Vitaly Meshchersky, a young man who has recently entered the university, comes home for the holidays, inspired by the desire to find love without romance. Following his plans, he travels to neighboring estates, getting into his uncle's house one day. Along the way, the hero’s childhood love for his cousin Sonya, whom he now meets and with whom he immediately begins an affair, is mentioned. Sonya coquettishly warns Vitaly that tomorrow he will see her friend from the gymnasium Natalya Stankevich visiting her and fall in love with her "to the grave." The next morning, he really sees Natalie and is amazed at her beauty. Since that time, a sensual relationship with Sonya and Natalie's innocent admiration have been developing for Vitaly at the same time. Sonya jealously assumes that Vitaly is in love with Natalie, but at the same time asks him to pay more attention to the latter in order to carefully hide his connection with him. However, Natalie does not leave Sonya's relationship with Vitaly unnoticed and, when he takes her by the hand, informs him about it. Vitaly replies that he loves Sonya like a sister.

The day after this conversation, Natalie does not go out for breakfast or dinner, and Sonya ironically assumes that she has fallen in love. Natalie appears in the evening and surprises Vitaly with friendliness, liveliness, a new dress and a changed hairstyle. On the same day, Sonya says that she is ill and will lie in bed for five days. In Sonya's absence, the role of mistress of the house naturally passes to Natalie, who, meanwhile, avoids being alone with Vitaly. One day, Natalie tells Vitaly that Sonya is angry with her for not trying to entertain him, and offers to meet in the garden in the evening. Vitali occupies himself with reflections to what extent he owes this offer to polite hospitality. At dinner, Vitaly announces to his uncle and Natalie that he is going to leave. In the evening, when she and Natalie go for a walk, she asks him if this is true, and he, answering in the affirmative, asks her permission to introduce herself to her relatives. She, with the words “yes, yes, I love you,” goes back to the house and tells Vitaly to leave tomorrow, adding that she will return home in a few days.

Vitaly returns home and finds Sonya in her nightgown in his room. At the same moment, Natalie appears on the threshold with a candle in her hand and, seeing them, runs away.

A year later, Natalie marries Alexei Meshchersky, Vitaly's cousin. A year later, Vitaly accidentally meets her at the ball. A few years later, Natalie's husband dies and Vitaly, fulfilling his family duty, comes to the funeral. They avoid talking to each other.

Years pass. Meshchersky graduates from the university and settles in the countryside. He converges with the peasant orphan Gasha, who gives birth to his child. Vitaly invites Gache to get married, but in response he hears a refusal, an offer to go to Moscow and a warning that if he is going to marry someone else, she will drown herself with the child. Some time later, Meshchersky goes abroad and sends a telegram to Natalie on the way back, asking permission to visit her. Permission is given, a meeting takes place, a mutual sincere explanation and a love scene. Six months later, Natalie dies from premature birth.

retold

"Natalie" Bunin: love, fate and death

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Vladislav
NIKOLAENKO

"Natalie" Bunin: love, fate and death

"Natalie" is part of "Dark Alleys" - a collection of short stories and miniatures, united for the most part by the theme of love - or even more broadly, the theme of the attraction of the sexes to each other. This theme is one of the central ones for the era in which Bunin lived and worked. The same era, no matter how much Bunin resisted it, taught him to see through the cover of everyday life the hidden action of incomprehensible and powerful forces: fate and death, love and lust. This is what makes Bunin, for all the “classicity” of his style and for all the hostility with which he treated the main artistic movements of his time, a writer of the twentieth century.

Even the ancients saw the duality of sexual relations, in which the purest and the most vile, the spiritual and the carnal, the giving birth and the deadly intertwined - and formed the myth of two Aphrodites, the Heavenly and the Square. Since then, the two female images between which the hero rushes - an unearthly blonde and a demonic brunette, a Beautiful Lady and a demonic temptress - have become a cliche, a running motif of adventure novels and Hollywood films. However, true talent is not afraid of stamps - he knows that he will not fall into bondage to them, but will make them work for his plan.

