The theme of love is often touched upon in the works of A.I. Kuprina. This feeling is revealed in his works in different ways, but, as a rule, it is tragic. We can see the tragedy of love especially clearly in two of his works: “Olesya” and “ Garnet bracelet».
The story “Olesya” is Kuprin’s early work, written in 1898. Here you can see the features of romanticism, because the writer shows his heroine outside the influences of society and civilizations.
Olesya is a person of pure soul. She grew up in the forest, she is characterized by naturalness, kindness, and sincerity. The heroine lives only according to the dictates of her heart, pretense and insincerity are alien to her, she does not know how to step over her true desires.
Olesya meets in her life a person from a completely different world. Ivan Timofeevich is an aspiring writer and urban intellectual. A feeling arises between the characters, which later helps to reveal the essence of their characters. Before us appears the drama of the unequal love of the characters. Olesya is a sincere girl, she loves Ivan Timofeevich with all her soul. A sincere feeling makes a girl stronger; she is ready to overcome all obstacles for her lover. Ivan Timofeevich, despite his positive qualities, is spoiled by civilization, corrupted by society. This kind but weak man with a “lazy” heart, indecisive and cautious, cannot rise above the prejudices of his environment. There is some kind of flaw in his soul; he cannot completely surrender to the strong feeling that has captured him. Ivan Timofeevich is not capable of nobility, he does not know how to care for others, his soul is full of selfishness. This is especially noticeable at the moment when he confronts Olesya with a choice. Ivan Timofeevich is ready to force Olesya to choose between himself and her grandmother, he did not think about how Olesya’s desire to go to church might end, the hero gives his beloved the opportunity to convince himself of the need for their separation, and so on.
Such selfish behavior of the hero becomes the cause of a real tragedy in the life of the girl, and of Ivan Timofeevich himself. Olesya and her grandmother are forced to leave the village because they are in real danger from the local residents. The lives of these heroes turn out to be largely destroyed, not to mention the heart of Olesya, who sincerely loved Ivan Timofeevich.
In this story we see the tragedy of the discrepancy between a genuine, natural feeling and a feeling that has absorbed the features of civilization.
The story “The Garnet Bracelet,” written in 1907, tells us about genuine, strong, unconditional, but unrequited love. It is worth noting that this work is based on real events from the family chronicles of the Tugan-Baranovsky princes. This story became one of the most famous and profound works about love in Russian literature.
Before us are typical representatives of the aristocracy of the early 20th century, the Shein family. Vera Nikolaevna Sheina is a beautiful society lady, moderately happy in her marriage, lives a calm, dignified life. Her husband, Prince Shein, is a rather pleasant person, Vera respects him, she is comfortable with him, but from the very beginning the reader gets the impression that the heroine does not love him.
The calm flow of life of these characters is disturbed only by letters from an anonymous admirer of Vera Nikolaevna, a certain G.S.Zh. The heroine's brother is contemptuous of marriage and does not believe in love, so he is ready to publicly ridicule this hapless G.S.Z. But, taking a closer look, the reader understands that only this secret admirer of Princess Vera is a true treasure among the vulgar people who have forgotten how to love. “..love among people has taken such vulgar forms and has simply descended to some kind of everyday convenience, to a little entertainment,” - with these words of General Anosov, Kuprin conveys the contemporary state of affairs.
A petty official, Zheltkov, turns out to be a fan of Vera Nikolaevna. One day a fateful meeting took place in his life - Zheltkov saw Vera Nikolaevna Sheina. He didn’t even talk to this young lady, who was still unmarried. And how dare he - their social status was too unequal. But a person is not subject to feelings of such strength, he is not able to control the life of his heart. Love captured Zheltkov so much that it became the meaning of his entire existence. From this man's farewell letter we learn that his feeling is “reverence, eternal admiration and slavish devotion.”
From the hero himself we learn that this feeling is not a consequence of mental illness. After all, he didn’t need anything in response to his emotions. Perhaps this is absolute, unconditional love. Zheltkov’s feelings are so strong that he voluntarily leaves this life, just so as not to disturb Vera Nikolaevna. After the death of the hero, at the very end of the work, the princess begins to vaguely realize that she was unable to discern something very important in her life in time. It is not for nothing that at the end of the story, while listening to a Beethoven sonata, the heroine cries: “Princess Vera hugged the trunk of the acacia tree, pressed herself against it and cried.” It seems to me that these tears are the heroine’s longing for true love, which people so often forget about.
