories The Liquid Sun (1912) and The Star of Solomon (1917) are characterized by a skilful interweaving of concrete everyday and surreal episodes and pictures; the stories “The Garden of the Blessed Virgin” and “Two Hierarchs” ( 1915). They showed Kuprin's interest in the rich and complex world around him, in the unsolved mysteries of the human psyche. The symbolism, moral or philosophical allegory contained in these works was one of the most important means of artistic embodiment of the world and man by the writer.

9. Kuprin in exile

A. Kuprin perceived the events of the 1st World War from a patriotic position. Paying tribute to the heroism of Russian soldiers and officers, in the stories "Goga Merry" and "Cantaloupe" he exposes the bribe-takers and embezzlers who are cleverly profiting from the people's misfortune.

During the October Revolution and Civil War Kuprin lived in Gatchina, near Petrograd. When General Yudenich's troops left Gatchina in October 1919, Kuprin moved with them. He settled in Finland and then moved to Paris.

In the first years of his stay in emigration, the writer experienced an acute creative crisis caused by separation from his homeland. The turning point came only in 1923, when his new talented works appeared: "The One-Armed Commandant", "Fate", "The Golden Rooster". The past of Russia, memories of Russian people, of native nature - this is what Kuprin gives the last strength of his talent to. In stories and essays about Russian history, the writer revives the traditions of Leskov, telling about unusual, sometimes anecdotal, colorful Russian characters and customs.

Such excellent stories as "The Shadow of Napoleon", "Red, Bay, Gray, Black", "The Tsar's Guest from Narovchat", "The Last Knights" were written in the Leskov manner. In his prose, the old, pre-revolutionary motives were again sounded. The short stories "Olga Sur", "Bad Pun", "Blondel" seem to complete the line in the depiction of the circus writer, following the famous "Listrigons" he writes the story "Svetlana", again resurrecting the colorful figure of the Balaklava fishing chieftain Kolya Kostandi. The story "The Wheel of Time" (1930) is dedicated to the glorification of the great "gift of love", the hero of which is the Russian engineer Misha, who fell in love with a beautiful Frenchwoman, akin to the former selfless and pure-hearted characters of the writer. Kuprin's stories "Yu-Yu", "Zaviraika", "Ralph" continue the line of depicting animals by the writer, which he began before the revolution (stories "Emerald", "White Poodle", "Elephant Walk", "Peregrine Falcon").

In a word, no matter what Kuprin wrote about in emigration, all his works are imbued with thoughts about Russia, a hidden longing for the lost homeland. Even in the essays dedicated to France and Yugoslavia - "Home Paris", "Intimate Paris", "Cape Huron", "Old Songs" - the writer, painting foreign customs, everyday life and nature, again and again returns to the idea of ​​Russia. He compares French and Russian swallows, Provencal mosquitoes and Ryazan mosquitoes, European beauties and Saratov girls. And everything to him at home, in Russia, seems nicer and better.

Kuprin's last works, the autobiographical novel "Juncker" and the story "Janet" (1933), also inspire lofty moral problems. "Juncker" is a continuation of the autobiographical story "At the Turning Point" ("Cadets"), created by Kuprin thirty years ago, although the names of the main characters are different: in "Cadets" - Bulavin, in "Cadets" - Alexandrov. Talking about the next stage of the hero's life at the Alexander School, Kuprin in "Junkers", unlike "Cadets", removes the slightest critical notes about the educational system in Russian closed military educational institutions, coloring the story of Alexandrov's cadets in pink, idyllic tones. However, "Juncker" is not just the history of the Alexander Military School, conveyed through the eyes of one of his pupils. This is also a work about old Moscow. The silhouettes of the Arbat, the Patriarch's Ponds, the Institute of Noble Maidens, etc. appear through the romantic haze.

The novel expressively conveys the feeling of first love that is born in the heart of young Aleksandrov. But despite the abundance of light and festivities, Juncker is a sad book. She is warmed by the senile warmth of memories. Again and again with "indescribable, sweet, bitter and tender sadness," Kuprin mentally returns to his homeland, to his departed youth, to his beloved Moscow.

10. The story of "Janet"

These nostalgic notes are clearly heard in the story"Janet" . Without touching, "as if a film of cinema is unfolding," he walks past the old emigre professor Simonov, once famous in Russia, but now huddled in a poor attic, the life of bright and noisy Paris. With a great sense of tact, without falling into sentimentality, Kuprin tells about the loneliness of an old man, about his noble, but no less oppressive poverty, about his friendship with a mischievous and rebellious cat. But the most heartfelt pages of the story are devoted to Simonov's friendship with a little half-beggar girl Zhaneta - “the princess of four streets”. The writer does not ideally idealize this pretty black eyelid girl with dirty handms relating, like a black cat, a bit down to the old professor. However, a chance acquaintance with her illuminated his lonely life, revealed the entire hidden reserve of tenderness in his soul.

