The theme of love in the works of Bunin and Kuprin, two Russian writers dating back to the first half of the 20th century, is common in their works. The heroes of their stories and stories are characterized by extraordinary sincerity and strength of feeling. It subjugates all human thoughts. However, the theme of love in the works of Bunin and Kuprin is almost always revealed tragically. The main characters are invariably doomed to suffer. In order to preserve their feeling, they should part forever. We see such an ending in all the stories of Ivan Alekseevich. The theme of tragic love in Bunin's works is explored in great detail.
Love in the works of Bunin
The heroes of his works live in anticipation of love. They strive to find it and often die, burned by it. This feeling in his works is selfless, selfless. It requires no reward. One can say about such love: “Strong as death.” It will be a joy, not a misfortune, for her to go to the torment.
For Bunin, love does not last long - in marriage, in family, in everyday life. This is a dazzling short flash that illuminates to the very depths of the hearts and souls of lovers. A tragic ending, death, oblivion, suicide is inevitable.
Ivan Alekseevich created a whole series of stories, “Dark Alleys,” dedicated to describing the various shades of this feeling. You probably won’t find a single work in it with a happy ending. The feeling described by the author, one way or another, is short-lived and ends, if not tragically, then at least dramatically. One of the most famous stories in this series is “Sunstroke.”
"Sunstroke"
In Bunin's work, the theme of love and beauty is presented in very complex situations, which are often contradictory. For the author, this feeling is real madness. Love is a surge of emotions. This is a moment of happiness, which quickly ends and only after some time is understood and realized. Such, for example, is the meeting of a lieutenant with a stranger, described in “Sunstroke.” This short moment of happiness cannot be resurrected or returned. When the heroine leaves, the lieutenant feels that he has aged 10 years. The feeling between them suddenly appeared and just as suddenly disappeared. It left a deep wound in my soul, but it was still a great happiness.
"Caucasus" and "Clean Monday"
In the story “Caucasus,” love ends tragically. The husband of the narrator's beloved dies because of her. The theme of love in the works of Ivan Bunin is known to many of us from the work “Clean Monday”.
In it, the heroine goes to a monastery, and the hero suffers from longing for her. He loved this girl with all his soul. However, in spite of everything, his feeling for her remains a bright spot in his life, albeit with an admixture of something mysterious, incomprehensible, bitter.
The love of the heroes of the works “Olesya” and “Garnet Bracelet”
The theme of love is the main theme in Kuprin’s work. Alexander Ivanovich created many works dedicated to this feeling. In the story “Olesya” by Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin, the heroine fell in love with a “kind, but only weak” man. The theme of tragic love in Kuprin’s work is also revealed in his other work, “The Garnet Bracelet.”
The author tells the story of a certain poor employee Zheltkov, describing his feelings for the wealthy married princess Vera Nikolaevna. For him, the only way out is suicide. Before committing it, he says, like a prayer, the words: “Hallowed be thy name.” In Kuprin's works, the heroes may seem unhappy. However, this is only partly true. They are happy simply because they once had love in their lives, and this is the most wonderful feeling. Thus, the theme of tragic love in Kuprin’s work has a life-affirming connotation. Olesya from the story of the same name regrets only that she does not have a child left from her beloved. Zheltkov dies while pronouncing a blessing on his beloved woman. These are romantic and beautiful love stories that are so rare in real life...
The heroes of Kuprin's works are dreamy individuals endowed with a passionate imagination. However, they are also laconic and impractical. These traits are fully revealed after they pass the test of love.
So, for example, Zheltkov did not talk about love for Vera, thereby dooming himself to torment and suffering. However, he could not hide his feeling, so he wrote letters to her. Zheltkov from the story “The Garnet Bracelet” experienced an unrequited, sacrificial feeling that completely took possession of him. It would seem that this is a minor official, an unremarkable person. However, he had a truly enormous gift - he knew how to love. He subordinated his entire being, his entire soul to this feeling. When Vera Nikolaevna’s husband asked him not to bother her with his letters anymore, Zheltkov decided to die. He simply could not imagine existing without the princess.
Love in the works of Kuprin and Bunin
Bunin and Kuprin are Russian writers, their work dates back to the first half of the 20th century. They both worked on a theme about love. In their works, love is filled with tragedy, and this contributes to the fact that readers worry about the heroes of the books and let the story pass through themselves.