The two heroines of the story - Sonya and Natalie - in general, correspond to the mentioned classical scheme (except that Sonya's hair is not black, but chestnut). For Sonya, the hero experiences a heavy carnal attraction, in addition, imbued with that trembling that only a young man has, to whom female nudity is first revealed. His feeling for Natalie is sublime, it is based on admiration and worship. “Natalie still won’t hurt our romance ... You will go crazy with love for her, and you will kiss with me,” Sonya says, not without insight. But she was mistaken: love and lust, of course, are different things, and Bunin distinguishes them perfectly, but it’s impossible to calmly separate one from the other: the triangle created as a result does not suit anyone - and Sonya herself, not least: “It’s terrible, I’m I notice how idiotically you stare at her, at times I feel hatred for you, ready, like some kind of Odarka, to grab your hair in front of everyone, but what should I do?

However, let's not disregard Natalie's phrase: "I am convinced of one thing: in the terrible difference between the first love of a young man and a girl." In order to understand what is meant, let's compare her biography with the biography of the hero.

So, Natalie: falls in love with a young man, thinking that he loves her friend; feeling his attention and hearing his “renunciation” of Sonya (but, it seems, suspecting the truth), avoids him for several days in a row, apparently trying to subdue her overwhelming feelings; finally, she confesses her love herself - only in order to catch him with Sonya that very evening. Then he enters into a reasonable marriage without love (by the way, we also note the delightfully written ballroom meeting of the main characters, where neither characters nor emotions are named by name), buries her husband ... and only then, then, then meets her beloved, accepts humiliating secrecy their relationship and dies in childbirth.

The other side is Viktor Meshchersky: with enthusiasm he “twists” two novels at once, tormented, but also reveling in the difference in relations with Sonya and Natalie; after the break, she is also tormented and revels in the feeling of a broken life (“Gaudeamus igitur!” at the ball, of course, it is said with anguish, but still the direct meaning of this exclamation is not completely absorbed by irony: “pretty blonde and dry, dark-faced beauty Cossack”), mindlessly converges with a peasant woman, mindlessly gives birth to a son from her ...

The difference can, in general, be expressed simply: over a girl (in any case, in the understanding of Natalie: Sonya rightly notes that “there are different girls”), lust has less power. It is possible and even simpler - a woman (again, of course, not any) is more responsible, she is not so willing and easy to obey those forces that freely play with a man.

The story is clearly divided into two parts: after the fifth chapter, it, in essence, could end, and the last two form a kind of postscript, which, in turn, could become a separate story.

The first part deals with love and lust, and sensuality acts as a rival of love. The second part is about love, fate and death. These new themes are anticipated at the beginning of the first part by an ominous vision of a bat (an impure and demonic creature): "I ... clearly saw her vile dark velvety and eared, snub-nosed, death-like, predatory muzzle." Actually, lust, which prevented love from being realized in the first part, acts as one of the pseudonyms of fate. And fate is also to blame for the further drama of the hero: his relationship with Gasha, described by the dismissive “got together” is perceived more as a concession to fate than lust: “That's all that's left for me in life!”

And this concession for the second time stands in the way of love: although formally both the hero and Natalie are free, their union must remain secret and, as it were, unfulfilled: Natalie’s death in premature birth will become a terrible symptom of this fatal incompleteness.

So, love in Bunin's story is doomed: too powerful forces oppose it. But the triumph of the dark forces is not final; moreover, it is, in a way, imaginary. "Is there an unhappy love?" - says Natalie: the happiness of love is irrevocable, and nothing can erase it. The light of love "shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it," in the words of the Gospel.

Such is the problematic of Bunin's story. But the artistic world is still not only a problematic. The role of descriptions (especially landscapes, although by no means only landscapes) in Bunin's prose is well known. “Steps immersed in water, wet, cold and slippery from the nasty green velvet of mucus”, “dark red velvet” of a rose, which “by evening ... became lethargic and lilac”, “smooth and matte sky from this milkiness” - these and such phrases are not optional decorations, but carriers of artistic meaning. The poet and critic G. Adamovich wrote about Bunin that his world (the world, not the heroes) exists as if before the fall - and this is very accurate. Bunin's world is gracious because it is seen with love - and we already know that there is no unhappy love. That is why Bunin is so sensitive to all the sensual signs of the world - visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, tactile - and all of them are “very good” for him. Even the very “nasty green velvet of slime” is presented by the hero with delight, and the author describes it with pleasure.