The story ends sadly. Mother takes Janet out of Paris, and the old man is left all alone again, except for the black cat. In this piece

Kuprin managed with great artistic power to show the collapse of the life of a person who had lost his homeland. But the philosophical context of the story is broader. It is in the affirmation of the purity and beauty of the human soul, which a person should not lose in any life's hardships.

After the story "Janet" Kuprin did not create anything significant. As the daughter of the writer KA Kuprin testifies, “he sat down at his desk, forced to earn his daily bread. It was felt that he really lacked Russian soil, purely Russian material. "

It is impossible without a feeling of acute pity to read the letters of a writer of these years to his old friends-emigrants: Shmelev, artist I. Repin, circus wrestler I. Zaikin. Their main motive is nostalgic pain for Russia, the impossibility of creating outside of it. “Emigrant life completely chewed me up, and remoteness from my homeland flattened my spirit to the ground,” 6 he confesses to IE Repin.

11. Return to the homeland and death of Kuprin

Homesickness is becoming more and more unbearable, and the writer decides to return to Russia. At the end of May 1937, Kuprin returned to the city of his youth - Moscow, and at the end of December he moved to Leningrad. Old and terminally ill, he still hopes to continue his writing career, but his strength finally leaves him. Kuprin died on August 25, 1938.

A master of language, an entertaining plot, a man of great love of life, Kuprin left a rich literary heritage that does not fade from time to time, bringing joy to new and new readers. The feelings of many connoisseurs of Kuprin's talent were well expressed by K. Paustovsky: “We should be grateful to Kuprin for everything - for his deep humanity, for his subtle talent, for love for his country, for unshakable faith in the happiness of his people and, finally, for never dying in him the ability to light up from the slightest contact with poetry and freely and easily write about it. "

0 / 5. 0

(August 26, old style) 1870 in the town of Narovchat, Penza province, in the family of a minor official. The father died when his son was in his second year.

In 1874, his mother, who came from an ancient family of Tatar princes Kulanchakov, moved to Moscow. From the age of five, due to the difficult financial situation, the boy was sent to the Moscow Razumovsky orphanage, famous for its harsh discipline.

In 1888, Alexander Kuprin graduated from the cadet corps, in 1890 - the Alexander military school with the rank of second lieutenant.

Upon graduation, he was enrolled in the 46th Dnieper Infantry Regiment and sent to serve in the city of Proskurov (now Khmelnitsky, Ukraine).

In 1893, Kuprin went to St. Petersburg to enter the Academy of the General Staff, but was not allowed to take exams due to a scandal in Kiev, when in a restaurant-barge on the Dnieper, he threw a drunken bailiff who insulted a girl-waitress overboard.

In 1894 Kuprin left military service. He traveled a lot in the south of Russia and Ukraine, tried himself in various fields of activity: he was a loader, storekeeper, forest ranger, land surveyor, psalm reader, proofreader, estate manager and even a dentist.

The first story of the writer "The Last Debut" was published in 1889 in the Moscow "Russian Satirical Leaflet".

Army life is described by him in the stories of 1890-1900 "From the Distant Past" ("Inquiry"), "Lilac Bush", "Lodging", "Night Shift", "Army Warrant Officer", "Campaign".

Kuprin's early sketches were published in Kiev in the collections Kiev Types (1896) and Miniatures (1897). In 1896, the story "Moloch" was published, which brought wide popularity to the young author. This was followed by "The Night Shift" (1899) and a number of other stories.

During these years Kuprin met the writers Ivan Bunin, Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky.

In 1901 Kuprin settled in St. Petersburg. For some time he was in charge of the department of fiction of the "Journal for All", then became an employee of the magazine "Peace of God" and the publishing house "Knowledge", which published the first two volumes of Kuprin's works (1903, 1906).

Alexander Kuprin entered the history of Russian literature as the author of the stories and novels "Olesya" (1898), "Duel" (1905), "Pit" (1 part - 1909, 2 part - 1914-1915).

He is also known as a major storyteller. Among his works in this genre - "In the circus", "Swamp" (both 1902), "Coward", "Horse thieves" (both 1903), "Peaceful life", "Measles" (both 1904), "Staff-captain Rybnikov "(1906)," Gambrinus "," Emerald "(both 1907)," Shulamith "(1908)," Garnet Bracelet "(1911)," Listrigones "(1907-1911)," Black Lightning "and" Anathema "( both 1913).

In 1912 Kuprin made a trip to France and Italy, the impressions of which were reflected in the cycle of travel sketches "Cote d'Azur".

During this period, he actively mastered new, previously unknown types of activity - he went up in a hot air balloon, flew in an airplane (which almost ended tragically), went down under the water in a diving suit.

In 1917, Kuprin worked as editor of the newspaper Svobodnaya Rossiya, published by the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party. From 1918 to 1919, the writer worked for the World Literature publishing house, founded by Maxim Gorky.

