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Summary of works of Russian literature of the first half of the XNUMXth century: briefly, most importantly

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Table of contents

1. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy 1828-1910 (Childhood. Tale (1852). Adolescence Tale (1854). Youth Tale (1857). Cossacks. Caucasian Tale of 1852 (1853-1862, unfinished, published 1863). War and Peace Novel (1863-1869, 1- e separate edition 1867-1869).Anna Karenina Roman (1873-1877))
2. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov 1860-1904 (A boring story From the notes of an old man. A Tale (1889). A Duel Tale (1891). The Jumping Tale (1891, published 1892). Ward No. 6 Tale (1892). The Black Monk Tale (1893, published 1894). Literature teacher Story (1889 - 1894). Seagull Comedy (1895 - 1896). House with a Mezzanine Artist's Story (1896). In the Ravine Tale (1899, published 1900). Three Sisters Drama (1901). Cherry Orchard Comedy (1904))
3. Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko 1853-1921 (In bad company. From the childhood memories of my friend: Story (1885). The Blind Musician: Story (1886))
4. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin 1870-1953 (Antonov apples - Story (1900). Village - Story (1910). The gentleman from San Francisco - Story (1915). Easy breathing - Story (1916). Life of Arsenyev's Youth - Novel (1927-1933, published 1952))
5. Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev 1871-1919 (The Life of Vasily of Fivey - A Story (1903). The Story of the Seven Hanged Men - (1906). Judas Iscariot - A Story (1907))
6. Maxim Gorky 1868-1936 (Bourgeois - Play (1901, published 1902). At the bottom. Pictures - Play (1902, published 1903). Mother - Novel (1906))
7. Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin 1870-1938 (Duel - Tale (1905). Garnet bracelet - Tale (1911))
8. Alexander Alexandrovich Blok 1880-1921 (Stranger Lyrical drama (1906). Showroom - Lyrical drama (1906). Twelve - Poem (1918))
9. Andrei Bely 1880-1934 (Petersburg - Roman (1913))
10. Fyodor Kuzmin Sologub 1863-1927. The Little Demon - Novel (1902))
11. Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky 1893-1930 (Cloud in pants - Tetraptych Poem (1914-1915). About this - Poem (1922-1923))
12. Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov 1899-1977 (Mashenka - Novel (1926). Defense of Luzhin - Novel (1929-1930). Camera Obscura - Novel (1932-1933))

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy 1828 - 1910

Childhood. Tale (1852)

On August 12, 18, ten-year-old Nikolenka Irteniev wakes up on the third day after his birthday at seven o'clock in the morning. After the morning toilet, the teacher Karl Ivanovich takes Nikolenka and his brother Volodya to greet their mother, who is pouring tea in the living room, and with their father, who is giving housekeeping instructions to the clerk in his office. Nikolenka feels in himself a pure and clear love for his parents, he admires them, making accurate observations for himself: "... in one smile lies what is called the beauty of the face: if a smile adds charm to a face, then it is beautiful; if it does not change him, then the face is ordinary; if she spoils it, then it is bad. For Nikolenka, mother's face is beautiful, angelic. The father, due to his seriousness and severity, seems to the child a mysterious, but undeniably beautiful person who "likes everyone without exception." The father announces to the boys about his decision - tomorrow he takes them with him to Moscow. All day long: studying in classes under the supervision of Karl Ivanovich, upset by the news received, and hunting, on which the father takes the children, and meeting with the holy fool, and the last games, during which Nikolenka feels something like first love for Katenka - everything this is accompanied by a woeful and sad feeling of the impending farewell to his native home. Nikolenka recalls the happy time spent in the village, the courtyard people who are selflessly devoted to their family, and the details of the life lived here appear vividly before him, in all the contradictions that his childish consciousness is trying to reconcile.

The next day at twelve o'clock the carriage and the britzka stood at the entrance. Everyone is busy with preparations for the road, and Nikolenka is especially keenly aware of the discrepancy between the importance of the last minutes before parting and the general fuss that reigns in the house. The whole family gathers in the living room around a round table. Nikolenka hugs her mother, cries and thinks of nothing but her grief. Having left for the main road, Nikolenka waves a handkerchief to his mother, continues to cry and notices how tears give him "pleasure and joy." He thinks of his mother, and all Nikolenka's memories are filled with love for her.

For a month now, the father and children have been living in Moscow, in the grandmother's house. Although Karl Ivanovich was also taken to Moscow, new teachers teach the children. On grandmother's name day, Nikolenka writes his first poems, which are read in public, and Nikolenka is especially worried about this moment. He meets new people: Princess Kornakova, Prince Ivan Ivanovich, relatives Ivins - three boys, almost the same age as Nikolenka. When communicating with these people, Nikolenka develops his main qualities: natural subtle observation, inconsistency in his own feelings. Nikolenka often looks at himself in the mirror and cannot imagine that someone can love him. Before going to bed, Nikolenka shares his experiences with his brother Volodya, admits that he loves Sonechka Valakhina, and all the childish genuine passion of his nature is manifested in his words. He admits: "...when I lie and think about her, God knows why I feel sad and I want to cry terribly."

Six months later, my father receives a letter from my mother from the village that she caught a severe cold during a walk, fell ill, and her strength is dwindling every day. She asks to come and bring Volodya and Nikolenka. Without delay, the father and sons leave Moscow. The most terrible forebodings are confirmed - for the last six days, mother has not gotten up. She can't even say goodbye to her children - her open eyes can't see anything anymore... Mommy dies on the same day in terrible suffering, having only had time to ask for blessings for the children: "Mother of God, don't leave them!"

The next day, Nikolenka sees a mother in a coffin and cannot reconcile with the thought that this yellow and wax face belongs to the one he loved most in life. A peasant girl, who is brought to the deceased, screams terribly in horror, screams and rushes out of the room Nikolenka, struck by bitter truth and despair before the incomprehensibility of death.

Three days after the funeral, the whole house moves to Moscow, and with the death of her mother, Nikolenka ends a happy childhood time. Arriving later in the village, he always comes to the grave of mother, not far from whom Natalya Savishnu, faithful until the last days, was buried.

A Boyhood Tale (1854)

Immediately after arriving in Moscow, Nikolenka feels the changes that have taken place with him. In his soul there is a place not only for his own feelings and experiences, but also for compassion for the grief of others, the ability to understand the actions of other people. He is aware of all the inconsolability of his grandmother's grief after the death of his beloved daughter, rejoices to tears that he finds the strength to forgive his older brother after a stupid quarrel. Another striking change for Nikolenka is that he bashfully notices the excitement that the twenty-five-year-old maid Masha arouses in him. Nikolenka is convinced of his ugliness, envies Volodya's beauty, and tries with all his might, although unsuccessfully, to convince himself that a pleasant appearance cannot make up all the happiness of life. And Nikolenka tries to find salvation in thoughts of proud loneliness, to which, as it seems to him, he is doomed.

Grandmother is informed that the boys are playing with gunpowder, and although this is just harmless lead shot, the grandmother blames Karl Ivanovich for the lack of supervision of the children and insists that he be replaced by a decent tutor. Nikolenka is having a hard time parting with Karl Ivanovich.

Nikolenka does not get along with the new French tutor, he himself sometimes does not understand his impudence towards the teacher. It seems to him that the circumstances of life are directed against him. The incident with the key, which by negligence he breaks, it is not clear why he is trying to open his father's briefcase, finally brings Nikolenka out of balance. Deciding that everyone has deliberately turned against him, Nikolenka behaves unpredictably - she hits the tutor, in response to her brother's sympathetic question: "What is happening to you?" - shouts, as all are disgusting to him and disgusting. They lock him in a closet and threaten to punish him with rods. After a long confinement, during which Nikolenka is tormented by a desperate feeling of humiliation, he asks his father for forgiveness, and convulsions are made with him. Everyone fears for his health, but after a twelve-hour sleep, Nikolenka feels good and at ease and is even glad that his family is experiencing his incomprehensible illness.

After this incident, Nikolenka feels more and more lonely, and his main pleasure is solitary reflection and observation. He observes the strange relationship between the maid Masha and the tailor Vasily. Nikolenka does not understand how such a rough relationship can be called love. Nikolenka’s range of thoughts is wide, and he is often confused in his discoveries: “I think, what I think, what I think about, and so on. My mind has gone beyond my mind...”

Nikolenka rejoices at Volodya's admission to the university and is envious of his maturity. He notices the changes that happen to his brother and sisters, watches how an aging father develops a special tenderness for children, experiences the death of his grandmother - and he is offended by talk about who will get her inheritance ...