Love in Kuprin’s perception is often tragic. But, perhaps, only this feeling can give meaning to human existence. We can say that the writer tests his heroes with love. Strong people(such as Zheltkov, Olesya) thanks to this feeling they begin to glow from within, they are able to carry love in their hearts, no matter what.
In literature in general, and in Russian literature in particular, the problem of the relationship between man and the world around him occupies a significant place. Personality and environment, individual and society - many Russians thought about this writers XIX century. The fruits of these reflections were reflected in many stable formulations, for example in the well-known phrase “Wednesday has eaten.” There has been a noticeable increase in interest in this topic in late XIX- the beginning of the 20th century, in a turning point era for Russia. In the spirit of humanistic traditions inherited from the past, Alexander Kuprin considers this issue, using all the artistic means that have become an achievement of the turn of the century.
The work of this writer was for a long time, as it were, in the shadows, overshadowed by bright representatives of his contemporaries. Today, the works of A. Kuprin are of great interest. They attract the reader with their simplicity, humanity, and democracy in the noblest sense of the word. The world of A. Kuprin’s heroes is motley and diverse. He himself lived a bright life, filled with diverse impressions - he was a military man, a clerk, a land surveyor, and an actor in a traveling circus troupe. A. Kuprin said many times that he does not understand writers who do not find anything more interesting than themselves in nature and people. The writer is very interested in human destinies, while the heroes of his works are most often not successful, successful people, satisfied with themselves and life, but rather the opposite. But A. Kuprin treats his outwardly unsightly and unlucky heroes with the warmth and humanity that has always distinguished Russian writers. In the characters of the stories “White Poodle”, “Taper”, “Gambrinus”, as well as many others, the traits of “ little man“However, the writer does not simply reproduce this type, but reinterprets it anew.
Let's reveal Kupri's very famous story "The Garnet Bracelet", written in 1911. Its plot is based on real event- the love of telegraph official P. P. Zheltkov for the wife of an important official, member State Council Lyubimova. This story is mentioned by Lyubimov’s son, the author of famous memoirs Lev Lyubimov. In life, everything ended differently than in A. Kuprin’s story -. the official accepted the bracelet and stopped writing letters; nothing more was known about him. The Lyubimov family remembered this incident as strange and curious. Under the pen of the writer, the story turned into a sad and tragic story about the life of a little man who was elevated and destroyed by love. This is conveyed through the composition of the work. It gives an extensive, leisurely introduction, which introduces us to the exhibition of the Sheiny house. The story of extraordinary love itself, the story of the garnet bracelet, is told in such a way that we see it through the eyes of different people: Prince Vasily, who tells it as an anecdotal incident, brother Nikolai, for whom everything in this story seems offensive and suspicious. important, Vera Nikolaevna herself and, finally, General Anosov, who was the first to suggest that here, perhaps, lies true love, “of which women dream and of which men are no longer capable.” The circle to which Vera Nikolaevna belongs cannot admit that this is a real feeling, not so much because of the strangeness of Zheltkov’s behavior, but because of the prejudices that control them. Kuprin, wanting to convince us, the readers, of the authenticity of Zheltkov’s love, resorts to the most irrefutable argument - the hero’s suicide. In this way, the little man’s right to happiness is affirmed, and the motive of his moral superiority over the people who so cruelly insulted him, who failed to understand the strength of the feeling that was the whole meaning of his life, arises.
Kuprin's story is both sad and bright. It permeates him musical beginning- indicated as an epigraph piece of music, - and the story ends with a scene when the heroine listens to music at a tragic moment of moral insight for her. The text of the work includes the theme of the inevitability of the death of the main character - it is conveyed through the symbolism of light: at the moment of receiving the bracelet, Vera Nikolaevna sees red stones in it and thinks with alarm that they look like blood. Finally, the theme of the clash of different cultural traditions arises in the story: the theme of the east - the Mongolian blood of the father of Vera and Anna, the Tatar prince, introduces into the story the theme of love-passion, recklessness; the mention that the sisters’ mother is English introduces the theme of rationality, dispassion in the sphere of feelings, and the power of the mind over the heart. In the final part of the story, a third line appears: it is no coincidence that the landlady turns out to be a Catholic. This introduces into the work the theme of love-admiration, which in Catholicism surrounds the Mother of God, love-self-sacrifice.
