A.I. Kuprin in his best works reflected the atmosphere of the revolutionary events that were brewing in the country.
His bright, original prose reflected the existence of various classes and estates of Russian society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Continuing the democratic and humanistic traditions of Russian literature, especially L.N. Tolstoy and A.P. Chekhov, Kuprin was sensitive to the present, to its urgent problems.
Kuprin's literary activity began at the time of his stay in the cadet corps. He began to write poetry, where notes of despondency and melancholy sound, then heroic motives are heard (“Dreams”). In 1889, a graduate of the cadet school, Kuprin, published his first short story in the Russian satirical leaflet, which was called The Last Debut. For publishing the story without the permission of his superiors, Kuprip was arrested in the guardhouse. After retiring (1894) and settling in Kyiv, the writer collaborates in Kiev newspapers.
An interesting literary phenomenon was a series of essays "Kiev types" (1895-1898). The images he created reflected the essential features of the motley urban philistine and people of the "bottom" that were characteristic of the entire pre-October Russia. Here one encounters the images of a “white-lining” student, a landlady, a sanctimonious praying woman, a fireman, a failed singer, a modernist artist, and slum dwellers.
Already in the 90s, based on the material of army life in the stories “Inquiry”, “Overnight”, the writer poses acute moral problems ^ In the story “Inquest”, the outrageous fact of punishment with rods of a Tatar soldier Mukhamet Baiguzin, who could not even understand why he was being punished , makes Lieutenant Kozlovsky feel in a new way the deadening, soulless atmosphere of the royal barracks and his role in the system of oppression. The conscience of the officer is awakened, a feeling of connection with the driven soldier is born, dissatisfaction with his position and, as a result, an explosion of spontaneous discontent.
In these stories, the influence of L. Tolstoy is felt in questions about the moral responsibility of the intelligentsia for the suffering and tragic fate of the people.
In the mid-1990s, a new theme, prompted by time, imperiously enters Kuprin's work. In the spring, he travels as a newspaper correspondent to the Donetsk Basin, where he gets acquainted with the working and living conditions of the workers. In 1896 he wrote a long story "Moloch". Here, more significantly and deeper than his predecessors (Chekhov), he reflected the contradictions between labor and capital. The story gives a picture of the life of a large capitalist factory, shows the miserable life of workers' settlements, spontaneous protests of workers. The writer showed all this through the perception of an intellectual. Engineer Bobrov, like Garshin's heroes, painfully and sharply reacts to someone else's pain, to the manifestation of serial injustice. The hero compares capitalist progress, which creates factories and factories, with the monstrous idol Moloch, demanding human sacrifices. The specific embodiment of Moloch in the story is the bourgeois businessman Kvashnin, who does not disdain any means in order to make millions. At the same time, he is not averse to acting as a figure and leader of the bourgeois class ("we own the future", "we are the salt of the earth"), Bobrov watches with disgust the scene of groveling before Kvashnin. Bobrov's fiancée Nina Zinenko becomes the subject of a deal with this businessman.
The hero of the story is characterized by duality and hesitation. At the moment of a spontaneous outbreak of protest, the hero seeks to blow up the factory boilers and thereby avenge his own and others' suffering. But then the determination fades away, and he refuses to take revenge on the hated Moloch.
The meaning of the story is not exhausted by Bobrov's tragedy. What is new in it is connected with the author's attention to class conflicts, to tomorrow's destinies of the people. The story ends with a story about a spontaneous revolt of workers, the burning of a factory, the flight of Kvashnin and the call of punishers to deal with the rebels. Subsequently, Kuprin did not address the working topic on such a scale.
The writer was not associated with the revolutionary movement, much was unclear to him in the socio-political problems of the time.
About the people of the working class, about the gloomy hard life of the Donetsk miners, "In the bowels of the earth" is told.
In 1897, Kuprin served as manager of the estate in the Rivne district. Here he closely approaches the peasants, which is reflected in his stories "Forest Wilderness", "Horse Thieves", "Silver Wolf". He writes a wonderful story "Olesya". Before us is the poetic image of the girl Olesya, who grew up in the hut of an old "sorceress", outside the usual norms of a peasant family. Olesya's love for the intellectual Ivan Timofeevich, who accidentally drove into a remote forest village, is a free, simple and strong feeling, without looking back and obligations, among tall pines, painted with a crimson reflection of the dying dawn. The story of the girl gets a tragic end, here Olesya's free life is invaded by the selfish calculations of village officials, and the superstitions of dark peasants. Beaten and ridiculed, Olesya is forced to flee the forest nest with Manuilikha.
In search of a strong man, Kuprin sometimes poeticizes people of the social “bottom”. The horse thief Buzyga (“Horse thieves”, 1903) is bred as a powerful nature, the author gives him traits of generosity - Buzyga takes care of his boy Vasil.
His stories about animals are amazing (“Emerald”, “White Poodle”, “Barbos and Kulka”, “Yu-yu” and others). Often strong and beautiful animals become victims of money-grubbing, base human passions.
In the story "Peaceful Life" (1904) he creates the image of a retired official Nasedkin, acting as a God-fearing "guardian" of state foundations and a voluntary slanderer.
In 1899, he met Gorky, and in 1905, in the Gorky journal Znanie, Kuprin's story The Duel was published. The timeliness and social value of the work lay in the fact that it truthfully and vividly showed the internal decay of the tsarist army, this stronghold of the autocratic regime. The hero of the story "Duel" - a young lieutenant Romashov, unlike Bobrov ("Moloch"), is shown in the process of spiritual growth, gradual insight, freeing himself from the power of conservative-traditional concepts and ideas of his circle. At the beginning of the story, despite his kindness, he naively divides everyone into "people of black and white bones", thinking that he belongs to a special, higher caste. As false illusions dissipate, Romashov begins to reflect on the viciousness of the army order, on the injustice of the entire system of existing social relations. He has a feeling of loneliness, a passionate denial of the inhumanly dirty, wild life. The cruel Osadchy, the violent Bek-Agamalov, the dull Leshchenko, the dapper Bobeinsky, the army serviceman and the drunkard Plum - all these officers are shown as alien to the truth-seeker Romashov. In conditions of arbitrariness and lack of rights, they lose not only the true idea of ​​honor, but also their human appearance. This is especially evident in their attitude towards the soldiers.
The story contains a number of episodes of soldier drill, lessons in “literature”, preparation for the review, when the officers beat the soldiers especially cruelly, break their eardrums, knock them to the ground with their fists, make people exhausted from the heat, twitched, “have fun”. In the story, the mass of soldiers is truthfully depicted, individual characters are shown, people of various nationalities with their own traditions. Among the soldiers were Khlebnikov, Ukrainians Shevchuk, Boriychuk, Lithuanian Soltys, Cheremis (Mari) Gainan, Tatars Mukhamettinov, Karafutdinov and many others. All of them - clumsy peasants, workers, artisans - find it difficult to bear the separation from their native places and habitual work, the author especially singles out the images of the batman Gainan and the soldier Khlebnikov.
Khlebnikov, recently torn off the ground, organically does not perceive the army's "sciences", and therefore he has to bear the brunt of the position of a frightened soldier, defenseless in the face of unbridled military. The fate of the soldiers worries Romashov. He is not alone in this inner protest. A kind of philosopher and theorist, Lieutenant Colonel Kazansky sharply criticizes the order in the army, hates vulgarity and ignorance, dreams of freeing the human "I" from the fetters of a rotten society, he is against despotism and violence. But unlike the decadents, he glorifies life and its joys. In his preaching of the “absolute freedom” of the human spirit, there are also false ideas of anarchist individualism, there is a mockery of the humanistic motives of fighters for a better future for mankind (“What interest will make me break my head for the happiness of the people of the thirty-second century?”) The image of Nazansky is romanticized, although Kuprin and he himself felt the weakness of the philosophy of his hero and was not completely satisfied with the created character,
Unlike Nazansky, Romashov cannot stop at an individual refusal to care for his neighbor. After all, he knows that the soldiers are crushed by their own ignorance, and general slavery, and arbitrariness, and violence on the part of officers.
The scene of Romashov's meeting with the tortured Khlebnikov, who was trying to throw himself under a train, and their frank conversation, Paustovsky rightly refers to "one of the best scenes in Russian literature." The officer recognizes a friend in the soldier, forgetting about the caste barriers between them.
Having sharply raised the question of the fate of Khlebnikov, Romashov dies, without finding an answer, which way to go to liberation. His deadly duel with officer Nikolaev is, as it were, a consequence of the growing conflict between the hero and the military officer caste. The reason for the duel is connected with the hero's love for Alexandra Petrovna Nikolaeva (Shurochka). In order to ensure her husband's career, Shurochka suppresses the best human feelings in herself and asks Romashov not to shy away from the duel, for this will harm her husband, who wants to enter the academy. "Duel" became extremely popular in Russia and was soon translated into European languages.
The atmosphere of revolutionary days breathes in Kuprin's excellent short story Gambrinus (1907). The theme of all-conquering art is woven here with the idea of ​​democracy, the bold protest of the "little man" against the black forces of arbitrariness and reaction. Meek and cheerful Sashka, with his outstanding talent as a violinist and sincerity, attracts a diverse crowd of port loaders, fishermen, and smugglers to the Odessa tavern. They enthusiastically greet the melodies, which reflect the scene of social moods and events - from the Russian-Japanese war to the bright days of the revolution, when Sashkin's violin sounds with the cheerful rhythms of the Marseillaise. In the days of the onset of terror, Sashka challenges the disguised detectives and the Black Hundred "scoundrels in a hat", refusing to play the monarchical anthem at their request, openly denouncing them for murders and pogroms.
Crippled by the tsarist secret police, he returns to his port friends to play for them on the outskirts of the deafeningly cheerful Chaban. Free creativity, the strength of the national spirit, according to Kuprin, are invincible.
But the writer retains illusions about the possibility of a sudden enlightenment of people and an end to the bloody tsarist terror, dreams of a "worldwide anarchist union of free people" ("Toast", 1906). During the World War, Kuprin wrote stories about the events of these years (“The Garden of the Blessed Virgin”, “Cantaloupes”, “Goga Veselov”), Participated in the war, retired for health reasons, but when troops arrived in Gatchina, where he lived, Yudenich, Kuprin leaves Russia.
In emigration, sentimental and idyllic embellishment of the past of Russia, the very past to which he had previously passed judgment, begins to be found in his works. Such, for example, is the autobiographical novel The Junkers (1928-1933), conceived as a continuation of the story At the Turning Point (The Cadets). Among the works of the emigrant period, the novel "Planet" stands out. Emigrant professor Simonov is tormented by nostalgia. He cannot find a place for himself in a foreign country. Kuprin, too, could no longer live without a homeland. He returned to Russia in 1937. There were many writers' ideas, but on August 25, 1938, Kuprin died.

