Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin is a famous Russian writer. His works, woven from real life stories, are filled with “fatal” passions and exciting emotions. On the pages of his books, heroes and villains come to life, from privates to generals. And all this against the backdrop of unfading optimism and piercing love for life, which the writer Kuprin gives to his readers.

Biography

He was born in 1870 in the city of Narovchat into the family of an official. A year after the boy’s birth, the father dies and the mother moves to Moscow. The future writer spent his childhood here. At the age of six he was sent to the Razumovsky boarding school, and upon graduation in 1880 - to Cadet Corps. At the age of 18, after completing his studies, Alexander Kuprin, whose biography is inextricably linked with military affairs, entered the Alexander Junker School. Here he wrote his first work, “The Last Debut,” which was published in 1889.

Creative path

After graduating from college, Kuprin enlists in an infantry regiment. Here he spends 4 years. The life of an officer provides a wealth of material for him. During this time, his stories “In the Dark,” “Overnight,” “On a Moonlit Night” and others were published. In 1894, after his resignation, Kuprin, whose biography begins from scratch, moves to Kyiv. The writer tries various professions, gaining precious life experience, as well as ideas for his future works. In subsequent years, he traveled a lot around the country. The result of his wanderings are the famous stories “Moloch”, “Olesya”, as well as the stories “Werewolf” and “Wilderness”.

In 1901 new stage writer Kuprin begins his life. His biography continues in St. Petersburg, where he marries M. Davydova. Here his daughter Lydia and new masterpieces are born: the story “The Duel”, as well as the stories “White Poodle”, “Swamp”, “River of Life” and others. In 1907, the prose writer married again and acquired a second daughter, Ksenia. This period is the heyday of the author’s work. He's writing famous stories"Pomegranate Bracelet" and "Shulamith". In his works of this period, Kuprin, whose biography unfolds against the backdrop of two revolutions, shows his fear for the fate of the entire Russian people.

Emigration

In 1919, the writer emigrated to Paris. Here he spends 17 years of his life. This stage creative path is the most unfruitful in the life of a prose writer. Homesickness, as well as a constant lack of funds, forced him to return home in 1937. But creative plans were not destined to come true. Kuprin, whose biography has always been connected with Russia, writes the essay “Native Moscow.” The disease progresses, and in August 1938 the writer dies of cancer in Leningrad.

Works

Among the most famous works The writer can be noted for the stories “Moloch”, “Duel”, “The Pit”, the stories “Olesya”, “Garnet Bracelet”, “Gambrinus”. Kuprin's work touches on various aspects of human life. He writes about pure love and prostitution, about heroes and the decaying atmosphere of army life. There is only one thing missing from these works - something that can leave the reader indifferent.

Russian literature Silver Age

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin

Biography

Kuprin Alexander Ivanovich (1870 - 1938) - Russian writer. Social criticism marked the story “Moloch” (1896), in which industrialization appears in the image of a monster factory that enslaves a person morally and physically, the story “The Duel” (1905) - about the death of a mentally pure hero in the deadening atmosphere of army life, and the story “The Pit” (1909 - 15) - about prostitution. A variety of finely outlined types, lyrical situations in the stories and short stories “Olesya” (1898), “Gambrinus” (1907), “Garnet Bracelet” (1911). Cycles of essays (“Listrigons”, 1907 - 11). In 1919 - 37 in exile, in 1937 he returned to his homeland. Autobiographical novel "Junker" (1928 - 32).

Big encyclopedic dictionary, M.-SPb., 1998

Biography

Kuprin Alexander Ivanovich (1870), prose writer.

Born on August 26 (September 7, new year) in the city of Narovchat, Penza province, in the family of a minor official who died a year after the birth of his son. After the death of her husband, his mother (from the ancient family of Tatar princes Kulanchakov) moved to Moscow, where the future writer spent his childhood and youth. At the age of six, the boy was sent to the Moscow Razumovsky boarding school (orphanage), from where he left in 1880. The same year he entered the Moscow Military Academy, which was transformed into the Cadet Corps.

After completing his studies, he continued his military education at the Alexander Junker School (1888 - 90). Subsequently, he described his “military youth” in the stories “At the Turning Point (Cadets)” and in the novel “Junkers”. Even then he dreamed of becoming “a poet or novelist.”

Kuprin's first literary experience was poetry that remained unpublished. The first work to see the light was the story “The Last Debut” (1889).

In 1890, having graduated military school, Kuprin, with the rank of second lieutenant, was enlisted in an infantry regiment stationed in the Podolsk province. The life of an officer, which he led for four years, provided rich material for his future works. In 1893 - 1894, his story “In the Dark” and the stories “On a Moonlit Night” and “Inquiry” were published in the St. Petersburg magazine “Russian Wealth”. A series of stories are dedicated to the life of the Russian army: “Overnight” (1897), “Night Shift” (1899), “Hike”. In 1894, Kuprin retired and moved to Kyiv, without any civilian profession and with little life experience. In the following years, he traveled a lot around Russia, trying many professions, greedily absorbing life experiences that became the basis of his future works. In the 1890s, he published the essay “Yuzovsky Plant” and the story “Moloch”, the stories “Wilderness”, “Werewolf”, the stories “Olesya” and “Kat” (“Army Ensign”). During these years, Kuprin met Bunin, Chekhov and Gorky. In 1901 he moved to St. Petersburg, began working for the “Magazine for Everyone,” married M. Davydova, and had a daughter, Lydia. Kuprin's stories appeared in St. Petersburg magazines: “Swamp” (1902); "Horse Thieves" (1903); "White Poodle" (1904). In 1905, his most significant work was published - the story "The Duel", which was a great success. The writer’s performances reading individual chapters of “The Duel” became an event in the cultural life of the capital. His works of this time were very well-behaved: the essay “Events in Sevastopol” (1905), the stories “Staff Captain Rybnikov” (1906), “River of Life”, “Gambrinus” (1907). In 1907, he married his second wife, sister of mercy E. Heinrich, and had a daughter, Ksenia. Kuprin's work in the years between the two revolutions resisted the decadent mood of those years: the cycle of essays "Listrigons" (1907 - 11), stories about animals, the stories "Shulamith", "Garnet Bracelet" (1911). His prose became a notable phenomenon of Russian literature at the beginning of the century. After October revolution The writer did not accept the policy of military communism, the “Red Terror”; he feared for the fate of Russian culture. In 1918 he came to Lenin with a proposal to publish a newspaper for the village - “Earth”. At one time he worked at the World Literature publishing house, founded by Gorky. In the fall of 1919, while in Gatchina, cut off from Petrograd by Yudenich's troops, he emigrated abroad. The seventeen years that the writer spent in Paris were an unproductive period. Constant material need and homesickness led him to the decision to return to Russia. In the spring of 1937, the seriously ill Kuprin returned to his homeland, warmly received by his admirers. Published the essay “Native Moscow”. However, the new creative plans were not destined to come true. In August 1938, Kuprin died in Leningrad from cancer.

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin (1870-1938) - famous Russian writer. His father, a small official, died a year after the birth of his son. His mother, originally from the Tatar princes Kulanchakov, after the death of her husband moved to the capital of Russia, where Kuprin spent his childhood and youth. At the age of 6, Alexander was sent to an orphanage, where he stayed until 1880. And immediately upon leaving, he entered the Moscow Military Academy.

Afterwards he studied at the Alexander School (1888-90). In 1889, his first work, “The Last Debut,” saw the light of day. In 1890, Kuprin was assigned to an infantry regiment in the Podolsk province, life in which became the basis for many of his works.

In 1894 the writer resigns and moves to Kyiv. The following years were devoted to wandering through Russia.

In 1890, he introduced readers to many publications - “Moloch”, “Yuzovsky Plant”, “Werewolf”, “Olesya”, “Kat”.

A.I. Kuprin is a prominent representative of Russian critical realism, whose work occurred in the most difficult pre- and post-revolutionary years of the 20th century.

Writer Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin (1870 - 1938).

Early years

Alexander was born in the small town of Narovchat (today it is the Penza region) on August 26, 1870. He was orphaned very early (the father died when the child was one year old; a period of considerable financial difficulties began for the mother and her young son). His mother managed to give Sasha an education: having moved to Moscow, he studied at the Moscow Razumovsky boarding school.

In 1887, Alexander was accepted as a student at the Alexander Military School. The years of study became for him a period of accumulation of experience and first literary works. In 1889, he published a story, which he gave the title “The Last Debut.”

Stormy youth and the beginning of maturity

After studying for about 4 years, Kuprin served in the Dnieper Infantry Regiment, and then, after retiring, traveled around the south of Russia and tried himself in various professions: from a loader to a dentist. At this time he already begins to actively write. The story “Moloch”, the story “Olesya”, and the stories “Shulamith” and “Pomegranate Bracelet”, which later became classics, were published. From the pen of the writer came the story “The Duel” that brought him literary fame.

During the First World War, Kuprin opened a military hospital in his own house and took part in the fighting. He was interested in politics and in his views was close to the Social Revolutionaries.

Emigration and return to the homeland

Kuprin did not accept the October Revolution, joined the White movement, and emigrated in 1919. For 17 years he lived in Paris, continuing to work. One of the most significant works of this period is the story “Junker”, based on memories. Illness, poverty, nostalgia for Russia forced the writer to return to Soviet Union. But he only had a year to live - Alexander Ivanovich died on August 25, 1938.

