Love... Perhaps there is no person who has not thought about it at least once. What is this? What does a person live by? Or a trifle that makes you vulnerable? Deep and strong feeling or fleeting affection? Love at first sight? Happy? Undivided? These questions make my head spin. But there are no answers to them. People have been looking for these answers for centuries, but if they find them, they are different for everyone. That's why they say that love is something eternal, imperishable. She has, is, and will continue to excite the hearts and souls of people.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the treasury of Russian literature was replenished with the works of two writers: Ivan Bunin and Alexander Kuprin, who found their answers to “eternal” questions. And they told the world about it. It would seem that these two writers are not at all similar to each other. Even outwardly, their differences are so great that it seems as if they could not have anything in common. Pushkin called Kuchelbecker “a brother in muse, in destinies.” One can hardly say this about Bunin and Kuprin, because their fates were noticeably different. But the muse, it seems, was the same...
Love is like sunstroke and love is like death - the thoughts of the two great writers are very similar. What is sunstroke if not a tiny death? The gentle sun warms, hugs your shoulders... It seems that you can no longer live without it. And then what has brought you only joy for so long “hits you over the head,” clouds your heart and mind, and leaves behind a lot more pain and unpleasant heaviness in your head and weakness in your body.
Bunin’s “sunstroke” throws the nameless lieutenant and his equally nameless companion into the abyss of passion. Having known each other for only three hours, drunk either from the sun, or from hops, or from each other, they get off the ship somewhere, in some small town, and spend several unforgettable hours together. And here “unforgettable” is not a pompous or vulgar word, no. It is sincere: “... as soon as they entered and the footman closed the door, the lieutenant rushed to her so impulsively and both of them suffocated so frantically in the kiss that for many years later they remembered this moment: neither one nor the other had ever experienced anything like this in their entire lives.”
The feeling that overwhelmed the two people did not last long: only night and a little morning. But it left an indelible mark in the souls of both.
They parted easily, only “in front of everyone” they kissed on the pier. But after this parting, the same torment began that always happens when you come to your senses after a sunstroke.
The lieutenant was tormented. Even one single day without Her seemed unbearable, endlessly long and empty. The room in which everything breathed Her was empty. Along with him, the lieutenant’s heart also became empty, deprived of happiness.
Only the next morning he felt better. But the world has changed for this man, and the gentle sun that brought him together with perhaps the greatest love of his life became “aimless.” The soul of the lieutenant hardly died, but, having fallen in love, he still died.
Having fallen in love, the hero of A. Kuprin’s story “Garnet Bracelet” Zheltkov also died. For many years he passionately and secretly loved one single woman, an unattainable woman, without paying attention to others. He loved selflessly, with the kind of love “that women dream of and that men are no longer capable of.”
But Vera, the beloved “G.S.Zh.”, was unable to see that same love in this feeling. She walked past Anosova, barely touching her.
Zheltkov accomplished a feat in the name of this love. By taking his own life, he saved Vera Nikolaevna from suffering, who was burdened by the feeling of a secret admirer.
How much do you have to love a person to do something like this?..
Love that is “strong as death.” Yes, this is not Bunin’s “sunstroke”. But both confirm the idea that true love is always tragic, sacrificial, selfless. And, of course, it doesn’t come to everyone. It can appear and disappear, like a sunstroke, like lightning in a stormy sky, and leave behind a mark that nothing can ever erase. When you fall in love, you give something to someone else. And first of all - the soul. This kind of love doesn't just disappear. Probably only with a person. You can sprinkle it with some passions, other feelings, but it will live as long as you live.
Great love - great works. Two different writers, even outwardly so different that it seems as if they could not have anything in common. But they have the same muse.
>Essays on the work Sunstroke
Love
Many literary heroes have passed the test of love, but Bunin's heroes are a special category... Ivan Alekseevich looked at the topic 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 have not found long-term love, but are happy in the fact that they have comprehended, albeit fleeting, true love, which overtook them like a “bright flash”, like a “sunstroke”.