A bright representative of realism, a charismatic personality and simply a famous Russian writer of the early 20th century - Alexander Kuprin. His biography is eventful, quite heavy and overflowing with an ocean of emotions, thanks to which the world has come to know his best creations. "Moloch", "Duel", "Garnet Bracelet" and many other works that have replenished the golden fund of world art.

The beginning of the way

Born on September 7, 1870 in the small town of Narovchat, Penza District. His father is civil servant Ivan Kuprin, whose biography is very short, since he died when Sasha was only 2 years old. After that, he stayed with his mother Lyubov Kuprina, who was a Tatar of princely blood. They suffered hunger, humiliation and deprivation, so his mother made the difficult decision to send Sasha to the department for young orphans of the Alexander Military School in 1876. A pupil of a military school, Alexander, graduated from it in the second half of the 80s.

In the early 90s, after graduating from a military school, he became an employee of the Dnieper Infantry Regiment No. 46. A successful military career remained in his dreams, as Kuprin's disturbing, eventful and emotional biography tells. The summary of the biography says that Alexander failed to enter a higher military educational institution because of a scandal. And all because of his hot temper, under the influence of alcohol, he threw a police officer off the bridge into the water. Having risen to the rank of lieutenant, he retired in 1895.

Writer's Temperament

A person with an incredibly bright color, eagerly absorbing impressions, a wanderer. He tried many crafts on himself: from a laborer to a dental technician. A very emotional and extraordinary person is Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin, whose biography is full of bright events, which became the basis of many of his masterpieces.

His life was quite turbulent, there were many rumors about him. Explosive temperament, excellent physical shape, he was drawn to try himself, which gave him invaluable life experience and strengthened his spirit. He constantly sought to meet adventures: he dived under water in special equipment, flew on an airplane (he almost died due to a disaster), was the founder of a sports society, etc. During the war years, together with his wife, he equipped an infirmary in his own house.

He loved to get to know a person, his character and communicated with people of a wide variety of professions: specialists with a higher technical education, itinerant musicians, fishermen, card players, the poor, clergymen, entrepreneurs, etc. And in order to better know a person, to feel his life for himself, he was ready for the most insane adventure. The researcher, whose spirit of adventurism simply rolled over, is Alexander Kuprin, the writer's biography only confirms this fact.

He worked with great pleasure as a journalist in many editorial offices, published articles, messages in periodicals. He often went on business trips, lived either in the Moscow region, or in the Ryazan region, as well as in the Crimea (Balaklavsky district) and in the city of Gatchina, Leningrad region.

revolutionary activity

He was not satisfied with the then social order and the prevailing injustice, and therefore, as a strong personality, he wanted to somehow change the situation. However, despite his revolutionary sentiments, the writer had a negative attitude towards the October coup led by representatives of the Social Democrats (Bolsheviks). Bright, full of events and various difficulties - this is Kuprin's Biography. Interesting facts from the biography say that Alexander Ivanovich nevertheless collaborated with the Bolsheviks and even wanted to publish a peasant publication called "Earth", and therefore often saw the head of the Bolshevik government V. I. Lenin. But soon he suddenly went over to the side of the "whites" (the anti-Bolshevik movement). After they were defeated, Kuprin moved to Finland, and then to France, namely to its capital, where he stopped for a while.

In 1937, he took an active part in the press of the anti-Bolshevik movement, while continuing to write his works. Restless, filled with the struggle for justice and emotions, this was exactly the biography of Kuprin. The summary of the biography says that in the period from 1929 to 1933 such famous novels were written: "The Wheel of Time", "Junkers", "Janeta", and many articles and stories were published. Emigration had a negative effect on the writer, he was unclaimed, suffered hardships and missed his native land. In the second half of the 1930s, having believed the propaganda in the Soviet Union, he and his wife returned to Russia. The return was overshadowed by the fact that Alexander Ivanovich suffered from a very serious illness.

People's life through the eyes of Kuprin

Kuprin's literary activity is imbued with the classic for Russian writers manner of compassion for the people, who are forced to live in misery in a miserable environment. A strong-willed person with a strong craving for justice is Alexander Kuprin, whose biography says that he expressed his sympathy in his work. For example, the novel "The Pit", written at the beginning of the 20th century, which tells about the hard life of prostitutes. As well as images of intellectuals suffering from the hardships they are forced to endure.

His favorite characters are just like that - reflective, a little hysterical and very sentimental. For example, the story "Moloch", where the representative of such an image is Bobrov (engineer) - a very sensitive character, compassionate and worried about ordinary factory workers who work hard while the rich ride like cheese in butter on other people's money. The representative of such images in the story "Duel" are Romashov and Nazansky, who are endowed with great physical strength, as opposed to a quivering and sensitive soul. Romashov was very annoyed by military activities, namely vulgar officers and downtrodden soldiers. Probably not a single writer condemned the military environment as much as Alexander Kuprin.

The writer did not belong to the tearful, people-worshipping writers, although his work was often approved by the well-known populist critic N.K. Mikhailovsky. His democratic attitude towards his characters was expressed not only in the description of their hard life. Alexander Kuprin's man of the people not only had a quivering soul, but was also strong-willed and could give a worthy rebuff at the right time. The life of the people in the work of Kuprin is a free, spontaneous and natural course, and the characters have not only troubles and sorrows, but also joy and consolation (the cycle of stories "Listrigons"). A person with a vulnerable soul and a realist is Kuprin, whose biography by date says that this work took place in the period from 1907 to 1911.

His realism was also expressed in the fact that the author described not only the good features of his characters, but also did not hesitate to show their dark side (aggression, cruelty, rage). A vivid example is the story "Gambrinus", where Kuprin described the Jewish pogrom in great detail. This work was written in 1907.

Perception of life through creativity

Kuprin is an idealist and a romantic, which is reflected in his work: heroic deeds, sincerity, love, compassion, kindness. Most of his characters are emotional people, those who have fallen out of the usual life rut, they are in search of truth, a freer and fuller being, something beautiful ...