His works, whose heroes are representatives of the poor intelligentsia and ordinary people, have not lost their relevance in our time. Kuprin's heroes love life, try to survive, resist the surrounding cynicism and vulgarity. They live in a natural, changing world, where Good and Evil are forever intertwined and have an endless dispute with each other.

Brief information about Kuprin.

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin, Russian prose writer, author of the stories and novels “Olesya”, “At the Turning Point” (Cadets), “Duel”, “Shulamith”, “The Pit”, “Garnet Bracelet”, “Junker”, as well as many short stories and essays.

A.I. Kuprin was born on August 26 (September 7, n.s.) 1870 in the city of Narovchat, Penza province, in the family of a hereditary nobleman, a minor official.

Alexander Kuprin as a writer, a person and a collection of legends about his turbulent life is a special love of the Russian reader, akin to the first youthful feeling for life.

Ivan Bunin, who was jealous of his generation and rarely gave out praise, undoubtedly understood the inequality of everything written by Kuprin, nevertheless called him a writer by the grace of God.

And yet it seems that by his character Alexander Kuprin should have become not a writer, but rather one of his heroes - a circus strongman, an aviator, the leader of Balaklava fishermen, a horse thief, or perhaps he would have tamed his violent temper somewhere in a monastery (by the way, he made such an attempt). The cult of physical strength, a penchant for excitement, risk, and violence distinguished the young Kuprin. And later, he loved to measure his strength with life. At the age of forty-three, he suddenly began to learn stylish swimming from the world record holder Romanenko, together with the first Russian pilot Sergei Utochkin, he ascended in a hot air balloon, descended in a diving suit to the seabed, with the famous wrestler and aviator Ivan Zaikin flew on a Farman plane... However, the spark of God, apparently, cannot be extinguished.

Kuprin was born in the town of Narovchatov, Penza province, on August 26 (September 7), 1870. His father, a minor official, died of cholera when the boy was not even two years old. In the family left without funds, besides Alexander, there were two more children. The mother of the future writer Lyubov Alekseevna, nee Princess Kulunchakova, came from Tatar princes, and Kuprin loved to remember his Tatar blood, there was even a time when he wore a skullcap. In the novel “Junkers”, he wrote about his autobiographical hero “... the mad blood of the Tatar princes, the uncontrollable and indomitable ancestors on his mother’s side, pushing him to harsh and rash actions, distinguished him among the dozens of junkers.”

In 1874, Lyubov Alekseevna, a woman, according to her memoirs, “with a strong, unyielding character and high nobility,” decides to move to Moscow. There they settle in the common room of the Widow's House (described by Kuprin in the story “Holy Lie”). Two years later, due to extreme poverty, she sends her son to the Alexander Orphanage School for Children. For six-year-old Sasha, a period of existence in a barracks situation begins - seventeen years long.

In 1880 he entered the Cadet Corps. Here the boy, yearning for home and freedom, becomes close to teacher Tsukanov (in the story “At the Turning Point” - Trukhanov), a writer who “remarkably artistically” read Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev to his students. The teenager Kuprin also begins to try his hand at literature - of course, as a poet; Who at this age has not at least once crumpled a piece of paper with the first poem! He is interested in the then fashionable poetry of Nadson. At the same time, Cadet Kuprin, already a convinced democrat, the “progressive” ideas of the time seeped even through the walls of a closed military school. He angrily denounces in rhyming form the “conservative publisher” M.N. Katkov and Tsar Alexander III himself, brands the “vile, terrible thing” of the tsar’s trial of Alexander Ulyanov and his accomplices who attempted to assassinate the monarch.

At the age of eighteen, Alexander Kuprin entered the Third Alexander Junker School in Moscow. According to the recollections of his classmate L.A. Limontov, he was no longer a “nondescript, small, clumsy cadet,” but a strong young man, who valued the honor of his uniform most of all, a dexterous gymnast, a lover of dancing, who fell in love with every pretty partner.

His first appearance in print also dates back to the Junker period - on December 3, 1889, Kuprin’s story “The Last Debut” appeared in the magazine “Russian Satirical Leaflet”. This story really almost became the first and last literary debut of the cadet. Later, he recalled how, having received a fee of ten rubles for a story (for him then a huge sum), to celebrate, he bought his mother “goat boots”, and with the remaining ruble he rushed to the arena to prance on a horse (Kuprin loved horses very much and considered it “ call of the ancestors"). A few days later, a magazine with his story caught the eye of one of the teachers, and cadet Kuprin was summoned to the authorities: “Kuprin, your story” - “That’s right!” - “To the punishment cell!” A future officer was not supposed to engage in such “frivolous” things. Like any debutant, he, of course, longed for compliments and in the punishment cell he read his story to a retired soldier, an old school guy. He listened carefully and said, “Well written, your honor! But you just can’t understand anything.” The story was really weak.

After the Alexander School, Second Lieutenant Kuprin was sent to the Dnieper Infantry Regiment, which was stationed in Proskurov, Podolsk province. Four years of life “in an incredible wilderness, in one of the border southwestern towns. Eternal dirt, herds of pigs on the streets, huts smeared with clay and dung...” (“To Glory”), hours-long training of soldiers, gloomy officer revelries and vulgar romances with local “lionesses” made him think about the future, as he would think about The hero of his famous story “The Duel” is Second Lieutenant Romashov, who dreamed of military glory, but after the savagery of provincial army life, he decided to retire.

These years gave Kuprin knowledge of military life, the customs of the small-town intelligentsia, the customs of the Polesie village, and subsequently gave the reader such works as “Inquiry”, “Overnight”, “Night Shift”, “Wedding”, “Slavic Soul”, “Millionaire” , “Jew”, “Coward”, “Telegraphist”, “Olesya” and others.

At the end of 1893, Kuprin submitted his resignation and left for Kyiv. By that time, he was the author of the story “In the Dark” and the story “On a Moonlit Night” (Russian Wealth magazine), written in the style of heartbreaking melodrama. He decides to take up literature seriously, but this “lady” does not fall into his hands so easily. According to him, he suddenly found himself in the position of a college girl who was taken at night into the wilds of the Olonets forests and abandoned without clothes, food or a compass; “...I had no knowledge, either scientific or everyday,” he writes in his “Autobiography.” In it, he gives a list of professions that he tried to master, having taken off his military uniform, he was a reporter for Kiev newspapers, a manager during the construction of a house, he grew tobacco, served in a technical office, was a psalm-reader, played in the theater of the city of Sumy, studied dentistry, tried to become a monk , worked in a forge and carpentry shop, unloaded watermelons, taught at a school for the blind, worked at the Yuzovsky steel mill (described in the story “Moloch”)...

This period ended with the publication of a small collection of essays, “Kyiv Types,” which can be considered Kuprin’s first literary “drill.” Over the next five years, he made a rather serious breakthrough as a writer; in 1896 he published the story “Moloch” in “Russian Wealth”, where the rebellious working class was shown on a large scale for the first time, and published the first collection of stories “Miniatures” (1897), which included “Dog Happiness” ", "Stoletnik", "Breget", "Allez" and others, followed by the story "Olesya" (1898), the story "Night Shift" (1899), the story "At the Turning Point" ("Cadets"; 1900).

In 1901, Kuprin came to St. Petersburg as a fairly famous writer. He was already familiar with Ivan Bunin, who immediately upon arrival introduced him to the house of Alexandra Arkadyevna Davydova, publisher of the popular literary magazine “World of God.” There were rumors about her in St. Petersburg that she locked writers who asked her for an advance in her office, gave them ink, a pen, paper, three bottles of beer, and released them only if they had a finished story, immediately giving them a fee. In this house, Kuprin found his first wife - the bright, Spanish Maria Karlovna Davydova, the adopted daughter of a publisher.

A capable student of her mother, she also had a firm hand in dealing with the writing brethren. At least during the seven years of their marriage - the time of Kuprin’s greatest and most stormy fame - she managed to keep him at his desk for quite long periods (even to the point of depriving him of breakfast, after which Alexander Ivanovich fell asleep). Under her, works were written that put Kuprin in the first rank of Russian writers: the stories “Swamp” (1902), “Horse Thieves” (1903), “White Poodle” (1904), the story “Duel” (1905), the stories “Staff Captain Rybnikov ", "River of Life" (1906).

After the release of “The Duel,” written under the great ideological influence of the “petrel of the revolution” Gorky, Kuprin becomes an all-Russian celebrity. Attacks on the army, exaggeration of colors - downtrodden soldiers, ignorant, drunken officers - all this “appealed” to the tastes of the revolutionary-minded intelligentsia, who considered the defeat of the Russian fleet in the Russo-Japanese War to be their victory. This story is, without a doubt, written by hand great master, but today it is perceived in a slightly different historical dimension.

Kuprin passes the most powerful test - fame. “It was time,” Bunin recalled, “when the publishers of newspapers, magazines and collections on reckless cars chased him around... restaurants, where he spent days and nights with his casual and regular drinking companions, and humiliatedly begged him to take a thousand, two thousands of rubles in advance for the mere promise not to forget them on occasion with his mercy, and he, heavyset, large-faced, just squinted, was silent and suddenly abruptly said in such an ominous whisper, “Get to hell this very minute!” - that timid people immediately seemed to fall through the ground.” Dirty taverns and expensive restaurants, poor tramps and polished snobs of St. Petersburg bohemia, gypsy singers and races, finally, an important general, thrown into a pool with sterlet... - the whole set of “Russian recipes” for the treatment of melancholy, which for some reason always noisy glory pours out, he tried it (how can one not recall the phrase of Shakespeare’s hero “What is the melancholy of a great-spirited man expressed in the fact that he wants to drink”).