In Bunin's works, love always brings suffering. Heroes always break up, receiving incurable mental wounds, some strive to commit suicide. Love acts as a disinterested but passing feeling that covers you headlong without demanding anything in return.
In the period from 1937 to 1944, Bunin worked on a collection of short stories, “Dark Alleys,” which contained stories about love. The pattern is that all works have a tragic ending. The most famous story included in the collection is “Sunstroke.” In this work, the characters love sincerely, with all their hearts.
The story describes the problem between young people in love with each other, their difficult separation and their internal contradictions. The story describes a meeting of two people on the deck of a ship, a spark runs between them, and they run away from the crowd. They rent a hotel room and indulge in passion. But in the morning they were faced with separation, there were tears and vows of love. Then they decided that everything that happened was just sunstroke. At this moment, the meaning of the name is revealed; it turns out that sunstroke symbolizes an unexpectedly surging feeling. With this story, the writer shows that real feeling comes suddenly.
Kuprin was a master of images. He made his characters bright and memorable. He knew how best to reveal human character in love. Kuprin shows love as a bright feeling, and not a short-term passion. But his stories, like Bunin’s, end tragically. The heroes will have to fight for love with the whole world.
In Kuprin's work, the theme of love is the most important. Love affects everyone in its own way. But the most important thing is that this feeling is mutual.
Both Bunin and Kuprin show real love, without hiding anything. Love is not ideal, and sooner or later you have to pay for everything, and everyone has their own payment.
Both writers place their heroes in such conditions that love makes them unhappy. It's about social relations. In the story “Sunstroke,” the lieutenant falls in love with a married woman with whom he had a romantic adventure. It’s the same with Kuprin in Zheltkov’s “Pomegranate Bracelet,” a feeling for the married princess that took over, crowding out everything else from his life.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin and Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin wrote many works, the main theme of which is love.
Love passes by
In the works of these authors, everyday life and love, everyday life and this high feeling cannot be combined. However, it also happens that people, without noticing their happiness, pass by it. And from this side the theme of love is revealed in the works of Bunin and Kuprin. For example, the heroine of “The Pomegranate Bracelet,” Princess Vera, lately notices Zheltkov’s feelings for her, but at the end of the work she learns what all-consuming, selfless love means. For a brief moment it illuminated her life.
Essay on the topic “The theme of love in the works of Bunin and Kuprin”
Love in reasoning has limitless meaning. Many people express it in their own way. The skill of transformation excites the mind. What are the transitions and expressions of Kuprin and Bunin’s feelings in their works. The beauty of the word, bewitching at once, permeates the lines of such famous works as “Pomegranate Bracelet” and “Dark Alleys”.
Both poets characterize love as a sacrificial, light, evaporating, floating and vulnerable feeling “from the word of an evil tongue and the depravity of speech.” The main characters of the works experience the feelings of their creators, they are the embodiment of lonely and unbridled love, the frantic power of attraction and rejection, unquestioning decisions, madness and at the same time lightness. What is love according to Kuprin and Bunin? And what is their role?
Does your teacher check for plagiarism? Order a unique work from us for 250 rubles
Connect with us:
Many poets of the 18-19 centuries of Golden Rus', such as Pushkin, M.V. Lermontov and other poets of that time built a similar meaning of the embodiment of the white bird of love, hope and calmness.
The reminder of this “caste of poets” is not accidental. Since for many years the greatest poets of Russian poetry and lyricism have tried to build a certain algorithm for the manifestation of love in their works, no matter how rude it may sound. Kuprin and Bunin were not afraid of showing unbridled love and exposing it to the public; without any restrictions, the reader accepts this feeling and experiences it together with the poet and the heroes of the works. The theme of love in the works of Bunin and Kuprin has 3 aspects in its style:
- Exemplary import
- Theoretically-textured
- Allegorical-matophoric;
Each of these aspects is connected by one similar thing - they all have a single goal in their own way, they connect the unique feeling of love in the work with a feeling of sacrifice, affection, warmth of penetration. But there are also differences between the styles of manifestation of love and its passage through the reader. To understand this, let's remember Kuprin's work "The Garnet Bracelet" where the heroine realizes that she missed the feeling of love. And Kuprin’s tough love, from which the hero suffers, sacrifices himself, but remains completely true to his feeling, never gives up his position and tries to analyze the aspect of his passion, the object is always elevated to the heart, the strategic position of courier and arthropy in the allegorical description.