The feeling of love, the fullness of life, this is what Kuprin's biography is saturated with, interesting facts from which indicate that no one else could write about feelings in the same poetic way. Which is clearly reflected in the story "Garnet Bracelet", written in 1911. It is in this work that Alexander Ivanovich exalts true, pure, gratuitous, ideal love. He very accurately depicted the characters of various layers of society, described in detail and in all details the environment surrounding his characters, their way of life. It was for his sincerity that he often received reprimands from critics. Naturalism and aestheticism are the main features of Kuprin's work.

His stories about animals "Barbos and Zhulka", "Emerald" deserve a place in the fund of the world art of the word. A brief biography of Kuprin says that he is one of the few writers who could feel the course of natural, real life in such a way and reflect it so successfully in his works. A vivid embodiment of this quality is the story "Olesya", written in 1898, where he describes the deviation from the ideal of natural existence.

Such an organic worldview, healthy optimism are the main distinguishing features of his work, in which lyricism and romance, the proportionality of the plot and compositional center, the drama of actions and truth harmoniously merge.

Master of Literary Arts

The virtuoso of the word is Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin, whose biography says that he could very accurately and beautifully describe the landscape in a literary work. His external, visual and, one might say, olfactory perception of the world was simply excellent. I.A. Bunin and A.I. Kuprin often competed to determine the smell of different situations and phenomena in his masterpieces and not only ... In addition, the writer could depict the true image of his characters very carefully to the smallest detail: appearance, disposition, communication style, etc. He found complexity and depth even when describing animals, and all because he loved to write on this topic.

A passionate love of life, a naturalist and a realist, this was exactly what Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin was. A brief biography of the writer says that all his stories are based on real events, and therefore are unique: natural, vivid, without intrusive speculative constructions. He thought about the meaning of life, described true love, talked about hatred, strong-willed and heroic deeds. Such emotions as disappointment, despair, struggle with oneself, the strengths and weaknesses of a person became the main ones in his works. These manifestations of existentialism were typical of his work and reflected the complex inner world of a person at the turn of the century.

Transitional writer

He really is a representative of the transitional stage, which, undoubtedly, was reflected in his work. A striking type of the “off-road” era is Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin, whose brief biography suggests that this time left an imprint on his psyche, and, accordingly, on the works of the author. His characters are in many ways reminiscent of the heroes of A.P. Chekhov, the only difference is that Kuprin's images are not so pessimistic. For example, technologist Bobrov from the story "Moloch", Kashintsev from "Zhidovka" and Serdyukov from the story "Swamp". The main characters of Chekhov are sensitive, conscientious, but at the same time broken, exhausted people who are lost in themselves and disappointed in life. They are shocked by aggression, they are very compassionate, but they can no longer fight. Realizing their helplessness, they perceive the world only through the prism of cruelty, injustice and meaninglessness.

A brief biography of Kuprin confirms that, despite the gentleness and sensitivity of the writer, he was a strong-willed person who loved life, and therefore his characters are somewhat similar to him. They have a strong lust for life, which they grasp very tightly and do not let go. They listen to both heart and mind. For example, the drug addict Bobrov, who decided to kill himself, listened to the voice of reason and realized that he loves life too much to end everything once and for all. The same thirst for life lived in Serdyukov (the student from the work "Swamp"), who was very sympathetic to the forester and his family, who were dying from an infectious disease. He spent the night at their house and in this short time he almost went crazy from pain, feelings and compassion. And with the onset of morning, he seeks to quickly get out of this nightmare in order to see the sun. He seemed to be running from there in a fog, and when he finally ran up the hill, he simply choked from an unexpected surge of happiness.

Passionate love of life - Alexander Kuprin, whose biography suggests that the writer was very fond of happy endings. The end of the story sounds symbolic and solemn. It says that the fog was spreading at the feet of the guy, about the clear blue sky, about the whisper of green branches, about the golden sun, the rays of which "rang with the triumphant triumph of victory." What sounds like a victory of life over death.

The exaltation of life in the story "Duel"

This work is a true apotheosis of life. Kuprin, whose brief biography and work are closely connected, described the cult of personality in this story. The main characters (Nazansky and Romashev) are bright representatives of individualism, they declared that the whole world would perish when they were gone. They firmly believed in their beliefs, but were too weak in spirit to bring their idea to life. It was this disproportion between the exaltation of one's own personalities and the weakness of its owners that the author caught.

A master of his craft, an excellent psychologist and realist, the writer Kuprin possessed precisely such qualities. The author's biography says that he wrote "Duel" at a time when he was at the peak of his fame. It was in this masterpiece that the best qualities of Alexander Ivanovich were combined: an excellent writer of everyday life, a psychologist and a lyricist. The military theme was close to the author, given his past, and therefore no effort was required to develop it. The bright general background of the work does not overshadow the expressiveness of its main characters. Each character is incredibly interesting and is a link in one chain, without losing their individuality.

Kuprin, whose biography says that the story appeared during the years of the Russo-Japanese conflict, criticized the military environment to the nines. The work describes military life, psychology, and displays the pre-revolutionary life of Russians.

In the story, as in life, there is an atmosphere of deadness and impoverishment, sadness and routine. Feeling of absurdity, disorder and incomprehensibility of life. It was these feelings that overcame Romashev and were familiar to the inhabitants of pre-revolutionary Russia. In order to drown out the ideological "off-road", Kuprin described in the "Duel" the loose temper of the officers, their unfair and cruel attitude towards each other. And of course, the main vice of the military is alcoholism, which also flourished among the Russian people.

Characters

You don’t even need to draw up a plan for Kuprin’s biography in order to understand that he is spiritually close to his heroes. These are very emotional, broken personalities who sympathize, are indignant because of the injustice and cruelty of life, but they cannot fix anything.

After the "Duel" a work appears called "The River of Life". In this story, completely different moods reign, many liberation processes have taken place. He is the embodiment of the final drama of the intelligentsia, about which the writer narrates. Kuprin, whose work and biography are closely connected, does not change himself, the main character is still a kind, sensitive intellectual. He is a representative of individualism, no, he is not indifferent, throwing himself into a whirlwind of events, he understands that a new life is not for him. And glorifying the joy of being, he nevertheless decides to leave this life, because he believes that he does not deserve it, which he writes about in a suicide note to a friend.

The theme of love and nature are those areas in which the optimistic moods of the writer are clearly expressed. Such a feeling as love, Kuprin considered a mysterious gift that is sent only to the elect. This attitude is displayed in the novel "The Garnet Bracelet", which is only worth Nazansky's passionate speech or Romashev's dramatic relationship with Shura. And Kuprin's stories about nature are simply fascinating, at first they may seem too detailed and ornate, but then this multi-coloredness begins to delight, as it comes to the realization that these are not standard turns of speech, but the author's personal observations. It becomes clear how he was captured by the process, how he absorbed the impressions that he then displayed in his work, and this is simply enchanting.

Mastery of Kuprin

A virtuoso of the pen, a man with excellent intuition and an ardent love of life, Alexander Kuprin was just that. A brief biography tells that he was an incredibly deep, harmonious and internally filled person. He subconsciously felt the secret meaning of things, could connect the causes and understand the consequences. As an excellent psychologist, he had the ability to highlight the main thing in the text, because of which his works seemed ideal, from which nothing can be removed or added. These qualities are displayed in "Evening Guest", "River of Life", "Duel".

Alexander Ivanovich did not add anything to the sphere of literary methods. However, in the later works of the author, such as “River of Life”, “Staff Captain Rybnikov”, there is a sharp change in the direction of art, he is clearly drawn to impressionism. The stories become more dramatic and compressed. Kuprin, whose biography is full of events, later returns to realism again. This refers to the chronicle novel "The Pit", in which he describes the life of brothels, he does this in the usual manner, still naturally and without hiding anything. Because of what periodically receives condemnation of critics. However, this did not stop him. He did not strive for the new, but he tried to improve and develop the old.

Results

Biography of Kuprin (briefly about the main thing):

• Kuprin Alexander Ivanovich was born on 09/07/1870 in the town of Narovchat, Penza District in Russia.
• He died on August 25, 1938 at the age of 67 in St. Petersburg.
• The writer lived at the turn of the century, which invariably reflected in his work. Survived the October Revolution.
• The direction of art is realism and impressionism. The main genres are short stories and short stories.
• Since 1902, he lived in a marriage with Davydova Maria Karlovna. And since 1907 - with Heinrich Elizaveta Moritsovna.
• Father - Kuprin Ivan Ivanovich. Mother - Kuprina Lyubov Alekseevna.
• Had two daughters - Xenia and Lydia.

