The theme of ruined noble nests at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries was one of the most popular. (Remember, for example, A.P. Chekhov's play The Cherry Orchard.) For Bunin, she is very close, because his family was among those whose "nests" were ruined. Back in 1891, he conceived the story " Antonov apples”, but wrote and published it only in 1900. The story was subtitled "Pictures from the Book of Epitaphs". Why? What did the writer want to emphasize with this subtitle? Perhaps bitterness about the perishing "noble nests" dear to his heart ... What is the story about? About autumn, about Antonov apples - this is a chronicle of the life of nature, marked by months (from August to November). It consists of four small chapters, and each is devoted to a certain month and the work that is carried out in the village during this month.
The narration is conducted in the first person: “I remember an early fine autumn”, “I remember a harvest year”, “Here I see myself again in the village ...”. Often the phrase begins with the word "remember". "I remember early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinned garden, I remember maple alleys, the delicate aroma of fallen leaves and the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness. The theme of memory in the story is one of the main ones. The memory is so sharp that the narration is often conducted in the present tense: “The air is so clean, as if it were not there at all, voices and the creak of carts are heard throughout the garden”, “everywhere there is a strong smell of apples”. But the acute longing for the past changes the time, and the hero-narrator narrates about the recent past as about the distant: “These days were so recent, but meanwhile it seems to me that almost a whole century has passed since then.”
Bunin dwells on the attractive aspects of landlord life: the proximity of nobles and peasants, the fusion of human life with nature, its naturalness. Strong huts, gardens, homeliness, hunting scenes, wild feasts, peasant labor, reverent communication with books, antique furniture, hospitality with hospitable dinners are lovingly described. Patriarchal life appears in an idyllic light, in its obvious aestheticization and poeticization. The author regrets the harmony and beauty that has passed away, the peaceful flow of days, the prosaic present, where the smell of Antonov apples disappears, where there are no hounds, no domestics and the owner himself - the landowner-hunter. Often, not events and pictures are recalled, but impressions: “There are a lot of people - all people are tanned, with weather-beaten faces ... And in the yard a horn blows and dogs howl in different voices ... I still feel how eagerly and capaciously the young chest was breathing in the cold of a clear and damp day in the evening, when you used to ride with a noisy gang of Arseny Semyonych, excited by the musical gallop of dogs thrown into the black forest in some Red Hillock or Gremyachiy Island, already exciting the hunter with its name alone. Changes in reality are obvious - the picture of an abandoned cemetery and the departure of Vyselkovskaya inhabitants give rise to sadness, a feeling of goodbye, reminiscent of an epitaph related to Turgenev's pages about the desolation of noble nests.
The story is not clear storyline, it is made up of a number of "fragmented" pictures, impressions, memories. Their change reflects the gradual disappearance of the old way of life. Each of these fragments of life has a specific coloration: "A cool garden filled with a purple mist"; “Sometimes in the evening, between the gloomy low clouds, the trembling golden light of the low sun made its way in the west.”
Bunin, as it were, takes over from L.N. Tolstoy, idealizing a person living among forests and meadows. He poetizes the phenomena of nature. God why, along with sadness in the story, there is also a motive of joy, light acceptance and affirmation of life. Read the descriptions of nature. Forest landscape at the time of the hunt, open field, panorama of the steppe, sketches of an apple orchard, the diamond constellation Stozhar. Landscapes are given in dynamics, in a subtle transfer of colors and author's moods. Bunin reproduces the change of time of day, the rhythm of the seasons, the renewal of everyday life, the struggle of epochs, the unstoppable running of time, with which Bunin's characters and the author's thoughts are associated. In "Antonov's Apples" Bunin showed not only the elegiacy of a noble estate, but also the vanished poetry of the old Russian way of life - noble and peasant, the way in which Russia has stood for centuries. The writer revealed the values on which this life rested - attachment to the earth, the ability to hear and understand it: “We listen for a long time and distinguish trembling in the earth. The trembling turns into noise, grows ... "
The story is distinguished by a special lyrical excitement, conveyed by a peculiar vocabulary, expressive epithets, rhythm and syntax of Bunin's text. Critic Y. Aikhenvald noted that Bunin “does not gloatingly, but painfully depicts Russian rural poverty ... looks back with sadness at an obsolete time in our history, at all these ruined noble nests". If we recall the beginning of the story, then it is full of joyful vivacity: “How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world!” Gradually, the intonation changes, nostalgic notes appear: “For last years one thing supported the fading spirit of the landowners - hunting. At the end, in the description late autumn sounds like pure sadness.
According to the modern literary critic V.A. Keldysh, “the true hero of the story is the magnificent Russian autumn with all its colors, sounds and smells. Contact with nature, giving a feeling of joy and the fullness of existence - this is the main angle, the artistic angle of view.
And yet ... The reading public still perceived Bunin as a poet. In 1909, he was elected an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences: “Of course, as a poet crowned by I.A. Bunin Academy, - critic A. Izmailov noted. “As a storyteller, he retains in his writing the same significant tenderness of perception, the same sadness of the soul experiencing early autumn.”
In assessing the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907, Bunin was restrained. Emphasizing his apathy, in 1907 he left to travel with his wife, Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, an intelligent and educated woman, who became his devoted and selfless friend for life. They lived together for many years, and after Bunin's death, she prepared his manuscript for publication and wrote a biography, Bunin's Life.
