Ivan Bunin, "Easy breathing": analysis of the work

And again about love ... And if it's about love, then it's necessarily about Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, because there is not yet equal to him in literature in his ability so deeply, exactly, And at the same time it is easy and easy to convey an endless palette of colors and shades of life, love and human destinies, and what is most surprising - all this on two or three sheets. In his stories, time is inversely proportional to the fullness of feelings and emotions. Here you read his story "Easy breathing" (the analysis of the work follows), and it takes time from the power of five to ten minutes, but at the same time you have time to plunge into life, and even the soul of the main characters, and live with them for several decades, and Sometimes all my life. Is not this a miracle?

The story of IA. Bunin "Easy breathing": analysis and summary

From the first lines the author acquaints the reader with the main character of the narrative - Olya Meshcherskaya. But what kind of acquaintance is this? The analysis of the story "Light Breath" draws attention to the scene - the cemetery, a fresh clay mound on the grave and a heavy smooth cross of oak. Time is cold, gray days of April, still bare trees, icy wind. In the very cross is inserted a medallion, and in the medallion there is a portrait of a young girl, a schoolgirl, with happy, "strikingly alive eyes". Apparently, the narrative is built on contrasts, hence the feelings are ambivalent: life and death - spring, April month, but still bare trees; A strong supermodern cross with a portrait of a young girl, in the prime of her awakening femininity. Involuntarily you wonder what this earthly life is, and what death is, and you are amazed at how close the atoms of life and death are to each other, and with them beauty and ugliness, simplicity and craftiness, stunning success and tragedy ...

main character

The principle of contrast is used both in the image of Olechka Meshcherskaya herself, and in the description of her short but brilliant life. A girl, she did not attract attention. The only thing that could be said - she was one of many lovely, rich and absolutely happy girls who, due to their age, are playful and careless. However, she soon began to develop rapidly and to be well-groomed, and in her incomplete fifteen she was known as a real beauty. She was not afraid of anything and was not shy, and at the same time her ink spots on her fingers or disheveled hair looked much more natural, neat and elegant, rather than the deliberate orderliness or thoroughness of the hair of her girlfriends. Nobody so gracefully danced at balls like her. Nobody so skilfully skated like her. No one had as many fans as Olya Meshcherskaya ... The analysis of the story "Light Breath" does not end there.

Last winter

As they said in the gymnasium, "Olya Meshcherskaya, her last winter, has completely gone mad with merriment." She always puts herself on display: combs defiantly, wears expensive combs, rapes parents on shoes "at twenty rubles." She openly and simply declares to the headmistress that she is not a girl for a long time, but a woman ... Flirting with the schoolgirl Shenshin, promises him to be faithful and loving and at the same time so impermanent and capricious in dealing with him, bringing him to an attempt to commit suicide. She, in fact, entices and seduces Alexei Mikhailovich Malyutin, an adult solid man of fifty-six years, and then, realizing his disadvantage, as an excuse for his unruly behavior, evokes a feeling of disgust towards him. Further - more ... Olya enters into a relationship with a Cossack officer, an ugly, plebeian kind that had nothing to do with the society in which she was rotating, and promises him to marry him. And at the station, seeing him off to Novocherkassk, he says that there can not be any love between them, and all this talk is just a mockery and a mockery of him. As evidence to her words, she lets him read that page of the diary, where it was mentioned about her first connection with Malyutin. Do not be insulted, the officer shoots it here, on the platform ... The question arises: why, why does she need all this? What corners of the human soul is trying to reveal the work "Easy breathing" (Bunin)? Analysis of the sequence of actions of the main character will allow the reader to answer these and other questions.