And here we return again to the duality of sexual relations. Their carnal side for Bunin is not only lust, it is involved in this beautiful world, and this involvement is illuminated and consecrated. Even the “bodily intoxication” of dating Sonya retains its value for the author and reader, despite the fact that it is they who separate the hero from Natalie. This is all the more true for relations with herself - they act as a real shrine, and the chastity with which Bunin is silent about their carnal side is, after all, dictated by a sense of reverence, and not decency.

Thus, in the artistic world of the story, tragedy is not canceled, but overcome. And despite the fact that the story ends by no means with a “happy ending” (there are no happy endings in Dark Alleys at all), it does not leave a painful impression: its sadness is light.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

That summer, for the first time, I put on a student cap and was happy with that special happiness of the beginning of a young free life, which happens only at this time. I grew up in a strict noble family, in the countryside, and as a young man, passionately dreaming of love, I was still pure in body and soul, blushed at the free conversations of my gymnasium comrades, and they frowned: “You, Meshchersky, would go to the monks!” I wouldn't have blushed that summer. Arriving home for the holidays, I decided that the time had come for me to be like everyone else, to violate my purity, to seek love without romance, and, by virtue of this decision, and the desire to show my blue band, I began to travel in search of love meetings in neighboring estates, relatives and friends. So I ended up on the estate of my maternal uncle, a retired and long-widowed ulan Cherkasov, father only daughter, and my cousin Sonya ...

I arrived late, and only Sonya met me at the house. When I jumped out of the carriage and ran into the dark hallway, she came out in a night flannel dressing gown, holding a candle high in her left hand, turned her cheek to me for a kiss and said, shaking her head with her usual mockery:

“Ah, the young man who is always and everywhere late!

“Well, it’s not my fault this time,” I replied. It was not the young man who was late, but the train.

Hush, everyone is asleep. The whole evening they were dying of impatience, waiting, and finally they gave up on you. Papa went to bed angry, scolding you with a helipad, and Ephraim, who obviously remained at the station until the morning train, an old fool, Natalie left offended, the servants also dispersed, I alone turned out to be patient and faithful to you ... Well, take off your clothes and let's go to dinner.

I answered, admiring her blue eyes and her raised hand, open to the shoulder:

- Thank you, dear friend. It is now especially pleasant for me to make sure of your fidelity - you have become a perfect beauty, and I have the most serious views on you. What a hand, what a neck, and how seductive is this soft dressing gown, under which, surely, there is nothing!

She laughed.

- Almost nothing. But you have become at least where and very matured. A lively look and a vulgar black mustache ... But what is it with you? In these two years that I have not seen you, you have turned from a boy who is always flashing from shyness into a very interesting impudent. And this would promise us a lot of love pleasures, as our grandmothers used to say, if it were not for Natalie, with whom you will fall in love to the grave tomorrow morning.

- Who is Natalie? I asked, following her into the dining room, lit by a bright hanging lamp, with the windows open into the blackness of a warm and quiet summer night.

- This is Natasha Stankevich, my friend from high school, who came to visit me. And this is really a beauty, not like me. Imagine: a lovely head, the so-called "golden" hair and black eyes. And not even eyes, but black suns, to put it in Persian. Eyelashes, of course, huge and also black, and amazing golden complexion, shoulders and everything.

– What else? I asked, admiring the tone of our conversation more and more.

- But tomorrow morning we will go swimming with her - I advise you to climb into the bushes, then you will see what. And built like a young nymph...

On the table in the dining room were cold meatballs, a piece of cheese and a bottle of red Crimean wine.

"Don't be angry, there's nothing else," she said, sitting down and pouring wine for me and herself. And no vodka. Well, God forbid, let's clink glasses with wine.

- And what exactly, God forbid?

- Find me as soon as possible such a groom that would go to us "in the yard." After all, I’m already twenty-one years old, and I can’t get married somewhere on the side: with whom will dad stay?

- Well, God forbid!

