Illustration for the story by I.A. Bunin "Sunstroke"
In the work of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, love is always tragic, and sometimes it does not save, but leads to death. Heroes of it famous works they do not know family and quiet happiness, so as not to break the love boat about life.
Story "Sunstroke" amazing and different in its own way. The writer analyzes in it a serious problem of a personal nature: a choice that carries consequences. The heroes make their choice, and find themselves far from each other, with no hope of reunion.
This work tells about the unexpected love that broke out between the main characters - a lieutenant and a beautiful stranger. Ivan Bunin does not give them names in order to show that they are ordinary people, and their history is not at all unique. The couple is not ready for a big and bright feeling, and they have absolutely no time to figure it out, since they have only one night that they spend enjoying each other. When the time comes to say goodbye, the lieutenant does not think about what mortal anguish will attack him after his beloved leaves the ship forever. As if before his eyes, his whole life passes, which is measured, now evaluated from the height of the tender feeling that has enclosed him in chains.
The meeting of the lieutenant and the stranger was a "sunstroke" for both of them: blinded with passion, and then devastated their souls. I.A. Bunin shows us that every person has a need to love and be loved, but in his story this love is devoid of illusions. Not every person can take on such a big responsibility - be in love. For the heroes of this story, love turned out to be an immense happiness that they could not afford.
"A beautiful stranger…"
Obviously, with this work, the author wanted to show the dramatic outcome of love. Bunin never wrote about happy love. In his opinion, the reunion and kinship of souls is a completely different feeling, which has nothing to do with passion, which rises to heaven. True love, as already mentioned, comes and goes suddenly, like a sunstroke.
Meanwhile, each of us is free to choose how to act in a given situation. The meeting of the heroes was an attempt to drown out the disturbing voice of a longing heart.
Love, which the lieutenant realized too late, almost destroys him, deprives him of the joy of life; he feels "ten years older". As if looking for salvation from the surging tenderness, he rushes into the city, wanders around the market, passes people and feels terribly lonely. This bittersweet feeling prevents him from thinking and looking at the world soberly. He knows for sure that he will never meet his stranger again.
The love that Bunin describes in his works has no future. His heroes can never find happiness, they are doomed to suffer. "Sunstroke" once again reveals Bunin's concept of love: "When we love, we die..." .
Dorofeeva Alexandra
The theme of love is the leading theme in the work of I.A. Bunin. His interpretation of this feeling is original, it differs from the usual, classical understanding. According to Bunin, love is always a flash, " fleeting vision”, which has no future, but without which life has no meaning.
Love is the most powerful shock in a person's life. This feeling brings not only and not so much happiness to a person. Almost always it is painted with tragic and fatal tones, in the end it makes people unhappy, leaves them lonely. But at the time of this "fatal outbreak" human life takes on a higher meaning, painted with all colors. A person never feels this world and this life so subtly and deeply as in the moment of love.
To define this feeling, Bunin himself picked up bright metaphors that became the names of his stories - “dark alleys”, “light breathing”, “sunstroke”. The story "Sunstroke" very clearly reflects Bunin's understanding of love. The characters in this story are a man and a woman. And this is the most important thing for a writer. The story does not even give their names. Only a few details are mentioned: the hero is a lieutenant, the heroine is a married woman with a husband and a child.
The portrait of the heroine is more important. She is an object of love, an object of all-consuming passion. It is important to note that the carnal side of love is very important and significant for Bunin. The writer emphasizes that the heroine had a tanned body, because she had just rested in Anapa. This woman is like a child: she is small in stature, her "hand, small and strong, smelled of sunburn." The heroine is easy to communicate with, "as fresh as at seventeen". All these descriptions in no way convey to us the inner content of this woman. It is not so important either for the hero or for the writer. What matters is the feeling that this woman in the hero evokes.
The lieutenant and the beautiful stranger spent only one night together. The heroine from Anapa was returning home, and her random companion turned out to be main character story. Bunin does not describe to us the acquaintance of the heroes, the birth of their passion. The story begins at a moment when the characters are already passionate about each other: “After dinner, we left the brightly and hotly lit dining room on deck and stopped at the rail.” And the feeling of these people is also heated and "hotly lit."
The lieutenant persuades his companion to go ashore in the first city he comes across on the way. It is important that the heroine agrees very easily. She generally takes the situation lighter. It is not for nothing that Bunin does not show her feelings, but we are witnessing the all-consuming passion of the hero, his rich inner life in these few hours.
After the night spent, the heroes part. We see that the “beautiful stranger” has a very light attitude to everything that happened. She "as before was simple, cheerful and - already reasonable." The heroine says that this will not happen again, because she is married. This fleeting romance is completely unexpected for her, it happened only thanks to the “sunstroke”: “it’s like an eclipse has found me ...”.