By this time, the marriage with Maria Karlovna had apparently exhausted itself, and Kuprin, unable to live by inertia, with youthful ardor fell in love with the teacher of his daughter Lydia - the small, fragile Lisa Heinrich. She was an orphan and had already experienced her own bitter story; she had been a nurse in the Russian-Japanese War and returned from there not only with medals, but also with a broken heart. When Kuprin, without delay, declared his love to her, she immediately left their house, not wanting to be the cause of family discord. Following her, Kuprin also left home, renting a room at the Palais Royal hotel in St. Petersburg.

For several weeks he has been rushing around the city in search of poor Lisa and, of course, acquires a sympathetic company... When his great friend and admirer of talent, Professor of St. Petersburg University Fyodor Dmitrievich Batyushkov, realized that there would be no end to these madnesses, he found Lisa in a small hospital, where she got a job as a nurse. What did he talk to her about? Maybe it was that she had to save the pride of Russian literature... It is unknown. Only Elizaveta Moritsovna’s heart trembled and she agreed to immediately go to Kuprin; however, with one strict condition, Alexander Ivanovich must undergo treatment. In the spring of 1907, the two of them went to the Finnish sanatorium “Helsingfors”. This great passion for the little woman became the reason for the creation of the wonderful story “Shulamith” (1907) - the Russian “Song of Songs”. In 1908, their daughter Ksenia was born, who would later write the memoirs “Kuprin is my father.”

From 1907 to 1914, Kuprin created such significant works as the stories “Gambrinus” (1907), “Garnet Bracelet” (1910), the cycle of stories “Listrigons” (1907-1911), and in 1912 he began work on the novel “The Pit”. When he came out, critics saw in him an exposure of yet another social evil Russia - prostitution, Kuprin considered paid “priestesses of love” to be victims of social temperament from time immemorial.

By this time, he had already disagreed in political views with Gorky and moved away from revolutionary democracy.

Kuprin called the war of 1914 fair and liberating, for which he was accused of “official patriotism.” A large photograph of him with the caption “A.I.” appeared in the St. Petersburg newspaper Nov. Kuprin, called up to active army" However, he did not go to the front - he was sent to Finland to train recruits. In 1915, he was declared unfit for military service due to health reasons, and he returned home to Gatchina, where his family lived at that time.

After the seventeenth year, Kuprin, despite several attempts, common language did not find a new government (although, under the patronage of Gorky, he even met with Lenin, but he did not see in him a “clear ideological position”) and left Gatchina along with Yudenich’s retreating army. In 1920, the Kuprins ended up in Paris.

After the revolution, about 150 thousand emigrants from Russia settled in France. Paris became the Russian literary capital - Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius, Ivan Bunin and Alexey Tolstoy, Ivan Shmelev and Alexey Remizov, Nadezhda Teffi and Sasha Cherny, and many others lived here famous writers. All kinds of Russian societies were formed, newspapers and magazines were published... There was even this joke about two Russians meeting on a Parisian boulevard. “Well, how do you live here?” - “It’s okay, you can live, one problem is too many French.”

At first, while the illusion of his homeland being taken away with him still persisted, Kuprin tried to write, but his gift gradually faded away, like his once powerful health; more and more often he complained that he could not work here, because he was accustomed to “writing off” his heroes from life . “They are a wonderful people,” Kuprin said about the French, “but they don’t speak Russian, and in the shop and in the pub - everywhere it’s not our way... Which means this is what it’s like - you’ll live, you’ll live, and you’ll stop writing.” His most significant work of the emigrant period is the autobiographical novel “Junker” (1928-1933). He became more and more quiet, sentimental - unusual for his acquaintances. Sometimes, however, the hot Kuprin blood still made itself felt. One day, the writer and friends were returning from a country restaurant by taxi, and they started talking about literature. The poet Ladinsky called “The Duel” his best work. Kuprin insisted that the best of everything he wrote, “The Garnet Bracelet,” contains the lofty, precious feelings of people. Ladinsky called this story implausible. Kuprin was furious. “Garnet bracelet” is a true story!” and challenged Ladinsky to a duel. With great difficulty we managed to dissuade him, driving around the city all night, as Lydia Arsenyeva recalled (“Far Shores.” M. “Respublika”, 1994).

Apparently, Kuprin really had something very personal connected with the “Garnet Bracelet”. At the end of his life, he himself began to resemble his hero - the aged Zheltkov. “Seven years of hopeless and polite love” Zheltkov wrote unrequited letters to Princess Vera Nikolaevna. The aged Kuprin was often seen in a Parisian bistro, where he sat alone with a bottle of wine and wrote love letters to a woman he barely knew. The magazine “Ogonyok” (1958, No. 6) published a poem by the writer, possibly composed at that time. There are the following lines: “And no one in the world will know, That for years, every hour and moment, A polite, attentive old man languishes and suffers from love.”

Before leaving for Russia in 1937, he recognized few people, and they hardly recognized him. Bunin writes in his “Memoirs” “... I once met him on the street and gasped internally and there was no trace left of the former Kuprin! He walked with small, pitiful steps, trudged so thin and weak that it seemed that the first gust of wind would blow him off his feet...”

When his wife took Kuprin to Soviet Russia, the Russian emigration did not condemn him, understanding that he was going there to die (although such things were perceived painfully in the emigrant environment; they said, for example, that Alexei Tolstoy simply fled to the “Sovdepia” from debts and creditors) . For the Soviet government it was politics. In the Pravda newspaper dated June 1, 1937, a note appeared: “On May 31, the famous Russian pre-revolutionary writer Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin, who returned from emigration to his homeland, arrived in Moscow. At the Belorussky station A.I. Kuprin was met by representatives of the literary community and the Soviet press.”

Kuprin was settled in a rest home for writers near Moscow. On a sunny day summer days Baltic sailors came to visit him. Alexander Ivanovich was carried out in a chair onto the lawn, where the sailors sang for him in chorus, came up, shook his hand, said that they had read his “Duel”, thanked him... Kuprin was silent and suddenly began to cry loudly (from the memoirs of N.D. Teleshov “Notes of a Writer ").

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin died on August 25, 1938 in Leningrad. In his last years as an emigrant, he often said that one should die in Russia, at home, like an animal that goes to die in its den. I would like to think that he passed away calmed and reconciled.

Lyubov Kalyuzhnaya,

Alexander KUPRIN (1870-1938)

1. Youth and early work of Kuprin

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin had a bright, original talent, which was highly valued by L. Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky. The attractive power of his talent lies in the capacity and vitality of the narrative, the entertaining nature of the plots, the naturalness and ease of the language, and the vivid imagery. Kuprin's works attract us not only with their artistic skill, but also with their humanistic pathos and great love of life.

Kuprin was born on August 26 (September 7), 1870 in the city of Narovchat, Penza province, in the family of a district clerk. The father died when the child was in his second year. His mother moved to Moscow, where poverty forced her to live in a widow's house and send her son to an orphanage. Children's and teenage years writers were held in closed educational institutions military type: in a military gymnasium, and then in a cadet school in Moscow. In 1890, after graduating from military school, Kuprin served in the army with the rank of lieutenant. An attempt to enter the General Staff Academy in 1893 was unsuccessful for Kuprin, and in 1894 he resigned. The next few years in Kuprin’s life were a period of numerous moves and changes in various types of activities. He worked as a reporter in Kyiv newspapers, served in an office in Moscow, as a manager of an estate in the Volyn province, as a prompter in a provincial troupe, tried many more professions, met people of the most diverse specialties, views and life destinies.

Like many writers, A. I. Kuprin began his creative activity like a poet. Among Kuprin’s poetic experiments there are 2-3 dozen that are quite good in execution and, most importantly, genuinely sincere in revealing human feelings and moods. This especially applies to his humorous poems - from the thorny “Ode to Katkov,” written in adolescence, to numerous epigrams, literary parodies, and humorous impromptu poems. Kuprin never stopped writing poetry all his life. However, he found his true calling in prose. In 1889, while a student at a military school, he published his first story, “The Last Debut,” and was sent to a punishment cell for violating the rules of the school, whose students were prohibited from appearing in print.

Kuprin's work in journalism gave him a lot. In the 90s, he published feuilletons, notes, court chronicles, literary criticism, and travel correspondence on the pages of provincial newspapers.

In 1896, Kuprin’s first book was published - a collection of essays and feuilletons “Kyiv Types”, in 1897 a book of stories “Miniatures” was published, which included early stories writers published in newspapers. The writer himself spoke of these works as “the first childish steps on literary road" But they were the first school of the future recognized master short story and artistic essay.

2. Analysis of the story “Moloch”

Working in the forge shop of one of the metallurgical plants in Donbass introduced Kuprin to work, life and the customs of the working environment. He wrote essays “Yuzovsky Plant”, “In the Main Mine”, “Rail Rolling Plant”. These essays were preparation for the creation of the story “Moloch”, published in the December issue of the magazine “Russian Wealth” for 1896.