A. Kuprin’s hero, a little man, faces the world of misunderstanding around him, the world of people for whom love is a kind of madness, and, faced with it, dies.
In the wonderful story “Olesya,” we are presented with a poetic image of a girl who grew up in the hut of an old “witch,” outside the usual norms of a peasant family. Olesya’s love for the intellectual Ivan Timofeevich, who accidentally visited a remote forest village, is a free, simple and strong feeling, without looking back or obligations, among tall pines, painted with the crimson glow of the dying dawn. The girl's story ends tragically. Olesya’s free life is invaded by the selfish calculations of village officials and the superstitions of ignorant peasants. Beaten and molested, Olesya and Manuilikha are forced to flee from the forest nest.
In Kuprin's works, many heroes have similar traits - spiritual purity, dreaminess, ardent imagination, combined with impracticality and lack of will. And they reveal themselves most clearly in love. All heroes treat women with filial purity and reverence. Willingness to give in for the sake of the woman you love, romantic worship, knightly service to her - and at the same time underestimating yourself, lacking faith in your own strengths. Men in Kuprin's stories seem to change places with women. These are the energetic, strong-willed “Polessia sorceress” Olesya and the “kind, but only weak” Ivan Timofeevich, the smart, calculating Shurochka Nikolaevna and the “pure, sweet, but weak and pitiful” second lieutenant Romashov. All these are Kuprin’s heroes with a fragile soul, caught in a cruel world.
Kuprin’s excellent story “Gambrinus,” created in the troubled year of 1907, breathes the atmosphere of revolutionary days. The theme of all-conquering art is intertwined here with the idea of democracy, the bold protest of the “little man” against the black forces of arbitrariness and reaction. Meek and cheerful Sashka, with his extraordinary talent as a violinist and sincerity, attracts a diverse crowd of longshoremen, fishermen, and smugglers to the Odessa tavern. They greet with delight the melodies, which seem to be the background, as if reflecting public moods and events - from the Russo-Japanese War to the rebellious days of the revolution, when Sashka’s violin sounds with the cheerful rhythms of “La Marseilles”. In the days of the onset of terror, Sashka challenges the disguised detectives and the black-hundred “scoundrels in a fur hat,” refusing to play the monarchist anthem at their request, openly denouncing them of murders and pogroms.
Crippled by the tsarist secret police, he returns to his port friends to play for them on the outskirts the tunes of the deafeningly cheerful “Shepherd.” Free creativity and the power of the people's spirit, according to Kuprin, are invincible.
Returning to the question posed at the beginning - “man and the world around him” - we note that in Russian prose of the early 20th century a wide range of answers to it is presented. We considered only one of the options - tragic collision personality with the world around him, his insight and death, but not a meaningless death, but containing an element of purification and high meaning.
The theme of love is probably the most frequently touched upon in literature, and in art in general. It was love that inspired greatest creators of all times to create immortal works. In the works of many writers, this theme is key, including A. I. Kuprin, whose three main works - “Olesya”, “Shulamith” and “Pomegranate Bracelet” - are dedicated to love, however, presented by the author in different manifestations.
There is probably no more mysterious, beautiful and all-consuming feeling, familiar to everyone without exception, than love, because from birth a person is already loved by his parents and he himself experiences, albeit unconsciously, reciprocal feelings. However, for everyone, love has its own special meaning; in each of its manifestations it is different and unique. In these three works, the author depicted this feeling from the perspective of different people and each of them has it different character, while its essence remains unchanged - it knows no boundaries.
