Philosophical issues Bunin's works include a huge range of topics and issues that were relevant during the life of the writer and that remain relevant today.
Philosophical reflections of Bunin
The philosophical problems that the writer touches on in his works were very different. Here are just a few of them:
The decomposition of the world of the peasants and the collapse of the former village way of life.
The fate of the Russian people.
Love and loneliness.
The meaning of human life.
Bunin's work "Village" can be attributed to the first topic about the decomposition of the world of peasants and the collapse of the rural and ordinary way of life. This story tells about how the life of the village peasants is changing, changing not only their way of life, but also their moral values and concepts.
One of the philosophical problems that Ivan Alekseevich raises in his work relates to the fate of the Russian people, who were not happy and were not free. He talked about this in his works “The Village” and “ Antonov apples».
Bunin is known to the whole world as the most beautiful and subtle lyricist. Love for the writer was some special feeling that could not last long. He devotes his cycle of stories to this topic. Dark alleys”, which is both sad and lyrical.
Bunin, both as a person and as a writer, was concerned about the morality of our society. To this he devoted his work “The Gentleman from San Francisco”, where he shows the callousness and indifference of bourgeois society.
Philosophical problems are inherent in all the works of the great master of the word.
The collapse of peasant life and the world
One of the works where the writer raises philosophical problems is the burning story "The Village". It contrasts two heroes: Tikhon and Kuzma. Despite the fact that Tikhon and Kuzma are brothers, these images are opposite. It is no coincidence that the author endowed his characters with different qualities. This is a reflection of reality. Tikhon is a wealthy peasant, a kulak, and Kuzma is a poor peasant who himself learned to compose poetry and did it well.
The plot of the story takes the reader to the beginning of the twentieth century, when people in the village were starving, turning into beggars. But the ideas of revolution suddenly appear in this village, and the peasants, ragged and hungry, come to life listening to them. But poor, illiterate people do not have the patience to delve into political nuances, they very soon become indifferent to what is happening.
The writer bitterly writes in the story that these peasants are incapable of decisive action. They do not interfere in any way, and do not even make an attempt to prevent the devastation native land, poor villages, allowing their indifference and inactivity to ruin their native places. Ivan Alekseevich suggests that the reason for this is their lack of independence. This can be heard from the main character, who confesses:
“I can’t think, I’m not taught”
Bunin shows that this shortcoming appeared among the peasants due to the fact that serfdom existed in the country for a long time.
The fate of the Russian people
The author of such wonderful works as the story "The Village" and the story "Antonov's Apples" bitterly talks about how the Russian people suffer and how difficult their fate is. It is known that Bunin himself never belonged to the peasant world. His parents were nobles. But Ivan Alekseevich, like many nobles of that time, was attracted by the study of the psychology of a simple person. The writer tried to understand the origins and foundations national character a simple man.
Studying the peasant, his history, the author tried to find in him not only negative, but also positive features. Therefore, he does not see a significant difference between a peasant and a landowner, this is especially felt in the plot of the story "Antonov apples", which tells about how the village lived. The small estate nobility and peasants worked together and celebrated holidays. This is especially evident during harvesting in the garden, when Antonov apples smell strong and pleasant.
At such times, the author himself liked to wander in the garden, listening to the voices of the peasants, observing the changes in nature. The writer also loved fairs, when the fun began, the men played the accordion, and the women put on beautiful and bright outfits. At such times it was good to wander around the garden and listen to the conversation of the peasants. And although, according to Bunin, the nobles are people who bring true high culture, but ordinary peasants, peasants also contributed to the formation of Russian culture and spiritual world of their country.
Love and loneliness at Bunin
Almost all the works of Ivan Alekseevich, which were written in exile, are poetic. Love for him is a small moment that cannot last forever, so the author in his stories shows how it fades away under the influence of life circumstances, or at the behest of one of the characters. But the theme takes the reader much deeper - it's loneliness. It can be traced and felt in many works. Far from his homeland, abroad, Bunin missed his native places.
In Bunin's story "In Paris" it is said that if far from home, love can break out, but it is not real, since two people are completely alone. Nikolai Platanych, the hero of the story "In Paris", left his homeland long ago, as the white officer could not come to terms with what was happening in his homeland. And here, far from his homeland, he accidentally meets beautiful woman. Much connects and unites them with Olga Alexandrovna. The heroes of the work speak the same language, their views on the world coincide, both of them are lonely. Their souls were drawn to each other. Far from Russia, from their homeland, they fall in love.