In "Moloch" Kuprin mercilessly exposed the inhuman essence of emerging capitalism. The title of the story itself is symbolic. Moloch, according to the concepts of the ancient Phoenicians, was the god of the sun, to whom human sacrifices were made. It is with this that the writer compares capitalism. Only Moloch-capitalism is even more cruel. If one human victim per year was sacrificed to Moloch the god, then Moloch capitalism devours much more. The hero of the story, engineer Bobrov, calculated that at the plant where he works, every two days of work “devours a whole person.” "Damn it! - exclaims the engineer, excited by this conclusion, in a conversation with his friend Dr. Goldberg. - Do you remember from the Bible that some Assyrians or Moabites made human sacrifices to their gods? But these copper gentlemen, Moloch and Dagon, would blush with shame and resentment in front of the figures that I have just cited.” This is how the image of the bloodthirsty god Moloch appears on the pages of the story, which, as a symbol, runs through the entire work. The story is also interesting because here for the first time in Kuprin’s work the image of an intellectual truth-seeker appears.

The central character of the story, engineer Andrei Ilyich Bobrov, is such a seeker of truth. He likens himself to a person “who was flayed alive” - he is a soft, sensitive, sincere person, a dreamer and a lover of truth. He does not want to put up with violence and the hypocritical morality that covers this violence. He stands up for purity, honesty in relationships between people, for respect for human dignity. He is sincerely outraged that the individual is becoming a toy in the hands of a bunch of egoists, demagogues and crooks.

However, as Kuprin shows, Bobrov’s protest has no practical way out, because he is a weak, neurasthenic person, incapable of struggle and action. His outbursts of indignation end with a recognition of his own powerlessness: “You have neither the determination nor the strength for this... Tomorrow you will again be prudent and weak.” The reason for Bobrov's weakness is that he feels alone in his outrage at injustice. He dreams of a life based on pure relationships between people. But he doesn’t know how to achieve such a life. The author himself does not answer this question.

We must not forget that Bobrov’s protest is largely determined by a personal drama - the loss of his beloved girl, who, seduced by wealth, sold herself to a capitalist and also became a victim of Moloch. All this does not detract, however, from the main thing that characterizes this hero - his subjective honesty, hatred of all kinds of injustice. The ending of Bobrov's life is tragic. Internally broken, devastated, he ends his life suicide.

In the story, the millionaire Kvashnin is the personification of the destructive power of the chistogan. This is a living embodiment of the bloodthirsty god Moloch, which is emphasized by the very portrait of Kvashnin: “Kvashnin sat in a chair, spreading his colossal legs and sticking his stomach forward, looking like a Japanese idol of rough work.” Kvashnin is the antipode of Bobrov, and he is portrayed by the author in sharply negative tones. Kvashnin makes any deals with his conscience, any immoral act, even a crime, in order to satisfy his own. whims and desires. He makes the girl he likes, Nina Zinenko, Bobrov’s fiancée, his kept woman.

The corrupting power of Moloch is especially strongly shown in the fate of people trying to get into the ranks of the “chosen ones.” Such, for example, is the director of the Shelkovnikov plant, who only nominally manages the plant, subordinate in everything to the protege of a foreign company - the Belgian Andrea. This is one of Bobrov’s colleagues, Svezhevsky, who dreams of becoming a millionaire by the age of forty and is ready to do anything in the name of this.

The main thing that characterizes these people is immorality, lies, adventurism, which have long become the norm of behavior. Kvashnin himself lies, pretending to be an expert in the business he leads. Shelkovnikov lies, pretending that it is he who runs the plant. Nina's mother lies, hiding the secret of her daughter's birth. Svezhevsky lies, and Faya plays the role of Nina’s groom. Fake directors, fake fathers, fake husbands - this, according to Kuprin, is a manifestation of the general vulgarity, falsehood and lies of life, which the author and his positive hero cannot put up with.

The story is not free, especially in the history of the relationship between Bobrov, Nina and Kvashnin, from a touch of melodrama; the image of Kvashnin is devoid of psychological persuasiveness. And yet, “Moloch” was not an ordinary event in the work of the novice prose writer. The search for moral values, a person of spiritual purity, outlined here, will become the main one for Kuprin’s further work.

Maturity usually comes to a writer as a result of the many-sided experiences of his own life. Kuprin's work confirms this. He felt confident only when he stood firmly on the ground of reality and portrayed what he knew perfectly well. The words of one of the heroes of Kuprin’s “The Pit”: “By God, I would like to become a horse, a plant or a fish for a few days, or be a woman and experience childbirth; I would like to live my inner life and look at the world through the eyes of every person I meet,” sound truly autobiographical. Kuprin tried to explore everything as much as possible, to experience everything for himself. This inherent desire for him as a person and a writer to be actively involved in everything that happens around him led to the appearance already in early work works of a wide variety of subjects, in which a rich gallery of human characters and types is displayed. In the 90s, the writer willingly turned to depicting the exotic world of tramps, beggars, homeless people, tramps, and street thieves. These paintings and images are at the center of his works such as “The Petitioner”, “Painting”, “Natasha”, “Friends”, “Mysterious Stranger”, “Horse Thieves”, “White Poodle”. Kuprin showed a steady interest in the life and customs of the acting community, artists, journalists, and writers. These are his stories “Lidochka”, “Lolly”, “Survived Glory”, “Allez!”, “By order”, “Curl”, “Nag”, and the play “Clown” is also included here.

The plots of many of these works are sad, sometimes tragic. Indicative, for example, is the story “Allez!” - a psychologically capacious work, inspired by the idea of ​​humanism. Beneath the external restraint of the author's narration, the story hides the writer's deep compassion for man. The orphaned lot of a five-year-old girl turned into a circus rider, the work of a skilled acrobat under the circus dome, full of momentary risk, the tragedy of a girl deceived and insulted in her pure and high feelings and, finally, her suicide as an expression of despair - all this is depicted with Kuprin’s inherent insight and skill. It was not for nothing that L. Tolstoy considered this story one of Kuprin’s best creations.

At that time of his formation as a master of realistic prose, Kuprin wrote a lot and willingly about animals and children. Animals in Kuprin's works behave like people. They think, suffer, rejoice, fight injustice, make human friends and value this friendship. In one of the later stories, the writer, addressing his little heroine, will say: “Please note, dear Nina: we live next to all the animals and know nothing at all about them. We're just not interested. Let's take, for example, all the dogs you and I have known. Each has its own special soul, its own habits, its own character. It's the same with cats. It's the same with horses. And in birds. Just like people...” Kuprin’s works contain wise human kindness and the love of a humanist artist for everything living and living next to us and around us. These sentiments permeate all his stories about animals - “White Poodle”, “Elephant”, “Emerald” and dozens of others.

Kuprin's contribution to children's literature is enormous. He had the rare and difficult gift of writing about children in an engaging and serious manner, without false sweetness or schoolboy didactics. It is enough to read any of his children's stories - “ Wonderful doctor», « Kindergarten”, “On the River”, “Taper”, “The End of a Fairy Tale” and others, and we will be convinced that children are depicted by the writer with the finest knowledge and understanding of the child’s soul, with deep penetration into the world of his hobbies, feelings and experiences.

Constantly defending human dignity and the beauty of the inner world of man, Kuprin endowed his positive heroes - both adults and children - with high nobility of soul, feelings and thoughts, moral health, and a kind of stoicism. The best that they are rich in inner world, manifests itself most clearly in their ability to love - unselfishly and strongly. A love conflict underlies so many of Kuprin’s works of the 90s: the lyrical prose poem “Stoletnik”, the short stories “Stronger than Death”, “Narcissus”, “The First Person You Come Along”, “Loneliness”, “Autumn Flowers”, etc.

Affirming the moral value of man, Kuprin sought his positive hero. He found it among people not corrupted by selfish morality, living in unity with nature.

The writer contrasted the representatives of “civilized” society, who had lost nobility and honesty, with a “healthy,” “natural” person from the people.

3. Analysis of the story “Olesya”

It is this idea that forms the basis of the short story"Olesya" (1898). The image of Olesya is one of the brightest and most humane in the rich gallery female images, created by Kuprin. This is a freedom-loving and integral nature, captivating with its external beauty, with an extraordinary mind and noble soul. She is amazingly responsive to every thought, every movement of the soul of a loved one. At the same time, she is uncompromising in her actions. Kuprin shrouds in mystery the process of forming Olesya’s character and even the very origin of the girl. We don't know anything about her parents. She was raised by a dark, illiterate grandmother. She could not have any spiritualizing influence on Olesya. And the girl turned out to be so wonderful primarily because, Kuprin convinces the reader, she grew up among nature.

The story is built on a comparison of two heroes, two natures, two attitudes. On the one hand - an educated intellectual, a resident of a big city, Ivan

Timofeevich. On the other hand, Olesya is a person who has not been influenced by urban civilization. Compared to Ivan Timofeevich, a kind but weak man,

"lazy heart", Olesya rises with nobility, integrity, proud confidence in her inner strength. If in his relationships with the forest worker Ermola and the dark, ignorant village people, Ivan Timofeevich looks brave, humane and noble, then in his interactions with Olesya the negative sides of his nature also appear. True artistic instinct helped the writer reveal beauty human personality, generously endowed by nature. Naivety and authority, femininity and proud independence, “flexible, agile mind”, “primitive and vivid imagination”, touching courage, delicacy and innate tact, involvement in the innermost secrets of nature and spiritual generosity - these qualities are highlighted by the writer, drawing the charming appearance of Olesya , an integral, original, free nature, which flashed like rare gems in the surrounding darkness and ignorance.