In the story “Olesya,” written in 1898, Kuprin describes a remote village in the Volyn province, on the outskirts of Polesie, where fate brought Ivan Timofeevich, the “master,” an urban intellectual. Fate brings him together with the granddaughter of the local sorceress Manuilikha, Olesya, who fascinates him with her extraordinary beauty. This is the beauty not of a society lady, but of a wild fallow deer living in the lap of nature. However, it is not only appearance that attracts Ivan Timofeevich to Oles: The young man is delighted with the girl’s self-confidence, pride and audacity. Having grown up in the depths of the forests and hardly communicating with people, she is accustomed to treating strangers with great caution, but having met Ivan Timofeevich, she gradually falls in love with him. He captivates the girl with his ease, kindness, and intelligence, because for Olesya all this is unusual and new. The girl is very happy when a young guest often visits her. During one of these visits, she, fortune-telling by his hand, characterizes the reader as a man “although kind, but only weak,” and admits that his kindness is “not heartfelt.” That his heart is “cold, lazy,” and to the one he “will love him,” he will bring, albeit unwittingly, “a lot of evil.” Thus, according to the young fortune teller, Ivan Timofeevich appears before us as an egoist, a person incapable of deep emotional experiences. However, in spite of everything, young people fall in love with each other, completely surrendering to this all-consuming feeling. Falling in love, Olesya shows her sensitive delicacy, innate intelligence, observation and tact, her instinctive knowledge of the secrets of life. Moreover, her love reveals the enormous power of passion and dedication, revealing in her the great human talent of understanding and generosity. Olesya is ready to do anything for the sake of her love: go to church, enduring the bullying of the villagers, find the strength to leave, leaving behind only a string of cheap red beads, which are a symbol eternal love and devotion. The image of Olesya for Kuprin is the ideal of an open, selfless, deep character. Love elevates her above those around her, giving her joy, but at the same time making her defenseless and leading to inevitable death. Compared to great love Olesya even loses Ivan Timofeevich’s feelings for her in many ways. His love is sometimes more like a passing hobby. He understands that the girl will not be able to live outside the nature that surrounds her here, but still, offering her his hand and heart, he implies that she will live with him in the city. At the same time, he does not think about the possibility of abandoning civilization, remaining to live for Olesya here, in the wilderness.
He resigns himself to the situation, without even making attempts to change anything, challenging the current circumstances. Probably, if it were true love, Ivan Timofeevich would have found his beloved, doing everything possible for this, but, unfortunately, he never realized what he had missed.
A. I. Kuprin also revealed the theme of mutual and happy love in the story “Sulamith,” which tells about the boundless love of the richest King Solomon and the poor slave Sulamith, who works in the vineyards. An unshakably strong and passionate feeling lifts them above material differences, erasing the boundaries that separate lovers, once again proving the strength and power of love. However, in the finale of the work, the author destroys the well-being of his heroes, killing Shulamith and leaving Solomon alone. According to Kuprin, love is a bright flash that reveals the spiritual value of the human personality, awakening in it all the best that is hidden for the time being in the depths of the soul.
Kuprin portrays a completely different kind of love in the story “The Garnet Bracelet.” deep feeling The main character Zheltkov, a petty employee, a “little man” for a society lady, Princess Vera Nikolaevna Sheina, brings him so much suffering and torment, since his love is unrequited and hopeless, as well as pleasure, since it elevates him, exciting his soul and giving him joy. More likely not even love, but adoration; it is so strong and unconscious that even ridicule does not detract from it. In the end, realizing the impossibility of his beautiful dream and having lost hope of reciprocity in his love, and also largely under the pressure of those around him, Zheltkov decides to commit suicide, but even at the last moment all his thoughts are only about his beloved, and even leaving this life, he continues to idolize Vera Nikolaevna, addressing her as if to a deity: “Hallowed be thy name.” Only after the death of the hero does the one with whom he was so hopelessly in love realize “that the love that every woman dreams of has passed her by,” it’s a pity that it’s too late. The work is deeply tragic; the author shows how important it is not only to understand another in time, but also, looking into one’s soul, perhaps to find reciprocal feelings there. In "The Garnet Bracelet" there are words that "love must be a tragedy"; It seems to me that the author wanted to say that before a person realizes and spiritually reaches the level where love is happiness and pleasure, he must go through all the difficulties and adversities that are somehow associated with it.
Search activity of students when studying the works of A.I. Kuprin “Olesya”, “Garnet Bracelet”
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Olga SUKHARINA
Olga Nikolaevna SUKHARINA (1965) - teacher of Russian language and literature at school No. 71 in Yekaterinburg.