In the writer's work, a special place is occupied by essays - "travel poems", born as a result of wanderings in Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Ceylon, India, Turkey, Greece, North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Palestine. "The Shadow of a Bird" (1907-1911) is the name of a cycle of works in which diary entries, impressions of the places seen, cultural monuments are intertwined with the legends of ancient peoples. IN literary criticism this cycle is called differently - lyric poems, stories, travel poems, travel notes, travel essays. (Reading these works, think about which genre definition most fully characterizes Bunin's works. Why?)
In this cycle, the writer for the first time looked at what is happening around from the point of view of a "citizen of the world", wrote that he was "doomed to know the longing of all countries and all times." This position allowed him to assess the events of the beginning of the century in Russia differently.
Larisa Vasilievna TOROPCHINA - teacher at Moscow Gymnasium No. 1549; honored teacher of Russia.
“The smell of Antonov apples disappears from the estates...”
The cherry orchard has been sold, it's gone, it's true...
Forgot about me...
A.P. Chekhov
Speaking of cross-cutting topics in literature, I would like to highlight the topic extinction of landowners' nests as one of the most interesting and deep. Considering it, students of grades 10–11 turn to the works of the 19th–20th centuries.
For many centuries, the Russian nobility was the bulwark of state power, the ruling class in Russia, the "flower of the nation", which, of course, was reflected in literature. Of course, the characters of literary works were not only the honest and noble Starodum and Pravdin, the open, morally pure Chatsky, not satisfied with an idle existence in the light of Onegin and Pechorin, who went through many trials in search of the meaning of life, Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov, but also rude and ignorant The Prostakovs and Skotinin, Famusov, who cares exclusively for his “native little man”, the projector Manilov and the reckless “historical man” Nozdryov (the latter, by the way, are much more numerous, as in life).
Reading works of art XVIII - the first half of XIX century, we see the heroes-masters - whether it be Mrs. Prostakova, accustomed to the blind obedience of those around her to the will, or the wife of Dmitry Larin, alone, “without asking her husband”, who managed the estate, or “damn fist” Sobakevich, a strong owner who knew not only the names of his serfs, but also the peculiarities of their characters, their skills and crafts, and with the legitimate pride of the father-landowner, he praised “dead souls”.
However, by the middle of the 19th century, the picture of Russian life had changed: reforms were ripe in society, and writers were not slow to reflect these changes in their works. And now, before the reader, the no longer self-confident owners of serf souls, who quite recently proudly said: “The law is my desire, the fist is my police,” and the confused owner of the Maryino estate Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov, an intelligent, kind-hearted man who found himself on the eve of the abolition of serfdom rights in a difficult situation, when the peasants almost cease to obey their master, and he can only exclaim bitterly: “My strength is no more!” True, at the end of the novel we learn that Arkady Kirsanov, who left in the past the worship of the ideas of nihilism, “became a zealous owner” and the “farm” he created already brings quite a significant income, and Nikolai Petrovich “got into world mediators and works hard strength." As Turgenev says, “their affairs are beginning to get better” - but for how long? Another three or four decades will pass - and the Ranevskys and Gaevs will come to replace the Kirsanovs ("The Cherry Orchard" by A.P. Chekhov), the Arsenyevs and the Khrushchevs ("The Life of Arsenyev" and "Sukhodol" by I.A. Bunin). And now we can talk about these heroes, about their way of life, characters, habits, actions in more detail.
First of all, works of art should be selected for conversation: these can be the story "Belated Flowers", the plays "The Cherry Orchard", "Three Sisters", "Uncle Vanya" by A.P. Chekhov, the novel "The Life of Arseniev", the stories "Dry Valley", "Antonov Apples", the stories "Natalie", "Snowdrop", "Rusya" by I.A. Bunin. Of these works, you can choose two or three for detailed analysis, while others can be accessed fragmentarily.
"The Cherry Orchard" students analyze in the classroom, a lot of literary studies are devoted to the play. And yet everyone - with a careful reading of the text - can discover something new in this comedy. So, speaking about the extinction of the life of the nobility at the end of the 19th century, students notice that the heroes of The Cherry Orchard Ranevskaya and Gaev, despite the sale of the estate where they spent the best years of their lives, despite the pain and sorrow for the past, are alive and even in the final relatively well. Lyubov Andreevna, having taken fifteen thousand that the Yaroslavl grandmother sent, goes abroad, although she understands that this money - with her extravagance - will not last long. Gaev is also not eating the last piece of bread: he is provided with a place in the bank; Another thing is whether he, a gentleman, an aristocrat, condescendingly speaking to a devoted lackey, will cope: “You go away, Firs. I, so be it, will undress myself, ”- with the position of“ bank servant ”. And the impoverished Simeonov-Pishchik, who is always fussing about where to borrow money, will perk up at the end of the play: “the British came to his estate and found some white clay in the ground” and he “surrendered them a plot with clay for twenty four years". Now this fussy, simple-hearted person even distributes part of the debt (“owes everyone”) and hopes for the best.