When Nikolay Platanych, main character, dies suddenly and quite unexpectedly in the subway, then Olga Alexandrovna returns to an empty and lonely house, where she experiences incredible sadness, bitterness of loss and emptiness in her soul. This emptiness has now settled in her soul forever, because the lost values cannot be replenished far from her native land.
The meaning of human life
The relevance of Bunin's works lies in the fact that he raises questions of morality. This problem of his works concerned not only the society and the time when the writer lived, but also our modern one. This is one of the biggest philosophical problems that will always confront human society.
Immorality, according to the great writer, does not appear immediately, and it is impossible to notice it even at the beginning. But then it grows and in some crucial moment begins to produce the most dire consequences. The immorality that grows in society hits the people themselves, forcing them to suffer.
An excellent confirmation of this can be famous story Ivan Alekseevich "The Gentleman from San Francisco". The protagonist does not think about morality or about his spiritual development. He dreams only about this - to get rich. And he subordinates everything to this goal. For many years of his life he works hard without developing as a person. And now, when he was already 50 years old, he achieves the material well-being that he has always dreamed of. Another, higher goal, the main character does not set for himself.
Together with his family, where there is no love and understanding, he goes on a long and distant journey, which he pays in advance. When visiting historical monuments, it turns out that neither he nor his family are interested in them. Material values have supplanted interest in beauty.
The protagonist of this story has no name. It is Bunin who deliberately does not give the rich millionaire a name, showing that the entire bourgeois world consists of such soulless members of it. The story vividly and accurately describes another world that is constantly working. They have no money, and they do not have as much fun as the rich do, and the basis of their life is work. They die in poverty and in the holds, but the fun on the ship does not stop because of this. A cheerful and carefree life does not stop even when one of them dies. The millionaire without a name is simply taken away so that his body does not interfere.
A society where there is no sympathy, pity, where people do not experience any feelings, where they do not know the wonderful moments of love - this is a dead society that cannot have a future, but they also have no present. And the whole world, which is built on the power of money, is an inanimate world, it is an artificial way of life. After all, even the wife and daughter do not evoke compassion for the death of a wealthy millionaire, rather, this regret for a spoiled trip. These people do not know why they came into this world, and therefore they simply ruin their lives. deep meaning human life they are not available.
The moral foundations of the works of Ivan Bunin will never become obsolete, so his works will always be readable. The philosophical problems that Ivan Alekseevich shows in his works were continued by other writers. Among them are A. Kuprin, and M. Bulgakov, and B. Pasternak. All of them showed love, fidelity, and honesty in their works. After all, a society without these important moral categories simply cannot exist.
“Bunin, with amazing skill, elevates prose to the rank of poetry,” writes Julius Aikhenvald. And it's hard to disagree with that. Indeed, the world of Bunin's prose is as surprisingly harmonious as poetic world. Reading Bunin, we are convinced of how much poetry there is in our prose and how the ordinary is akin to the beautiful.
In his work, the writer addresses a variety of topics. In to the world fiction I. A. Bunin is included as the author of works about the Russian village. In 1910-1913, stories of rare depth were published: "The Village", "Dry Valley", - a whole series of amazing stories. Glory came to Bunin, and a heated debate unfolded around these works.
Surprising and constant was Bunin's interest in secret, hidden processes in the human soul, imperceptibly for it itself losing the fullness of feelings, the flight of a dream. "Cup of Life", "Son", "Otto Stein", " Easy breath"," Loopy ears, "Chang's dreams" - the list of these works is difficult to interrupt, since the theme of the world of human feelings and experiences is present in almost all of Bunin's works.
In the mid-1910s, the writer became interested in a completely different topic - global processes, which at that time had the most gloomy forecasts. The writer defined the First World War as "an unprecedented catastrophe", comparing it with the opening pages of the Bible. The Gentleman from San Francisco (1915), with its world of blatant falsehood, paradoxical human egoism and myopia, was supposed to help sober up, although it did not contain direct responses to the war.
Already the first phrase about the selection by the Lord (the gentleman has no name) of the itinerary for the pleasure cruise is saturated certain meaning. The author presents the morality of wealthy travelers. Interesting to see the details. The ship is called "Atlantis", which, of course, is associated with inevitable death. Different "layers" of the sailors are located on different "levels of life": shiny salons on the one hand, and "hellish" fireboxes of the stoker on the other. All this can be compared with the model of the wrong disunited world. A ship above the mighty, formidable depths of the ocean looks like a miserable chip. And the movement of "Atlantis" in a vicious circle and the return with the body of the already dead Master is a symbol of a meaningless movement in space. The sense of impending catastrophe is clear in the usual description.
In Bunin's story, we see both manifestations of domestic, social evil, and absolute, metaphysical evil.