And we clinked glasses, and, having slowly drunk the whole glass, she again began to look at me with a strange smile, at how I worked with a fork, began, as it were, to say to herself:

- Yes, you are wow, you look like a Georgian and are quite handsome, before you were already very thin and green-faced. In general, it has changed a lot, it has become light, pleasant. Only here the eyes run.

“That’s because you embarrass me with your charms. You weren't quite the same before...

And I looked at her cheerfully. She was sitting on the other side of the table, all up on a chair, tucking her leg under her, putting her full knee on her knee, a little sideways to me; under the lamp, the even tan of her hand shone, her blue-purple smiling eyes shone, and her thick and soft hair, braided at night in a large braid, shone reddish chestnut; the collar of the open dressing gown revealed a round, tanned neck and the beginning of a plump chest, on which also lay a triangle of tan; on her left cheek she had a mole with a beautiful curl of black hair.

- Well, what about dad?

She, still looking with the same smile, took out of her pocket a small silver cigarette case and a silver box of matches and lit a cigarette with some even excessive dexterity, adjusting her tucked thigh under her:

- Dad, thank God, well done. As before, he is straight, firm, taps with a crutch, whips up his gray-haired cook, secretly tints his mustache and sideburns with something brown, looks gallantly at Christya ... Only even more than before and even more insistently shakes, shakes his head. He never seems to agree with anything,” she said, and laughed. - Do you want a cigarette?

I lit a cigarette, although I had not yet smoked then, she again poured me and herself and looked into the darkness outside the open window:

- Yes, for now, thank God. And a beautiful summer - what a night, huh? Only the nightingales were already silent. And I'm really happy for you. I sent for you at six o'clock, I was afraid that Ephraim, who had gone out of his mind, would not be late for the train. Waiting for you most impatiently. And then I was even pleased that everyone had dispersed and that you were late, that if you came, we would sit alone. For some reason, I thought that you had changed a lot, with people like you, it always happens like that. And you know, it's such a pleasure to sit alone in the whole house on a summer night, when you are waiting for someone from the train, and finally hear that they are coming, bells rumble, roll up to the porch ...

I firmly took her hand across the table and held it in mine, already feeling a pull to her entire body. She blew rings of smoke from her lips with cheerful calmness. I threw out my hand and, as if jokingly, said:

- So you say Natalie ... No Natalie can compare with you ... By the way, who is she, where does she come from?

- Our Voronezh, from a wonderful family, once very rich, now just a beggar. They speak English and French in the house, but there is nothing to eat ... A very touching girl, slender, still fragile. Clever, only very secretive, it’s not immediately clear whether she is smart or stupid ... These Stankeviches are close-minded neighbors of your dearest cousin Alexei Meshchersky, and Natalie says that he often began to call on them and complain about his single life. But she doesn't like him. And then - rich, they will think that she left because of the money, she sacrificed herself for her parents.

“Yes,” I said. - But back to business. Natalie, Natalie, what about our romance with you?

- Natalie still does not interfere with our romance, - she answered. - You will go crazy with love for her, and you will kiss with me. You will cry on my chest from her cruelty, and I will comfort you.

"But you know that I've been in love with you for a long time."

“Yes, but it was just an ordinary crush on a cousin, and it was too underhanded, you were only ridiculous and boring then. But God bless you, I forgive you your previous stupidity and I am ready to start our romance tomorrow, despite Natalie. In the meantime, we go to bed, I have to get up early tomorrow to do housework.

And she got up, wrapping her dressing gown around her, took an almost burnt out candle in the hallway and led me to my room. And on the threshold of this room, rejoicing and marveling at what I marveled at in my soul and rejoiced over the whole dinner—such a happy success of my love hopes, which suddenly fell to my lot at the Cherkasovs—I kissed her long and greedily and pressed her against the lintel, and she closed her eyes gloomily, lowering the dripping candle lower and lower. Leaving me with a crimson face, she shook her finger at me and said quietly:

- Just look now: tomorrow, in front of everyone, do not dare to devour me with "passionate eyes"! God forbid if dad notices anything. He is terribly afraid of me, I am even more afraid of him. And I don't want Natalie to notice anything. I'm very bashful, please don't judge by the way I behave with you. And if you don’t follow my orders, you will immediately become disgusted with me ...