But for the devoted Firs, who after the abolition of serfdom “did not agree to freedom, remained with the masters” and who remembers the blessed times when cherries from the garden “were dried, soaked, pickled, boiled jam”, life is over: he is not today or tomorrow dies - from old age, from hopelessness, from uselessness to anyone. His words sound bitter: “They forgot about me ...” The gentlemen abandoned, like old man Firs, and the old cherry orchard, they left what, according to Ranevskaya, was her “life”, “youth”, “happiness”. The former serf, and now the new master of life, Yermolai Lopakhin, has already “grabbed an ax in the cherry orchard”. Ranevskaya cries, but does nothing to save the garden, the estate, and Anya, a young representative of the once rich and noble noble family, leaves her native places even with joy: “What have you done to me, Petya, why I no longer love cherry orchard, like before?" But after all “do not renounce loving”! So, I didn't love that much. It is bitter that they so easily leave what was once the meaning of life: after the sale of the cherry orchard, “everyone calmed down, even cheered up ... in fact, now everything is fine.” And only the author’s remark at the end of the play: “Among the silence there is a dull knock on wood, sounding lonely and sad”(Italics mine. - L.T.) - says that sad becomes Chekhov himself, as if warning his heroes against forgetting their former life.
What happened to the characters in Chekhov's drama? Analyzing their life, characters, behavior, students come to the conclusion: this degeneration, not moral (“stupid” nobles, in fact, are not bad people: kind, unselfish, ready to forget the bad, to help each other in some way), not physical (the heroes - all except Firs - are alive and well), but rather - psychological, consisting in the absolute inability and unwillingness to overcome the difficulties sent by fate. Lopakhin's sincere desire to help the "stupid" is shattered by the utter apathy of Ranevskaya and Gaev. “I have never met such frivolous people like you, gentlemen, such unbusinesslike, strange people,” he states with bitter bewilderment. And in response he hears a helpless: "Dachi and summer residents - it's so vulgar, sorry." As for Anya, here it is probably more appropriate to talk about rebirth, about the voluntary renunciation of the former life values. Is it good or bad? Chekhov, a sensitive, intelligent person, does not give an answer. Time will show…
It’s a pity for other Chekhov’s heroes, smart, decent, kind, but completely incapable of active creative activity, of surviving in difficult conditions. After all, when Ivan Petrovich Voinitsky, a nobleman, the son of a privy councilor, who spent many years “like a mole ... within four walls” and scrupulously collects income from the estate of his late sister in order to send
her money ex-husband- to Professor Serebryakov, exclaims in despair: “I am talented, smart, brave ... If I lived normally, then Schopenhauer, Dostoevsky could come out of me ...”, then you don’t really believe him. What prevented Voynitsky from living a full life? Probably, the fear of plunging into the whirlpool of events, the inability to deal with difficulties, an inadequate assessment of reality. After all, he, in fact, himself created an idol for himself from Professor Serebryakov (“all our thoughts and feelings belonged to you alone ... we reverently pronounced your name”), and now he reproaches his son-in-law for ruining his life. Sonya, the professor's daughter, who after the death of her mother formally owns the estate, cannot defend his rights to it and only begs his father: “You must be merciful, dad! Uncle Vanya and I are so unhappy!” So what keeps you from being happy? Think it's the same mental apathy, softness that prevented Ranevskaya and Gaev from saving the cherry orchard.
And the Prozorov sisters, the general's daughters, throughout the entire play ("Three Sisters"), like a spell, repeating: "To Moscow! To Moscow! To Moscow!”, their desire to leave the dull county town is never fulfilled. Irina is about to leave, but at the end of the play she is still here, in this "philistine, despicable life." Will he leave? Chekhov puts an ellipsis...
If Chekhov's heroes-nobles are passive, but at the same time they are kind, intelligent, benevolent, then the heroes of I.A. Bunin exposed degeneration both moral and physical. Students, of course, will remember the characters of the poignantly tragic story "Sukhodol": the crazy grandfather Pyotr Kirillich, who "was killed ... by his illegitimate son Gervaska, a friend of his father" of the young Khrushchevs; the pitiful, hysterical aunt Tonya, who had gone mad “from unhappy love,” “lived in one of the old courtyard huts near the impoverished Sukhodolsk estate”; the son of Pyotr Kirillich - Pyotr Petrovich, with whom the yard Natalya fell selflessly in love and who exiled her for this “into exile, to farm S O shki”; and Natalya herself, the foster sister of another son of Pyotr Kirillich, Arkady Petrovich, whose “pillar gentlemen Khrushchevs” had her father “driven into soldiers”, and “her mother was in such awe that her heart broke at the sight of the dead turkeys”. It is amazing that at the same time, the former serf does not hold a grudge against the owners, moreover, she believes that “there were no simpler, kinder Sukhodolsk gentlemen in the whole universe.”
As an example of a consciousness mutilated by serfdom (after all, the unfortunate woman literally sucked up slavish obedience with her mother’s milk!) Students will cite an episode when a half-crazy young lady, to whom Natalya was assigned to “consist”, “cruelly and with pleasure tore her hair” just because the maid “clumsily pulled” the stocking from the lady’s leg. Natalya was silent, did not resist a fit of unreasonable rage, and only, smiling through her tears, determined for herself: “It will be difficult for me.” How not to remember the departure of Firs (The Cherry Orchard), forgotten by everyone in the turmoil, as a child rejoicing that his “lady ... has arrived” from abroad, and on the verge of death (in the literal sense of the word!) lamenting not about himself, but about the fact that "Leonid Andreevich ... did not put on a fur coat, he went in a coat," but he, the old lackey, "did not even look"!
Working with the text of the story, students will note that the narrator, in whom, undoubtedly, there are features of Bunin himself, a descendant of the once noble and rich, and by the end of the 19th century completely impoverished noble family, recalls the former Sukhodol with sadness, because for him and for all the Khrushchevs, "Sukhodol was a poetic monument of the past." However, the young Khrushchev (and, of course, the author himself with him) is objective: he also talks about the cruelty with which the landlords unleashed their anger not only on the servants, but also on each other. So, according to the memoirs of the same Natalia, on the estate “they sat down at the table ... with rapniks” and “not a day passed without a war! They were all hot - pure gunpowder.