Social evil appears in the story in the form of an unfair bourgeois world order, an image of the inequality of people. It is also the unshakable confidence of some people that they have the right to command others. This is also the pretense of many people who do not just live, but act out, play some role, sometimes already mortally bored with them. And, finally, social evil manifests itself in the fact that people live, obeying not the natural human principle, but the “logic of things” - the social status of a person, his place on the social ladder, and not his true essence, always turns out to be more important.
But not only social trouble is in the field of view of the author. All the problems identified by Bunin can be called eternal, irremovable, they exist in any society, and social evil is only a consequence of eternal, cosmic, world evil. Cosmic evil manifests itself in eternity, indestructible™ of any evil. It is no coincidence that in the story, as a parallel to the fate of the master, the mention of the Roman emperor Nero Tiberius: “A man lived on this island two thousand years ago, indescribably vile in satisfying his lust and for some reason having power over millions of people.”
This evil has not disappeared - it has been reborn thousands of times and reborn in the same gentleman from San Francisco. Cosmic evil is the incomprehensibility and hostility of the world elements to man. The personification of world evil in the story is the Devil, “huge as a cliff”, watching the ship from the rocks - this is a symbol of the dark beginnings of human life that are not subject to reason. About the fight for human souls F. M. Dostoevsky said this: "The devil fights with God, and the battlefield is the hearts of people."
The story about the life collapse of the self-confident "master of life" develops into a lyrically rich reflection on the connection between man and the world, about the greatness of the natural cosmos and its insubordination to human wills, about eternity and the impenetrable mystery of being.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is a world-famous writer and Nobel laureate. In his works, he touches eternal themes: love, nature and death. The theme of death, as you know, affects the philosophical problems of human existence.
The philosophical problems that Bunin raises in his works are most fully revealed in the story "The Gentleman from San Francisco". In this story, death is presented as one of the important events that determine the true value of the individual. Philosophical problems of the meaning of life, true and imaginary values are the main ones in this work. The writer reflects not only on the fate of an individual, but also on the fate of humanity, which, in his opinion, is on the verge of death. The story was written in 1915, when the First World War and there was a crisis of civilization. It is symbolic in the story that the ship on which the protagonist travels is called "Atlantis". Atlantis is a legendary sunken island that could not stand the raging elements and became a symbol of a lost civilization.
There are also associations with the Titanic that died in 1912. The “ocean that walked behind the walls” of the steamer is a symbol of the elements, nature, opposed to civilization. But people sailing on the ship do not notice the hidden threat that the elements are fraught with, they do not hear the howling of the wind, which drowns out the music. They firmly believe in their idol - the captain. The ship is a model of Western bourgeois civilization. Its holds and decks are the layers of this society. The upper floors are reminiscent of a "huge hotel with all amenities", here are people standing at the top of the social ladder, people who have achieved complete well-being. Bunin draws attention to the regularity of this life, where everything is subject to a strict routine. The author emphasizes that these people, the masters of life, have already lost their individuality. All they do while traveling is having fun and waiting for lunch or dinner. From the outside it looks unnatural and unnatural. There's no place here sincere feelings. Even the couple in love ends up being hired by Lloyd to "play love for good money". It is an artificial paradise filled with light, warmth and music. But there is also hell. This hell is the "underwater womb" of the ship, which Bunin compares with the underworld. They work there simple people on which the well-being of those who lead a carefree and serene life depend.
A prominent representative of bourgeois civilization in the story is a gentleman from San Francisco. The hero is simply called the master, because it is in the mouth that he is. At least he considers himself a master and revels in his position. He achieved everything he aspired to: wealth, power. Now he can afford to go to the Old World “only for the sake of entertainment”, he can enjoy all the benefits of life. Describing the gentleman's appearance, Bunin uses epithets that emphasize his wealth and unnaturalness: "silver mustache", "golden fillings" of teeth, a strong bald head is compared with "old ivory". There is nothing spiritual in the master, his goal - to become rich and reap the fruits of this wealth - was realized, but he did not become happier because of this. ) But here comes the climax of the story, the gentleman from San Francisco dies. It is unlikely that this master of life expected to leave the sinful earth so soon. His death looks “illogical”, out of the general measured order of things, but after all, for her there are no social or material differences.
And the worst thing is that the human begins to manifest itself in him only before death. “It was no longer the gentleman from San Francisco, who was no longer there, who was wheezing, but someone else.” Death makes him a man: "his features began to thin, brighten." Death dramatically changes the attitude of those around him: the corpse must be urgently removed from the hotel so as not to spoil the mood of other guests, they cannot even provide a coffin - only a soda box, and the servants, who trembled before the living, laugh at the dead. Thus, the power of the master turned out to be imaginary, illusory. In pursuit of material values, he forgot about the true, spiritual values, and therefore he was forgotten immediately after his death. This is what is called reward according to merit. The gentleman from San Francisco deserves only oblivion.