This writer, more than others, deserves the title of the best classic of the 20th century, since he introduced so many innovations into the world of literature. His works are full of feelings and original details. In short stories, he was able to describe significant episodes from the lives of ordinary people. So in the story “Sunstroke” we see how love overtakes the main characters at the most unexpected moment. Both of them are traveling 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 time. This has already happened to many couples: they got together, were overwhelmed by feelings, broke up and never met again. But Bunin takes his heroes through the whole gamut of feelings. It shows that not even a fleeting coincidence of circumstances passes without leaving 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 never finds it. After all, he doesn't even know her name. 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 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 incident will leave a clear mark on 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. Having overcome himself, he goes to bed completely broken, with tears rolling down his cheeks. The next morning everything returns to normal, as if this meeting had never happened, there had been 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 notices people's smiles again, which means the wound will soon heal.
The theme of love is the leading theme in the works of I.A. Bunina. His interpretation of this feeling is original, it differs from the usual, classical understanding. According to Bunin, love is always a flash, a “fleeting vision” that 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. It is almost always painted in tragic and fatal tones, ultimately making people unhappy and leaving them alone. But at the moment of this “fatal outbreak,” human life acquires a higher meaning and is painted in all colors. Never does a person feel this world and this life so subtly and deeply as in the moment of love.
To define this feeling, Bunin himself selected vivid metaphors that became the titles of his stories - “dark alleys”, “light breathing”, “sunstroke”. The story “Sunstroke” very clearly reflects Bunin’s understanding of love. The heroes of this work are a man and a woman. And this is the most important thing for a writer. Even their names are not given in the story. Only certain details are mentioned: the hero is a lieutenant, the heroine is a married woman with a husband and 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 been on vacation in Anapa. This woman looks like a child: she is small in stature, her “hand, small and strong, smelled of tan.” The heroine is easy to talk to, “fresh as at seventeen.” All these descriptions do not 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 what feeling this woman evokes in the hero.
The lieutenant and the beautiful stranger spent only a night together. The heroine from Anapa was returning home, and her random companion turned out to be the main character of the 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 captivated by each other: “After dinner, we left the brightly and hotly lit dining room on the deck and stopped at the railing.” And the feeling of these people is also intense and “hotly lit.”
The lieutenant persuades his companion to go ashore in the first city they come across along the way. It is important that the heroine agrees very easily. She generally feels more at ease about the current situation. It is not for nothing that Bunin does not show her feelings, but we become witnesses to the all-consuming passion of the hero, his intense inner life in these few hours.
After a night spent, the heroes part. We see that the “beautiful stranger” has a very light attitude towards everything that happened. She “was still simple, cheerful and - already reasonable.” The heroine says that this will not happen again, because she is married. This fleeting romance was completely unexpected for her, it happened only thanks to “sunstroke”: “it was like an eclipse had come over me...”.
But we see the heroine’s rather casual attitude towards everything that happened. It seems to me that this woman will not think long about the meaning of this fleeting romance and will not experience strong emotions. This becomes especially noticeable in contrast with the hero’s feelings.
You cannot calmly read the description of the lieutenant’s emotions. At first, he was given an easy-going attitude towards this connection. But after returning to the empty, already soulless room, “the lieutenant’s heart sank”: “A strange adventure! - he said out loud, laughing and feeling that tears were welling up in his eyes. - “I give you my word of honor that I’m not at all what you might think...” And she’s already left... Ridiculous woman!”
Throughout the entire second part of the story, we observe the increasing mental anguish of the hero. He could not look at the still unmade but already empty bed; the sounds of city life and human voices were unbearable to him. 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 overcome by horror and 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 charm...” Therefore, the lieutenant’s suffering reaches some physical level. The hero experiences almost physical pain from memories and awareness of an irreparable loss. Even drinking vodka didn’t help me forget. The hero’s pain is so strong that he cannot walk normally, but walks “stumbling, clinging spur to spur”: “He lay with his hands under the back of his head, and gazed intently into the space in front of him. Then he clenched his teeth, closed his eyelids, feeling the tears rolling down his cheeks from under them, and finally fell asleep, and when he opened his eyes again, the evening sun was already turning reddish yellow behind the curtains.”
The short phrase that ends the story sums up everything that happened: “The lieutenant sat under a canopy on the deck, feeling himself ten years older.”