Yes, on the one hand, the narrator says, “there was charm ... in the ruined Sukhodolsk estate”: it smelled of jasmine, elderberry and euonymus grew rapidly in the garden, “the wind, running through the garden, carried ... the silky rustle of birch trees with satin-white, black-spotted trunks ... the green-gold oriole screamed sharply and joyfully ”(recall Nekrasov’s“ there is no ugliness in nature ”), and on the other - a“ nondescript ”dilapidated house instead of the burned-out“ grandfather oak ”, several old birches and poplars left over from the garden,“ overgrown with wormwood and candlestick” barn and glacier. Everything is ruin, desolation. A sad impression, but once, according to legend, young Khrushchev, his great-grandfather, notes, “a rich man, only in his old age he moved from near Kursk to Sukhodol”, did not like the Sukhodol wilderness. And now his descendants are doomed to vegetate here almost in poverty, although earlier “money, according to Natalia, did not know what to do with”. “Fat, small, with a gray beard” the widow of Pyotr Petrovich Klavdia Markovna spends time knitting “thread socks”, and “Aunt Tonya” in a torn dressing gown, worn directly on her naked body, with a high hat on her head, built “from some kind of dirty rag”, looks like Baba Yaga and is a truly pitiful sight.
Even the narrator’s father, a “carefree man” for whom “it seemed that there were no attachments,” is grieving over the loss of the former wealth and power of his family, complaining until his death: “One, one Khrushchev is now left in the world. And he is not in Sukhodol!” Of course, “the power of ancient nepotism is immensely great”, it is hard to talk about the death of loved ones, but both the narrator and the author are sure that a series of ridiculous deaths in the estate is predetermined. And the end of the “grandfather” at the hands of Gervasius (the old man slipped from the blow, “waving his hands and just hit the sharp corner of the table with his temple”), and the mysterious, incomprehensible death of the intoxicated Pyotr Petrovich, who was returning from his mistress from Lunev (or really “the horse killed ... attached, or one of the servants, embittered at the master for beatings). The Khrushchev family, once mentioned in the chronicles and giving the Fatherland "both stewards, and governors, and eminent men," has ended. There was nothing left: "no portraits, no letters, not even simple accessories ... everyday life."
Gorek and the finale of the old Sukhodolsk house: it is doomed to a slow dying, and the remains of the once luxurious garden were cut down by the last owner of the estate, the son of Pyotr Petrovich, who left Sukhodol and entered the railroad as a conductor. How similar it is to the death of a cherry orchard, with the only difference that in Sukhodol everything is simpler and more terrible. The “smell of Antonov apples” has disappeared forever from the landlord estates, life has gone. Bunin writes bitterly: “And sometimes you think: yes, it’s enough, did they even live in the world?”
Noble nests cherished alleys. These words from K. Balmont's poem "In Memory of Turgenev" perfectly convey the mood of the story "Antonov apples". Apparently, it is no coincidence that on the pages of one of his first stories, the very date of creation of which is extremely symbolic, I.A. Bunin recreates the world of the Russian estate. It is in it, according to the writer, that the past and present, the history of the culture of the golden age and its fate at the turn of the century, family traditions of a noble family and individual human life. Sadness about the nests of nobles fading into the past is the leitmotif not only of this story, but also of numerous poems, such as “The high white hall, where the black piano is ...”, “Into the living room through the garden and dusty curtains ...”, “On a quiet night, the late moon came out ... ". However, the leitmotif of decline and destruction is overcome in them “not by the theme of liberation from the past, but on the contrary, by the poetization of this past, living in the memory of culture ... Bunin's poem about the estate is characterized by picturesqueness and at the same time inspired emotionality, sublimity and poetic feeling. The estate becomes for the lyrical hero an integral part of his individual life and at the same time a symbol of the homeland, the roots of the family ”(L. Ershov).
The play " The Cherry Orchard" - last thing dramatic work Chekhov, a sad elegy about the passing time of "noble nests". In a letter to N.A. Chekhov confessed to Leikin: “I terribly love everything that in Russia is called an estate. This word has not yet lost its poetic connotation. Everything connected with the estate life was dear to the playwright; it symbolized the warmth of family relations, which A.P. so aspired to. Chekhov. And in Melikhovo, and in Yalta, where he happened to live.
The image of the cherry orchard is in a central way in Chekhov's comedy, he is presented as the leitmotif of various time plans, involuntarily connecting the past with the present. But the cherry orchard is not just a background of ongoing events, it is a symbol of estate life. The fate of the estate plot organizes the play. Already in the first act, immediately after the meeting with Ranevskaya, discussion begins on saving the mortgaged estate from auction. In the third act, the estate is sold, in the fourth - farewell to the estate and past life.
The cherry orchard personifies not only the manor, it is a wonderful creation of nature that a person must preserve. The author pays great attention to this image, which is confirmed by the extended remarks and replicas of the characters. The whole atmosphere, which is associated in the play with the image of the cherry orchard, serves to affirm its enduring aesthetic value, the loss of which cannot but impoverish the spiritual life of people. That is why the image of the garden is taken out in the title.