Before entering the university, Nikolenka is a few months away. He is preparing for the Faculty of Mathematics and studies well. Trying to get rid of many of the shortcomings of adolescence, Nikolenka considers the main one to be a tendency to inactive reasoning and thinks that this tendency will bring him much harm in life. Thus, it manifests attempts at self-education. Friends often come to Volodya - adjutant Dubkov and student Prince Nekhlyudov. Nikolenka talks more and more often with Dmitry Nekhlyudov, they become friends. The mood of their souls seems to Niklenka the same. Constantly improving himself and thus correcting all of humanity - Nikolenka comes to such an idea under the influence of his friend, and he considers this important discovery the beginning of his youth.

Youth Tale (1857)

The sixteenth spring of Nikolai Irtenyev is coming. He is preparing for university exams, full of dreams and thoughts about his future destiny. In order to more clearly define the purpose of life, Nikolai starts a separate notebook where he writes down the duties and rules necessary for moral perfection. On a passionate Wednesday, a gray-haired monk, confessor, comes to the house. After confession, Nikolai feels like a pure and new person. But at night, he suddenly remembers one of his shameful sins, which he hid in confession. He hardly sleeps until morning and at six o'clock he hurries in a cab to the monastery to confess again. Joyful, Nikolenka comes back, it seems to him that there is no person in the world better and cleaner than him. He is not restrained and tells the driver about his confession. And he replies: "Well, sir, your master's business." The joyful feeling disappears, and Nikolai even experiences some distrust of his excellent inclinations and qualities.

Nikolai successfully passes the exams and is enrolled in the university. The family congratulate him. By order of his father, the coachman Kuzma, the cabman and the bay Handsome are at the complete disposal of Nikolai. Deciding that he is already quite an adult, Nikolai buys many different knick-knacks, a pipe and tobacco on the Kuznetsk bridge. At home, he tries to smoke, but feels nauseous and weak. Dmitri Nekhlyudov, who has come to fetch him, reproaches Nikolai, explaining all the stupidity of smoking. Friends, together with Volodya and Dubkov, go to a restaurant to celebrate the younger Irtenyev's admission to the university. Observing the behavior of young people, Nikolai notices that Nekhlyudov differs from Volodya and Dubkov in a better, correct way: he does not smoke, does not play cards, does not talk about love affairs. But Nikolai, because of his boyish enthusiasm for adulthood, wants to imitate Volodya and Dubkov. He drinks champagne, lights a cigarette in a restaurant from a burning candle, which is on the table in front of strangers. As a result, a quarrel with a certain Kolpikov arises. Nikolai feels insulted, but takes all his offense on Dubkov, unfairly yelling at him. Understanding all the childishness of his friend's behavior, Nekhlyudov calms and comforts him.

The next day, on the orders of his father, Nikolenka goes, as a fully grown man, to make visits. He visits the Valakhins, Kornakovs, Ivins, Prince Ivan Ivanovich, with difficulty enduring long hours of forced conversations. Nikolai feels free and easy only in the company of Dmitry Nekhlyudov, who invites him to visit his mother in Kuntsevo. On the way, friends talk on various topics, Nikolai admits that he has recently become completely confused in the variety of new impressions. He likes Dmitri's calm prudence without a hint of edification, the free and noble mind, he likes that Nekhlyudov forgave the shameful story in the restaurant, as if not attaching special significance to it. Thanks to conversations with Dmitry, Nikolai begins to understand that growing up is not a simple change in time, but a slow formation of the soul. He admires his friend more and more and, falling asleep after a conversation in the Nekhlyudovs' house, thinks about how good it would be if Dmitry married his sister or, on the contrary, he married Dmitry's sister.

The next day, Nikolai leaves for the village by mail, where memories of childhood, of his mother, come to life in him with renewed vigor. He thinks a lot, reflects on his future place in the world, on the concept of good breeding, which requires a huge inner work on himself. Enjoying the village life, Nikolai is happy to realize in himself the ability to see and feel the most subtle shades of the beauty of nature.

Father at forty-eight marries a second time. The children do not like their stepmother; after a few months, the father and his new wife develop a relationship of “quiet hatred”.

With the beginning of his studies at the university, it seems to Nikolai that he dissolves in a mass of the same students and is largely disappointed with his new life. He rushes about from talking with Nekhlyudov to participating in student revels, which are condemned by his friend. Irtenev is annoyed by the conventions of secular society, which seem for the most part to be a pretense of insignificant people. Among the students, Nikolai makes new acquaintances, and he notices that the main concern of these people is to get pleasure from life, first of all. Under the influence of new acquaintances, he unconsciously follows the same principle. Negligence in studies bears fruit: Nikolai fails at the first exam. For three days he does not leave the room, he feels truly unhappy and has lost all the former joy of life. Dmitri visits him, but because of the cooling that comes in their friendship, Nekhlyudov's sympathy seems condescending to Nikolai and therefore insulting.

Late one evening, Nikolai takes out a notebook on which is written: "Rules of life." From the surging feelings associated with youthful dreams, he cries, but not with tears of despair, but of remorse and moral impulse. He decides to re-write the rules of life and never change them again. The first half of youth ends in anticipation of the next, happier one.

Cossacks. The Caucasian story of 1852 (1853 - 1862, unfinished, published 1863)

On an early winter morning from the porch of the Chevalier Hotel in Moscow, after saying goodbye to his friends after a long dinner, Dmitry Andreevich Olenin drives off in a Yamskaya troika to the Caucasian infantry regiment, where he is enlisted as a cadet.

Left without parents from a young age, Olenin squandered half of his fortune by the age of twenty-four, did not finish the course anywhere and did not serve anywhere. He constantly succumbs to the passions of young life, but just enough so as not to be bound; instinctively runs away from any feelings and deeds that require serious effort. Not knowing with certainty what to direct the strength of youth, which he clearly feels in himself, Olenin hopes to change his life with his departure to the Caucasus so that there will be no more mistakes and remorse in it.

For a long time on the road, Olenin either indulges in memories of Moscow life, or draws in his imagination alluring pictures of the future. The mountains that open before him at the end of the path surprise and delight Olenin with the infinity of majestic beauty. All Moscow memories disappear, and some solemn voice seems to say to him: "Now it has begun."

The village of Novomlinskaya stands three versts from the Terek, which separates the Cossacks and the highlanders. The Cossacks serve on campaigns and on cordons, "sit" in patrols on the banks of the Terek, hunt and fish. The women run the household. This established life is disturbed by the arrival of two companies of the Caucasian infantry regiment, in which Olenin has been serving for three months. He was assigned an apartment in the house of a cornet and a school teacher who comes home on holidays. The household is run by his wife - grandmother Ulita and daughter Maryanka, who is going to be married off to Lukashka, the most daring of the young Cossacks. Just before the arrival of Russian soldiers in the village in the night patrol on the banks of the Terek, Lukashka is different - he kills a Chechen swimming to the Russian coast from a gun. When the Cossacks look at the murdered abrek, an invisible quiet angel flies over them and leaves this place, and the old man Eroshka says, as if with regret: "He killed the Dzhigit." Olenin was coldly received by the hosts, as is customary among the Cossacks to accept army. But gradually the owners become more tolerant of Olenin. This is facilitated by his openness, generosity, immediately established friendship with the old Cossack Eroshka, whom everyone in the village respects. Olenin observes the life of the Cossacks, she admires his natural simplicity and fusion with nature. In a fit of good feelings, he gives Lukashka one of his horses, and he accepts the gift, unable to understand such disinterestedness, although Olenin is sincere in his act. He always treats Uncle Eroshka with wine, immediately agrees with the demand of the cornet to raise the rent, although a lower one was agreed, gives Lukashka a horse - all these external manifestations of Olenin's sincere feelings are called by the Cossacks simplicity.

Eroshka tells a lot about Cossack life, and the simple philosophy contained in these stories delights Olenin. They hunt together, Olenin admires the wild nature, listens to Eroshka's instructions and thoughts and feels that he gradually wants to merge more and more with the surrounding life. All day he walks through the forest, returns hungry and tired, has dinner, drinks with Eroshka, sees mountains at sunset from the porch, listens to stories about hunting, about abreks, about a carefree, daring life. Olenin is overwhelmed with a feeling of causeless love and finally finds a feeling of happiness. "God did everything for the joy of man. There is no sin in anything," says Uncle Eroshka. And as if Olenin answers him in his thoughts: "Everyone needs to live, you need to be happy ... The need for happiness is embedded in a person." Once, while hunting, Olenin imagines that he is "the same mosquito, or the same pheasant or deer, as those that now live around him." But no matter how subtly Olenin felt. nature, no matter how he understands the surrounding life, it does not accept him, and he is bitterly aware of this.

Olenin participates in one expedition and is promoted to officer. He eschews the well-worn rut of army life, which consists for the most part of card games and revelry in fortresses, and in the villages - in courting Cossack women. Every morning, having admired the mountains, Maryanka, Olenin goes hunting. In the evening he comes back tired, hungry, but completely happy. Eroshka certainly comes to him, they talk for a long time and go to bed.