But we see a rather everyday attitude of the heroine to everything that happened. It seems to me that this woman will not think for a long time about the meaning of this fleeting romance, will not experience strong emotions. This becomes especially noticeable in contrast with the feelings of the hero.
You can not calmly read the description of the emotions of the lieutenant. At first, he was given a light attitude towards this connection. But after returning to an empty, already soulless room, “the lieutenant’s heart sank”: “- A strange adventure! he said aloud, laughing and feeling that tears were welling up in his eyes. - “I give you my word of honor that I am not at all what you might think ...” And she has already left ... An absurd woman!
Throughout the second part of the story, we observe the ever-increasing mental anguish of the hero. He could not look at the still unmade, but already empty bed, he could not bear the sounds of city life, human voices. The city in which the "beautiful stranger" lived began to seem to the lieutenant somehow special, reserved. The thought of the possibility of never seeing this woman again turned out to be unbearable: “And he felt such pain and such uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was seized by horror, despair.”
It is important to note that the hero's memories are physical in nature. He remembered the smell of the heroine's body and dress, the sound of her voice, the warmth of her skin, "the feeling of just experienced pleasures with all her feminine charms ..." Therefore, the lieutenant's suffering goes to some physical level. The hero experiences almost physical pain from the memories and the realization of an irreparable loss. Even drunk vodka did not help to forget. The pain of the hero is so strong that he cannot walk normally, but walks, “stumbling, clinging to the spur with a spur”: “He lay with his hands behind his head and gazed intently into the space in front of him. Then he clenched his teeth, closed his eyelids, feeling tears rolling down his cheeks from under them, and finally fell asleep, and when he opened his eyes again, the evening sun was already reddish yellow behind the curtains.
A short phrase that concludes the story sums up everything that happened: "The lieutenant sat under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older."
The love that happened between the characters of the story is like a sunstroke. I think that this feeling had no future. After a while, a beautiful stranger would turn into an ordinary woman, love lost its sharpness under the yoke of everyday life.
There was something painful in the passion of these people, as there is a lot of sickness in a sunstroke. Just as misfortune happens from an overabundance of the sun, so from very strong and intense feelings there remains a feeling of severe mental and physical pain, an unhealed wound. But this, according to Bunin, is the beauty of love.
The theme of love is the main one in the work of Ivan Aleksandrovich Bunin. "Sunstroke" is one of his most famous short stories. The analysis of this work helps to reveal the author's views on love and its role in the fate of a person.
What is typical for Bunin, he focuses not on platonic feelings, but on romance, passion, desire. For the beginning of the 20th century, this can be considered a bold innovative decision: no one before Bunin openly sang and spiritualized bodily feelings. For a married woman, a fleeting relationship was an unforgivable, grave sin.
The author argued: "All love is a great happiness, even if it is not divided." This saying applies to this story as well. In it, love comes like an inspiration, like a bright flash, like a sunstroke. It is an elemental and often tragic feeling, which, nevertheless, is a great gift.
In the story "Sunstroke" Bunin talks about the fleeting romance of a lieutenant and a married lady who sailed on the same ship and suddenly ignited passion for each other. The author sees the eternal secret of love in the fact that the characters are not free in their passion: after the night they part forever, not even knowing each other's name.
The motif of the sun in the story gradually changes its color. If at the beginning the luminary is associated with joyful light, life and love, then at the end the hero sees in front of him "Aimless Sun" and understands what he experienced "terrible sunstroke". The cloudless sky became grayish for him, and the street, resting against it, humped. The lieutenant yearns and feels 10 years older: he does not know how to find the lady and tell her that he can no longer live without her. What happened to the heroine remains a mystery, but we guess that falling in love will also leave an imprint on her.
Bunin's manner of narration is very "dense". He is a master of the short genre, and in a small volume he manages to fully reveal the images and convey his idea. The story contains a lot of short but capacious descriptive sentences. They are filled with epithets and details.
Interestingly, love is a scar that remains in the memory, but does not burden the soul. Waking up alone, the hero realizes that he is again able to see smiling people. He himself will soon be able to rejoice: a spiritual wound can heal and almost not hurt.
Bunin never wrote about happy love. According to him, the reunion of souls is a completely different feeling, which has nothing to do with sublime passion. True love, as already mentioned, comes and goes suddenly, like a sunstroke.
See also:
- Analysis of the story "Easy breathing"
- "Cuckoo", a summary of Bunin's work
- "Evening", analysis of Bunin's poem
- "Cricket", analysis of Bunin's story
- "Book", analysis of Bunin's story
- "Dense green spruce by the road", analysis of Bunin's poem
Many literary heroes passed the test of love, but Bunin's heroes are a special category.Ivan Alekseevich looked at the theme of love in a new way, revealing it from all sides. In his works one can see spiritualized love, enthusiastic, passionate, fleeting, unhappy. Most often, Bunin's heroes are unhappy in that they did not find long-term love, but they are happy in that they comprehended, though fleeting, but true love, which overtook them like a “bright flash”, like a “sunstroke”.