Answer
The story of I.A. Bunin "Antonov apples" refers to one of those of his works, where the writer with sad love recalls the "golden" days that have gone forever. The author worked in an era of fundamental changes in society: the whole beginning of the twentieth century is covered in blood. It was possible to escape from the aggressive environment only in the memories of the best moments.
The idea of the story came to the author in 1891, when he was staying at the estate with his brother Eugene. The smell of Antonov apples, which filled the autumn days, reminded Bunin of those times when the estates prospered, and the landowners did not grow poor, and the peasants reverently treated everything lordly. The author was sensitive to the culture of the nobility and the old local way of life, deeply worried about their decline. That is why a cycle of stories-epitaphs stands out in his work, which tells about a long-gone, “dead”, but still so dear old world.
The writer nurtured his work for 9 years. The Antonov Apples were first published in 1900. However, the story continued to be refined and changed, Bunin polished the literary language, gave the text even more imagery, and removed everything superfluous.
What is the piece about?
"Antonov's Apples" is an alternation of pictures of noble life, united by the memories of a lyrical hero. At first he remembers early autumn, a golden garden, picking apples. All this is managed by the owners, who lived in a hut in the garden, arranging a whole fair there on holidays. The garden is filled with different faces of peasants who amaze with contentment: men, women, children - they are all on the best terms with each other and with the landowners. The idyllic picture is complemented by pictures of nature, at the end of the episode main character exclaims: “How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world!”
The harvest year in the ancestral village of the protagonist Vyselka pleases the eye: everywhere there is contentment, joy, wealth, the simple happiness of the peasants. The narrator himself would like to be a peasant, not seeing any problems in this share, but only health, naturalness and closeness to nature, and not at all poverty, lack of land and humiliation. From the peasant, he moves on to the noble life of former times: serfdom and immediately after, when the landowners were still playing leading role. An example is the estate of Anna Gerasimovna's aunt, where prosperity, austerity, and serfdom of servants were felt. The decor of the house also seems to be frozen in the past, even talking only about the past, but this also has its own poetry.
Hunting, one of the main entertainments of the nobility, is mentioned separately. Arseny Semenovich, the brother-in-law of the protagonist, organized large-scale hunts, sometimes for several days. The whole house was filled with people, vodka, cigarette smoke, dogs. The conversations and memories about it are noteworthy. The narrator saw these amusements even in a dream, plunging into a slumber on soft featherbeds in some corner room under the icons. But it’s also nice to oversleep the hunt, because in the old estate there are books, portraits, magazines all around, at the sight of which “sweet and strange longing” seizes.
But life has changed, it has become "beggarly", "small local". But even in it there are remnants of its former greatness, poetic echoes of the former noble happiness. So, on the threshold of a century of change, the landlords had only memories of carefree days.
Main characters and their characteristics
- Disparate paintings are connected through a lyrical hero, who represents the author's position in the work. He appears before us as a man with a fine mental organization, dreamy, receptive, divorced from reality. He lives in the past, grieving for it and not noticing what is really going on around him, including in the village environment.
- The protagonist's aunt Anna Gerasimovna also lives in the past. Order and accuracy reign in her house, antique furniture is perfectly preserved. The old woman also speaks of the times of her youth, and of her inheritance.
- Shurin Arseny Semenovich is distinguished by a young, dashing spirit, in hunting conditions these reckless qualities are very organic, but what is he like in everyday life, in the household? This remains a mystery, because in his face the noble culture is poeticized, like in the past heroine.
- There are many peasants in the story, but they all have similar qualities: folk wisdom, respect for the landowners, dexterity and thriftiness. They bow low, run at the first call, in general, support a happy noble life.
Problems
The problematics of the story "Antonov apples" mainly focuses on the theme of the impoverishment of the nobility, their loss of their former authority. According to the author, the landowner's life is beautiful, poetic, there is no place for boredom, vulgarity and cruelty in rural life, the owners and peasants coexist perfectly with each other and are unthinkable separately. Bunin's poeticization of serfdom is clearly visible, because it was then that these beautiful estates flourished.
Another important issue raised by the writer is the problem of memory. In the critical, crisis era in which the story was written, one wants peace, warmth. It is his that a person always finds in childhood memories, which are colored with a joyful feeling, from that period only good things usually appear in the memory. This is beautiful and Bunin wants to leave forever in the hearts of readers.
Subject
- The main theme of Bunin's Antonov Apples is the nobility and its way of life. It is immediately evident that the author is proud of his own estate, therefore he puts it very highly. The village landowners are also praised by the writer because of their connection with the peasants, who are clean, highly moral, morally healthy. In rural worries there is no place for melancholy, melancholy and bad habits. It is in these remote estates that the spirit of romanticism is alive, moral values and concepts of honor.
- The theme of nature occupies a large place. Paintings native land written freshly, cleanly, with respect. The author's love for all these fields, gardens, roads, estates is immediately visible. In them, according to Bunin, lies the real real Russia. The nature surrounding the lyrical hero truly heals the soul, drives away destructive thoughts.
Meaning
Nostalgia is the main feeling that covers both the author and many readers of that time after reading Antonov Apples. Bunin is a true artist of the word, therefore his country life- an idyllic picture. The author carefully avoided all sharp corners, in his story life is beautiful and devoid of problems, social contradictions, which in reality had accumulated by the beginning of the 20th century and inevitably led Russia to change.
The meaning of this story by Bunin is to create a picturesque canvas, to plunge into the bygone, but alluring world of serenity and prosperity. For many people, the departure from reality was an exit, but a short one. Nevertheless, "Antonov's Apples" is an exemplary work in artistic terms, and one can learn from Bunin the beauty of his style and imagery.