Olenin sees Maryanka every day and admires her in the same way as the beauty of the mountains, the sky, without even thinking about other relationships. But the more he observes her, the more, imperceptibly for himself, he falls in love.

Olenin is forced on his friendship by Prince Beletsiy, who is familiar from the Moscow world. Unlike Olenin, Beletsky leads the ordinary life of a wealthy Caucasian officer in the village. He persuades Olenin to come to the party, where Maryanka should be. Obeying the peculiar playful rules of such parties, Olenin and Maryanka are left alone, and he kisses her. After that, "the wall that separated them before was destroyed." Olenin spends more and more time in the hosts' room, looking for any excuse to see Maryanka. Thinking more and more about his life and succumbing to the feeling that has come over him, Olenin is ready to marry Maryanka.

At the same time, preparations for the wedding of Lukashka and Maryanka continue. In such a strange state, when outwardly everything goes to this wedding, and Olenin's feeling grows stronger and determination becomes clearer, he proposes to the girl. Maryanka agrees, subject to the consent of the parents. In the morning, Olenin is going to go to the owners to ask for the hand of their daughter. He sees Cossacks on the street, among them Lukashka, who are going to catch abreks who have moved to this side of the Terek. In obedience to duty, Olenin goes with them.

Surrounded by Cossacks, the Chechens know they can't escape and are preparing for the final battle. During the fight, the brother of the Chechen that Lukashka killed earlier shoots Lukashka in the stomach with a pistol. Lukashka is brought to the village, Olenin learns that he is dying.

When Olenin tries to speak to Maryanka, she rejects him with contempt and malice, and he suddenly clearly understands that he can never be loved by her. Olenin decides to go to the fortress, to the regiment. Unlike those thoughts that he had in Moscow, now he no longer repents and does not promise himself better changes. Before leaving Novomlinsky, he is silent, and in this silence one feels a hidden, previously unknown understanding of the abyss between him and the surrounding life. Eroshka, who sees him off, intuitively feels the inner essence of Olenin. "After all, I love you, I feel sorry for you! You are so bitter, all alone, all alone. You are somehow unloved!" he says goodbye. Having driven off, Olenin looks back and sees how the old man and Maryana are talking about their affairs and no longer look at him.

War and Peace Novel (1863 - 1869, 1st ed. ed. 1867 - 1869)

The action of the book begins in the summer of 1805 in St. Petersburg. At the evening at the maid of honor Scherer, among other guests, are Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a wealthy nobleman, and Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. The conversation turns to Napoleon, and both friends try to defend the great man from the condemnations of the hostess of the evening and her guests. Prince Andrei is going to war because he dreams of glory equal to that of Napoleon, and Pierre does not know what to do, participates in the revelry of St. Petersburg youth (here Fedor Dolokhov, a poor, but extremely strong-willed and determined officer, occupies a special place); for another mischief, Pierre was expelled from the capital, and Dolokhov was demoted to the soldiers.

Further, the author takes us to Moscow, to the house of Count Rostov, a kind, hospitable landowner, who arranges a dinner in honor of the name day of his wife and youngest daughter. A special family structure unites the Rostovs' parents and children - Nikolai (he is going to war with Napoleon), Natasha, Petya and Sonya (a poor relative of the Rostovs); only the eldest daughter, Vera, seems to be a stranger.

At the Rostovs, the holiday continues, everyone is having fun, dancing, and at this time in another Moscow house - at the old Count Bezukhov - the owner is dying. An intrigue begins around the count's will: Prince Vasily Kuragin (a Petersburg courtier) and three princesses - all of them are distant relatives of the count and his heirs - are trying to steal a portfolio with Bezukhov's new will, according to which Pierre becomes his main heir; Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya, a poor lady from an aristocratic old family, selflessly devoted to her son Boris and seeking patronage for him everywhere, interferes with stealing the portfolio, and Pierre, now Count Bezukhov, gets a huge fortune. Pierre becomes his own person in Petersburg society; Prince Kuragin tries to marry him to his daughter - the beautiful Helen - and succeeds in this.

In Lysy Gory, the estate of Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, Prince Andrei's father, life goes on as usual; the old prince is constantly busy - either writing notes, or giving lessons to his daughter Marya, or working in the garden. Prince Andrei arrives with his pregnant wife Liza; he leaves his wife in his father's house, and he himself goes to war.

Autumn 1805; the Russian army in Austria takes part in the campaign of the allied states (Austria and Prussia) against Napoleon. Commander-in-Chief Kutuzov does everything to avoid Russian participation in the battle - at the review of the infantry regiment, he draws the attention of the Austrian general to the poor uniforms (especially shoes) of Russian soldiers; right up to the battle of Austerlitz, the Russian army retreats in order to join the allies and not accept battles with the French. In order for the main Russian forces to be able to retreat, Kutuzov sends a detachment of four thousand under the command of Bagration to detain the French; Kutuzov manages to conclude a truce with Murat (a French marshal), which allows him to buy time.

Junker Nikolai Rostov serves in the Pavlograd Hussar Regiment; he lives in an apartment in the German village where the regiment is stationed, together with his squadron commander, captain Vasily Denisov. One morning, Denisov lost his wallet with money - Rostov found out that Lieutenant Telyanin had taken the wallet. But this offense of Telyanin casts a shadow on the entire regiment - and the regiment commander demands that Rostov admit his mistake and apologize. The officers support the commander - and Rostov concedes; he does not apologize, but retracts his accusations, and Telyanin is expelled from the regiment due to illness. Meanwhile, the regiment goes on a campaign, and the junker's baptism of fire takes place during the crossing of the Enns River; the hussars must be the last to cross and set fire to the bridge.

During the battle of Shengraben (between the detachment of Bagration and the vanguard of the French army), Rostov is wounded (a horse was killed under him, he concussed his hand when he fell); he sees the approaching French and "with the feeling of a hare running away from dogs", throws a pistol at the Frenchman and runs.

For participation in the battle, Rostov was promoted to cornet and awarded the soldier's St. George's Cross. He comes from Olmutz, where the Russian army is encamped in preparation for the review, to the Izmailovsky regiment, where Boris Drubetskoy is stationed, to see his childhood friend and collect letters and money sent to him from Moscow. He tells Boris and Berg, who is lodging with Drubetsky, the story of his injury - but not in the way it really happened, but in the way they usually tell about cavalry attacks ("how he chopped right and left," etc.) .

During the review, Rostov experiences a feeling of love and adoration for Emperor Alexander; this feeling only intensifies during the battle of Austerlitz, when Nicholas sees the king - pale, crying from defeat, alone in the middle of an empty field.

Prince Andrei, right up to the battle of Austerlitz, lives in anticipation of the great feat that he is destined to accomplish. He is annoyed by everything that is discordant with this feeling of his - both the trick of the mocking officer Zherkov, who congratulated the Austrian general on the next defeat of the Austrians, and the episode on the road when the doctor's wife asks to intercede for her and Prince Andrey is confronted by a convoy officer. During the Shengraben battle, Bolkonsky notices Captain Tushin, a "small round-shouldered officer" with an unheroic appearance, commanding a battery. The successful actions of Tushin's battery ensured the success of the battle, but when the captain reported to Bagration about the actions of his gunners, he became more shy than during the battle. Prince Andrei is disappointed - his idea of ​​\uXNUMXb\uXNUMXbthe heroic does not fit either with the behavior of Tushin, or with the behavior of Bagration himself, who essentially did not order anything, but only agreed with what the adjutants and superiors who approached him offered him.

On the eve of the battle of Austerlitz there was a military council at which the Austrian General Weyrother read the disposition of the upcoming battle. During the council, Kutuzov openly slept, not seeing any use in any disposition and foreseeing that tomorrow's battle would be lost. Prince Andrei wanted to express his thoughts and his plan, but Kutuzov interrupted the council and suggested that everyone disperse. At night, Bolkonsky thinks about tomorrow's battle and about his decisive participation in it. He wants fame and is ready to give everything for it: "Death, wounds, loss of a family, nothing scares me."

The next morning, as soon as the sun came out of the fog, Napoleon signaled to start the battle - it was the day of the anniversary of his coronation, and he was happy and confident. Kutuzov, on the other hand, looked gloomy - he immediately noticed that confusion was beginning in the allied troops. Before the battle, the emperor asks Kutuzov why the battle does not begin, and hears from the old commander-in-chief: “That’s why I don’t start, sir, because we are not at the parade and not on Tsaritsyn Meadow.” Very soon, the Russian troops, finding the enemy much closer than expected, break up the ranks and flee. Kutuzov demands to stop them, and Prince Andrei, with a banner in his hands, rushes forward, dragging the battalion with him. Almost immediately he is wounded, he falls and sees a high sky above him with clouds quietly crawling over it. All his former dreams of glory seem to him insignificant; insignificant and petty seems to him and his idol, Napoleon, circling the battlefield after the French utterly defeated the allies. "Here is a beautiful death," says Napoleon, looking at Bolkonsky. Convinced that Bolkonsky is still alive, Napoleon orders him to be taken to the dressing station. Among the hopelessly wounded, Prince Andrei was left in the care of the inhabitants.