I undressed and fell into bed with dizziness, but fell asleep sweetly and instantly, overwhelmed by happiness and fatigue, not at all suspecting what a great misfortune lay ahead of me, that Sonya's jokes would turn out to be no jokes.

Subsequently, I repeatedly recalled, as a kind of ominous omen, that when I entered my room and struck a match to light a candle, a large bat. She rushed so close to my face that even by the light of a match I clearly saw her vile dark velvety and eared, snub-nosed, death-like muzzle of a predator, then with a disgusting trembling, breaking, dived into the blackness of the open window. But then I immediately forgot about her.

A young man, Vitaly Meshchersky, who has recently entered the university, arrives home for the holidays, and he has a desire to find love without romance. To carry out his plan, he visits neighboring estates and one day ends up in his uncle's house. At the same time, the author talks about Meshchersky's childhood love for his cousin Sonya, with whom he is now dating and immediately starts an affair. Flirting with Vitaly, Sonya warns him that tomorrow he will meet Natalie Stankevich, a friend from the gymnasium, who is visiting her, and will definitely fall in love with her "to the grave."

The next morning, Meshchersky really sees Natalie and is amazed at her beauty. From that moment on, for Vitaly, an innocent admiration for Natalie and a sensual relationship with Sonya develop simultaneously. Sonya is jealous of Vitaly, believing that he is in love with Natalie, but at the same time she asks her lover to pay more attention to her friend so that their connection does not become noticeable.

But for Natalie, Sonya's relationship with Vitaly does not go unnoticed, and when the young man takes her hand, she tells him about it, to which Vitaly replies that Sonya is like a sister to him.

The next day after this conversation, Natalie does not appear for breakfast or dinner. Sonya, with her usual irony, suggests that her friend has fallen in love. Natalie comes out only in the evening and behaves affably, lively, she has a new dress and a new hairstyle. The girl surprises Vitaly. On this day, Sonya reports that she does not feel well and she needs to lie down for five days to recover. In her absence, the role of the mistress of the house is played by Natalie, who tries to avoid meeting Vitaly alone. One day, Natalie tells Vitaly the words of Sonya, who is angry with her friend for not entertaining the guest, and invites Vitaly to meet in the evening in the garden. The young man ponders for a long time whether this proposal was dictated only by polite hospitality. During dinner, Vitaly informs his uncle and Natalie that he intends to leave. In the evening, during a walk, the girl asks if this is true, to which the hero answers in the affirmative and asks for permission to introduce himself to her relatives. Natalie confesses her love to Vitaly and asks to leave tomorrow, saying that she herself will also return home in a few days.

The young man returns home and meets Sonya in his room, dressed only in a nightgown. At the same moment, Natalie enters the room with a candle in her hand and, seeing a couple, runs away.

A year later, Natalie becomes the wife of Vitaly's cousin Alexei Meshchersky. A year later, Natalie and Vitaly meet by chance at a ball. A few years later, Natalie's husband dies, and Vitaly, following his family duty, comes to the funeral. Young people avoid talking to each other.

Years go by. Meshchersky has long completed his studies at the university and moved to the countryside. He meets Gasha, a peasant orphan, with whom he has a child. Vitaly wants to marry Gasha, but she refuses him, offers to go to Moscow and warns that if Vitaly decides to marry someone else, then she and her child will drown herself. After some time, Meshchersky goes abroad and, returning back, sends a telegram to Natalie asking permission to visit her. Natalie gives permission, the characters meet, there is a mutual explanation, ending in a love scene. Six months later, Natalie dies from premature birth.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

"Natalie"

Vitaly Meshchersky, a young man who has recently entered the university, comes home for the holidays, inspired by the desire to find love without romance. Following his plans, he travels to neighboring estates, getting into his uncle's house one day. Along the way, the hero’s childhood love for his cousin Sonya, whom he now meets and with whom he immediately begins an affair, is mentioned. Sonya coquettishly warns Vitaly that tomorrow he will see her friend from the gymnasium Natalya Stankevich visiting her and fall in love with her "to the grave." The next morning, he really sees Natalie and is amazed at her beauty. Since that time, a sensual relationship with Sonya and Natalie's innocent admiration have been developing for Vitaly at the same time. Sonya jealously assumes that Vitaly is in love with Natalie, but at the same time asks him to pay more attention to the latter in order to carefully hide his connection with him. However, Natalie does not leave Sonya's relationship with Vitaly unnoticed and, when he takes her by the hand, informs him about it. Vitaly replies that he loves Sonya like a sister.