Search activity of students when studying the works of A.I. Kuprin “Olesya”, “Garnet Bracelet”
Lessons on creativity by A.I. Kuprin can begin with a lecture presentation of the material. The teacher gives an overview creative path writer, comparing him with the work of I.A. Bunina. The purpose of matching is to invite students to search. A problematic question can be asked at the beginning of a conversation about Kuprin, and at the end of a presentation of material about the writer’s work.
In subsequent lessons I pay a lot of attention search activity of students. To do this, I am thinking through a system of problematic questions, the answers to which are based on the existing knowledge base, but are not contained in previous knowledge; the questions should cause intellectual difficulties in students and a targeted mental search. The teacher can come up with indirect hints and leading questions, and can sum up the main thing himself, based on the students’ answers. It is possible that the teacher does not give a ready answer; the task of the mentor is to attract the student to cooperation.
Sample questions and problem search tasks when studying the story “The Garnet Bracelet”:
How does the landscape help to understand the mood and inner world of Vera Nikolaevna?
How important is the image of General Anosov in the work?
Give a comparative analysis of the description of Vera’s name day and the description of Zheltkov’s room.
Compare the guests' gifts with Zheltkov's gift. What's the point of the comparison?
What mood will the ending of the story have? What role does music play in creating this mood?
The search method is based on the following forms of activity:
Working with text;
Selection of quotations;
Text analysis:
holistic analysis,
episode analysis,
comparative analysis;
Identification of artistic features of the text.
For each question, I advise students to collect material; we arrange the collected information in the form of diagrams.
When analyzing the story “Olesya,” we thought about the following question: “Ivan Timofeevich is a kind man, but weak. Is this statement true?” I give examples of such reasoning, presented in the form of diagrams.
Conclusion. Ivan Timofeevich's feelings turned out to be too weak. Failed to protect his love. Maybe there was no true love that would have eclipsed doubts and helped to survive all the troubles and sorrows.
Conclusion. Olesya is capable of stronger feelings than her chosen one. For the heroine, love became life; Ivan Timofeevich could not save this feeling and did not want to.
General Anosov about Zheltkov: “ Madman... Maybe yours life path crossed, Verochka, exactly the kind of love that women dream about and that men are no longer capable of.”
Prince Shein about Zheltkov:“I feel that this person is not capable of deceiving and lying... I feel that I am present at some enormous tragedy of the soul...”
Conclusion. Kuprin shows the nobility of the soul of a common man, his ability to have deep, sublime feelings. Love elevates a person and transforms his soul. Lyubov Zheltkova, the one who happens “once in a thousand years,” has remained immortal. It is this kind of love that Kuprin praises.
Associative series: cold - arrogant - proud - arrogant - aristocratic
2. If the cold is concentrated around from the very beginning main character how does this characterize features of her perception of life?
Bad weather will give way to warm days
Summer will give way to autumn
Youth - old age
The most beautiful flowers are doomed to wither and die
Is Princess Vera able to sense the elusive passage of time?
3. Vera's attitude towards nature:
sea- “When I see the sea for the first time, it pleases and amazes me”
“When I get used to it, I miss looking at it...”;
forest (pines, mosses, fly agarics) - comparison:
Conclusion. Kuprin draws a parallel between the description of the autumn garden and the internal state of the heroine. “The trees calmed down and meekly dropped their yellow leaves.” The heroine is in such an indifferent state: she is strictly simple with everyone, coldly kind.
End of the story:“Princess Vera hugged the acacia trunk, pressed herself against it and cried. The trees shook softly. A light wind came and, as if sympathizing with her, rustled the leaves...”
Olesya's love is a strong, deep, selfless feeling
Based on the story by A.I. Kuprin "Olesya"
Love-test:
Olesya is a stranger to others;
Brave, free;
Strives for good;
She is not afraid to live in harmony with her heart, therefore she is destined to see further, to feel more subtly than her cautious chosen one;
Strives for good;
Love is main meaning life.