Nikolai Rostov comes home on vacation; Denisov goes with him. Rostov is everywhere - both at home and by acquaintances, that is, by all of Moscow - is accepted as a hero; he becomes close to Dolokhov (and becomes one of his seconds in a duel with Bezukhov). Dolokhov proposes to Sonya, but she, in love with Nikolai, refuses; at a farewell feast hosted by Dolokhov for his friends before leaving for the army, he beats Rostov (apparently not quite honestly) for a large sum, as if taking revenge on him for Sonin's refusal.

An atmosphere of love and fun reigns in the Rostovs' house, created primarily by Natasha. She sings beautifully, dances (at the ball at Yogel, the dance teacher, Natasha dances a mazurka with Denisov, which causes general admiration). When Rostov returns home in a depressed state after a loss, he hears Natasha's singing and forgets about everything - about the loss, about Dolokhov: "all this is nonsense <...> but here it is - the real one." Nikolai admits to his father that he lost; when he manages to collect the required amount, he leaves for the army. Denisov, admired by Natasha, asks for her hand in marriage, is refused and leaves.

In December 1805, Prince Vasily visited the Bald Mountains with his youngest son, Anatole; Kuragin's goal was to marry his dissolute son to a wealthy heiress, Princess Marya. The princess was extraordinarily excited by the arrival of Anatole; the old prince did not want this marriage - he did not love the Kuragins and did not want to part with his daughter. By chance, Princess Mary notices Anatole, embracing her French companion, m-lle Bourrienne; to her father's delight, she refuses Anatole.

After the Battle of Austerlitz, the old prince receives a letter from Kutuzov, which says that Prince Andrei "fell a hero worthy of his father and his fatherland." It also says that Bolkonsky was not found among the dead; this allows us to hope that Prince Andrei is alive. Meanwhile, Princess Lisa, Andrey's wife, is about to give birth, and on the very night of the birth, Andrey returns. Princess Lisa dies; on her dead face Bolkonsky reads the question: "What have you done to me?" - the feeling of guilt before the deceased wife no longer leaves him.

Pierre Bezukhov is tormented by the question of his wife's connection with Dolokhov: hints from acquaintances and an anonymous letter constantly raise this question. At a dinner in the Moscow English Club, arranged in honor of Bagration, a quarrel breaks out between Bezukhov and Dolokhov; Pierre challenges Dolokhov to a duel, in which he (who does not know how to shoot and has never held a pistol in his hands before) wounds his opponent. After a difficult explanation with Helen, Pierre leaves Moscow for St. Petersburg, leaving her a power of attorney to manage his Great Russian estates (which makes up most of his fortune).

On the way to St. Petersburg, Bezukhov stops at the post station in Torzhok, where he meets the famous Freemason Osip Alekseevich Bazdeev, who instructs him - disappointed, confused, not knowing how and why to live on - and gives him a letter of recommendation to one of the St. Petersburg Masons. Upon arrival, Pierre joins the Masonic lodge: he is delighted with the truth that has been revealed to him, although the ritual of initiation into Masons confuses him somewhat. Filled with a desire to do good to his neighbors, in particular to his peasants, Pierre goes to his estates in the Kyiv province. There he very zealously embarks on reforms, but, having no "practical tenacity", turns out to be completely deceived by his manager.

Returning from a southern trip, Pierre visits his friend Bolkonsky at his estate, Bogucharovo. After Austerlitz, Prince Andrei firmly decided not to serve anywhere (in order to get rid of active service, he accepted the position of collecting the militia under the command of his father). All his worries are focused on his son. Pierre notices the "faded, dead look" of his friend, his detachment. Pierre's enthusiasm, his new views contrast sharply with Bolkonsky's skeptical mood; Prince Andrei believes that neither schools nor hospitals are needed for the peasants, and serfdom should be abolished not for the peasants - they are used to it - but for the landlords, who are corrupted by unlimited power over other people. When friends go to the Bald Mountains, to the father and sister of Prince Andrei, a conversation takes place between them (on the ferry during the crossing): Pierre sets out to Prince Andrei his new views (“we do not live now only on this piece of land, but have lived and will live forever there, in everything"), and Bolkonsky for the first time after Austerlitz sees the "high, eternal sky"; "something better that was in him suddenly woke up joyfully in his soul." While Pierre was in the Bald Mountains, he enjoyed close, friendly relations not only with Prince Andrei, but also with all his relatives and household; for Bolkonsky, a new life (internally) began from a meeting with Pierre.

Returning from leave to the regiment, Nikolai Rostov felt at home. Everything was clear, known in advance; True, it was necessary to think about what to feed the people and horses - the regiment lost almost half of its people from hunger and disease. Denisov decides to recapture the transport with food assigned to the infantry regiment; Summoned to headquarters, he meets Telyanin there (in the position of Chief Provision Master), beats him and for this he must stand trial. Taking advantage of the fact that he was slightly wounded, Denisov goes to the hospital. Rostov visits Denisov in the hospital - he is struck by the sight of sick soldiers lying on straw and on greatcoats on the floor, and the smell of a rotting body; in the officer's chambers he meets Tushin, who has lost his arm, and Denisov, who, after some persuasion, agrees to submit a request for pardon to the sovereign.

With this letter, Rostov goes to Tilsit, where the meeting of two emperors, Alexander and Napoleon, takes place. At the apartment of Boris Drubetskoy, enlisted in the retinue of the Russian emperor, Nikolai sees yesterday's enemies - French officers, with whom Drubetskoy willingly communicates. All this - both the unexpected friendship of the adored tsar with yesterday's usurper Bonaparte, and the free friendly communication of the retinue officers with the French - all irritates Rostov. He cannot understand why battles were needed, arms and legs torn off, if the emperors are so kind to each other and reward each other and the soldiers of the enemy armies with the highest orders of their countries. By chance, he manages to pass a letter with Denisov's request to a familiar general, who gives it to the tsar, but Alexander refuses: "the law is stronger than me." Terrible doubts in Rostov's soul end with the fact that he convinces familiar officers, like him, who are dissatisfied with the peace with Napoleon, and most importantly, himself that the sovereign knows better what needs to be done. And "our job is to cut and not think," he says, drowning out his doubts with wine.

Those enterprises that Pierre started at home and could not bring to any result were executed by Prince Andrei. He transferred three hundred souls to free cultivators (that is, he freed them from serfdom); replaced corvée with dues on other estates; peasant children began to be taught to read and write, etc. In the spring of 1809, Bolkonsky went on business to the Ryazan estates. On the way, he notices how green and sunny everything is; only the huge old oak "did not want to submit to the charm of spring" - it seems to Prince Andrei in harmony with the sight of this gnarled oak that his life is over.

On guardianship matters, Bolkonsky needs to see Ilya Rostov, the district marshal of the nobility, and Prince Andrei goes to Otradnoye, the Rostov estate. At night, Prince Andrei hears the conversation between Natasha and Sonya: Natasha is full of delight from the charms of the night, and in the soul of Prince Andrei "an unexpected confusion of young thoughts and hopes arose." When - already in July - he passed the very grove where he saw the old gnarled oak, he was transformed: "through the hundred-year-old hard bark, juicy young leaves made their way without knots." “No, life is not over at thirty-one,” Prince Andrei decides; he goes to St. Petersburg to "take an active part in life."

In St. Petersburg, Bolkonsky becomes close to Speransky, the state secretary, an energetic reformer close to the emperor. For Speransky, Prince Andrei feels a feeling of admiration, "similar to the one he once felt for Bonaparte." The prince becomes a member of the commission for drafting the military regulations. At this time, Pierre Bezukhov also lives in St. Petersburg - he became disillusioned with Freemasonry, reconciled (outwardly) with his wife Helen; in the eyes of the world, he is an eccentric and kind fellow, but in his soul "the hard work of inner development" continues.

The Rostovs also end up in St. Petersburg, because the old count, wanting to improve his money matters, comes to the capital to look for places of service. Berg proposes to Vera and marries her. Boris Drubetskoy, already a close friend in the salon of Countess Helen Bezukhova, begins to go to the Rostovs, unable to resist Natasha's charm; in a conversation with her mother, Natasha admits that she is not in love with Boris and is not going to marry him, but she likes that he travels. The countess spoke with Drubetskoy, and he stopped visiting the Rostovs.