Showing the originality and talent of Olesya, Kuprin proved himself to be a subtle master psychologist. For the first time in his work, he touched upon those mysterious phenomena of the human psyche that science is still unraveling. He writes about the unrecognized powers of intuition, premonitions, and the wisdom of thousands of years of experience that the human mind is capable of assimilating. Explaining the heroine’s “witchcraft” charms, the author expresses the conviction that Olesya had access to “that unconscious, instinctive, vague, strange knowledge obtained by chance experience, which, ahead of exact science by centuries, lives, mixed with funny and wild beliefs, in the dark , a closed mass of people, passed on like the greatest secret from generation to generation.”

In the story, for the first time, Kuprin’s cherished thought is so fully expressed: a person can be beautiful if he develops, and not destroys, the physical, spiritual and intellectual abilities given to him from above.

Kuprin considered pure, bright love to be one of the highest manifestations of the truly human in a person. In his heroine, the writer showed this possible happiness of free, unfettered love. The description of the blossoming of love and, with it, the human personality constitutes the poetic core of the story, its semantic and emotional center. With an amazing sense of tact, Kuprin makes us experience the anxious period of the birth of love, “full of vague, painfully sad sensations,” and its happiest seconds of “pure, complete all-consuming delight,” and the long joyful dates of lovers in a dense pine forest. The world of spring, jubilant nature - mysterious and beautiful - merges in the story with an equally beautiful outpouring of human feelings. "Almost whole month the naive, charming fairy tale of our love continued, and to this day, together with the beautiful appearance of Olesya, these flaming evening dawns live with unfading force in my soul, these dewy mornings fragrant with lilies of the valley and honey, full of cheerful freshness and the ringing noise of birds, these hot, languid, lazy July days... I, like a pagan god or like a young, strong animal, enjoyed the light, warmth, conscious joy of life and calm, healthy, sensual love.” In these heartfelt words of Ivan Timofeevich, the hymn of the author of “living life”, its enduring value, its beauty sounds.

The story ends with the separation of the lovers. There is essentially nothing unusual in such an ending. Even if Olesya had not been beaten by local peasants and had not left with her grandmother, fearing even more cruel revenge, she would not have been able to unite her fate with Ivan Timofeevich - they are so different people.

The story of two lovers unfolds against the backdrop of the magnificent nature of Polesie. The Kuprinsky landscape is not only extremely picturesque and rich, but also unusually dynamic. Where another, less subtle artist would have depicted the calm of a winter forest, Kuprin notes movement, but this movement sets off the silence even more clearly. “From time to time a thin branch would fall from the top and you could hear very clearly how, as it fell, it touched other branches with a slight crack.” Nature in the story is a necessary element of content. She actively influences a person’s thoughts and feelings, her paintings are organically connected with the movement of the plot. Static winter paintings nature at the beginning, at the moment of the hero’s loneliness; stormy spring, coinciding with the emergence of a feeling of love for Olesya; a fabulous summer night in moments of supreme happiness for lovers; and, finally, a severe thunderstorm with hail - these are the psychological accompaniments of the landscape that help reveal the idea of ​​the work. The bright fairy-tale atmosphere of the story does not fade even after the dramatic denouement. Gossip and gossip, the vile persecution of the clerk recede into the background, the savage reprisal of the Perebrod women against Olesya after her visit to the church fades into obscurity. Over everything insignificant, petty and evil, the victory, albeit sadly ending, is real, great - earthly love. The final touch of the story is characteristic: a string of red beads left by Olesya on the corner of the window frame in a hastily abandoned wretched hut. This detail gives compositional and semantic completeness to the work. A string of red beads is the last tribute to Olesya’s generous heart, the memory of “her tender, generous love.”

“Olesya,” perhaps more than any other work of early Kuprin, testifies to deep and diverse connections young writer with the traditions of Russian classics. Thus, researchers usually recall Tolstoy’s “Cossacks,” which are based on the same task: to depict a person untouched and uncorrupted by civilization, and to put him in contact with the so-called “civilized society.” At the same time, one can easily detect a connection between the story and Turgenev’s line in Russian prose of the 19th century. They are brought together by the contrast between a weak-willed and indecisive hero and a heroine who is courageous in her actions and completely devoted to the feeling that has gripped her. And Ivan Timofeevich involuntarily reminds us of the heroes of Turgenev’s stories “Asya” and “Spring Waters”.

In my own way artistic method The story “Olesya” is an organic combination of romanticism and realism, the ideal and the real-life. The romanticism of the story is manifested primarily in the disclosure of the image of Olesya and in the depiction of the beautiful nature of Polesie.

Both of these images - nature and Olesya - are fused into a single harmonious whole and cannot be thought of in isolation from each other. Realism and romanticism in the story complement each other and appear in a kind of synthesis.

“Olesya” is one of those works in which the best features of Kuprin’s talent were most fully revealed. Masterful modeling of characters, subtle lyricism, vivid pictures of ever-living, renewing nature, inextricably linked with the course of events, with the feelings and experiences of the heroes, poeticization of the great human feeling, a consistently and purposefully developing plot - all this puts “Olesya” among the most significant works of Kuprin.

4. Analysis of the story “Duel”

The early 900s is an important period in creative biography Kuprina. During these years, he became acquainted with Chekhov, the story “In the Circus” was approved by L. Tolstoy, he became close friends with Gorky and the Znanie publishing house. Ultimately, it was to Gorky, his help and support, that Kuprin owed much of his work on his most important work, the story"Duel" (1905).

In his work, the writer turns to the image of the military environment so familiar to him. At the center of “The Duel,” as in the center of the story “Moloch,” is the figure of a man who has become, to use Gorky’s words, “sideways” to his social environment. The basis of the plot of the story is the conflict between Lieutenant Romashov and the surrounding reality. Like Bobrov, Romashov is one of the many cogs in a social mechanism that is alien and even hostile to him. He feels like a stranger among the officers; he differs from them primarily in his humane attitude towards the soldiers. Like Bobrov, he painfully experiences the abuse of a person, the humiliation of his dignity. “It is dishonorable to beat a soldier,” he declares, “you cannot beat a man who not only cannot answer you, but does not even have the right to raise his hand to protect himself from a blow. He doesn’t even dare to tilt his head. That's shameful!". Romashov, like Bobrov, is weak, powerless, in a state of painful duality, and internally contradictory. But unlike Bobrov, who is depicted as an already fully formed personality, Romashov is given in the process spiritual development. This gives his image internal dynamism. At the beginning of his service, the hero is full of romantic illusions, dreams of self-education and a career as a General Staff officer. Life crushes these dreams mercilessly. Shocked by the failure of his half-company on the parade ground during the regiment review, he travels around the city until nightfall and unexpectedly meets his soldier Khlebnikov.

The images of soldiers do not occupy as significant a place in the story as the images of officers. But even episodic figures of the “lower ranks” are remembered by the reader for a long time. This is Romashova’s orderly Gainan, Arkhipov, and Sharafutdinov. Close-up Private Khlebnikov is singled out in the story.

One of the most exciting scenes of the story and, according to the fair remark of K. Paustovsky, “one of the best... in Russian literature” is a night meeting at the canvas railway Romashova with Khlebnikov. Here, both the plight of the downtrodden Khlebnikov and the humanism of Romashov, who sees the soldier first of all as a human being, are revealed with the utmost completeness. The difficult, joyless fate of this unfortunate soldier shocked Romashov. A deep spiritual change occurs in him. From that time on, Kuprin writes, “his own fate and the fate of this... downtrodden, tortured soldier were somehow strangely, closely related... intertwined.” What is Romashov thinking about, what new horizons are opening up before him, when, having rejected the life he has lived until now, he begins to think about his future?

As a result of intense thought about the meaning of life, the hero comes to the conclusion that “there are only three proud callings of man: science, art and a free person.” These internal monologues of Romashov are remarkable, in which such basic problems of the story are posed as the relationship between the individual and society, the meaning and purpose of human life, etc. Romashov protests against vulgarity, against dirty “regimental love”. He dreams of a pure, sublime feeling, but his life ends early, absurdly and tragically. A love affair accelerates the outcome of Romashov’s conflict with the environment he hates.

The story ends with the death of the hero. Romashov found himself defeated in an unequal struggle against the vulgarity and stupidity of army life. Having forced his hero to see the light, the author did not see the specific ways in which the young man could move on and realize the found ideal. And no matter how much Kuprin suffered for a long time working on the finale of the work, he did not find another convincing ending.

Kuprin's excellent knowledge of army life was clearly demonstrated in his depiction of the officer environment. The spirit of careerism, inhumane treatment of soldiers, and the squalor of spiritual interests reign here. Considering themselves a special breed of people, officers look at soldiers like cattle. One of the officers, for example, beat his orderly so much that “there was blood not only on the walls, but also on the ceiling.” And when the orderly complained to the company commander, he sent him to the sergeant major and “the sergeant major beat him on his blue, swollen, bloody face for another half hour.” It is impossible to calmly read those scenes of the story where it is described how they mock the sick, downtrodden, physically weak soldier Khlebnikov.