The fluttering moth

And here involuntarily the image of a fluttering moth, frivolous, reckless, but possessing an incredible thirst for life, a desire to find some special, fascinating and beautiful destiny deserving only the elite, involuntarily suggests itself. But life is subject to other laws and rules, for violation of which it is necessary to pay. Therefore, Olya Meshcherskaya, like a butterfly, bravely, without fear, and at the same time easily and casually, ignoring the feelings of others, flies to the fire, to the light of life, towards new sensations, to burn to ashes: "So does the pen, The edges of the drawn notebook, not knowing about the fate of its line, where wisdom, heresy are mixed ... "(Brodsky)

Contradictions

Indeed, in Ole Mescherskaya mixed everything. "Easy breathing", the analysis of the story, allows us to distinguish in the work of such a stylistic device as the antithesis - a sharp contrast of concepts, images, states. She is beautiful and at the same time immoral. She can not be called stupid, she was capable, but at the same time superficial and thoughtless. There was no cruelty in it, "for some reason the younger classes did not like anyone like her." Her merciless attitude to the feelings of other people was not meaningful. She, like a raging element, took everything in her way, but not because she wanted to destroy and suppress, but only because she could not do otherwise: "... how do you combine with this pure gaze the awful thing that is now connected with the name of Olya Meshcherskaya?" Both beauty and this frenzy were its essence, and she did not dare to show both in full measure. Therefore, she was so loved, admired, stretched to her, and so her life was so bright, but fleeting. In a different way, it could not be, which the "Easy Breath" narrative (Bunin) proves to us. The analysis of the work gives a deeper understanding of the life of the main character.

Cool lady

The antithetic composition (antithesis) is also observed in the description of the very image of the classy lady Olechka Meshcherskaya, and in an indirect but so perceptible comparison of her with her student schoolgirl. For the first time I. Bunin ("Easy Breath") introduces the reader to the new character - the head of the gymnasium, in the conversation scene between her and mademoiselle Mescherskaya regarding the evocative behavior of the latter. And what do we see? Two absolute opposites - a youthful, but gray-haired madame with a smooth parting in neatly corrugated hair and light, graceful Olya with a beautifully decorated, though not for years, hairdo with an expensive comb. One behaves simply, clearly and vividly, fearing nothing and boldly responding to reproaches, despite such a young age and unequal position. The other - does not take his eyes off the endless knitting and secretly begins to get annoyed.

After the tragedy happened

We remind you that this is a story about "Easy Breath". The analysis of the work follows. The second and last time the reader encounters the image of a classy lady after the death of Olya, in the cemetery. Again, we have a sharp, but clear clarity of the antithesis. "An elderly girl" in black kid gloves and in mourning every Sunday goes to the grave of Olya, for hours without taking her eyes off the oak cross. She dedicated her life to some "insubstantial" feat. At first she was worried about the fate of her brother, Alexei Mikhailovich Malyutin, the most remarkable ensign who seduced the beautiful schoolgirl. After his death, she devoted herself to work, merging wholly with the image of the "ideological worker". Now Olya Meshcherskaya is the main theme of all her thoughts and feelings, we can say, a new dream, a new meaning of life. However, is it possible to call her life a life? Yes and no. On the one hand, all that is in the world, it is necessary and has the right to be, despite the seemingly uselessness and uselessness. And on the other - in comparison with the splendor, brilliance and insolence of the colors of Olya's short life, this is rather a "slow death". But, as they say, the truth is somewhere in the middle, because the colorful picture of the life of a young girl is also an illusion behind which the void is hidden.

Conversation

The story "Light Breath" does not end there. The class lady sits for a long time near her grave and endlessly recalls one and the same conversation of two girls overheard ... Olya chatted with her friend at a big change and mentioned one book from her father's library. It spoke about what a woman should be like. First of all, with large black, boiling resin, eyes, thick eyelashes, tender blush, longer than ordinary hands, a thin mill ... But most importantly - a woman should be with a light breath. Olya understood literally - she sighed and listened to her breathing, the expression "light breath" all reflects the essence of her soul, thirsting for life, striving for its fullness and inviting boundlessness. However, "easy breathing" (the analysis of the eponymous story comes to an end) can not be eternal. As everything that is worldly, like the life of any person and the life of Olya Meshcherskaya, sooner or later it disappears, dissipates, perhaps becoming a part of this world, a cold spring wind or a leaden sky.

What can we say in conclusion about the story "Easy Breath", the analysis of which was carried out above? Written in 1916, long before the birth of the collection "Dark Alleys", the novel "Easy Breath" can be called without exaggeration one of the pearls of I. Bunin's work.