On New Year's Eve there should be a ball at the Catherine's grandee. The Rostovs are carefully preparing for the ball; at the ball itself, Natasha experiences fear and timidity, delight and excitement. Prince Andrei invites her to dance, and "the wine of her charms hit him in the head": after the ball, his work in the commission, the speech of the sovereign in the Council, and the activities of Speransky seem insignificant to him. He proposes to Natasha, and the Rostovs accept him, but according to the condition set by the old prince Bolkonsky, the wedding can take place only after a year. This year Bolkonsky is going abroad.

Nikolai Rostov comes on vacation to Otradnoye. He is trying to put the household affairs in order, trying to check the accounts of Mitenka's clerk, but nothing comes of it. In mid-September, Nikolai, the old count, Natasha and Petya, with a pack of dogs and a retinue of hunters, go out on a big hunt. Soon they are joined by their distant relative and neighbor ("uncle"). The old count with his servants let the wolf through, for which the hunter Danilo scolded him, as if forgetting that the count was his master. At this time, another wolf came out to Nikolai, and the dogs of Rostov took him. Later, the hunters met the hunt of a neighbor - Ilagin; the dogs of Ilagin, Rostov and the uncle chased the hare, but his uncle's dog Rugay took it, which delighted the uncle. Then Rostov with Natasha and Petya go to their uncle. After dinner, uncle began to play the guitar, and Natasha went to dance. When they returned to Otradnoye, Natasha admitted that she would never be as happy and calm as now.

Christmas time has come; Natasha languishes from longing for Prince Andrei - for a short time she, like everyone else, is entertained by a trip dressed up to her neighbors, but the thought that "her best time is wasted" torments her. During Christmas time, Nikolai especially acutely felt love for Sonya and announced her to his mother and father, but this conversation upset them very much: the Rostovs hoped that Nikolai's marriage to a rich bride would improve their property circumstances. Nikolai returns to the regiment, and the old count with Sonya and Natasha leaves for Moscow.

Old Bolkonsky also lives in Moscow; he has visibly aged, become more irritable, relations with his daughter have deteriorated, which torments the old man himself, and especially Princess Marya. When Count Rostov and Natasha come to the Bolkonskys, they receive the Rostovs unkindly: the prince - with the calculation, and Princess Mary - herself suffering from awkwardness. Natasha is hurt by this; to console her, Marya Dmitrievna, in whose house the Rostovs were staying, took her a ticket to the opera. In the theater, the Rostovs meet Boris Drubetskoy, now fiancé Julie Karagina, Dolokhov, Helen Bezukhova and her brother Anatole Kuragin. Natasha meets Anatole. Helen invites the Rostovs to her place, where Anatole pursues Natasha, tells her about his love for her. He secretly sends her letters and is going to kidnap her in order to secretly marry (Anatole was already married, but almost no one knew this).

The kidnapping fails - Sonya accidentally finds out about him and confesses to Marya Dmitrievna; Pierre tells Natasha that Anatole is married. Prince Andrei, who has arrived, learns about Natasha's refusal (she sent a letter to Princess Marya) and about her affair with Anatole; he returns Natasha her letters through Pierre. When Pierre comes to Natasha and sees her tear-stained face, he feels sorry for her and at the same time he unexpectedly tells her that if he were "the best person in the world", then "on his knees he would ask for her hand and love" her. In tears of "tenderness and happiness" he leaves.

In June 1812, the war begins, Napoleon becomes the head of the army. Emperor Alexander, having learned that the enemy had crossed the border, sent Adjutant General Balashev to Napoleon. Balashev spends four days with the French, who do not recognize the importance he had at the Russian court, and finally Napoleon receives him in the very palace from which the Russian emperor sent him. Napoleon listens only to himself, not noticing that he often falls into contradictions.

Prince Andrei wants to find Anatole Kuragin and challenge him to a duel; for this he goes to St. Petersburg, and then to the Turkish army, where he serves at the headquarters of Kutuzov. When Bolkonsky learns about the beginning of the war with Napoleon, he asks for a transfer to the Western Army; Kutuzov gives him an assignment to Barclay de Tolly and lets him go. On the way, Prince Andrei calls in Bald Mountains, where outwardly everything is the same, but the old prince is very annoyed with Princess Marya and noticeably brings m-lle Bourienne closer to him. A difficult conversation takes place between the old prince and Andrey, Prince Andrey leaves.

In the Drissa camp, where the headquarters of the Russian army was located, Bolkonsky finds many opposing parties; at the military council, he finally understands that there is no military science, and everything is decided "in the ranks." He asks the sovereign for permission to serve in the army, and not at court.

The Pavlograd regiment, in which Nikolai Rostov still serves, already a captain, retreats from Poland to the Russian borders; none of the hussars think about where and why they are going. On July 12, one of the officers tells in the presence of Rostov about the feat of Raevsky, who brought two sons to the Saltanovskaya dam and went on the attack next to them; This story raises doubts in Rostov: he does not believe the story and does not see the point in such an act, if it really happened. The next day, at the town of Ostrovne, the Rostov squadron hit the French dragoons, who were pushing the Russian lancers. Nikolai captured a French officer "with a room face" - for this he received the St. George Cross, but he himself could not understand what confuses him in this so-called feat.

The Rostovs live in Moscow, Natasha is very ill, doctors visit her; at the end of Peter's Lent, Natasha decides to go to fast. On Sunday, July 12, the Rostovs went to mass at the Razumovskys' home church. Natasha is very strongly impressed by the prayer (“Let us pray to the Lord in peace”). She gradually returns to life and even begins to sing again, which she has not done for a long time. Pierre brings the sovereign's appeal to the Muscovites to the Rostovs, everyone is touched, and Petya asks to be allowed to go to war. Not having received permission, Petya decides the next day to go to meet the sovereign, who is coming to Moscow, in order to express to him his desire to serve the fatherland.

In the crowd of Muscovites meeting the tsar, Petya was nearly crushed. Together with others, he stood in front of the Kremlin Palace, when the sovereign went out onto the balcony and began to throw biscuits to the people - Petya got one biscuit. Returning home, Petya resolutely announced that he would certainly go to war, and the next day the old count went to find out how to place Petya somewhere more unsafe. On the third day of his stay in Moscow, the tsar met with the nobility and merchants. Everyone was in awe. The nobility donated the militia, and the merchants donated money.

The old Prince Bolkonsky is weakening; despite the fact that Prince Andrei informed his father in a letter that the French were already at Vitebsk and that his family's stay in the Bald Mountains was unsafe, the old prince laid a new garden and a new building on his estate. Prince Nikolai Andreevich sends the manager Alpatych to Smolensk with instructions, he, having arrived in the city, stops at the inn, at the familiar owner - Ferapontov. Alpatych gives the governor a letter from the prince and hears advice to go to Moscow. The bombardment begins, and then the fire of Smolensk. Ferapontov, who previously did not want to even hear about the departure, suddenly begins to distribute bags of food to the soldiers: "Bring everything, guys! <...> I decided! Raceya!" Alpatych meets Prince Andrei, and he writes a note to his sister, offering to urgently leave for Moscow.

For Prince Andrei, the fire of Smolensk "was an epoch" - a feeling of anger against the enemy made him forget his grief. He was called "our prince" in the regiment, they loved him and were proud of him, and he was kind and meek "with his regimental officers." His father, having sent his family to Moscow, decided to stay in the Bald Mountains and defend them "to the last extremity"; Princess Mary does not agree to leave with her nephews and stays with her father. After the departure of Nikolushka, the old prince has a stroke, and he is transported to Bogucharovo. For three weeks, the paralyzed prince lies in Bogucharovo, and finally he dies, asking for forgiveness from his daughter before his death.

Princess Mary, after her father's funeral, is going to leave Bogucharovo for Moscow, but the Bogucharovo peasants do not want to let the princess go. By chance, Rostov turns up in Bogucharovo, easily pacified the peasants, and the princess can leave. Both she and Nikolai think about the will of providence that arranged their meeting.

When Kutuzov is appointed commander-in-chief, he calls on Prince Andrei to himself; he arrives in Tsarevo-Zaimishche, at the main apartment. Kutuzov listens with sympathy to the news of the death of the old prince and invites Prince Andrei to serve at the headquarters, but Bolkonsky asks for permission to remain in the regiment. Denisov, who also arrived at the main apartment, hurries to present Kutuzov with a plan for a guerrilla war, but Kutuzov listens to Denisov (as well as the report of the general on duty) obviously inattentively, as if "by his life experience" despising everything that was said to him. And Prince Andrei leaves Kutuzov completely reassured. “He understands,” Bolkonsky thinks about Kutuzov, “that there is something stronger and more significant than his will, this is the inevitable course of events, and he knows how to see them, knows how to understand their meaning <...> And the main thing is that He is Russian".