In Bunin, the superficial theme of love is revealed in the same way as in Kuprin, but the inner meaning is not revealed in the same way as in the heroes of “Kuprin Stories”. Windy sensuality and unlimitedness can be seen in almost every work. But “Dark Alleys” is a kind of exception to the theme of manifestations of love.
It seems that the poet is trying to show both the light and dark sides of the manifestation of “love fun”. In some places the theme of love touches the reader’s soul, and in others it touches the body. For Bunin and Kuprin, it was important that their heroes and readers felt the torment of sacrificial love not only in their souls, but also in their bodies. To make this whole feeling seem similar in our time. Therefore, the manifestation of love in the works of both authors is still a relevant topic to this day.
“Love is the same as before: sacrificial, prosaic, tragic, real, imbued with anxiety and emotions, heartbreaking magic of body and soul. And lying has a happy ending,” said the 19th century Russian publicist Arsentiy Gudelman Banshtorden. It was the theme of love between Kuprin and Bunin in prose and lyrics that helped a person gain an understanding of that time, to feel the hero through and through, the feelings that tore apart both body and soul.
“The equality of feelings of allegorical love and their tender care, feelings of unreliability, anxiety and childish impressionability, loss, separation and restoration again” - this is the love expression of Kuprin and Bunin. “Percurte adre as ad aspra”—the passage of love like light—is the truth of the works of these greatest Russian lyric writers.
Human imperfection and life-affirming moments
There is probably something in man himself that prevents us all from noticing goodness and beauty. This is selfishness, which is often expressed in the desire to be happy at any cost, even if the other person suffers from it. In the works of Kuprin and Bunin we find all these reflections. However, despite the drama present in them, one can also see something life-affirming in the stories and stories. A high feeling helps the characters of Kuprin and Bunin to go beyond the circle of vulgarity and everyday life that surrounds them. And it doesn’t matter that it’s only for a moment, that the price of this moment is often a whole life.
Artistic embodiment of the theme of love in the prose of I.A. Bunin and A.I. Kuprin.
Artistic embodiment of the theme of love in the prose of I.A. Bunin and A.I. Kuprin.
Of course, these are two great geniuses who cannot be compared; these are two completely different people with their own worldview. But they are united by the theme that is touched upon in their works - the theme of love. Bunin's works show different plots and pictures of love, all of them are beautiful and at the same time tragic. In his work there are frank notes of love between a woman and a man, a detailed revelation of the feelings of earthly love, at the same time this cannot be called vulgar, ordinary platonic love, the works tell of pure love that does not carry vulgarity. Kuprin elevates love to the skies, he writes about love that happens once in a lifetime, fatal love, often tragic, bringing tragedy into the lives of lovers. In turn, Bunin also has fatal love, with its own tragic plots, but it is more “earthly” than Kuprin’s. The works of both authors are characterized by the incompatibility of the happiness of lovers with the modern world, the inconsistency of life, the desire for justice, happiness, love, and a sad understanding of the impossibility of happiness in this world. In the theme of love, Bunin is revealed as a man of amazing talent, a subtle psychologist who knows how to convey the state of the soul, so to speak, wounded by love. The writer does not avoid complex, frank topics, depicting the most intimate human experiences in his stories. The peculiarity of Bunin the artist is that he considers love to be a tragedy, a catastrophe, madness, a great feeling that can both infinitely elevate and destroy a person.
“Dark Alleys” is a unique book in Russian literature, where all 38 short stories are dedicated to feelings of love. Bunin's depiction of love passion is filled with psychological, symbolic, and philosophical meaning. The acute intensity of feelings reveals the deep natural tragedy of life. The catastrophic endings of the stories in different ways confirm the hidden general idea of the book: the lasting happiness of lovers in this world is impossible. In the stories of I. A. Bunin we see a rich, varied, complex range of shades of love - this most unsolved feeling on earth. The writer explores the nature of love, its varieties: love-self-forgetfulness, love-passion, love-madness. Hence the variety of characters and plots in his stories. The characters in “Dark Alleys” do not oppose nature; often their actions are completely illogical and contrary to generally accepted morality. Bunin’s love is “criminal” - it steps over norms, goes beyond the boundaries of everyday life. Love overcomes boundaries and conventions because it is a manifestation of natural, living life. In his perception of the love theme there was no hostile attitude towards the feminine principle, there was no vulgarization of love. The collection “Dark Alleys” shows spiritual, platonic and carnal love, sensual, physical passion. This is most clearly presented in the story “Natalie”. This reflects the simultaneous mixing of two types of love and their interweaving in a complex unity: Natalie evokes in a man a sublime and painful feeling of adoration, alien to carnal attraction, Sonya personifies “bodily rapture.” But the heroines are not opposed to each other. Naturalistic details do not overshadow the romance of sensations, the spirituality of love, which cannot be immoral - this is, first of all, earthly joy, the mysterious attraction of one sex to the other. The writer shows the dark, tragic, tangled labyrinths of love.