The day after this conversation, Natalie does not go out for breakfast or dinner, and Sonya ironically assumes that she has fallen in love. Natalie appears in the evening and surprises Vitaly with friendliness, liveliness, a new dress and a changed hairstyle. On the same day, Sonya says that she is ill and will lie in bed for five days. In Sonya's absence, the role of mistress of the house naturally passes to Natalie, who, meanwhile, avoids being alone with Vitaly. One day, Natalie tells Vitaly that Sonya is angry with her for not trying to entertain him, and offers to meet in the garden in the evening. Vitali occupies himself with reflections to what extent he owes this offer to polite hospitality. At dinner, Vitaly announces to his uncle and Natalie that he is going to leave. In the evening, when she and Natalie go for a walk, she asks him if this is true, and he, answering in the affirmative, asks her permission to introduce herself to her relatives. She, with the words “yes, yes, I love you,” goes back to the house and tells Vitaly to leave tomorrow, adding that she will return home in a few days.

Vitaly returns home and finds Sonya in her nightgown in his room. At the same moment, Natalie appears on the threshold with a candle in her hand and, seeing them, runs away.

A year later, Natalie marries Alexei Meshchersky, Vitaly's cousin. A year later, Vitaly accidentally meets her at the ball. A few years later, Natalie's husband dies and Vitaly, fulfilling his family duty, comes to the funeral. They avoid talking to each other.

Years pass. Meshchersky graduates from the university and settles in the countryside. He converges with the peasant orphan Gasha, who gives birth to his child. Vitaly invites Gache to get married, but in response he hears a refusal, an offer to go to Moscow and a warning that if he is going to marry someone else, she will drown herself with the child. Some time later, Meshchersky goes abroad and sends a telegram to Natalie on the way back, asking permission to visit her. Permission is given, a meeting takes place, a mutual sincere explanation and a love scene. Six months later, Natalie dies from premature birth.

A young man named Vitaly Meshchersky came home for the holidays. He wants to find love without romance, and, inspired by this goal, he travels to neighboring estates, hoping to fulfill his plan. Soon he ends up in his uncle's house, where he meets a girl, Sonya, with whom he was once in love. He wants to hook up with her romantic relationship. But Sonya warned Vitaly that her friend, Natalie Stankevich, would arrive tomorrow, with whom he would definitely fall in love.

At first he did not believe it, but when he met Natalie the next day, Vitaly's true feelings flared up. Sonya begins to be jealous of Vitaly, as she sees that he has by no means friendly feelings for her friend. Natalie also sees the relationship between Vitaly and Sonya. When he decides to take her hand, he tells him about it. Vitaly said that he loves Sonya like a sister. After some time, Sonya said that she was ill and would lie in bed for several days.

Naturally, the role of a good-natured hostess passes to Natalie. She avoids being alone with Vitaly. But soon meets him in the garden. Vitaly says that he wants to be introduced to her family, and Natalie shows love feelings for him. She advises Vitaly to leave the next day, and she herself will arrive in the city after a while. Returning to his room, Vitaly finds Sonya in one shirt. At the same moment, Natalie enters. Seeing this scene, she runs out of the room and drives away. A year later, Natalie married her cousin Vitaly. And a year later, he met her at the ball. A few years later, Natalie's husband died, and Vitaly met her at the funeral. They avoid talking to each other.

Time has passed. Vitaly graduated from the university and settled in the countryside. He lives with a peasant girl, Gasha, who bore him a child. Vitaly made an offer to marry Gasha in the church, but she refused him. In addition, she gave an ultimatum that if he wants to marry someone, then she will drown herself with the child. After some time, Vitaly went abroad. From there, he wrote a letter to Natalie that he wanted to meet her. She gives her consent. When they met, the old feelings flared up again between them. And six months later, Natalie dies from a failed birth.