Same. he speaks before the Battle of Borodino to Pierre, who has come to see the battle. “While Russia was healthy, a stranger could serve it and there was a wonderful minister, but as soon as it is in danger, you need your own, dear person,” Bolkonsky explains the appointment of Kutuzov as commander-in-chief instead of Barclay. During the battle, Prince Andrei was mortally wounded; they bring him to the tent to the dressing station, where he sees Anatol Kuragin on the next table - his leg is being amputated. Bolkonsky is seized with a new feeling - a feeling of compassion and love for everyone, including his enemies.

The appearance of Pierre on the Borodino field is preceded by a description of the Moscow society, where they refused to speak French (and even take a fine for a French word or phrase), where Rostopchinsky posters are distributed, with their pseudo-folk rude tone. Pierre feels a special joyful "sacrificial" feeling: "everything is nonsense in comparison with something," which Pierre could not understand to himself. On the way to Borodino, he meets militiamen and wounded soldiers, one of whom says: "They want to attack with all the people." On the field of Borodin, Bezukhov sees a prayer service before the miraculous icon of Smolensk, meets some of his acquaintances, including Dolokhov, who asks for forgiveness from Pierre.

During the battle, Bezukhov ended up on Raevsky's battery. The soldiers soon get used to him, call him "our master"; when the charges run out, Pierre volunteers to bring new ones, but before he could reach the charging boxes, there was a deafening explosion. Pierre runs to the battery, where the French are already in charge; the French officer and Pierre simultaneously grab each other, but the flying cannonball makes them unclench their hands, and the Russian soldiers who run up drive the French away. Pierre is horrified by the sight of the dead and wounded; he leaves the battlefield and walks along the Mozhaisk road for three versts. He sits on the side of the road; after a while, three soldiers make a fire nearby and invite Pierre to supper. After dinner, they go together to Mozhaisk, on the way they meet the bereator Pierre, who takes Bezukhov to the inn. At night, Pierre has a dream in which a benefactor (as he calls Bazdeev) speaks to him; the voice says that one must be able to unite in one's soul "the meaning of everything." "No," Pierre hears in a dream, "it is not necessary to connect, but it is necessary to conjugate." Pierre returns to Moscow.

Two more characters are given in close-up during the Battle of Borodino: Napoleon and Kutuzov. On the eve of the battle, Napoleon receives a gift from the Empress from Paris - a portrait of his son; he orders the portrait to be taken out to show it to the old guard. Tolstoy claims that Napoleon's orders before the battle of Borodino were no worse than all his other orders, but nothing depended on the will of the French emperor. Near Borodino, the French army suffered a moral defeat - this, according to Tolstoy, is the most important result of the battle.

Kutuzov did not make any orders during the battle: he knew that "an elusive force called the spirit of the army" decides the outcome of the battle, and he led this force "as far as it was in his power." When the adjutant Wolzogen arrives at the commander-in-chief with news from Barclay that the left flank is upset and the troops are fleeing, Kutuzov violently attacks him, claiming that the enemy has been beaten off everywhere and that tomorrow there will be an offensive. And this mood of Kutuzov is transmitted to the soldiers.

After the battle of Borodino, Russian troops retreat to Fili; the main issue that the military leaders are discussing is the question of protecting Moscow. Kutuzov, realizing that there is no way to defend Moscow, gives the order to retreat. At the same time, Rostopchin, not understanding the meaning of what is happening, ascribes to himself the leading role in the abandonment and fire of Moscow - that is, in an event that could not have happened by the will of one person and could not have happened in the circumstances of that time. He advises Pierre to leave Moscow, reminding him of his connection with the Masons, gives the crowd to be torn apart by the merchant's son Vereshchagin and leaves Moscow. The French enter Moscow. Napoleon is standing on Poklonnaya Hill, waiting for the deputation of the boyars and playing generous scenes in his imagination; he is told that Moscow is empty.

On the eve of leaving Moscow, the Rostovs were getting ready to leave. When the carts were already laid, one of the wounded officers (the day before several wounded were taken into the house by the Rostovs) asked permission to go further with the Rostovs in their cart. The countess at first objected - after all, the last fortune was lost - but Natasha convinced her parents to give all the carts to the wounded, and leave most of the things. Among the wounded officers who traveled with the Rostovs from Moscow was Andrei Bolkonsky. In Mytishchi, during another stop, Natasha entered the room where Prince Andrei was lying. Since then, she has looked after him on all holidays and overnight stays.

Pierre did not leave Moscow, but left his home and began to live in the house of Bazdeev's widow. Even before the trip to Borodino, he learned from one of the Masonic brothers that the Apocalypse predicted the invasion of Napoleon; he began to calculate the meaning of the name of Napoleon ("the beast" from the Apocalypse), and this number was equal to 666; the same amount was obtained from the numerical value of his name. So Pierre discovered his destiny - to kill Napoleon. He remains in Moscow and prepares for a great feat. When the French enter Moscow, officer Rambal comes to Bazdeev's house with his batman. The insane brother of Bazdeev, who lived in the same house, shoots at Rambal, but Pierre snatches the pistol from him. During dinner, Rambal frankly tells Pierre about himself, about his love affairs; Pierre tells the Frenchman the story of his love for Natasha. The next morning he goes to the city, no longer believing his intention to kill Napoleon, saves the girl, stands up for the Armenian family, which is robbed by the French; he is arrested by a detachment of French lancers.

Petersburg life, "preoccupied only with ghosts, reflections of life," went on in the old way. Anna Pavlovna Scherer had an evening at which Metropolitan Platon's letter to the sovereign was read and Helen Bezukhova's illness was discussed. The next day, news was received about the abandonment of Moscow; after some time, Colonel Michaud arrived from Kutuzov with the news of the abandonment and fire of Moscow; during a conversation with Michaud, Alexander said that he himself would stand at the head of his army, but would not sign peace. Meanwhile, Napoleon sends Loriston to Kutuzov with an offer of peace, but Kutuzov refuses "any kind of deal." The tsar demanded offensive actions, and, despite Kutuzov's reluctance, the Tarutino battle was given.

One autumn night, Kutuzov receives news that the French have left Moscow. Until the very expulsion of the enemy from the borders of Russia, all the activities of Kutuzov are aimed only at keeping the troops from useless offensives and clashes with the dying enemy. The French army melts in retreat; Kutuzov, on the way from Krasnoye to the main apartment, addresses the soldiers and officers: "While they were strong, we did not feel sorry for ourselves, but now you can feel sorry for them. They are also people." Intrigues do not stop against the commander-in-chief, and in Vilna the sovereign reprimands Kutuzov for his slowness and mistakes. Nevertheless, Kutuzov was awarded George I degree. But in the upcoming campaign - already outside of Russia - Kutuzov is not needed. "There was nothing left for the representative of the people's war but death. And he died."

Nikolai Rostov goes for repairs (to buy horses for the division) to Voronezh, where he meets Princess Marya; he again has thoughts of marrying her, but he is bound by the promise he made to Sonya. Unexpectedly, he receives a letter from Sonya, in which she returns his word to him (the letter was written at the insistence of the Countess). Princess Mary, having learned that her brother is in Yaroslavl, at the Rostovs, goes to him. She sees Natasha, her grief and feels closeness between herself and Natasha. She finds her brother in a state where he already knows that he will die. Natasha understood the meaning of the turning point that occurred in Prince Andrei shortly before her sister's arrival: she tells Princess Marya that Prince Andrei "is too good, he cannot live." When Prince Andrei died, Natasha and Princess Marya experienced "reverent tenderness" before the sacrament of death.

The arrested Pierre is brought to the guardhouse, where he is kept along with other detainees; he is interrogated by French officers, then he gets interrogated by Marshal Davout. Davout was known for his cruelty, but when Pierre and the French marshal exchanged glances, they both vaguely felt that they were brothers. This look saved Pierre. He, along with others, was taken to the place of execution, where the French shot five, and Pierre and the rest of the prisoners were taken to the barracks. The spectacle of the execution had a terrible effect on Bezukhov, in his soul "everything fell into a heap of senseless rubbish." A neighbor in the barracks (his name was Platon Karataev) fed Pierre and reassured him with his affectionate speech. Pierre forever remembered Karataev as the personification of everything "Russian good and round." Plato sews shirts for the French and several times notices that there are different people among the French. A party of prisoners is taken out of Moscow, and together with the retreating army they go along the Smolensk road. During one of the crossings, Karataev falls ill and is killed by the French. After that, Bezukhov has a dream at a halt in which he sees a ball, the surface of which consists of drops. Drops move, move; “Here he is, Karataev, spilled over and disappeared,” Pierre dreams. The next morning, a detachment of prisoners was repulsed by Russian partisans.