The officers live wildly and hopelessly in everyday life. Captain Sliva, for example, during 25 years of service did not read a single book or newspaper. Another officer, Vetkin, says with conviction: “In our business you’re not supposed to think.” The officers spend their free time drinking, playing cards, brawling in brothels, fighting among themselves, and telling stories about their love affairs. The life of these people is a miserable, thoughtless existence. It is, as one of the characters in the story says, “monotonous, like a fence, and gray, like a soldier’s cloth.”

This, however, does not mean that Kuprin, as some researchers claim, deprives the officers of the story of any glimpse of humanity. The essence of the matter is that in many officers - in the regiment commander Shulgovich, and in Bek-Agamalov, and in Vetkin, and even in captain Sliva, Kuprin notes positive qualities: Shulgovich, having reprimanded the embezzled officer, immediately gives him money. Vetkin is a kind and good comrade. Bek-Agamalov is, in essence, not a bad person. Even Sliva, a stupid campaigner, is impeccably honest in relation to the soldier’s money passing through his hands.

The point, therefore, is not that we are faced with only degenerates and moral monsters, although among characters there are stories like that. And the fact is that even those endowed positive qualities people, in an atmosphere of musty everyday life and dull monotony of life, lose the will to resist this soul-sucking swamp and gradually degrade.

But, as one of the then critics N. Ashevov wrote about Kuprin’s story “The Swamp,” filled with a similar range of thoughts, “a man dies in a swamp, a man must be resurrected.” Kuprin peers into the very depths of human nature and tries to notice in people those precious grains of the soul that still have to be nurtured, humanized, and cleared of the scum of bad layers. This feature of Kuprin’s artistic method was sensitively noted by the pre-revolutionary researcher of the writer’s work F. Batyushkov: “A realist in writing, he depicts people in real outlines, in alternating chiaroscuro, insisting that there are neither absolutely good nor absolutely bad people, that the most diverse properties fit in one and the same person, and that life will become beautiful when a person is free from all prejudices and preconceptions, is strong and independent, learns to subjugate the conditions of life, and begins to create his own way of life.”

Nazansky occupies a special place in the story. This is a non-plot character. He does not take any part in the events, and should, it would seem, be perceived as an episodic character. But the significance of Nazansky is determined, firstly, by the fact that it was in his mouth that Kuprin put the author’s reasoning, summing up the criticism of army life. Secondly, because it is Nazansky who formulates positive answers to the questions that arise from Romashov. What is the essence of Nazansky’s views? If we talk about his critical statements about the life and life of his former colleagues, then they go in the same direction with the main problems of the story, and in this sense they deepen it main topic. He enthusiastically prophesies the time when “a new radiant life” will come “far from our dirty, stinking parking lots.”

In his monologues, Nazansky glorifies life and power free man, which is also a progressive factor. However, Nazansky combines correct thoughts about the future and criticism of army orders with individualistic and selfish sentiments. A person, in his opinion, should live only for himself, regardless of the interests of other people. “Who is dearer and closer to you? “Nobody,” he says to Romashov. “You are the king of the world, its pride and adornment... Do what you want.” Take whatever you like... Whoever can prove to me with clear conviction how I am connected with this - damn him! - my neighbor, with a vile slave, with an infected person, with an idiot?.. And then, what interest will make me break my head for the happiness of the people of the 32nd century? It is easy to see that Nazansky here rejects Christian charity, love for one’s neighbor, and the idea of ​​self-sacrifice.

The author himself was not satisfied with the image of Nazansky, and his hero Romashov, who listens carefully to Nazansky, does not always share his point of view, much less follow his advice. Both Romashov’s attitude towards Khlebnikov and the renunciation of his own interests in the name of the happiness of his beloved woman, Shurochka Nikolaeva, indicate that the preaching of individualism by the Nazanskys, while exciting Romashov’s consciousness, does not, however, affect his heart. If anyone implements in the story the principles preached by Nazansky, without realizing it, of course, it is Shurochka Nikolaeva. It is she who condemns Romashov, who is in love with her, to death in the name of her selfish, selfish goals.

The image of Shurochka is one of the most successful in the story. Charming, graceful, she stands head and shoulders above the rest of the officer ladies of the regiment. Her portrait, painted by the loving Romashov, captivates with the hidden passion of her nature. Maybe that’s why Romashov is drawn to her, that’s why Nazansky loved her, because she has that healthy, vital, strong-willed principle that both friends so lacked. But all the extraordinary qualities of her nature are aimed at achieving selfish goals.

In the image of Shurochka Nikolaeva, an interesting artistic solution is given to the strength and weakness of the human personality, female nature. It is Shurochka who accuses Romashov of weakness: in her opinion, he is pathetic and weak-willed. What is Shurochka herself like?

This is a lively mind, an understanding of the vulgarity of the surrounding life, a desire to break through to the top of society at any cost (her husband’s career is a stepping stone to this). From her point of view, everything around is weak people. Shurochka knows exactly what she wants and will achieve her goal. The strong-willed, rationalistic principle is clearly expressed in her. She is an opponent of sentimentality, in herself she suppresses what could interfere with the goal she has set - all heartfelt impulses and attachments.

Twice, as if out of weakness, she refuses love - first from the love of Nazansky, then of Romashov. Nazansky accurately captures the duality of nature in Shurochka: “passionate heart” and “dry, selfish mind.”

The cult of evil willpower characteristic of this heroine is something unprecedented in feminine character, in the gallery of Russian women depicted in Russian literature. This cult is not affirmed, but rather debunked by Kuprin. Regarded as a perversion of femininity, the principles of love and humanity. Masterfully, at first, as if with random strokes, and then more and more clearly, Kuprin highlights in the character of this woman such a trait, initially not noticed by Romashov, as spiritual coldness, callousness. For the first time, he catches something alien and hostile to himself in Shurochka’s laughter at the picnic.

“There was something instinctively unpleasant in this laughter, which sent a chill into Romashov’s soul.” At the end of the story, in the scene last date, the hero experiences a similar, but significantly intensified sensation when Shurochka dictates her terms of the duel. “Romashov felt something secret, smooth, slimy crawling invisibly between them, which sent a cold smell to his soul.” This scene is complemented by the description of Shurochka’s last kiss, when Romashov felt that “her lips were cold and motionless.” Shurochka is calculating, selfish and in her ideas does not go beyond dreams of the capital, of success in high society. To fulfill this dream, she destroys Romashov, trying by any means to win a secure place for herself and for her limited, unloved husband. At the end of the work, when Shurochka deliberately does her disastrous deed, persuading Romashov to fight Nikolaev in a duel, the author shows the unkindness of the strength contained in Shurochka, contrasting it with Romashov’s “humane weakness”.

“The Duel” was and remains an outstanding phenomenon of Russian prose at the beginning of the 20th century.

During the period of the first Russian revolution, Kuprin was in a democratic camp, although he did not take direct part in the events. Being at the height of the revolution in Crimea, Kuprin observed revolutionary ferment among the sailors. He witnessed the massacre of the mutinous cruiser "Ochakov" and himself took part in the rescue of the few surviving sailors. Kuprin spoke about the tragic death of the heroic cruiser in his essay “Events in Sevastopol,” for which the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Chukhnin, ordered the writer to be expelled from Crimea.

5. Essays “Listrigons”

Kuprin suffered the defeat of the revolution very hard. But in his work he continued to adhere to the position of realism. With sarcasm, he portrays philistinism in his stories as a force that restrains a person’s spiritual growth and distorts the human personality.

Ugly " dead souls" Kuprin, as before, opposes ordinary people, proud, cheerful, cheerful, living a difficult, but spiritually rich, meaningful work life. These are his essays about the life and work of Balaklava fishermen under the general title"Listrigons" (1907-1911) (Listrigons - a mythical people of cannibal giants in Homer’s poem “Odyssey”). In "Listrigons" there is no main character who moves from one essay to another. But certain figures are still highlighted in them. These are the images of Yura Paratino, Kolya Kostandi, Yura Kalitanaka and others. Before us are natures that have been shaped over centuries by the life and profession of a fisherman. These people are the embodiment of activity. And, moreover, deeply human activity. Disunity and selfishness are alien to them.

Fishermen go to their hard fishery in teams, and joint hard work develops solidarity and mutual support in them. This work requires will, cunning, resourcefulness. People who are stern, courageous, and risk-loving are admired by Kuprin, because in their characters there is much that the reflective intelligentsia lacks. The writer admires their hoarse will and simplicity. The integral and courageous characters of the fishermen, the writer asserts, are the result of the fact that they, like Olesya, are children of nature, live far away from the spoiled “civilized” world. “Listrigons”, just like the story “Olesya,” represent in their artistic method, a fusion of realism and romanticism. In a romantic, upbeat style, the writer depicts the life, work and especially the characters of Balaklava fishermen.

During these same years, Kuprin created two wonderful works about love - “Sulamphi” (1908) and “Pomegranate Bracelet” (1911). Kuprin's interpretation of this topic appears especially significant in comparison with the depiction of women in anti-realist literature. A woman, who always personified the best and brightest in the Russian people among classical writers, during the years of reaction, under the pen of some fiction writers, turned into an object of lustful and gross desires. This is exactly how a woman is depicted in the works of A. Kamensky, E. Nagrodskaya, A. Verbitskaya and others.