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"A vigorous Antonovka - for a merry year." Village affairs are good if Antonovka is born: it means that bread is born too ... I remember a harvest year. At early dawn, when the roosters are still crowing and the huts are smoking black, you used to open a window into a cool garden filled with a lilac fog, through which the morning sun shines brightly in some places, and you can’t bear it - you order the horse to be saddled as soon as possible, and you yourself will run wash in the pond. The small foliage has almost completely flown from the coastal vines, and the branches show through in the turquoise sky. The water under the vines became clear, icy and as if heavy. She instantly drives away the night's laziness, and after washing and having breakfast in the servants' room with hot potatoes and black bread with coarse raw salt, you feel with pleasure the slippery leather of the saddle under you, driving through Vyselki to hunt. Autumn is the time for patronal holidays, and the people at this time are tidied up, satisfied, the view of the village is not at all the same as at another time. If the year is fruitful and a whole golden city rises on the threshing floors, and geese rumble loudly and sharply in the morning on the river, then it’s not bad at all in the village. In addition, our Vyselki from time immemorial, since the time of my grandfather, were famous for their “wealth”. Old men and women lived in Vyselki for a very long time - the first sign of a rich village - and they were all tall, big and white as a harrier. You only hear, it happened: “Yes, - here Agafya waved her eighty-three years old!” or conversations like this: “And when will you die, Pankrat?” Will you be a hundred years old? - How would you like to say, father? How old are you, I ask! “But I don’t know, father. — Do you remember Platon Apollonitch? “Well, sir, father,” I distinctly remember. - You see now. You must be at least a hundred. The old man, who is standing in front of the master, stretched out, meekly and guiltily smiles. Well, they say, to do - guilty, healed. And he probably would have gotten even more rich if he hadn’t overate on Petrovka onions. I also remember his old woman. Everyone used to sit on a bench, on the porch, bent over, shaking his head, panting, and holding onto the bench with his hands—everyone was thinking about something. “I suppose about your good,” the women said, because, however, there was a lot of “good” in her chests. And she doesn't seem to hear; blindly looks somewhere into the distance from under sadly raised eyebrows, shakes his head and seems to be trying to remember something. There was a big old woman, all kind of dark. Paneva - almost from the last century, chunks - deceased, neck - yellow and dried up, shirt with canine jambs is always white and white - "just put it in the coffin." And near the porch there was a large stone: she herself bought a shroud for her grave, as well as a shroud - an excellent shroud, with angels, with crosses and with a prayer printed around the edges. The yards in Vyselki also matched the old people: brick, built by grandfathers. And the rich peasants - Savely, Ignat, Dron - had huts in two or three connections, because sharing in Vyselki was not yet fashionable. In such families, they kept bees, were proud of the gray-iron-coloured bityug stallion, and kept the estates in order. On the threshing floors thick and fat hemp-growers grew dark, barns and barns covered with hair stood in the dark; in punkas and barns there were iron doors, behind which canvases, spinning wheels, new short fur coats, typesetting harness, measures bound with copper hoops were stored. Crosses were burned on the gates and on the sledges. And I remember sometimes it seemed to me extremely tempting to be a peasant. When you used to ride through the village on a sunny morning, you all think about how good it is to mow, thresh, sleep on the threshing floor in omets, and on a holiday to get up with the sun, under the thick and musical blasphemy from the village, wash yourself near the barrel and put on a clean suede shirt, the same trousers and indestructible boots with horseshoes. If, however, it was thought, to add to this a healthy and beautiful wife in festive attire, and a trip to mass, and then dinner with a bearded father-in-law, a dinner with hot lamb on wooden plates and with rushes, with honeycomb and homebrew, - so much more to wish for. impossible! Even in my memory, the warehouse of the average noble life, very recently, had much in common with the warehouse of a rich peasant life in terms of its homeliness and rural old-world prosperity. Such, for example, was the estate of Anna Gerasimovna's aunt, who lived about twelve versts from Vyselki. Until, it used to be, you get to this estate, it is already completely depleted. You have to walk with dogs in packs, and you don’t want to hurry - it’s so much fun in an open field on a sunny and cool day! The terrain is flat and can be seen far away. The sky is light and so spacious and deep. The sun is shining from the side, and the road, rolled after the rains by carts, is oily and shines like rails. Fresh, lush green winters are scattered around in wide shoals. A hawk will fly up from somewhere in the clear air and freeze in one place, fluttering with sharp wings. And clearly visible telegraph poles run off into the clear distance, and their wires, like silver strings, slide along the slope of the clear sky. There are little cats sitting on them - completely black badges on music paper. I didn’t know and didn’t see serfdom, but I remember I felt it at my aunt Anna Gerasimovna’s. You will drive into the courtyard and immediately feel that it is still quite alive here. The estate is small, but all old, solid, surrounded by century-old birches and willows. There are many outbuildings - low, but homely - and they all seem to be merged from dark oak logs under thatched roofs. It stands out in size or, rather, in length, only the blackened human one, from which the last Mohicans of the court class look out - some kind of dilapidated old men and old women, a decrepit retired cook, similar to Don Quixote. All of them, when you drive into the yard, pull themselves up and bow low, low. The gray-haired coachman, heading from the carriage house to pick up a horse, takes off his hat at the barn and walks around the yard with his head bare. He traveled with his aunt as a postilion, and now he takes her to mass, in the winter in a cart, and in