Denisov, the commander of the partisan detachment, is about to join forces with a small detachment of Dolokhov to attack a large French transport with Russian prisoners. From the German general, the head of a large detachment, a messenger arrives with a proposal to join in joint action against the French. This messenger was Petya Rostov, who remained for a day in Denisov's detachment. Petya sees Tikhon Shcherbaty returning to the detachment, a peasant who went to "take his tongue" and escaped the chase. Dolokhov arrives and, together with Petya Rostov, goes on reconnaissance to the French. When Petya returns to the detachment, he asks the Cossack to sharpen his saber; he almost falls asleep, and he dreams of the music. The next morning, the detachment attacks the French transport, and Petya dies during the skirmish. Among the captured prisoners was Pierre.

After his release, Pierre is in Orel - he is ill, the physical hardships he has experienced are affecting, but mentally he feels freedom he has never experienced before. He learns about the death of his wife, that Prince Andrei was still alive for a month after being wounded. Arriving in Moscow, Pierre goes to Princess Mary, where he meets Natasha. After the death of Prince Andrei, Natasha closed herself in her grief; She is brought out of this state by the news of Petya's death. She does not leave her mother for three weeks, and only she can ease the grief of the countess. When Princess Marya leaves for Moscow, Natasha, at the insistence of her father, goes with her. Pierre discusses with Princess Mary the possibility of happiness with Natasha; Natasha also awakens love for Pierre.

Seven years have passed. Natasha marries Pierre in 1813. The old Count Rostov is dying. Nikolai retires, accepts an inheritance - the debts turn out to be twice as much as the estates. He, along with his mother and Sonya, settled in Moscow, in a modest apartment. Having met Princess Marya, he tries to be restrained and dry with her (the thought of marrying a rich bride is unpleasant to him), but an explanation takes place between them, and in the fall of 1814 Rostov marries Princess Bolkonskaya. They move to the Bald Mountains; Nikolai skillfully manages the household and soon pays off his debts. Sonya lives in his house; "She, like a cat, took root not with people, but with the house."

In December 1820, Natasha and her children stayed with her brother. They are waiting for Pierre's arrival from Petersburg. Pierre arrives, brings gifts to everyone. In the office between Pierre, Denisov (he is also visiting the Rostovs) and Nikolai, a conversation takes place, Pierre is a member of a secret society; he talks about bad government and the need for change. Nikolai disagrees with Pierre and says that he cannot accept the secret society. During the conversation, Nikolenka Bolkonsky, the son of Prince Andrei, is present. At night, he dreams that he, along with Uncle Pierre, in helmets, as in the book of Plutarch, are walking ahead of a huge army. Nikolenka wakes up with thoughts of her father and the future glory.

Anna Karenina Roman (1873 - 1877)

In the Moscow house of the Oblonskys, where "everything was mixed up" at the end of the winter of 1873, they were waiting for the owner's sister, Anna Arkadyevna Karenina. The reason for the family discord was that Prince Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky was caught by his wife in treason with a governess. Thirty-four-year-old Stiva Oblonsky sincerely regrets his wife Dolly, but, being a truthful person, does not assure himself that he repents of his deed. Cheerful, kind and carefree Stiva has long been no longer in love with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and has long been unfaithful to her.

Stiva is completely indifferent to the work he does while serving as a boss in one of the Moscow presences, and this allows him to never get carried away, not make mistakes and perfectly fulfill his duties. Friendly, condescending to human shortcomings, charming Stiva enjoys the location of the people of his circle, subordinates, bosses and, in general, everyone with whom his life brings. Debts and family troubles upset him, but they cannot spoil his mood enough to make him refuse to dine in a good restaurant. He is having lunch with Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin, who has arrived from the village, his peer and a friend of his youth.

Levin came to propose to the eighteen-year-old Princess Kitty Shcherbatskaya, Oblonsky's sister-in-law, with whom he had long been in love. Levin is sure that such a girl, who is above all earthly things, like Kitty, cannot love him, an ordinary landowner, without special, as he believes, talents. In addition, Oblonsky informs him that, apparently, he has a rival - a brilliant representative of the St. Petersburg "golden youth", Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky.

Kitty knows about Levin's love and feels at ease and free with him; with Vronsky, however, she experiences an incomprehensible awkwardness. But it is difficult for her to understand her own feelings, she does not know who to give preference to. Kitty does not suspect that Vronsky does not at all intend to marry her, and her dreams of a happy future with him make her refuse Levin.

Meeting his mother, who has arrived from St. Petersburg, Vronsky sees Anna Arkadyevna Karenina at the station. He immediately notices the special expressiveness of Anna's whole appearance: "It was as if an excess of something so overwhelmed her being that, against her will, it was expressed either in a gleam of a look, or in a smile." The meeting is overshadowed by a sad circumstance: the death of a station watchman under the wheels of a train, which Anna considers a bad omen.

Anna manages to persuade Dolly to forgive her husband; a fragile peace is established in the Oblonskys' house, and Anna goes to the ball together with the Oblonskys and the Shcherbatskys. At the ball, Kitty admires Anna's naturalness and grace, admires that special, poetic inner world that appears in her every movement. Kitty expects a lot from this ball: she is sure that during the mazurka Vronsky will explain himself to her. Unexpectedly, she notices how Vronsky is talking with Anna: in each of their glances, an irresistible attraction to each other is felt, each word decides their fate. Kitty leaves in despair. Anna Karenina returns home to Petersburg; Vronsky follows her.

Blaming himself alone for the failure of the matchmaking, Levin returns to the village. Before leaving, he meets with his older brother Nikolai, who lives in cheap rooms with a woman he took from a brothel. Levin loves his brother, despite his irrepressible nature, which brings a lot of trouble to himself and those around him. Seriously ill, lonely, drinking, Nikolai Levin is fascinated by the communist idea and the organization of some kind of locksmith artel; this saves him from self-contempt. A meeting with his brother exacerbates the shame and dissatisfaction with himself, which Konstantin Dmitrievich experiences after the matchmaking. He calms down only in his family estate Pokrovsky, deciding to work even harder and not allow himself luxury - which, however, had not been in his life before.

The usual Petersburg life, to which Anna returns, causes her disappointment. She had never been in love with her husband, who was much older than her, and had only respect for him. Now his company becomes painful for her, she notices the slightest of his shortcomings: too big ears, the habit of cracking his fingers. Nor does her love for her eight-year-old son Seryozha save her. Anna tries to regain her peace of mind, but she fails - mainly because Alexei Vronsky seeks her favor in every possible way. Vronsky is in love with Anna, and his love is intensified because an affair with a lady of high society makes his position even more brilliant. Despite the fact that his whole inner life is filled with passion for Anna, outwardly Vronsky leads the usual, cheerful and pleasant life of a guards officer: with the Opera, the French theater, balls, horse races and other pleasures. But their relationship with Anna is too different in the eyes of others from easy secular flirting; strong passion causes general condemnation. Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin notices the attitude of the world to his wife's affair with Count Vronsky and expresses his displeasure to Anna. Being a high-ranking official, "Alexey Alexandrovich lived and worked all his life in the spheres of service, dealing with reflections of life. And every time he encountered life itself, he moved away from it." Now he feels himself in the position of a man standing above the abyss.

Karenin's attempts to stop his wife's irresistible desire for Vronsky, Anna's attempts to restrain herself, are unsuccessful. A year after the first meeting, she becomes Vronsky's mistress - realizing that now they are connected forever, like criminals. Vronsky is burdened by the uncertainty of relations, persuades Anna to leave her husband and join her life with him. But Anna cannot decide on a break with Karenin, and even the fact that she is expecting a child from Vronsky does not give her determination.

During the races, which are attended by all the high society, Vronsky falls from his horse Frou-Frou. Not knowing how serious the fall is, Anna expresses her despair so openly that Karenin is forced to take her away immediately. She announces to her husband about her infidelity, about disgust for him. This news produces on Alexei Alexandrovich the impression of a diseased tooth pulled out: he finally gets rid of the suffering of jealousy and leaves for Petersburg, leaving his wife at the dacha awaiting his decision. But, having gone through all the possible options for the future - a duel with Vronsky, a divorce - Karenin decides to leave everything unchanged, punishing and humiliating Anna with the requirement to observe the false appearance of family life under the threat of separation from her son. Having made this decision, Alexey Alexandrovich finds enough calmness to give himself over to reflections on the affairs of the service with his characteristic stubborn ambition. The decision of her husband causes Anna to burst into hatred for him. She considers him a soulless machine, not thinking that she has a soul and the need for love. Anna realizes that she is driven into a corner, because she is unable to exchange her current position for the position of a mistress who left her husband and son and deserves universal contempt.

The remaining uncertainty of relations is also painful for Vronsky, who in the depths of his soul loves order and has an unshakable set of rules of conduct. For the first time in his life, he does not know how to behave further, how to bring his love for Anna into line with the rules of life. In the event of a connection with her, he will be forced to retire, and this is also not easy for him: Vronsky loves regimental life, enjoys the respect of his comrades; besides, he is ambitious.