In contrast to them, Kuprin glorifies love as a powerful, tender and elevating feeling.

6. Analysis of the story “Shulamith”

By the brightness of the colors, the power of poetic embodiment, the story"Shulamith" occupies one of the first places in the writer’s work. This patterned story, imbued with the spirit of oriental legends, is about the joyful and tragic love poor girl to the king and sage Solomon is inspired by the biblical “Song of Songs”. The plot of “Sulamithi” is to a great extent the product of Kuprin’s creative imagination, but he drew his colors and moods from this biblical poem. However, this was not simple borrowing. Very boldly and skillfully using the technique of stylization, the artist sought to convey the pathetic, melodious, solemn structure, the majestic and full of energy sound of ancient legends.

Throughout the story there is a contrast between light and dark, love and hatred. The love of Solomon and Shulamith is described in light, festive colors, in a soft combination of colors. Conversely, the feelings of the cruel Queen Astiz and the royal bodyguard Eliav, who is in love with her, are devoid of a sublime character.

The image of Sulamith embodies passionate and pure, bright love. The opposite feeling - hatred and envy - is expressed in the image of Astiz, rejected by Solomon. Shulamith brought Solomon a great and bright love that fills her completely. Love worked a miracle with her - it revealed the beauty of the world to the girl, enriched her mind and soul. And even death cannot defeat the power of this love. Shulamith dies with words of gratitude for the highest happiness given to her by Solomon. The story "Shulamith" is especially remarkable as a glorification of women. The sage Solomon is beautiful, but even more beautiful in her half-childish naivety and selflessness is Shulamith, who gives her life for her lover. The words of Solomon’s farewell to Shulamith contain the innermost meaning of the story: “As long as people love each other, as long as the beauty of soul and body will be the best and sweetest dream in the world, until then, I swear to you, Shulamith, your name is in for many centuries it will be pronounced with tenderness and gratitude.”

The legendary plot of “Sulamith” opened up unlimited possibilities for Kuprin to sing of love that was strong, harmonious and freed from any everyday conventions and everyday obstacles. But the writer could not limit himself to such an exotic interpretation of the theme of love. He persistently searches in the most real, everyday reality for people obsessed the highest feeling love that can rise, at least in dreams, above the surrounding prose of life. And, as always, he turns his gaze to to the common man. This is how it arose in the creative mind of the writer poetic theme « Garnet bracelet».

Love, in Kuprin’s view, is one of the eternal, inexhaustible and not fully known sweet secrets. It most fully, deeply and diversifiedly reveals a person’s personality, his character, capabilities and talents. It awakens in a person the best, most poetic sides of his soul, elevates him above the prose of life, and activates spiritual forces. “Love is the brightest and most complete reproduction of my Self. Individuality is not expressed in strength, not in dexterity, not in intelligence, not in talent, not in voice, not in colors, not in gait, not in creativity. But in love... A person who dies for love dies for everything,” Kuprin wrote to F. Batyushkov, revealing his philosophy of love.

7. Analysis of the story "Garnet bracelet"

Narration within a story"Garnet bracelet" opens with a sad picture of nature, in which alarming notes are caught: “... From morning to morning there was a continuous rain, fine as water dust... then a fierce hurricane blew from the north-west, from the side of the steppe,” carrying away human lives. The lyrical landscape “overture” precedes the story of a romantically sublime, but unrequited love: a certain telegraph operator Zheltkov fell in love with a married aristocrat, Princess Vera Sheina, who was unattainable for him, writes tender letters to her, not hoping for an answer, and considers those moments when secretly , from a distance, can see his beloved.

As in many other stories by Kuprin, “The Garnet Bracelet” is based on a true fact. There was a real prototype main character the story of Princess Vera Sheina. This was the mother of the writer Lev Lyubimov, the niece of the famous “legal Marxist” Tugan-Baranovsky. In fact, there was also a telegraph operator Zholtov (Zheltkov’s prototype). Lev Lyubimov writes about this in his memoirs “In a Foreign Land”. Taking an episode from life, Kuprin creatively imagined it. The feeling of love is affirmed here as a real and high life value. “And I want to say that people nowadays have forgotten how to love. I don’t see true love,” states one of the characters, an old general, sadly. The life story of the “little man”, which included love that is “strong as death”, love - “a deep and sweet secret” - refutes this statement.

With the image of Zheltkov, Kuprin shows that ideal, romantic love is not a fiction; not a dream, not an idyll, but a reality, although rarely encountered in life. The portrayal of this character has a very strong romantic element. We know almost nothing about his past, about the origins of the formation of his character. Where and how was this “little man” able to get such a wonderful musical education, to cultivate in oneself such a developed sense of beauty, human dignity and inner nobility? Like all romantic heroes, Zheltkov is lonely. Describing the character’s appearance, the author draws attention to the features inherent in natures with a fine mental organization: “He was tall, thin, with long, fluffy soft hair... very pale, with a gentle girlish face, with blue eyes and a stubborn childish chin with a dimple in the middle.” This external originality of Zheltkov further emphasizes the richness of his nature.

The plot of the plot action is when Princess Vera receives on her birthday another letter from Zheltkov and an unusual gift - a garnet bracelet (“five scarlet bloody lights trembling inside five garnets”). “Definitely blood!” - Vera thought with unexpected alarm.” Outraged by Zheltkov’s importunity, Vera’s brother Nikolai Nikolaevich and her husband Prince Vasily decide to find and “teach a lesson” to this, from their point of view, “impudent.”

The scene of their visit to Zheltkov’s apartment is the culmination of the work, which is why the author dwells on it in such detail. At first, Zheltkov is shy in front of the aristocrats who visited his poor home, and feels guiltlessly guilty. But as soon as Nikolai Nikolaevich hinted that in order to “reason” with Zheltkov, he would resort to the help of the authorities, the hero literally transformed. It’s as if another person appears before us - defiantly calm, not afraid of threats, with a sense of self-esteem, aware of moral superiority over his uninvited guests. " Small man"He straightens out so spiritually that Vera's husband begins to feel involuntary sympathy and respect for him. He tells his brother-in-law

About Zheltkov: “I see his face, and I feel that this man is not capable of deceiving or knowingly lying. Indeed, think, Kolya, is he to blame for love and is it possible to control such a feeling as love... I feel sorry for this man. And I not only feel sorry, but I feel that I am present at some enormous tragedy of the soul...”

Tragedy, alas, was not long in coming. Zheltkov gives himself so much to his love that without it, life loses all meaning for him. And therefore he commits suicide, so as not to interfere with the princess’s life, so that “nothing temporary, vain and worldly would disturb” her “beautiful soul.” Zheltkov's last letter raises the theme of love to the highest tragedy. Dying, Zheltkov thanks Vera for being for him “the only joy in life, the only consolation, the only thought.”

It is important that with the death of the hero the great feeling of love does not die. His death spiritually resurrects Princess Vera, revealing to her a world of feelings hitherto unknown to her. She seems to be liberated internally, acquiring the great power of love inspired by the dead, which sounds like the eternal music of life. It is no coincidence that the epigraph to the story is Beethoven's second sonata, the sounds of which crown the finale and serve as a hymn to pure and selfless love.

Zheltkov seemed to have foreseen that Vera would come with him to say goodbye, and through the landlady he bequeathed to her to listen to a Beethoven sonata. In unison with the music, the dying words of the man who selflessly loved her sound in Vera’s soul: “I remember your every step, your smile, the sound of your gait. My last memories are enveloped in sweet sadness, quiet, beautiful sadness. But I won't cause you any grief. I leave alone, silently, as God and fate willed. "Hallowed be thy name."

In my sad dying hour, I pray only to you. Life could be wonderful for me too. Don't complain, poor heart, don't complain. In my soul I call upon death, but in my heart I am full of praise to you: “Hallowed be thy name.”

These words are a kind of akathist of love, the refrain of which is a line from a prayer. It is rightly said: “Lyrical musical ending The story affirms the high power of love, which made one feel its greatness, beauty, selflessness, introducing another soul to itself for a moment.”

And yet “Garnet Bracelet” does not leave such a bright and inspired impression as “Olesya”. K. Paustovsky subtly noticed the special tone of the story, saying about it: “the bitter charm of the “Garnet Bracelet.” This bitterness lies not only in the death of Zheltkov, but also in the fact that his love concealed, along with inspiration, a certain limitation and narrowness. If for Olesya love is a part of being, one of the constituent elements of the multicolored world surrounding her, then for Zheltkov, on the contrary, the whole world narrows down only to love, which he admits in his suicide letter to Princess Vera: “It happened,” he writes, “that I’m not interested in anything in life: neither politics, nor science, nor philosophy, nor concern for the future happiness of people - for me, my whole life lies only in you.” It is quite natural that the loss of his beloved becomes the end of Zheltkov’s life. He has nothing left to live for. Love did not expand or deepen his connections with the world, but, on the contrary, narrowed them. Therefore, the tragic ending of the story, along with the hymn of love, also contains another, no less important idea: you cannot live by love alone.