The plots of “Dark Alleys” are different: a short story of the seduction of a “simple girl” by a “master” (“Guest”, “Tanya”); “an unforgettable date on a cold autumn evening, eternal separation and the memory of a loved one for life” (“Cold Autumn”); the story of longing for love, memories, brief meetings as fate would have it, achieving the desired happiness and a tragic ending (“Natalie”); romantic love in the lap of nature (“Rusya”).
Often in “Dark Alleys” one finds some fatal motives, elemental love, unexpectedly arising and catastrophic. On this basis, the stories are in one way or another contrasted with previous works. All or almost all of the stories in “Dark Alleys” are told in the past tense. The narrative technique of Bunin's later works is distinguished by a striking combination of noble simplicity and sophistication. “Sunstroke” begins – without any explanation – vaguely – with a personal sentence: “After lunch we left the dining room on the deck...”. The reader still knows nothing about the upcoming event or its participants: the reader’s very first impressions are associated with sensations of light and heat. The story, devoid of exposition, will end with a laconic epilogue - a short sentence in which the lieutenant, feeling “ten years older,” seems to forever freeze. The transience of the incident that served as the basis for the plot is emphasized in “Sunstroke”, as in other late works of Bunin, by the fragmentation and dotted nature of the story about love rapprochement: individual details, gestures, and fragments of dialogue are selected and seemingly hastily assembled. In general, the description of the meeting of lovers takes up a little more than one page of text. This compositional feature of Bunin’s works about love – the selection of the most significant, turning-point episodes, the high plot “speed” in conveying the love story – allows many literary historians to talk about the “novelistic quality” of Bunin’s late prose. Bunin’s focus on the “eternal” questions of human existence, on the existential problems of existence does not make stories about love philosophical: the writer does not like logical abstractions and does not allow philosophical terminology into his texts. The foundation of Bunin's style is not a logical, consistent development of thought, but an artistic intuition of life, which finds expression in almost physiologically tangible descriptions, in complex “patterns” of light and rhythmic contrasts. Love in Bunin's works allows a person to accept life as the greatest gift, to acutely feel the joy of earthly existence, but this joy for the writer is not a blissful and serene state, but a tragic feeling, tinged with anxiety. The emotional atmosphere of the stories is created by the interaction of the motifs of love, beauty and inevitable finitude, the short-term nature of happiness, which are persistent in Bunin’s late prose. Joy and torment, sadness and jubilation are fused into an indissoluble whole in Bunin's later works. In the souls of Bunin’s characters there remains a complex complex of everything experienced. The author does not remain silent about the most powerful bodily pleasures. In “Dark Alleys” a whole gallery of female characters has been created, as evidenced by the titles of the stories themselves: “Muse”, “Rusya”, “Zoika and Valeria”, “Natalie”, “Tanya”. Male images are not so bright, less expressive and less developed. The female characters are varied: “simple souls” (“Tanya”), devoted to their beloved to the grave; broken, extravagant, bold in their own way, “daughters of the century” (“Antigone”); girls who matured early (“Zoyka and Valeria”); women of extraordinary spiritual beauty, endowed with the talent of love, capable of rewarding unspeakable happiness (“Natalie”). The love of the heroes in Bunin's stories is short-term, lightning-fast and at the same time sincere. Memory preserves feelings, but in life love is fleeting. Therefore, in Bunin’s works there are frequent inevitable catastrophes of human destinies, tragic and cruel endings. Love and separation go hand in hand. Bunin's stories depict the beginnings or endings of love stories. It is moments like these that attract the author. He tries to catch and record strange, inexplicable, sudden feelings. Most deeply, reverently, he conveyed his painful thoughts in those stories where we are talking about extraordinary natures, about the confrontation between the light and dark principles of life. In the cycle of stories “Dark Alleys,” Bunin does not tell different love stories at all, but creates a mosaic picture here, where each link is independent and at the same time necessary for recreating the general state of the world. It is catastrophic due to the very real destruction of spiritual values, their “replacement” with hasty and frivolous pleasures. In such an atmosphere, not only the soul perishes, but the wonderful feelings given to man by nature are humiliated. It is no coincidence that one motif runs through many of Bunin’s things - “shameless” affection. To talk about love thirty-eight times, without repeating it even once, is only possible for a great master. Each time the reader is struck in “Dark Alleys” by the freshness and youthful strength of feelings, the tension and flight of sensations, the delight and despair of passion.