This writer deserves more
the title of the best classic of the 20th century, as he made so many innovations in the world of literature. His works are full of feelings and peculiar details. In short stories, he managed to describe significant episodes from the life of ordinary people. So in the story "Sunstroke" we see how love overtakes the main characters at the most unexpected moment. Both of them travel on the same ship, only the Lieutenant is single, and the Lady who touched his heart is married.
Their love story is not unique. She is as old as the world. This has already happened to many couples: they got together, overwhelmed feelings, broke up and never met again. But Bunin spends
their characters through the whole gamut of feelings. He shows that not even a single fleeting set of circumstances passes without a trace. Each life event leaves its mark, leaving a mark in the soul of people. The lieutenant and the stranger spend one night together, and the next morning they part, without getting to know each other better.
He wanders for a long time that day, not finding a place for himself and trying to find at least one clue leading to her, but he does not find it. He doesn't even know her name, after all. All that is known about the lady is that she is married and has a three-year-old daughter. She, in turn, is pretty embarrassed by the feeling that overtook her, but she does not regret what happened at all. It's just time for her to go home, and it's time for him to return to work. They both understand that this case will leave a distinct mark in their souls. As long as the memories are alive, the pain will remain.
Everything reminds him of her: the smell of her perfume, an unfinished cup of coffee. Overpowering himself, he goes to bed completely broken, and tears roll down his cheeks. The next morning, everything returns to its normal state, as if there was no meeting, no parting. The past day is remembered as a distant past. Leaving the pier, he feels ten years older. This bittersweet feeling prevents him from enjoying life, but he again notices the smiles of people, which means that the wound will heal soon.
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The recognized master of the artistic word Ivan Alekseevich Bunin in works about love appears before us as a psychologist who knows how to amazingly subtly convey the state of the soul wounded by this wonderful feeling. Possessing a rare talent, the ability to love, the writer professes his own philosophy of love in his work.
Reading the stories of I.A. Bunin, we notice that the author's love does not exist in marriage and family, and he is not attracted to quiet family happiness. For him, it is not so much long and cloudless love that is important, but short-term, like lightning that flared up in the darkness and went out, but left its deep imprint in the soul. Love in the writer's stories is a tragedy, madness, a catastrophe, a great feeling that can elevate or destroy a person. A sudden “flash” of love can happen to anyone and at any moment.
Love is passion. We come to this conclusion after getting acquainted with the story "Sunstroke", the heroes of which were suddenly overtaken by love. Love, which has no past and future - there is only the present, only "now". A woman and a man do not even have names - just She and He. For the author (and the reader) it does not matter at all.
Without talking about the experiences of the heroine after leaving, the writer describes in detail the state of mind of the hero. An accidental meeting with a “charming, light, little creature”, an unexpected strong feeling, an absurd parting ... And then misunderstanding and mental anguish ... “... a completely new feeling ... that didn’t exist at all when they were together”, appeared in the soul of the lieutenant after that , as he at first thought, "a funny acquaintance." What some people learn in years, he happened to experience in one day.
Perhaps this day turned out to be one of the most difficult in the life of the protagonist. The enormous power of love, like a sunstroke, suddenly “struck” him. The lieutenant leaves the city as if he were a different person. There is no longer any passion, no hatred, no love in his soul, but, having experienced confusion, horror, despair, he now feels "ten years older."
"Truly magical" moments of life gives a person love, warms the soul with bright memories. But love also has its own "dark alleys", so it often dooms Bunin's heroes to suffering, does not lead them to happiness.
The happiness of the main character of the novel did not take place " Dark alleys". Hope's boundless love for her master forever made her lonely. A woman who has preserved her former beauty even now remembers the past, lives with memories of it. The love in her soul did not go out for many years. “Youth passes for everyone, but love is another matter,” she admits indifferently to Nikolai Alekseevich, who left her thirty years ago. “There was ... nothing more expensive ... in the world at that time, and then” for Nadezhda, therefore she “never could” forgive her offender.
Despite the fact that it is difficult for the indecisive and conceited Nikolai Alekseevich, prone to class prejudices, to imagine Nadezhda, the keeper of the inn, as his wife, he becomes sad after an unexpected meeting with her. The sixty-year-old military man understands that this once slender young beauty gave him the best moments of his life. Probably, for the first time he thought about happiness, about responsibility for committed actions. The life that Nikolai Alekseevich had long abandoned will now remain with him only in his memories.
Love for I.A. Bunin is that illusory happiness that a person strives for, but, unfortunately, very often misses. In it, as in life, light and dark principles always oppose. But the author, who gave us wonderful works about love, was convinced: "All love is a great happiness, even if it is not shared."