8. Analysis of the story “The Pit”

During these same years, Kuprin conceived a large artistic canvas - a story"Pit" , on which he worked with long breaks in 1908-1915. The story was a response to a series of erotic works that savored perversity and pathology, and to numerous debates about the emancipation of sexual passions, and to specific disputes about prostitution, which has become a sick phenomenon of Russian reality.

The humanist writer dedicated his book to “mothers and youth.” He tried to influence the unclouded consciousness and morality of young people, mercilessly telling about what vile things were happening in brothels. In the center of the story is an image of one of these “houses of tolerance”, where bourgeois morals triumph, where Anna Markovna, the owner of this establishment, feels like a sovereign ruler, where Lyubka, Zhenechka, Tamara and other prostitutes are “victims of social temperament” - and where young intellectuals - truth-seekers: student Lichonin and journalist Platonov come to pull these victims out from the bottom of this stinking swamp.

The story contains many vivid scenes where the life of nightlife establishments “in all its everyday simplicity and everyday efficiency” is calmly recreated, without strain or loud words. But overall, it did not become Kuprin’s artistic success. Stretched out, loose, overloaded with naturalistic details, “The Pit” caused dissatisfaction among both many readers and the author himself. Final opinion about this story in our literary criticism has not yet developed.

And yet “The Pit” should hardly be regarded as an absolute creative failure of Kuprin.

One of the undoubted, from our point of view, advantages of this work is that Kuprin looked at prostitution not only as social phenomenon(“one of the most terrible ulcers of bourgeois society,” we have been accustomed to assert for decades), but also as a phenomenon of a complex biological order. The author of “The Pit” tried to show that the fight against prostitution rests on global problems associated with changes in human nature, which conceals millennial instincts.

In parallel with work on the story “The Pit,” Kuprin is still working hard on his favorite genre - the story. Their topics are varied. With great sympathy, he writes about poor people, their crippled destinies, about their abused childhood, recreates pictures of bourgeois life, castigates the bureaucratic nobility and cynical businessmen. His stories of these years “Black Lightning” (1912), “Anathema” (1913), “Elephant Walk” and others are colored with anger, contempt and at the same time love.

An eccentric, a fanatic of the cause and a disinterested man, Turchenko, towering above the bourgeois quagmire, is akin to Gorky’s purposeful heroes. It is not for nothing that the leitmotif of the story is the image of black lightning from Gorky’s “Song of the Petrel.” And in terms of the power of its exposure of provincial philistinism, “Black Lightning” echoes Gorky’s Okurov cycle.

Kuprin followed the principles of realistic aesthetics in his work. At the same time, the writer willingly used forms artistic convention. These are his allegorical and fantastic stories “Dog Happiness”, “Toast”, extremely rich figurative symbolism works “Dreams”, “Happiness”, “Giants”. His fantastic stories “Liquid Sun” (1912) and “Star of Solomon” (1917) are characterized by a skillful interweaving of concrete everyday and surreal episodes and pictures. biblical stories and folk legends are based on the stories “The Garden of the Blessed Virgin” and “Two Saints” (1915). They showed Kuprin’s interest in the rich and complex world around him, in the unsolved mysteries of the human psyche. The symbolism, moral or philosophical allegory contained in these works was one of the most important means artistic embodiment writer of the world and man.

9. Kuprin in exile

A. Kuprin perceived the events of World War I from a patriotic position. Paying tribute to the heroism of Russian soldiers and officers, in the stories “Goga Merry” and “Cantaloupe” he exposes bribe-takers and embezzlers who cleverly profit from the people’s misfortune.

During the years of the October Revolution and the Civil War, Kuprin lived in Gatchina, near Petrograd. When General Yudenich’s troops left Gatchina in October 1919, Kuprin moved with them. He settled in Finland and then moved to Paris.

In the first years of his stay in exile, the writer experiences an acute creative crisis caused by separation from his homeland. The turning point came only in 1923, when his new talented works appeared: “The One-Armed Commandant”, “Fate”, “The Golden Rooster”. The past of Russia, memories of Russian people, about native nature- this is what Kuprin gives the last of his talent. In stories and essays about Russian history, the writer revives the traditions of Leskov, telling about unusual, sometimes anecdotal, colorful Russian characters and morals.

Such excellent stories as “Napoleon’s Shadow”, “Red, Bay, Gray, Black”, “The Tsar’s Guest from Narovchat”, “The Last Knights” were written in Leskov’s style. The old, pre-revolutionary motives again sounded in his prose. The short stories “Olga Sur”, “Bad Pun”, “Blondel” seem to complete the line in the writer’s depiction of the circus; following the famous “Listri-gons” he writes the story “Svetlana”, again resurrecting the colorful figure of the Balaklava fishing chieftain Kolya Kostandi. The story “The Wheel of Time” (1930) is dedicated to the glorification of the great “gift of love,” the hero of which, the Russian engineer Misha, who fell in love with a beautiful Frenchwoman, is akin to the writer’s previous unselfish and pure-hearted characters. Kuprin’s stories “Yu-Yu”, “Zaviraika”, “Ralph” continue the line of the writer’s depiction of animals, which he began even before the revolution (stories “Emerald”, “White Poodle”, “Elephant Walk”, “Peregrine Falcon”).

In a word, no matter what Kuprin wrote about in exile, all his works are imbued with thoughts about Russia, hidden with longing for a lost homeland. Even in essays dedicated to France and Yugoslavia - “Home Paris”, “Intimate Paris”, “Cape Huron”, “Old Songs” - the writer, depicting foreign customs, life and nature, returns again and again to the thought of Russia. He compares French and Russian swallows, Provencal mosquitoes and Ryazan mosquitoes, European beauties and Saratov girls. And everything at home, in Russia, seems nicer and better to him.

High moral problems Kuprin's latest works - the autobiographical novel "Junker" and the story "Zhaneta" (1933) - are also inspired. “Junkers” is a continuation of the autobiographical story “At the Turning Point” (“Cadets”) created by Kuprin thirty years ago, although the surnames of the main characters are different: in “Cadets” - Bulavin, in “Junkers” - Alexandrov. Talking about the next stage of the hero’s life at the Alexandrov School, Kuprin in “Junkers,” unlike “Cadets,” removes the slightest critical note towards the educational system in Russian closed military educational institutions, painting the narrative about Alexandrov’s cadet years in rosy, idyllic tones. However, “Junkers” is not just the story of the Alexander Military School, conveyed through the eyes of one of its pupils. This is also a work about old Moscow. The silhouettes of Arbat, Patriarch's Ponds, the Institute of Noble Maidens, etc. appear through the romantic haze.

The novel expressively conveys what is born in the heart young Alexandrov feeling of first love. But despite the abundance of light and festivities, the novel "Junker" is a sad book. She is warmed by the senile warmth of memories. Again and again, with “indescribable, sweet, bitter and tender sadness,” Kuprin mentally returns to his homeland, to his bygone youth, to his beloved Moscow.

10. The story “Zhaneta”

These nostalgic notes are clearly heard in the story"Zhaneta" . Without touching, “as if a cinematic film is unfolding,” he passes by the old emigrant professor Simonov, once famous in Russia, and now huddled in a poor attic, the life of a bright and noisy Paris. With a great sense of tact, without falling into sentimentality, Kuprin tells about the loneliness of an old man, about his noble, but no less oppressive poverty, about his friendship with a mischievous and rebellious cat. But the most heartfelt pages of the story are devoted to Simonov’s friendship with the little impoverished girl Zhaneta, the “princess of four streets.” The writer in no way idealizes this pretty, dark-haired girl with dirty little hands, who, like the black cat, looks a little down on the old professor. However, a chance acquaintance with her illuminated his lonely life and revealed all the hidden reserves of tenderness in his soul.

The story ends sadly. The mother takes Janeta away from Paris, and the old man is again left completely alone, except for the black cat. In this work

Kuprin managed with great artistic power to show the collapse of the life of a man who lost his homeland. But the philosophical context of the story is broader. He is in the affirmation of purity and beauty human soul, which a person should not lose under any hardships in life.

After the story “Zhaneta,” Kuprin did not create anything significant. As the daughter of the writer K. A. Kuprin testifies, “he sat down at his desk, forced to earn his daily bread. It was felt that he really lacked Russian soil, purely Russian material.”

It is impossible without a feeling of acute pity to read the letters of the writer of these years to his old emigrant friends: Shmelev, artist I. Repin, circus wrestler I. Zaikin. Their main motive is nostalgic pain for Russia, the inability to create outside of it. “The emigrant life completely chewed me up, and the distance from my homeland flattened my spirit to the ground,”6 he confesses to I.E. Repin.

11. Return to homeland and death of Kuprin

Homesickness becomes more and more unbearable, and the writer decides to return to Russia. At the end of May 1937, Kuprin returned to the city of his youth - Moscow, and at the end of December he moved to Leningrad. Old and terminally ill, he still hopes to continue his writing, but his strength finally leaves him. On August 25, 1938, Kuprin died.

A master of language, an entertaining plot, a man of great love for life, Kuprin left a rich literary legacy that does not fade with time, bringing joy to more and more new readers. The feelings of many connoisseurs of Kuprin’s talent were well expressed by K. Paustovsky: “We must be grateful to Kuprin for everything - for his deep humanity, for his subtle talent, for his love for his country, for his unshakable faith in the happiness of his people and, finally, for never the dying ability in him to ignite from the most insignificant contact with poetry and write freely and easily about it.”

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