The best sense of smell in Russia

Alexander Ivanovich was visiting Fyodor Chaliapin, who called him the most sensitive nose of Russia when visiting. A perfumer from France was present at the party, and he decided to check it out by asking Kuprin to name the main components of his new creation. To the great surprise of all those present, he coped with the task.

In addition, Kuprin had a strange habit: when meeting or making acquaintances, he sniffed people. This offended many, and some admired it, they claimed that thanks to this gift, he recognizes the nature of a person. I. Bunin was the only competitor of Kuprin, they often arranged competitions.

Tatar roots

Kuprin, like a real Tatar, was very quick-tempered, emotional and very proud of his origin. His mother is from the family of Tatar princes. Alexander Ivanovich often dressed in Tatar attire: a dressing gown and a colored skullcap. In this form, he liked to visit his friends, relax in restaurants. Moreover, in this attire, he sat down like a real khan and squinted his eyes for greater resemblance.

Universal Man

Alexander Ivanovich changed a large number of professions before he found his true calling. He tried his hand at boxing, pedagogy, fishing and acting. He worked in the circus as a wrestler, surveyor, pilot, itinerant musician, etc. Moreover, his main goal was not money, but invaluable life experience. Alexander Ivanovich stated that he would like to become an animal, a plant or a pregnant woman in order to experience all the delights of childbirth.

The beginning of writing

He received his first writing experience while still in a military school. It was the story "The Last Debut", the work was rather primitive, but nevertheless he decided to send it to the newspaper. This was reported to the leadership of the school, and Alexander was punished (two days in a punishment cell). He made a promise to himself never to write again. However, he did not keep his word, as he met the writer I. Bunin, who asked him to write a short story. Kuprin was broke at that time, and therefore he agreed and bought food and shoes for himself with the money he earned. It was this event that pushed him to serious work.

Here he is, the famous writer Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin, a physically strong person with a tender and vulnerable soul and with his own quirks. A big lover of life and an experimenter, compassionate and having a great craving for justice. Naturalist and realist Kuprin left a legacy of a large number of magnificent works that fully deserve the title of masterpieces.

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, in the entertaining plots, in the naturalness and ease of the language, in vivid imagery. Kuprin's works attract us not only with artistic skill, but also with humanistic pathos, 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 county clerk. The father died when the child was in its second year. His mother moved to Moscow, where the need forced her to settle in a widow's house, and send her son to an orphanage. The writer's childhood and youth were spent in closed military-type educational institutions: in a military gymnasium, and then in a cadet school in Moscow. In 1890, after graduating from a military school, Kuprin served in the army with the rank of lieutenant. An attempt to enter the Academy of the General Staff in 1893 was unsuccessful for Kuprin, and in 1894 he retired. The next few years in Kuprin's life were a period of numerous moves and changes in various activities. He worked as a reporter in Kiev newspapers, served in Moscow in an office, as an estate manager in the Volyn province, as a prompter in a provincial troupe, tried many more professions, met people of various specialties, views and life destinies.

Like many writers, AI Kuprin began his creative activity as a poet. Among Kuprin's poetic experiments, there are 2-3 dozens of good ones in execution and, most importantly, genuinely sincere in revealing human feelings and moods. This is especially true for his humorous poems - from the prickly "Ode to Katkov", written as a teenager, to numerous epigrams, literary parodies, playful impromptu. Kuprin did not stop writing poetry all his life. However, he found his true calling in prose. In 1889, as 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 pupils were forbidden to appear in print.

Work in journalism gave Kuprin a lot. In the 1990s, he published feuilletons, notes, court chronicles, literary critical articles, and travel correspondence on the pages of provincial newspapers.

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

2. Analysis of the story "Moloch"

Work in the forge shop of one of the metallurgical plants of Donbass introduced Kuprin to work, life and mores of the working environment. He wrote the essays "Yuzovsky Plant", "In the Main Mine", "Rail Rolling Plant". These essays were a 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 nature of emerging capitalism. The very title of the story is symbolic. Moloch - according to the concepts of the ancient Phoenicians, is the god of the sun, to whom human sacrifices were made. It is with him that the writer compares capitalism. Only Moloch-capitalism is even more cruel. If one human sacrifice per year was offered to Moloch-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 "devour a whole person." "Hell! - 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 after all, these copper gentlemen, Moloch and Dagon, would blush with shame and resentment before the figures that I have just given. This is how the image of the bloodthirsty god Moloch appears on the pages of the story, which, like a symbol, passes through the whole work. The story is also interesting because here for the first time in the work of Kuprin the image of an intellectual-truth seeker appears.

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

However, as Kuprin shows, Bobrov's protest has no practical way out, because he is a weak, neurasthenic person, incapable of struggle and action. Outbursts of indignation end with him admitting his own impotence: “You have neither determination nor 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 how to achieve such a life - he does not know. 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, tempted by wealth, sold herself to a capitalist and also became a victim of Moloch. All this does not detract from, however, the main thing that characterizes this hero - his subjective honesty, hatred of all kinds of injustice. The end of Bobrov's life is tragic. Internally broken, devastated, he ends his life suicide.

The personification of the pernicious power of the chistogan is the millionaire Kvashnin in the story. This is a living embodiment of the bloodthirsty god Moloch, which is already emphasized by the very portrait of Kvashnin: “Kvashnin was sitting in an armchair, spreading his colossal legs and sticking out his belly, similar to a Japanese idol of rough work.” Kvashnin is the opposite of Bobrov, and he is portrayed by the author in sharply negative tones. Kvashnin makes any deal with his conscience, any immoral act, even a crime, to satisfy his own. whims and desires. The girl he likes - Nina Zinenko, Bobrov's bride, he makes his kept woman.

The corrupting power of Moloch is especially strongly shown in the fate of people striving to climb into the number of "chosen ones". Such, for example, is the director of the Shelkovnikov plant, who only nominally manages the plant, in everything obeying the protégé of a foreign company, the Belgian Andrea. Such is one of Bobrov's colleagues - Svezhevsky, who dreams of becoming a millionaire by the age of forty and is ready for 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 is lying, pretending to be an expert in the business he leads. Shelkovnikov lies, pretending that it is he who manages the plant. Nina's mother lies, hiding the secret of her daughter's birth. Svezhevsky lies, and plays the role of Nina's fiancé. Dummy directors, dummy fathers, dummy husbands - such, according to Kuprin, is a manifestation of the universal vulgarity, falsity 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 deprived of psychological credibility. And yet, "Moloch" was not an ordinary event in the work of a novice prose writer. The search for moral values, a person of spiritual purity, outlined here, will become the basis 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 the Kuprinskaya “Pit”: “By God, I would like to become a horse, a plant or a fish for a few days, or to be a woman and experience childbirth; I would like to live an inner life and look at the world through the eyes of every person I meet,” they sound truly autobiographical. Kuprin tried, as far as possible, to experience everything, to experience everything for himself. This thirst, inherent in him as a person and a writer, to be actively involved in everything that happens around him, led to the appearance already in his early work of works of the most diverse subjects, in which a rich gallery of human characters and types was displayed. In the 1990s, the writer willingly turns to the image of the exotic world of tramps, beggars, homeless people, vagrants, and street thieves. These paintings and images are at the center of his works such as "The Petitioner", "Picture", "Natasha", "Friends", "The Mysterious Stranger", "Horse Thieves", "White Poodle". Kuprin showed a steady interest in the life and customs of the acting environment, artists, journalists, and writers. Such are his stories “Lidochka”, “Lolly”, “Experienced Glory”, “Allez!”, “On Order”, “Curl”, “Nag”, the play “Clown” also adjoins here.

The plots of many of these works are sad, sometimes tragic. For example, the story "Allez!" - a psychologically capacious work inspired by the idea of ​​humanism. Under the external restraint of the author's narration in the story, the writer's deep compassion for the person is hidden. The orphanage of a five-year-old girl turned into a circus rider, the work of a skilled acrobat under the dome of the circus full of momentary risk, the tragedy of a girl deceived and insulted in her pure and lofty feelings, and, finally, her suicide as an expression of despair - all this is depicted with the perspicacity inherent in Kuprin and skill. No wonder L. Tolstoy considered this story among the best of Kuprin's 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, referring to his little heroine, will say: “You notice, dear Nina: we live next to all animals and do not know anything about them at all. We just don't care. Take, for example, all the dogs that 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 the birds. Just like people…” In the works of Kuprin lies the wise human kindness and love of the humanist artist for everything living and living next to us and around us. These moods permeate all his stories about animals - "White Poodle", "Elephant", "Emerald" and dozens of others.