With special feeling, Kuprin wrote and reflected on love, believing that the most exciting secret of man is hidden in it. The understanding of love as the highest measure of human personality, ennobling a person and elevating him above circumstances, is revealed with great skill by Kuprin in his story “Olesya”. In it, just like in many other stories by Kuprin from folk life, the blind rage of the crowd decides the destinies of people - embittered, fanatical women deal with the heroine. His story is rather an elegy for lost happiness, a hymn to beauty, youth, and the generosity of human spiritual forces, which for some reason do not find their manifestation. In the story, Kuprin poetizes wonderful human feelings - love, nobility of soul, closeness to nature, the ability to enjoy its harmony and beauty. It is nature, generously and lovingly described in the story, that gives a bright, sad tone to the story about the fate of Olesya and Ivan Timofeevich. The hero of the story, Ivan Timofeevich, is a cheerful lover of life, an idle, dreamy and, essentially, unrequited person who, without meaning to, can easily bring grief and suffering to loving and dear people. Kuprin does not comment on the behavior of his hero; he is stingy with psychology. He follows more the principles of “objective” writing, which, however, is not devoid of subtle, subtle ridicule. Kuprin does not at all seek to expose his hero. Ivan Timofeevich has his own excuse - he is young, but he is still inexperienced in feelings, he is guilty before Olesya, but he himself suffers deeply. The finale of “Olesya,” its last lines, is one of the characteristic manifestations of that quality of Kuprin’s talent that his contemporaries highly valued—“warmth for all living things.” Indeed, this “warmth” of Kuprin is multi-embracing, which contains a love for nature, for horses, dogs, cats, birds - for life in all its manifestations. But at the center of his thoughts is always human life, taken in unity with everything living on earth.
Love and death are “aesthetic standards” in Kuprin’s world, but in “The Garnet Bracelet” the triumph of love over death is affirmed not on the material of an ancient biblical legend, but on the material of real life, the fate of a very specific person. Kuprin’s story “The Garnet Bracelet” is not a beautiful fiction of a writer, but an artist’s amazement at the very beauty of life, which is in no way inferior to ancient legends. Kuprin also depicts the fragility and insecurity of high human feelings in “The Garnet Bracelet.” The story introduces us to the core of Kuprin’s moral problems, his understanding of the hidden potentials of man, those spiritual riches that give him the opportunity to survive, no matter how crippled his life. Indeed, in the story “Garnet Bracelet” Kuprin describes the intimate life of a secular environment that is little familiar to him. But the main thing and what is attractive for him as an artist in the story is something else - the mystery of an all-consuming feeling, before which death itself is powerless. The characters in “The Pomegranate Bracelet” rack their brains over this riddle, suspecting some of it is self-interest, some of it is attack, madness, and some of it is the rarest manifestation of true love. And Zheltkov himself, this knight of selfless love, like everyone around him, is in difficulty. He is not to blame, Zheltkov explains in his suicide letter that “God was pleased to send him love as a great happiness.” This story glorifies man, his right to choose, his firmness in defending human dignity. Zheltkov’s letter is a kind of manifesto. The “Garnet Bracelet” inspires faith in a person. Zheltkov leaves this life not pitiful and lost, but infinitely loving: “Hallowed be thy name!” His farewell letter is a blessing for love and life. This is how heroes say goodbye to life.
Kuprin's stories and stories about love are real “novels for the education of feelings.” In them, perhaps, the talent of an artist so in love with beauty, justice and human dignity is most fully embodied.
Classical literature in all its colors reveals to us the essence of life, teaches us the correct perception of good and evil, love and hate. Writers convey to us their understanding of these things that are so important in life. They do not impose their worldview on us, they simply open our eyes to the true essence of humanity with its malicious attitude towards everything good and innocent. People use love, kindness, sincerity only for selfish purposes, thereby ruining these feelings.