After coming to Gatchina (St. Petersburg), where he lived since 1911, the White troops, he edited the newspaper "Prinevsky Krai", published by Yudenich's headquarters.

In the fall of 1919, he emigrated with his family abroad, where he spent 17 years, mainly in Paris.

During the emigre years Kuprin published several collections of prose "The Dome of St. Isaac of Dolmatsky", "Elan", "The Wheel of Time", the novels "Janet", "Juncker".

Living in exile, the writer lived in poverty, suffering both from lack of demand and from being cut off from his native soil.

In May 1937, Kuprin returned with his wife to Russia. By this time he was already seriously ill. Interviews with the writer and his journalistic essay "Moscow native" were published in Soviet newspapers.

On August 25, 1938, he died in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) from esophageal cancer. Buried at Literatorskie mostki Volkov cemetery.

Alexander Kuprin was married twice. In 1901, his first wife was Maria Davydova (Kuprina-Iordanskaya), the adopted daughter of the publisher of the magazine "Peace of God". Subsequently, she married the editor of the magazine "Modern World" (which replaced the "Peace of God"), publicist Nikolai Iordansky, and she herself worked in journalism. In 1960, her book of memoirs about Kuprin "The Years of Youth" was published.

Life and work of A. I. Kuprin.

The future master of the pen was born in a noble family on 09/07/1870, in the Penza province, the town of Narovchat. His parents were nobles.
At the age of six, Sasha was assigned to the Moscow Razumovskaya school. The next stage of his training was a military gymnasium, after which, after becoming a cadet, he underwent training at the Alexander Military School until 1890.
At the school, the future master of words wrote his first youthful poems, some of them have survived to this day. The first publication appeared in 1889 in a magazine called “Russian satirical leaf” and was called “The Last Debut”.
While in the rank of second lieutenant in an infantry regiment, Kuprin continued his attempts at writing. His works: "In the Dark", "Inquiry", "Moonlit Night" were published in St. Petersburg by the magazine "Russian wealth".
The army's cruel morals, hopeless boredom and endless drill, turned the military away from continuing the service. Having retired in 1894, he settled in Kiev. After moving to this city, books were published: a book of stories "Miniatures" and a collection of essays "Kiev types".
For about seven years, Alexander Ivanovich traveled around the expanses of his homeland and mastered various crafts, worked as a surveyor, fisherman, teacher, actor and even worked in a circus. The accumulated impressions are reflected in his books. For example, the story "Moloch" describes the hopeless exhausting labor of factory workers. And in 1898 "Polesskie Stories" and the story "Olesya" were created.
The wanderings ended in 1901 and the young writer, on the advice of I. Bunin, settled in St. Petersburg and married M.K.Davydova. He was hired by the Journal for Everyone.
The flowering of the author's talent fell on the years between the two revolutions. In 1905, the story "Duel" was published. She brought Kuprin universal fame. Publications followed one after another, from 1904 to 1917 the following stories were published: "Garnet Bracelet", "Gambrinus", "Emerald", "Shulamith", the story "The Pit", as well as the first collected works.
Friendship with M. Gorky and A. Chekhov contributed a lot to the formation of the writer and his participation in the life of society. Aleksandr Ivanovich helped the mutinous sailors from the cruiser Ochakov to hide from the police. When the First World War began, Alexander voluntarily went into the active army, but was soon demobilized. Upon his return, he placed the wounded soldiers in his house in Gatchina.
Family life was also changed. Having divorced his first wife, he married E.M. Geynrikh. In 1909, the prose writer was awarded the "Pushkin Prize". And in 1915 the complete collected works of Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin were published.
The February Revolution of 1917 brought the prose writer closer to the Socialist-Revolutionaries. He accepted it with enthusiasm, but the new government brought the country dictatorship and civil war. Disappointed, Kuprin joined Yudenich's army, and in 1920 immigrated with his wife and daughter to France.
In immigration, Alexander Ivanovich continued to work. There was created a novel-autobiography "Juncker", books "New stories and stories", "Elan", "Wheel of time". But life abroad turned out to be filled with poverty and nostalgia for their native land. His return to Russia in 1937 was supported by J.V. Stalin.
At home, Kuprin's family received a warm welcome, housing and the services of doctors. The writer by that time suffered from esophageal cancer. His last essay "Native Moscow" became the final point in the author's work.
A.I. Kuprin died on August 25, 1938 in Leningrad, at the age of 67. He rests in the Volkovskoye cemetery. The wife survived him for a short time, unable to withstand the hunger during the Leningrad blockade, she committed suicide.
Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin is an outstanding Russian realist writer, his works describe events in which he was a participant or eyewitness. And they vividly paint the life and everyday life of his contemporaries. With his work, he managed to make a significant contribution to Russian literature.