Kuprin's contribution to children's literature is enormous. He possessed a rare and difficult gift for writing about children in a fascinating and serious way, without false sweetness and schoolboy didactics. It is enough to read any of his children's stories - "The Wonderful Doctor", "Kindergarten", "On the River", "Taper", "The End of the Tale" and others, and we will be convinced that the children are depicted by the writer with the finest knowledge and understanding of the soul child, with a deep penetration into the world of his hobbies, feelings and experiences.

Invariably defending human dignity and the beauty of the inner world of man, Kuprin endowed his positive characters - both adults and children - with high nobility of soul, feelings and thoughts, moral health, and a kind of stoicism. The best that their inner world is rich in is manifested most clearly in their ability to love - disinterestedly and strongly. Love collision underlies so many of Kuprin's works of the 90s: the lyrical poem in prose "Centennial", the short stories "Stronger than Death", "Narcissus", "First Passer", "Loneliness", "Autumn Flowers", etc.

Claiming the moral value of a person, Kuprin was looking for his positive hero. He found him among people not corrupted by selfish morality, living in unity with nature.

Representatives of a "civilized" society, who have lost nobility and honesty, the writer contrasted a "healthy", "natural" person from the people.

3. Analysis of the story "Olesya"

It is this idea that underlies the short story."Olesya" (1898). The image of Olesya is one of the brightest and most human in the rich gallery of female images created by Kuprin. This is a freedom-loving and whole 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. However, she is uncompromising in her actions. Kuprin shrouds the secret process of forming the character of Olesya 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 inspiring influence on Olesya. And the girl turned out to be so wonderful, primarily because, - Kuprin convinces the reader, - that 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 the 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 relationship with the forest worker Yermola and the dark, ignorant village people, Ivan Timofeevich looks bold, humane and noble, then in communication with Olesya, the negative aspects of his nature also appear. A true artistic instinct helped the writer to reveal the beauty of the human person, generously endowed by nature. Naivety and authority, femininity and proud independence, “a flexible, mobile 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 , integral, -original, free nature, which "rare gems" flashed in the surrounding darkness and ignorance.

Showing Olesya's originality and talent, Kuprin showed himself to be a subtle master psychologist. For the first time in his work, he touched those mysterious phenomena of the human psyche that science is still unraveling. He writes about the unrecognized powers of intuition, forebodings, about the wisdom of thousands of years of experience, which the human mind is able to assimilate. Explaining the heroine's "sorcerous" charms, the author expresses the conviction that Olesya had access to "those unconscious, instinctive, foggy, obtained by random experience, strange knowledge, which, having outstripped exact science for centuries, lives, mixed with funny and wild beliefs, in a dark , a closed mass of the people, passed on as 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 does not destroy, the bodily, spiritual and intellectual abilities granted to him from above.

Kuprin considered pure, bright love to be one of the highest manifestations of a 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 go through the disturbing period of the birth of love, “full of vague, painfully sad sensations”, and her happiest seconds of “pure, full of all-consuming delight”, and long joyful dates of lovers in a dense pine forest. The world of spring jubilant nature - mysterious and beautiful - merge in the story with an equally wonderful overflow of human feelings. “For almost a whole month, the naive charming fairy tale of our love continued, and to this day, together with the beautiful appearance of Olesya, these blazing evening dawns, these dewy mornings, fragrant with lilies of the valley and honey, full of cheerful freshness and sonorous bird noise, live with unfading power in my soul, these hot, languid, lazy July days… I, like a pagan god or like a young, strong animal, enjoyed light, warmth, conscious joy of life and calm, healthy, sensual love.” In these heartfelt words of Ivan Timofeevich, the anthem of the author of “living life”, its enduring value, its beauty, sounds.

The story ends with the separation of the lovers. In such a ending, there is, in essence, nothing unusual. 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 join her fate with Ivan Timofeevich - they are so different people.

The story of two lovers unfolds against the backdrop of the magnificent nature of Polissya. The Kuprin landscape is not only extremely picturesque and rich, but also unusually dynamic. Where another, less subtle artist would have depicted the calmness of a winter forest, Kuprin notes movement, but this movement sets off the silence even more clearly. “At times, a thin twig fell off the top and it was extremely clearly heard how, falling, it touched other branches with a slight crack.” Nature in the story is a necessary element of content. She actively influences the thoughts and feelings of a person, her paintings are organically connected with the movement of the plot. Static winter pictures of nature at the beginning, at the moment of the hero's loneliness; a stormy spring coinciding with the birth of a feeling of love for Olesya; a fabulous summer night in moments of the highest happiness of lovers; and, finally, a severe thunderstorm with hail - these are the psychological accompaniments of the landscape, helping to 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 fade into the background, the wild reprisal of the Perebrod women over Olesya is obscured after her visit to the church. Over everything insignificant, petty and evil, even sadly ending, real, great - earthly love wins. 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 the deep and diverse connections of the young writer with the traditions of Russian classics. Thus, researchers usually recall Tolstoy's "Cossacks", which are based on the same task: to portray a person untouched and unspoiled by civilization, and to put him in touch with the so-called "civilized society". At the same time, one can easily find a connection between the story and Turgenev's line in Russian prose of the 19th century. They are brought together by the opposition of the weak-willed and indecisive hero and the heroine, brave in her actions, completely devoted to the feeling that gripped her. And Ivan Timofeevich involuntarily reminds us of the heroes of Turgenev's stories "Asya" and "Spring Waters".

According to its artistic method, the story "Olesya" is an organic combination of romanticism and realism, ideal and real-everyday. The romanticism of the story is manifested primarily in the disclosure of the image of Olesya and in the image of the beautiful nature of Polesie.

Both of these images - nature and Olesya - are merged into a single harmonious whole and cannot be thought of in isolation from each other. Realism and romanticism in the story complement each other, 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 the ever-living, renewing nature, Inextricably linked with the course of events, with the feelings and experiences of the characters, poetization of a 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 beginning of the 900s is an important period in Kuprin's creative biography. During these years, he became acquainted with Chekhov, L. Tolstoy approved the story "At the Circus", he closely approached Gorky and the Knowledge publishing house. Ultimately, it is to Gorky, his help and support, that Kuprin owes much to the completion of work on his most important work, the story"Duel" (1905).

In his work, the writer refers to the image of the military environment so well known to him. In the center of the "Duel", as in the center of the story "Moloch", is the figure of a man who, in Gorky's words, has become "sideways" to his social environment. The basis of the plot of the story is the conflict of lieutenant Romashov with the surrounding reality. Like Bobrov, Romashov is one of the many cogs in a social mechanism 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 abuse of a person, humiliation of his dignity. “To beat a soldier is dishonorable,” 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 turn his head. That's shameful!". Romashov, like Bobrov, is weak, powerless, in a state of painful split, internally contradictory. But unlike Bobrov, depicted as a fully formed personality, Romashov is given in the process of spiritual development. This gives his image an inner dynamism. At the beginning of the service, the hero is full of romantic illusions, dreams of self-education, a career as an officer of the General Staff. Life breaks mercilessly these dreams. Shocked by the failure of his half-company on the parade ground during the review of the regiment, he travels around the city until night and unexpectedly meets his soldier Khlebnikov.

The images of soldiers do not occupy such a significant 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 Romashov's orderly Gainan, and Arkhipov, and Sharafutdinov. A close-up is highlighted in the story of Private Khlebnikov.

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 railroad track between Romashov and Khlebnikov. Here, the plight of the downtrodden Khlebnikov and the humanism of Romashov, who sees in the soldier first of all a person, are revealed with the utmost completeness. The hard, bleak fate of this unfortunate soldier shocked Romashov. It is a deep emotional break. Since that time, writes Kuprin, "his own fate and the fate of this ... downtrodden, tortured soldier somehow strangely, kindred close ... intertwined." What does Romashov think about, what new horizons open up before him when, having rejected the life that he has lived so far, he begins to think about his future?

As a result of intense reflections on the meaning of life, the hero comes to the conclusion that "there are only three proud vocations of man: science, art and a free man." Remarkable are these internal monologues of Romashov, which pose such basic problems of the story 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. The love affair accelerates the denouement of Romashov's conflict with the environment he hates.