An unexpected departure into non-existence is perceived as the highest moment, when everything falls into place, when illusions disappear, and the truth remains, when nature "rudely" proves its omnipotence. But people continue their careless, thoughtless existence, quickly returning to "peace and tranquility." Their souls cannot be awakened to life by the example of one of them. The problem of the story goes beyond a particular case. Its ending is connected with reflections on the fate of not one hero, but all people, past and future passengers of the ship under the mythical and tragic name "Atlantis". Man is forced to overcome the "hard" path of "darkness, ocean, blizzard." Only to the naive, the simple, how accessible is the joy of communion “to the eternal and blissful abode”, to the highest spiritual values. The bearers of true values are the Abruzzi mountaineers and the old man Lorenzo. Lorenzo is a boatman, "a carefree reveler and a handsome man". He is probably the same age as the gentleman from San Francisco, only a few lines are dedicated, but unlike the gentleman, he has a sonorous name. Lorenzo is famous throughout Italy, more than once served as a model for many painters. He looks around with a royal air, rejoicing in life, showing off with his rags. The picturesque poor Lorenzo lives forever on the canvases of artists, and the rich old man from San Francisco was deleted from life as soon as he died.
The Abruzzi highlanders, like Lorenzo, personify the naturalness and joy of being. They live in harmony, in harmony with the world, with nature. Highlanders give praise to the sun, morning, Mother of God and Christ. According to Bunin, this is true values life.
Both in prose and in poetry, Bunin adhered to Tyutchev Fedor Ivanovich pessimistic (1803 - tradition. Perhaps the longest was 1873) the influence of F. Tyutchev's philosophical lyrics on him. Tyutchev's motif of the disharmony of love and death was heard as a desire to realize the general harmony of the world, the motif of the frailty of being - an affirmation of the eternity and incorruptibility of nature, which contains the source of eternal harmony and beauty.
In Bunin's poetry, one of the key places was occupied by philosophical lyrics. Looking into the past, the writer sought to capture the "eternal" laws of development of science, peoples, humanity. This was the meaning of his appeal to the distant civilizations of the past - Slavic and Eastern.
The basis of Bunin's philosophy of life is the recognition of earthly existence as only a part of the eternal cosmic history, in which the life of man and mankind is dissolved. In his lyrics, the feeling of the fatal confinement of human life in a narrow time frame, the feeling of human loneliness in the world, is exacerbated. In creativity, there is a motive of non-stop movement to the secrets of the world:
Once upon a time, over a heavy barge (1916) Once, over a heavy barge With a wide-bottomed stern, Many days in the bright azure Tackles swayed above me. . . It's time, it's time for me to leave the land, Breathe freer and fuller And again baptize my naked soul In the font of the sky and the seas!
The contradictory experiences of the lyrical hero are most clearly manifested in the deeply philosophical motives of the dream, the soul. The “bright dream”, “winged”, “intoxicating”, “enlightened happiness” are sung. However, such an exalted feeling carries within itself a "heavenly mystery", becomes "for the earth - a stranger."
Bunin in his poems responded to the complex issues of life. His lyrics are multifaceted and deep in philosophical questions of understanding the meaning of life. The poet expressed moods of confusion, disappointment, and at the same time knew how to fill his poems with inner light, faith in life, in the greatness of beauty. His lyrical hero has a holistic worldview, radiates a joyful, cheerful attitude towards the world.
The lyrics of I. A. Bunin reflect the theme of memory, the past, the mystery of time as a philosophical category: Blue wallpaper faded, Images, daguerreotypes were removed. Only there was a blue color, Where they hung for many years. Forgotten heart, forgotten Much that once loved! Only those who are no more, An unforgettable trace has been preserved.
These lines contain the idea of the transience of time, of the every second change in the universe and the person in it. Only memory preserves for us the people we love.
I. A. Bunin in his subtle, masterfully polished philosophical poems expressed the idea of the cosmic nature of the soul of each individual person. Philosophical themes of man's connection with nature, life and death, good and evil took the main place in the lyrics of I. Bunin.
The poet writes about the universal meaning scientific discoveries the brilliant researcher Giordano Bruno, who at the moment of execution proclaims: I am dying - because I want to. Scatter, executioner, scatter my ashes, despicable! Hello Universe, Sun! Executioner! - He will scatter my thought throughout the universe!