The love that happened between the heroes of the story is like sunstroke. I think this feeling had no future. After a while, the beautiful stranger would turn into an ordinary woman, love would lose its sharpness under the yoke of everyday life.
There was something sick in the passion of these people, just as there is something sick in sunstroke. Just as misfortune occurs from too much sun, very strong and intense feelings leave a feeling of severe mental and physical pain, an unhealed wound. But this, according to Bunin, is the beauty of love.
In the works of I. A. Bunin, perhaps, the leading place is occupied by the theme of love. Bunin's love is always a tragic feeling that has no hope of a happy ending; it is a difficult test for lovers. This is exactly how it appears to readers in the story “Sunstroke.”
Along with the collection of love stories “Dark Alleys,” created by Ivan Alekseevich in the mid-1920s, “Sunstroke” is one of the pearls of his work. The tragedy and complexity of the time during which I. Bunin lived and wrote were fully embodied by the writer in the images of the main characters of this work.
The work was published in Modern Notes in 1926. Critics received the work with caution, skeptically noting the emphasis on the physiological side of love. However, not all reviewers were so sanctimonious; among them there were also those who warmly welcomed Bunin’s literary experiment. In the context of Symbolist poetics, his image of the Stranger was perceived as a mystical sacrament of feeling, clothed in flesh and blood. It is known that the author, when creating his story, was impressed by Chekhov’s work, so he crossed out the introduction and began his story with a random sentence.
About what?
From the very beginning, the story is intriguing in that the narration begins with an impersonal sentence: “After lunch we went out...on deck...”. The lieutenant meets a beautiful stranger on the ship, whose name, like his name, remains unknown to the reader. It's as if they both get sunstroke; Passionate, ardent feelings flare up between them. The traveler and his companion leave the ship for the city, and the next day she leaves by ship to join her family. The young officer is left completely alone and after a while he realizes that he can no longer live without that woman. The story ends with him, sitting under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older.
The main characters and their characteristics
- She. From the story you can learn that this woman had a family - a husband and a three-year-old daughter, to whom she was returning by boat from Anapa (probably from vacation or treatment). The meeting with the lieutenant became a “sunstroke” for her - a fleeting adventure, a “cloudness of mind.” She does not tell him her name and asks him not to write to her in her city, because she understands that what happened between them was only a momentary weakness, and her real life lies in something completely different. She is beautiful and charming, her charm lies in her mystery.
- The lieutenant is an ardent and impressionable man. For him, the meeting with a stranger became fatal. He managed to truly understand what happened to him only after his beloved left. He wants to find her, bring her back, because he is seriously interested in her, but it’s too late. The misfortune that can happen to a person from an overabundance of sun, for him, was a sudden feeling, true love, which made him suffer from the realization of the loss of his beloved. This loss affected him greatly.
Issues
- One of the main problems in the story "Sunstroke" of this story is the problem of the essence of love. In the understanding of I. Bunin, love brings a person not only joy, but also suffering, making him feel unhappy. The happiness of short moments later results in the bitterness of separation and painful parting.
- This also leads to another problem in the story - the problem of the short duration and fragility of happiness. For both the mysterious stranger and the lieutenant, this euphoria was short-lived, but in the future they both “remembered this moment for many years.” Short moments of delight are accompanied by long years of melancholy and loneliness, but I. Bunin is sure that it is thanks to them that life takes on meaning.
Subject
The theme of love in the story “Sunstroke” is a feeling full of tragedy, mental anguish, but at the same time it is filled with passion and ardor. This great, all-consuming sensation becomes both happiness and sorrow. Bunin's love is like a match that quickly flares up and fades out, and at the same time it suddenly strikes, like a sunstroke, and can no longer help but leave its mark on the human soul.
Meaning
The point of “Sunstroke” is to show readers all the facets of love. It occurs suddenly, lasts a short time, and passes severely, like a disease. She is both beautiful and painful. This feeling can either elevate a person or completely destroy him, but it is precisely this feeling that can give him those bright moments of happiness that color his faceless everyday life and fill his life with meaning.
Ivan Aleksandrovich Bunin in the story “Sunstroke” strives to convey to readers his main idea that ardent and strong emotions do not always have a future: love fever is fleeting and like a powerful shock, but this is precisely what makes it the most wonderful feeling in the world.
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