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

Kuprin's excellent knowledge of army life was clearly manifested in the image of the officer environment. The spirit of careerism reigns here, the inhuman treatment of soldiers, the squalor of spiritual interests. Considering themselves people of a special breed, the officers look at the soldiers like cattle. One of the officers, for example, beat his batman so that "the blood was not only on the walls, but also on the ceiling." And when the batman 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 an hour." One cannot calmly read those scenes of the story where it is described how they mock the sick, downtrodden, physically weak soldier Khlebnikov.

Officers also live wildly and hopelessly in everyday life. Captain Plum, for example, has not read a single book or newspaper in 25 years of service. Another officer, Vetkin, says with conviction: "In our business, you are not supposed to think." Officers spend their free time on drinking, playing cards, brawls in brothels, fighting among themselves and on stories about their love affairs. The life of these people is a miserable, thoughtless vegetative existence. It, as one of the characters in the story says, is "monotonous, like a fence, and gray, like a soldier's cloth."

This, however, does not mean that Kuprin, as some researchers argue, deprives the officers of the story of glimpses of any humanity. The bottom line is that in many officers - in the commander of the regiment Shulgovich, and in Bek-Agamalov, and in Vetkin, and even in Captain Plum, Kuprin notes positive qualities: Shulgovich, having reprimanded the embezzler-officer, immediately gives him money. Vetkin is a kind and good friend. Not a bad person, in essence, and Bek-Agamalov. Even Plum, the stupid campaigner, is impeccably honest with the soldier's money passing through his hands.

The point, therefore, is not that before us are only degenerates and moral freaks, although there are such among the characters in the story. And in the fact that even people endowed with positive qualities, in an atmosphere of musty life and dull monotony of life, lose the will to resist this soul-sucking swamp and gradually degrade.

But, as N. Asheshov, one of the critics of the time, wrote about Kuprin's story "The Swamp", filled with a close circle of thoughts, "a person dies in a swamp, it is necessary to resurrect a person." Kuprin peers into the very depths of human nature and tries to notice in people those precious grains of the soul that have yet to be nurtured, humanized, cleansed 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: properties fit in one and the same person, and that life will become beautiful when a person is free from all prejudices and prejudices, is strong and independent, learns to subordinate the conditions of life to himself, and begins to create his own way of life.

Nazansky occupies a special place in the story. This is an out-of-character 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, by the fact that 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 former colleagues, then they go in the same direction with the main problems of the story, and in this sense deepen its main theme. He prophesies with inspiration the time when "far from our dirty, smelly parking lots" a "new luminous life" will come.

In his monologues, Nazansky glorifies the life and power of a free man, which is also a progressive factor. However, the right thoughts about the future, criticism of the army order are combined in Nazansky with individualistic and egoistic moods. 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, his pride and adornment… Do what you want. Take whatever you like ... Who will prove to me with clear persuasiveness what I have to do with this - damn him! - my neighbor, with a vile slave, with an infected, with an idiot? .. And then, what interest will make me break my head for the sake of the happiness of the people of the 32nd century? It is easy to see that Nazansky here rejects Christian mercy, 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 attentively listens to Nazansky, does not always share his point of view and even more so follows his advice. Both Romashov's attitude towards Khlebnikov, and the rejection of his own interests in the name of the happiness of his beloved woman, Shurochka Nikolaeva, testify to the fact that the preaching of individualism by Nazansky, exciting Romashov's consciousness, does not, however, affect his heart. Well, if anyone implements in the story the principles preached by Nazansky, without realizing this, of course, it is Shurochka Nikolaeva. It is she who dooms 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 officers' ladies of the regiment. Her portrait, drawn by Romashov in love, 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 beginning that both friends lacked so much. But all the outstanding qualities of her nature are aimed at the implementation of 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 charges Romashov with weakness: in her opinion, he is pathetic and weak-willed. What is Shurochka herself?

This is a living mind, an understanding of the vulgarity of the surrounding life, a desire to break through to the top of society at all costs (her husband's career is a step towards this). From her point of view, everyone around is weak people. Shurochka knows exactly what she wants and will get it. It has a strong-willed, rationalistic beginning. She is an opponent of sentimentality, in herself she suppresses what can interfere with her goal - all heart impulses and affections.

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

The cult of evil will power characteristic of this heroine is something unprecedented in the female character, in the gallery of Russian women depicted in Russian literature. This cult is not approved, but debunked by Kuprin. It is regarded as a perversion of femininity, the beginnings of love and humanity. Masterfully, at first, as if with random strokes, and then more and more clearly, Kuprin sets off in the character of this woman such a trait, at first 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 a picnic.

“There was something instinctively unpleasant in this laughter, from which it smelled of a chill in Romashov’s soul.” At the end of the story, in the scene of the last meeting, the hero experiences a similar, but much stronger feeling when Shurochka dictates his duel conditions. “Romashov felt something secret, smooth, slimy creeping invisibly between them, from which it smelled of cold on his soul.” This scene is supplemented by the description of Shurochka's last kiss, when Romashov felt that "her lips were cold and motionless." Shurochka is prudent, selfish, and in her ideas does not go beyond the dream of the capital, of success in high society. To fulfill this dream, she destroys Romashov, trying by any means to win a secured place for herself and for her limited, unloved husband. At the end of the work, when Shurochka deliberately does his pernicious deed, persuading Romashov to fight Nikolaev in a duel, the author shows the unkindness of the power contained in Shurochka, opposing Romashov's "humane weakness" to it.

"Duel" was and remains an outstanding phenomenon in 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 a direct part in the events. Being at the height of the revolution in the Crimea, Kuprin observed revolutionary ferment among the sailors. He witnessed the massacre of the rebel cruiser "Ochakov" and - he himself took part in the rescue of the few surviving sailors. Kuprin told 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 the Crimea.

5. Essays "Listrigons"

Kuprin suffered the defeat of the revolution very hard. But in his work he continued to remain on the positions of realism. With sarcasm, he depicts in his stories the philistine as a force that restrains the spiritual growth of a person, distorting the human personality.

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

Fishermen go to their hard fishing in artels, and joint hard work develops solidarity and mutual support in them. This work requires will, cunning, resourcefulness. Severe, courageous, risk-loving people are admired by Kuprin, because in their characters there is much that the reflective intelligentsia lacks. The writer admires their husky will and simplicity. The whole and courageous characters of the fishermen, the writer claims, are the result of method is a fusion of realism and romanticism.In a romantic, elevated style, the writer depicts life, work, and especially the characters of Balaklava fishermen.

In the same years, Kuprin created two wonderful works about love - "Sulamf" (1908) and "Garnet Bracelet" (1911). Kuprin's treatment of this topic appears especially significant in comparison with the depiction of a woman in anti-realist literature. The woman, who always personified by the classic writers all the best and brightest in the Russian people, during the years of reaction, under the pen of some fiction writers, turned into an object of lascivious and rude desires. This is how a woman is depicted in the works of A. Kamensky, E. Nagrodskaya, A. Verbitskaya and others.

In contrast to them, Kuprin sings of love as a powerful, tender and uplifting feeling.

6. Analysis of the story "Shulamith"

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

Throughout the story runs the opposition of light and dark, love and hate. The love of Solomon and Sulamith is described in light, festive colors, in a soft combination of colors. And vice versa, the feelings of the cruel queen Astis and the royal bodyguard Eliav, who is in love with her, are devoid of an exalted character.

Passionate and pure, bright love is embodied in the image of Sulamith. The opposite feeling - hatred and envy - is expressed in the image of Astiz rejected by Solomon. Shulamith brought Solomon great and bright love, which fills her completely. Love did a miracle with her - she opened 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 supreme happiness bestowed upon her by Solomon. The story "Shulamith" is especially remarkable as a glorification of a woman. The sage Solomon is beautiful, but Shulamith, who gives her life for her beloved, is even more beautiful in her half-childish naivety and selflessness. 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 is the best and sweetest dream in the world, until then, I swear to you, Shulamith, your name is in for many centuries will be pronounced with tenderness and gratitude.

The legendary plot of "Sulamith" opened up unlimited opportunities for Kuprin to sing love, strong, harmonious and freed from any everyday conventions and worldly obstacles. But the writer could not confine himself to such an exotic interpretation of the theme of love. He persistently searches in the most real, everyday reality for people possessed by the highest feeling of love, capable of rising, at least in dreams, above the surrounding prose of life. And, as always, he turns his gaze to the common man. This is how the poetic theme of the "Garnet Bracelet" arose in the writer's creative mind.