Olesya and Ivan Timofeevich
Through comparison with Ivan Timofeevich, an aspiring writer, Kuprin will allow you to see the main thing in Oles:
Ivan admires not only Olesya’s external beauty, but also her internal beauty;
It is important not only to be able to see, but also the desire to see;
Conclusion. Life taught Ivan Timofeevich to constantly control his emotional impulses, and did not teach him to think about the consequences. “A kind man, but weak,” he is not capable of true love. Olesya turned out to be right: “You will not love anyone with your heart, and you will bring a lot of grief to those who love you.”
Only in unity with nature is a person able to achieve spiritual beauty and nobility. 
A string of red beads from Olesya:
This is a memory of love;
This is a symbol of her pure feeling;
This is the power of her undying love;
Each bead is a spark of love.
Search activity prepares the transition to independent research activities.
Students independently formulate a problem and solve it by writing creative works (essays) or abstracts. What is important is the material that the children themselves collected as a result of search activities. It is important not to lose this material, to accumulate it, to systematize it. The result of working on a work is writing an essay. The basis of the essay will be the material, the supporting diagrams, reflecting the work during the students’ search activities. Each diagram is the basis of the essay, the disclosure of thoughts, the result of the work done, it is the student’s personality, his perception of what he read.
whoever can (help a lot) this is an internal exam in literature 1. What is the tragedy of the love of Zheltkov, the hero of Kuprin’s story “The Garnet Bracelet”?
2. Prove that for the hero of Kuprin’s story “The Garnet Bracelet,” love is the highest value of the world.
3. Show the richness of the spiritual world of the heroine of Kuprin’s story “Olesya”.
4. Prove by giving examples from Kuprin’s works that his favorite hero is a young man, gentle, intelligent, conscientious, ardently sympathetic to his “little brother” and at the same time weak-willed, tragically subject to the forces of environment and circumstances.
5. Why is the era of poets of the early 20th century characterized as the “Silver Age” of Russian poetry? What are its fundamental differences from the “golden age”?
6. What three pieces of advice does the lyrical hero of the poem V.Ya. give to the young poet? Bryusov "To the Young Poet"? Do you agree with his position? What, in your opinion, should a true poet be? Read the poem by heart.
7. Tell us what you know about Bryusov, the translator. Name its main translations. What languages are they used in?
8. How does Balmont’s lyrics show interest in ancient Slavic folklore? What images arise? Analyze the poems “Evil Spells” and “Firebird”.
9. What picture does Balmont paint in the poem “First Love”? Tell us about your perception of this poem.
10. Describe the work of early Mayakovsky. What are its main specific features? Read one poem from this period by heart.
11. “Freedom is the most beautiful thing in life, for the sake of it a person should be ready to sacrifice everything, even his life.” Confirm Gorky’s words with examples from his stories “Makar Chudra” and “Old Woman Izergil”.
12. Prove that even a crazy but extraordinary step, according to Gorky, will remain in people’s memory. Give examples from “The Song of the Falcon”, “The Song of the Petrel”, “The Legend of Marco”.
13. What is the meaning of the title of the play “At the Bottom”? Explain its symbolic meaning.
14. Who is Blok’s cycle of poems “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” dedicated to? What was it written for? Analyze 3 poems from this collection. Read one by heart.
15. How the theme of the House is revealed in Bulgakov’s novel “ White Guard"? What symbolic meaning does the word “house” have for Bulgakov?
16. What philosophical problems are raised in Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita”?
17. Show the inextricability of the connection between Tsvetaeva’s fate and creativity and Moscow. Analyze the cycle “Poems about Moscow.” Read one poem by heart.
18. Describe the image of the lyrical heroine of the poem “Requiem”.
19. Describe the Cossack life depicted by Sholokhov. Show the peculiarities of Cossack speech. How they help the writer convey the vitality of the setting. How does a writer depict the life of a village?
20. Describe the family structure of the Melekhovs, Korshunovs, Astakhovs. Make a comparative description.
21. How the First is depicted in the novel “Quiet Don” world war?
22. Compare Aksinya and Natalya, explain Gregory’s feelings for each of them. What is the significance of the heroines' names? Why do they both die?
23. What is the meaning of the title of Sholokhov’s story “The Fate of a Man”?
24. Give a detailed description of military prose and poetry. Analyze 2 works.
25. Give a detailed description of urban prose. Analyze 2 works.