the summer in a strong, iron-bound cart, like those on which the priests ride. The aunt's garden was famous for its neglect, nightingales, doves and apples, and the house for its roof. He stood at the head of the yard, by the very garden—the branches of the lindens embraced him—he was small and squat, but it seemed that he would never live—he looked so thoroughly from under his extraordinarily high and thick thatched roof, blackened and hardened with time. Its front façade always seemed to me alive: it was as if an old face was looking out from under a huge hat with hollow eyes, windows with mother-of-pearl glasses from rain and sun. And on the sides of these eyes there were porches - two old large porches with columns. Fully fed pigeons always sat on their pediment, while thousands of sparrows rained from roof to roof ... And the guest felt comfortable in this nest under the turquoise autumn sky! You enter the house and first of all you smell apples, and then others: old mahogany furniture, dried lime blossom, which has been lying on the windows since June ... In all the rooms - in the servants' room, in the hall, in the living room - it is cool and gloomy: this is because the house is surrounded by a garden, and the upper glass of the windows is colored: blue and purple. Everywhere is silence and cleanliness, although it seems that armchairs, inlaid tables and mirrors in narrow and twisted gold frames have never moved. And then a cough is heard: an aunt comes out. It is small, but also, like everything around, strong. She wears a large Persian shawl over her shoulders. She will come out importantly, but affably, and now, under endless talk about antiquity, about inheritances, treats begin to appear: first, "blowing", apples - Antonov, "bell lady", borovinka, "prodovitka" - and then an amazing dinner : all pink boiled ham with peas, stuffed chicken, turkey, marinades and red kvass - strong and sweet-sweet ... The windows to the garden are raised, and from there it blows a cheerful autumn coolness.III
In recent years, one thing has supported the fading spirit of the landowners - hunting. Previously, such estates as the estate of Anna Gerasimovna were not uncommon. There were also crumbling, but still living in grand style estates with huge estates, with a garden of twenty acres. True, some of these estates have survived to this day, but there is no life in them ... like my late brother-in-law Arseny Semenych. Since the end of September, our gardens and threshing floor have been empty, the weather, as usual, has changed dramatically. The wind tore and ruffled the trees for whole days, the rains watered them from morning to night. Sometimes in the evening, between the gloomy low clouds, the trembling golden light of the low sun made its way in the west; the air became pure and clear, and the sunlight shone dazzlingly between the foliage, between the branches, which moved like a living net and waved from the wind. The liquid blue sky shone coldly and brightly in the north above heavy lead clouds, and behind these clouds ridges of snowy mountain-clouds slowly floated up. You stand at the window and think: "Perhaps, God willing, the weather will clear up." But the wind did not let up. It disturbed the garden, tore at the stream of human smoke continuously running from the chimney, and again caught up the ominous wisps of ash clouds. They ran low and fast - and soon, like smoke, clouded the sun. Its brilliance faded, the window closed into the blue sky, and the garden became deserted and dull, and the rain began to sow again ... at first quietly, carefully, then more and more thickly, and finally turned into a downpour with a storm and darkness. It's been a long, unsettling night... From such a beating, the garden came out almost completely naked, covered with wet leaves and somehow hushed, resigned. But on the other hand, how beautiful it was when the clear weather came again, the transparent and cold days of early October, the farewell holiday of autumn! The preserved foliage will now hang on the trees until the first winters. The black garden will shine through in the cold turquoise sky and dutifully wait for winter, warming itself in the sunshine. And the fields are already sharply turning black with arable land and bright green with overgrown winter crops... It's time to hunt! And now I see myself in the estate of Arseny Semenych, in a big house, in a hall full of sun and smoke from pipes and cigarettes. There are a lot of people - all people are tanned, with weather-beaten faces, in undershirts and long boots. We just had a very hearty dinner, flushed and excited by noisy talk about the upcoming hunt, but they don’t forget to drink vodka after dinner. And in the yard a horn blows and dogs howl in different voices. The black greyhound, Arseny Semyonitch's favorite, climbs up on the table and begins to devour the remains of the hare with sauce from the dish. But suddenly he lets out a terrible screech and, knocking over plates and glasses, falls off the table: Arseny Semyonitch, who has come out of the office with a rapnik and a revolver, suddenly stuns the hall with a shot. The hall is even more filled with smoke, and Arseny Semyonitch is standing and laughing. "Sorry I missed it!" he says, playing with his eyes. He is tall, thin, but broad-shouldered and slender, and his face is a handsome gypsy. His eyes sparkle wildly, he is very dexterous, in a crimson silk shirt, velvet trousers and long boots. Having frightened both the dog and the guests with a shot, he playfully-importantly recites in a baritone:It's time, it's time to saddle the nimble bottom
And throw a ringing horn over your shoulders! —
And says loudly:
- Well, however, there is nothing to waste golden time! I still feel how greedily and capaciously the young chest breathed in the cold of a clear and damp day in the evening, when you used to ride with a noisy gang of Arseniy Semenych, excited by the musical din of dogs thrown into the black forest, into some Red Hillock or Gremyachiy Island, Exciting hunter by its name alone. You ride an evil, strong and squat "Kyrgyz", tightly restraining him with the reins, and you feel almost one with him. He snorts, asks for a lynx, noisily rustles his hooves along the deep and light carpets of black crumbling leaves, and each sound resounds in the empty, damp and fresh forest. A dog barked somewhere in the distance, another, a third answered passionately and plaintively, and suddenly the whole forest rumbled, as if it were all made of glass, from stormy barking and screaming. Amidst this uproar, a shot rang out loudly - and everything “brewed up” and rolled somewhere into the distance. - Take care! someone yelled in a desperate voice throughout the forest. "Ah, take care!" An intoxicating thought flashed through my mind. You will yell at the horse and, as if off the chain, you will rush through the forest, not understanding anything along the way. Only the trees flash before my eyes and sculpt in the face with mud from under the hooves of the horse. You will jump out of the forest, you will see a motley flock of dogs stretching along the ground on the greenery and you will push the “Kirghiz” even harder to cut across the beast, through the greenery, uplifts and stubbles, until, finally, you cross over to another island and the flock disappears from the eyes along with its furious barking and moaning. Then, all wet and trembling with exertion, you rein in the frothy, wheezing horse and greedily swallow the icy dampness of the forest valley. In the distance, the cries of hunters and the barking of dogs fade away, and all around you is dead silence. The half-opened timber stands motionless, and it seems that you have fallen into some reserved halls. There is a strong smell from the ravines of mushroom dampness, rotten leaves and wet tree bark. And the dampness from the ravines is becoming more and more noticeable, it is getting colder and darker in the forest ... It's time for an overnight stay. But it is difficult to collect the dogs after the hunt. The horns ring in the forest for a long and hopelessly-dreary ring, for a long time a scream, scolding and squealing of dogs is heard ... Finally, already completely in the dark, a gang of hunters tumble into the estate of some almost unfamiliar bachelor landowner and fill the entire courtyard of the estate with noise, which lights up lanterns, candles and lamps brought out to meet the guests from the house... It happened that such a hospitable neighbor had hunting for several days. In the early morning dawn, in the icy wind and the first wet winter, they would leave for the woods and the fields, and by dusk they would return again, all covered in mud, with flushed faces, reeking of horse sweat, the fur of a hunted animal, and the drinking began. It is very warm in a bright and crowded house after a whole day in the cold in the field. Everyone walks from room to room in unbuttoned undershirts, drinking and eating randomly, noisily conveying to each other their impressions of the killed seasoned wolf, who, baring his teeth, rolling his eyes, lies with his fluffy tail thrown to the side in the middle of the hall and stains with his pale and already cold floor with blood After vodka and food, you feel such a sweet fatigue, such a bliss of a young dream, that you hear a conversation as if through water. The weather-beaten face burns, and if you close your eyes, the whole earth will float under your feet. And when you lie down in bed, in a soft feather bed, somewhere in an old corner room with an icon and a lamp, the ghosts of fiery-colored dogs flash before your eyes, the feeling of a jump will ache all over your body, and you will not notice how you will drown along with all these images and sensations in a sweet and healthy dream, even forgetting that this room was once the prayer room of an old man, whose name is surrounded by gloomy fortress legends, and that he died in this prayer room, probably on the same bed. When it happened to oversleep the hunt, the rest was especially pleasant. You wake up and lie in bed for a long time. The whole house is silent. You can hear the gardener walking cautiously through the rooms, lighting the stoves, and how the firewood crackles and shoots. Ahead is a whole day of rest in the already silent winter estate. You will slowly get dressed, wander around the garden, find in the wet foliage an accidentally forgotten cold and wet apple, and for some reason it will seem unusually tasty, not at all like the others. Then you'll get down to books—grandfather's books in thick leather bindings, with gold stars on morocco spines. These books, resembling church breviaries, smell gloriously of their yellowed, thick, rough paper! Some kind of pleasant sourish mold, old perfume ... Good and notes in their margins, large and with round soft strokes made with a quill pen. You open the book and read: “A thought worthy of ancient and new philosophers, the flower of reason and feeling of the heart” ... And you will involuntarily be carried away by the book itself. This is “The Philosopher Nobleman”, an allegory published a hundred years ago by the dependency of some “cavalier of many orders” and printed in the printing house of the order of public charity, a story about how “the philosopher nobleman, having time and the ability to reason, to why the mind of a person can ascend, once received the desire to compose a plan of light in the spacious place of his village "... Then you will stumble upon" satirical and philosophical writings Voltaire” and for a long time you revel in the sweet and mannered syllable of the translation: “My lords! Erasmus composed in the sixth to tenth century a praise of tomfoolery (mannered pause - full stop); you order me to exalt reason before you ... ”Then you will move from Catherine’s antiquity to romantic times, to almanacs, to sentimental, pompous and long novels ... The cuckoo jumps out of the clock and mockingly sadly crows over you in an empty house. And little by little, a sweet and strange longing begins to creep into my heart... Here is "The Secrets of Alexis", here is "Victor, or the Child in the Forest": "Midnight strikes! Sacred silence takes the place of daytime noise and cheerful songs of the villagers. Sleep spreads its dark wings over the surface of our hemisphere; he shakes darkness and dreams from them ... Dreams ... How often they continue only the suffering of the wicked! roses and lilies, "leprosy and playfulness of young naughty ones", a lily hand, Lyudmila and Alina ... And here are magazines with the names of Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, Pushkin's lyceum student. And with sadness you will remember your grandmother, her clavichord polonaises, her languid recitation of poems from Eugene Onegin. And the old dreamy life will rise before you... Nice girls and women once lived in noble estates! Their portraits look at me from the wall, their aristocratic-beautiful heads in ancient hairstyles meekly and femininely lower their long eyelashes to sad and tender eyes...