Love, in the view of Kuprin, is one of the eternal, inexhaustible and not fully known sweet secrets. It most fully, deeply and versatilely manifests the personality of a person, 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 I. Not in strength, not in dexterity, not in mind, not in talent, not in voice, not in colors, not in gait, not in creativity, individuality is expressed. But in love... A person who died for love dies for everything,” Kuprin wrote to F. Batyushkov, revealing his philosophy of love.

7. Analysis of the story "Garnet bracelet"

Narrative in a story"Garnet bracelet" opens with a sad picture of nature, in which disturbing notes are captured: “... Then from morning till morning it rained without ceasing, fine as water dust ... then it blew from the north-west, from the side of the steppe, a ferocious hurricane, which claimed 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, inaccessible to him, writes tender letters to her, not hoping for an answer, considers those moments when he secretly , in the distance, can see the beloved.

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

In the image of Zheltkov, Kuprin shows that ideally, romantic love is not an invention; not a dream, not an idyll, but a reality, although rarely encountered in life. The image of this character has a very strong romantic beginning. 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 receive such an excellent musical education, to cultivate in himself such a developed sense of beauty, human dignity and inner nobility? Like all romantic heroes, Zheltkov is lonely. Describing the appearance of the character, 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 outward originality of Zheltkov further emphasizes the richness of his nature.

The plot of the plot action is the receipt by Princess Vera on her birthday of another letter from Zheltkov and an unusual gift - a pomegranate bracelet (“five scarlet bloody fires trembling inside five grenades”). "Just like blood!" Vera thought with unexpected anxiety. Outraged by the intrusiveness of Zheltkov, Vera's brother Nikolai Nikolaevich and her husband, Prince Vasily, decide to find and "teach a lesson" to this, from their point of view, "insolent".

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 dwelling, and feels guilty without guilt. But as soon as Nikolai Nikolaevich hinted that in order to “reason” Zheltkov, he would resort to the help of the authorities, the hero literally transforms. It is as if another person appears before us - defiantly calm, not afraid of threats, with self-esteem, aware of the moral superiority over his uninvited guests. The "little man" straightens up so spiritually that Vera's husband begins to feel involuntary sympathy and respect for him. He tells brother-in-law

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

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

It is important that with the death of the hero does not die, a great feeling of love. His death spiritually resurrects Princess Vera, reveals to her a world of feelings unknown to her until now. She, as it were, is internally liberated, gaining a 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.

It was as if Zheltkov foresaw that Vera would come with him to say goodbye, and through the landlady bequeathed to her to listen to Beethoven's sonata. In unison with the music in Vera's soul, the dying words of a man who selflessly loved her sound: “I remember your every step, smile, the sound of your gait. Sweet melancholy, quiet, beautiful melancholy are wrapped around my last memories. But I won't hurt you. I'm leaving alone, silently, it was so pleasing to God and fate. "Hallowed be thy name."

In the dying sad hour, I pray only to you. Life could be great for me too. Do not grumble, poor heart, do not grumble. In my soul I call for 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, in which the refrain is a line from a prayer. It is rightly said: “The lyrical musical ending of the story affirms the high power of love, which made it possible to feel its greatness, beauty, self-forgetfulness, attaching another soul to itself for a moment.”

And yet, "Garnet Bracelet" does not leave such a bright and inspirational impression as "Olesya". K. Paustovsky subtly noticed the special tonality 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 in itself, along with inspiration, a certain limitation, 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 dying letter to Princess Vera: “It happened like this,” he writes, “that I am not interested in anything in life: neither politics, nor science, nor philosophy, nor concern for the future happiness of people - for me, all life lies only in you. It is quite natural that the loss of a loved one becomes the end of Zheltkov's life. He has nothing more to live for. Love did not expand, did not deepen his ties with the world, but, on the contrary, narrowed them. Therefore, the tragic finale of the story, along with the hymn of love, contains another, no less important thought: one cannot live by love alone.

8. Analysis of the story "The Pit"

In the same years, Kuprin conceived a large artistic canvas - a story"Pit" , on which he worked with long breaks in the years 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 in Russian reality.

The humanist writer dedicated his book to "mothers and youth." He tried to influence the uncomplicated consciousness and morality of young people, mercilessly telling about what base things are happening in brothels. In the center of the narrative is the image of one of these "houses of tolerance", where petty-bourgeois customs triumph, where Anna Markovna, the mistress of this institution, feels herself to be the sovereign ruler, where Lyubka, Zhenechka, Tamara and other prostitutes are "victims of social temperament" - and where do young intellectuals - truth-seekers come to get these victims from the bottom of this stinking swamp: the student Likhonin and the journalist Platonov.

There are many vivid scenes in the story, where the life of nightlife establishments “in all its everyday simplicity and everyday efficiency” is recreated calmly, without anguish and loud words. But in general, it did not become Kuprin's artistic success. Stretched, friable, overloaded with naturalistic details, "The Pit" caused dissatisfaction of both many readers and the author himself. The 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 a social phenomenon (“one of the most terrible ulcers of bourgeois society,” we have been accustomed to say for decades), but also as a complex biological phenomenon. order. The author of "The Pit" tried to show that the fight against prostitution rests on global problems associated with a change in human nature, which is fraught with thousand-year-old instincts.

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

An eccentric, a fanatic of business and an unmercenary Turchenko, towering over the petty-bourgeois quagmire, is akin to Gorky's purposeful heroes. No wonder the leitmotif of the story is the image of black lightning from Gorky's "Song of the Petrel". Yes, and in terms of the power of denunciation of the provincial philistine, "Black Lightning" has something in common with Gorky's Okurovsky cycle.

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

9. Kuprin in exile

A. Kuprin perceived the events of World War I from a patriotic standpoint. Paying tribute to the heroism of Russian soldiers and officers, in the stories "Gog the Merry" and "Cantaloupe" he exposes bribe-takers and embezzlers of public funds, deftly cashing in on the people's misfortune.

During the years of the October Revolution and the Civil War, Kuprin lived in Gatchina, near Petrograd. When in October 1919 the troops of General Yudenich left Gatchina, Kuprin moved along 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, of native nature - this is what Kuprin gives the last strength of his talent to. In stories and essays on Russian history, the writer revives the traditions of Leskov, telling about unusual, sometimes anecdotal, colorful Russian characters and customs.

Such excellent stories as "Napoleon's Shadow", "Redheads, Bay, Grey, Ravens", "The Tsar's Guest from Narovchat", "The Last Knights" are written in Leskov's manner. In his prose, the old, pre-revolutionary motifs again sounded. The short stories "Olga Sur", "Bad Pun", "Blondel" seem to complete the line in the writer's depiction of the circus, following the famous "Listry-gons" he writes the story "Svetlana", again resurrecting the colorful figure of the Balaklava fishing ataman Kolya Kostandi. The glorification of the great “gift of love” is dedicated to the story “The Wheel of Time” (1930), the hero of which is the Russian engineer Misha, who fell in love with a beautiful French woman, akin to the writer’s former disinterested and pure-hearted characters. Kuprin's stories "Yu-Yu", "Zavirayka", "Ralph" continue the line of depiction of animals by the writer, which he began before the revolution (the stories "Emerald", "White Poodle", "Elephant Walk", "Peregrine Falcon").

In a word, no matter what Kuprin writes about in exile, all his works are imbued with thoughts about Russia, hidden longing for the lost homeland. Even in the essays on France and Yugoslavia - "Paris at Home", "Paris Intimate", "Cape Huron", "Old Songs" - the writer, painting foreign customs, life and nature, again and again returns 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 also spiritualize Kuprin's last works - the autobiographical novel "Junker" and the story "Janeta" (1933). The "Junkers" are a continuation of the autobiographical story "At the Break" ("The Cadets"), created by Kuprin thirty years ago, although the names of the main characters are different: in the "Cadets" - Bulavin, in the "Junkers" - Alexandrov. Talking about the next stage of the hero's life at the Alexander School, Kuprin in "Junkers", unlike "Cadets", removes the slightest critical notes about the educational system in Russian closed military educational institutions, coloring the narrative of Alexandrov's cadet years in pink, idyllic tones. However, "Junker" is not just the story of the Alexander Military School, conveyed through the eyes of one of his pupils. This is also a work about old Moscow. The silhouettes of the Arbat, Patriarch's Ponds, the Institute of Noble Maidens, etc. appear through the romantic haze.