Bunin the philosopher felt the continuity of being, the eternity of matter, believed in the power of creation. Human genius turns out to be equal to the boundless and eternal cosmos. Bunin could not come to terms with the need to die, the sentence of every person to death. According to the recollections of friends and relatives, he did not believe that he would disappear forever:
v The day will come - I will disappear. v And this room is empty v Everything will be the same: a table, a bench. v Yes, an image, ancient and simple.
In poetry, Bunin tried to find the harmony of the world, the meaning of human existence. He affirmed the eternity and wisdom of nature, defined it as an inexhaustible source of beauty. Bunin's life is always inscribed in the context of nature.
He was confident in the rationality of all living things and argued "that there is no nature separate from us, that every slightest movement of air is the movement of our own life."
Landscape lyrics gradually become philosophical. In a poem, the main thing for the author is the thought. The theme of life and death is devoted to many poems of the poet:
My spring will pass, and this day will pass, But it is fun to wander and know that everything passes, While the happiness of living will never die, As long as the dawn breaks the dawn above the earth And young life is born in its turn.
In lyrical work, Bunin comes to the idea of a person's responsibility to the past, present and future. Not a single person comes into this world without a purpose, living among people, everyone leaves his mark. This idea is confirmed in the poem "Pskov Forest", where the question is: "Are we worthy of our heritage? »
Pskov forest It is dark in the distance, and thickets are strict. Under the red mast, under the pine I stand and linger on the threshold Into the world forgotten, but dear. Are we worthy of our heritage? I will be too terrified where the paths of lynxes and bears Lead to fairy paths. Where the grain turns red on the viburnum, Where the rot is covered with red moss And the berries are misty blue, On the dry juniper.
Bunin believed that life is worth living only for creation, love and beauty. The poet, having traveled almost the whole world and having read thousands of books in search of answers to the "eternal" questions of being, did not believe in supernatural miracles, but believed in the mind and will of a person capable of changing the world for the better.
A.I. Bunin - the great Russian writer and poet, laureate Nobel Prize about literature. His work is characterized by the ability to reveal the whole tragedy of life, its problems, as well as saturation with small, but undoubtedly important details. In his work, the writer touched on many important topics. One of these is philosophy.
He re-raised eternal problems: the meaning of life and spirituality of people, beauty, life and death.
One of the most philosophical works A.I. Bunin is rightfully considered "The Gentleman from San Francisco". Here the writer told us a story about a man without a first and last name. Working all his life, the gentleman from San Francisco was not distracted from his goal at all and systematically achieved his ideals, not noticing anything around him at all. A.I. Bunin shows us an aimlessly lived life, profit, exploitation, the greedy pursuit of money. For all the years of his existence, the Lord from San Francisco rejected all the joys of life, so that later he would finally feel them to the fullest. For the American rich man, all doors are open, all whims are available, because he has money. But the plans were not destined to come true, even the elements themselves were against it, because this is one of those things that you cannot subdue with a stack of green papers or a guest of coins. The hero simply cannot enjoy life, he does not know how. His death becomes a sudden, but quite logical ending. Money and influence did not save a man from death, they could not give happiness and peace. After the death of the head of the family, the attitude towards him changed: he goes home in a soda box, lies in the cramped and cheapest room. In contrast, the gentleman from San Francisco shows the old man Lorenzo, who, although he was a poor man, lived happy life. Here the author raises the question of true and imaginary values. What is our life worth if it is lived in a cold shadow without vivid emotions and feelings? A.I. Bunin makes us think about the meaning of life, about how we spend the years given to us. Often people give themselves up to false and meaningless things, not noticing that true happiness is passing by.
Another of the writer's philosophical works is the story "Easy breathing". It originates in the cemetery, which makes us understand that here the author will touch on the topic of life and death. main character- Olesya Meretskaya. She had that "light breath" that she read about in the book. The young schoolgirl was natural, airy, as if she did not walk, but hovered above the ground. Her beauty, inner freedom and sincerity of her soul made her special, distinguished her from other girls. In Olya there is no hypocrisy, lies and falsehood, it is as if she is the embodiment of life itself. Even a terrible incident did not break her, but in the end Olya died. In this story, A.I. Bunin wanted to show how fleeting beauty and life are, how tragic its fate is in a cruel world, how people break and destroy everything that is pure, beautiful and alive, dooming it to a painful death.
A.I. Bunin raises quite burning topics. He seeks meaning and happiness, talks about life and death, captures the "light breath" of human existence. These themes cannot cease to excite the hearts of people of every generation, so they remain relevant to this day.