The novel expressively conveys the feeling of first love that is born in the heart of young Alexandrov. But despite the abundance of light and festivities, the Juncker novel 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 "Janeta"

These nostalgic notes are clearly heard in the story."Janeta" . Without touching, “as if a cinematographic film is unfolding,” the old emigrant professor Simonov, once famous in Russia, and now huddled in a poor attic, passes by the life of 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 a little semi-poor girl Zhaneta - "the princess of four streets." The writer does not in the least idealize this pretty dark-haired girl with dirty little hands, who, like the black cat, is a little condescending to the old professor. However, a chance acquaintance with her illuminated his lonely life, revealed all the hidden reserve of tenderness in his soul.

The story ends sadly. Mother takes Janet away from Paris, and the old man is left all alone again, 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 had lost his homeland. But the philosophical context of the story is wider. It is in the affirmation of the purity and beauty of the human soul, which a person should not lose under any life adversity.

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

11. Homecoming 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 writing, but his strength finally leaves him. August 25, 1938 Kuprin died.

A master of language, an entertaining plot, a man of great love of 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 finest talent, for love for his country, for his unshakable faith in the happiness of his people, and, finally, for never dying in him the ability to light up from the slightest contact with poetry and write freely and easily about it.

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Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin was born on August 26 (September 7), 1870 in the city of Narovchat (Penza province) in a poor family of a petty official.

1871 was a difficult year in Kuprin's biography - his father died, and the impoverished family moved to Moscow.

Education and the beginning of a creative path

At the age of six, Kuprin was sent to the class of the Moscow Orphan School, from which he left in 1880. After that, Alexander Ivanovich studied at the military academy, the Alexander Military School. The training time is described in such works by Kuprin as: “At the Turning Point (Cadets)”, “Junkers”. "The Last Debut" - the first published story of Kuprin (1889).

Since 1890 he was a second lieutenant in an infantry regiment. During the service, many essays, stories, novels were published: "Inquiry", "Moonlight Night", "In the Dark".

The heyday of creativity

Four years later, Kuprin retired. After that, the writer travels a lot around Russia, trying himself in different professions. During this time, Alexander Ivanovich met Ivan Bunin, Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky.

Kuprin builds his stories of those times on life impressions gleaned during his travels.

Kuprin's short stories cover many topics: military, social, love. The story "Duel" (1905) brought Alexander Ivanovich real success. Love in Kuprin's work is most vividly described in the story "Olesya" (1898), which was the first major and one of his most beloved works, and the story of unrequited love - "Garnet Bracelet" (1910).

Alexander Kuprin also liked to write stories for children. For children's reading, he wrote the works "Elephant", "Starlings", "White Poodle" and many others.

Emigration and the last years of life

For Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin, life and work are inseparable. Not accepting the policy of war communism, the writer emigrates to France. Even after emigration in the biography of Alexander Kuprin, the writer's ardor does not subside, he writes novels, short stories, many articles and essays. Despite this, Kuprin lives in material need and yearns for his homeland. Only 17 years later he returns to Russia. At the same time, the last essay of the writer is published - the work "Moscow dear".

After a serious illness, Kuprin died on August 25, 1938. The writer was buried at the Volkovskoye cemetery in Leningrad, next to the grave

A word about the work of AI Kuprin.

Question 36. The main themes and ideas of AI Kuprin's prose.

A. I. Kuprin

2. Main themes and let's go creativity:

a) ʼʼMolochʼʼ - an image of bourgeois society;

b) the image of the army (ʼʼNight shiftʼʼ, ʼʼTravelʼʼ, ʼʼDuelʼʼ);

c) the conflict of a romantic hero with everyday reality (ʼʼOlesyaʼʼ);

d) the theme of the harmony of nature, human beauty (ʼʼEmeraldʼʼ, ʼʼWhite Poodleʼʼ, ʼʼDog Happinessʼʼ, ʼʼShulamithʼʼ);

e) the theme of love (ʼʼGarnet braceletʼʼ).

3. The spiritual atmosphere of the era.

1. The work of A. I. Kuprin is peculiar and interesting, it strikes the author's observational ability and the amazing plausibility with which he describes people's lives. As a realist writer, Kuprin carefully peers into life and highlights the main, essential aspects in it.

2. a) This gave Kuprin the opportunity to create in 1896 a major work ʼʼMolohʼʼ, dedicated to the most important topic of the capitalist development of Russia. Truthfully and without embellishment, the writer depicted the true face of bourgeois civilization. In this work, he denounces hypocritical morality, corruption and falsehood in relations between people in a capitalist society.

Kuprin shows a large factory where the workers are brutally exploited. The main character, engineer Bobrov, an honest, humane person, is shocked and outraged by this terrible picture. At the same time, the author depicts the workers as an uncomplaining crowd, powerless to take any active action. In ʼʼMolochʼʼ, motifs characteristic of all subsequent works of Kuprin were outlined. The images of humanist truth-seekers will pass in a long line in many of his works. These heroes yearn for the beauty of life, rejecting the ugly bourgeois reality of their time.

b) Pages full of great revealing power were dedicated by Kuprin to the description of the tsarist army. The army was a stronghold of the autocracy, against which all the progressive forces of Russian society rose in those years. That is why Kuprin's works ʼʼNight Shiftʼʼ, ʼʼHikingʼʼ, and then ʼʼDuelʼʼ had a great public resonance. The tsarist army, with its mediocre, morally degenerated command, appears on the pages of ʼʼDuelʼʼ in all its unsightly appearance. Before us is a whole gallery of stupid and geeks, devoid of any glimmer of humanity. They are opposed by the main character of the story, lieutenant Romashov. He wholeheartedly protests against this nightmare, but is unable to find a way to overcome it. Hence the name of the story - ʼʼDuelʼʼ. The theme of the story is the drama of the ʼʼlittle manʼʼ, his duel with an ignorant environment, which ends with the death of the hero.

c) But not in all his works, Kuprin adheres to the framework of a strictly realistic direction. There are also romantic tendencies in his stories. He places romantic heroes in everyday life, in a real setting, next to ordinary people. And very often, in connection with this, the main conflict in his works becomes the conflict of a romantic hero with everyday life, dullness, and vulgarity.

In the wonderful story ʼʼOlesyaʼʼ, imbued with genuine humanism, Kuprin sings of people living in the midst of nature, untouched by money-grubbing and corrupting bourgeois civilization. Against the backdrop of wild, majestic, beautiful nature, strong, original people live - ʼʼchildren of natureʼʼ. Such is Olesya, who is as simple, natural and beautiful as nature itself. The author clearly romanticizes the image of the ʼʼdaughter of the forestsʼʼ. But her behavior, psychologically subtly motivated, allows you to see the real prospects of life. Endowed with unprecedented strength, the soul brings harmony into the obviously contradictory relationships of people. Such a rare gift is expressed in love for Ivan Timofeevich. Olesya, as it were, returns the naturalness of his experiences, which he had lost unnecessarily. Τᴀᴋᴎᴍ ᴏϬᴩᴀᴈᴏᴍ, the story describes the love of a realist man and a romantic heroine. Ivan Timofeevich falls into the romantic world of the heroine, and she - into his reality.

d) The theme of nature and man worries Kuprin throughout his life. The power and beauty of nature, animals as an integral part of nature, a person who has not lost touch with it, living according to its laws - these are the facets of this topic. Kuprin admires the beauty of the horse (ʼʼEmeraldʼʼ), fidelity of the dog (ʼʼWhite poodleʼʼ, ʼʼDog happinessʼʼ), female youth (ʼʼShulamithʼʼ). Kuprin sings of the beautiful, harmonious, living world of nature.

e) Only where a person lives in harmony with nature, love is beautiful and natural. In the artificial life of people, love, true love, which happens once in a hundred years, turns out to be unrecognized, misunderstood and persecuted. In the ʼʼGarnet Braceletʼʼ, the poor official Zheltkov is endowed with this gift of love. Great love becomes the meaning and content of his life. The heroine - Princess Vera Sheina - not only does not respond to his feelings, but also perceives his letters, a gift - a garnet bracelet - as something unnecessary, disturbing her peace, her usual way of life. Only after Zheltkov's death does she realize that the "love" that every woman dreams of has passed by. Mutual, perfect love did not take place, but this high and poetic feeling, even if concentrated in one soul, opens the way to a beautiful rebirth of another. Here the author shows love as a phenomenon of life, as an unexpected gift - poetic, illuminating life in the midst of everyday life, sober reality and sustainable life.

3. Reflecting on the individuality of the hero, his place among others, the fate of Russia in a time of crisis, at the turn of two centuries, Kuprin studied the spiritual atmosphere of the era, portrayed "living pictures" of the environment.

A word about the work of AI Kuprin. - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "A word about the work of AI Kuprin." 2017, 2018.