The life of three people is entangled in a web of lies. Anna's pity for her husband alternates with disgust; she cannot but meet with Vronsky, as Alexey Alexandrovitch demands. Finally, childbirth occurs, during which Anna almost dies. Lying in childbed fever, she asks for forgiveness from Alexei Alexandrovich, and at her bedside he feels pity for his wife, tender compassion and spiritual joy. Vronsky, whom Anna unconsciously rejects, experiences burning shame and humiliation. He tries to shoot himself, but is rescued.

Anna does not die, and when the softening of her soul caused by the proximity of death passes, she again begins to be burdened by her husband. Neither his decency and generosity, nor touching concern for a newborn girl does not save her from irritation; she hates Karenin even for his virtues. A month after her recovery, Anna goes abroad with retired Vronsky and her daughter.

Living in the countryside, Levin takes care of the estate, reads, writes a book on agriculture and undertakes various economic reorganizations that do not find approval among the peasants. The village for Levin is "a place of life, that is, joys, suffering, work." The peasants respect him, for forty miles they go to him for advice - and they strive to deceive him for their own benefit. There is no deliberateness in Levin's attitude towards the people: he considers himself a part of the people, all his interests are connected with the peasants. He admires the strength, meekness, justice of the peasants and is irritated by their carelessness, slovenliness, drunkenness, and lies. In disputes with his half-brother Sergei Ivanovich Koznyshev, who came to visit, Levin proves that zemstvo activities do not benefit the peasants, because they are not based either on knowledge of their true needs, or on the personal interest of the landowners.

Levin feels his merging with nature; he even hears the growth of spring grass. In the summer, he mows with the peasants, feeling the joy of simple labor. Despite all this, he considers his life idle and dreams of changing it to a working, clean and common life. Subtle changes are constantly taking place in his soul, and Levin listens to them. At one time it seems to him that he has found peace and forgotten his dreams of family happiness. But this illusion crumbles to dust when he learns about Kitty's serious illness, and then sees her herself, going to her sister in the village. The feeling that seemed dead again takes possession of his heart, and only in love does he see the opportunity to unravel the great mystery of life.

In Moscow, at a dinner at the Oblonskys, Levin meets Kitty and realizes that she loves him. In a state of high spirits, he proposes to Kitty and receives consent. Immediately after the wedding, the young people leave for the village.

Vronsky and Anna are traveling through Italy. At first, Anna feels happy and full of the joy of life. Even the consciousness that she is separated from her son, that she has lost her honorable name and that she has become the cause of her husband's misfortune, does not overshadow her happiness. Vronsky is lovingly respectful towards her, he does everything to ensure that she is not burdened by her position. But he himself, despite his love for Anna, feels longing and grabs at everything that can give his life significance. He begins painting, but having enough taste, he knows his mediocrity and soon becomes disillusioned with this occupation.

Upon returning to St. Petersburg, Anna clearly feels her rejection: they do not want to accept her, acquaintances avoid meeting her. Insults from the world poison Vronsky's life, but, busy with her experiences, Anna does not want to notice this. On Seryozha's birthday, she secretly goes to him and, finally seeing her son, feeling his love for herself, she realizes that she cannot be happy apart from him. In despair, in irritation, she reproaches Vronsky for falling out of love with her; it costs him great efforts to calm her down, after which they leave for the village.

The first time of married life turns out to be difficult for Kitty and Levin: they hardly get used to each other, charms are replaced by disappointments, quarrels - reconciliations. Family life seems to Levin like a boat: it is pleasant to look at sliding on water, but it is very difficult to rule. Unexpectedly, Levin receives news that brother Nikolai is dying in the provincial town. He immediately goes to him; despite his protests, Kitty decides to go with him. Seeing his brother, experiencing tormenting pity for him, Levin still cannot rid himself of the fear and disgust that the nearness of death arouses in him. He is shocked that Kitty is not at all afraid of the dying man and knows how to behave with him. Levin feels that only the love of his wife saves him in these days from horror and himself.

During Kitty's pregnancy, about which Levin learns on the day of his brother's death, the family continues to live in Pokrovsky, where relatives and friends come for the summer. Levin cherishes the spiritual closeness that he has established with his wife, and is tormented by jealousy, fearing to lose this closeness.

Dolly Oblonskaya, visiting her sister, decides to visit Anna Karenina, who lives with Vronsky on his estate, not far from Pokrovsky. Dolly is struck by the changes that have taken place in Karenina, she feels the falsity of her current way of life, especially noticeable in comparison with her former liveliness and naturalness. Anna entertains guests, tries to take care of her daughter, reading, setting up a village hospital. But her main concern is to replace Vronsky with herself for everything that he left for her sake. Their relationship is becoming more and more tense, Anna is jealous of everything that he is fond of, even of the Zemstvo activities, which Vronsky is engaged in mainly in order not to lose his independence. In the fall, they move to Moscow, waiting for Karenin's decision on a divorce. But, offended in his best feelings, rejected by his wife, finding himself alone, Alexei Alexandrovich falls under the influence of the well-known spiritualist, Princess Myagkaya, who persuades him, for religious reasons, not to give a criminal wife a divorce.

In the relationship between Vronsky and Anna there is neither complete discord nor agreement. Anna accuses Vronsky of all the hardships of her position; attacks of desperate jealousy are instantly replaced by tenderness; quarrels break out every now and then. In Anna's dreams, the same nightmare is repeated: some peasant leans over her, mutters meaningless French words and does something terrible to her. After a particularly difficult quarrel, Vronsky, against Anna's wishes, goes to visit his mother. In complete dismay, Anna sees her relationship with him as if by a bright light. She understands that her love is becoming more and more passionate and selfish, and Vronsky, without losing his love for her, is still weary of her and tries not to be dishonorable towards her. Trying to achieve his repentance, she follows him to the station, where she suddenly remembers the man crushed by the train on the day of their first meeting - and immediately understands what she needs to do. Anna throws herself under the train; her last vision is of a mumbling peasant. After that, "the candle, under which she read a book full of anxieties, deceptions, grief and evil, flared up with a brighter light than ever, illuminated for her everything that had previously been in darkness, crackled, began to fade and went out forever."

Life becomes hateful for Vronsky; he is tormented by an unnecessary, but indelible remorse. He leaves as a volunteer for the war with the Turks in Serbia; Karenin takes his daughter to her.

After Kitty's birth, which became a deep spiritual shock for Levin, the family returns to the village. Levin is in painful disagreement with himself - because after the death of his brother and the birth of his son he cannot resolve for himself the most important questions: the meaning of life, the meaning of death. He feels that he is close to suicide, and is afraid to walk around with a gun so as not to shoot himself. But at the same time, Levin notices: when he does not ask himself why he lives, he feels in his soul the presence of an infallible judge, and his life becomes firm and definite. Finally, he understands that the knowledge of the laws of good, given personally to him, Levin, in the Gospel Revelation, cannot be grasped by reason and expressed in words. Now he feels himself able to put an undeniable sense of goodness into every minute of his life.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov 1860 - 1904

A boring story From the notes of an old man. Tale (1889)

Professor of Medicine Nikolai Stepanovich is a scientist who has reached the heights of his science, enjoying universal honor and gratitude; his name is known to every literate person in Russia. The bearer of this name, that is, himself, is an old man, terminally ill; according to his own diagnosis, he has no more than six months left to live. In his notes, he tries to understand the situation in which he found himself: he, a famous person, was sentenced to death. He describes the usual course of his present life.

Sleeplessness every night. Household - wife and daughter Lisa, whom he used to love, now only irritate him with their petty everyday worries. The closest collaborators: eccentric and devoted university porter Nikolai, prosector Pyotr Ignatievich, a draft horse and a learned dumbass. The work that used to give Nikolai Stepanovich pleasure, his university lectures, once equal to the works of the poet, now bring him nothing but torment.

Nikolai Stepanovich is not a philosopher or a theologian, all his life the fate of the bone marrow interested him more than the ultimate goal of the universe, his soul does not want to know questions about the darkness beyond the grave. But what pleased his life - peace and happiness in the family, favorite work, self-confidence - gone forever. New thoughts, which he did not know before, poison his last days. It seems to him that life has deceived him, his glorious name, his brilliant past do not alleviate today's pain.

Ordinary visitors of the old professor. A faculty colleague, a negligent student, a dissertation begging for a topic - everyone seems to Nikolai Stepanovich funny, narrow-minded, limited, everyone gives a reason for irritation or mockery. But here is another welcome visitor: familiar steps, the rustle of a dress, a sweet voice...

Katya, the daughter of a late fellow ophthalmologist, grew up in the family of Nikolai Stepanovich. Even by the age of fifteen, she was seized by a passionate love for the theater. Dreaming of fame and service to art, trusting and addicted, she went into provincial actresses, but after two years she became disillusioned with the theater business, with stage mates, lost faith in her talent, experienced unhappy love, attempted suicide, buried her child. Nikolai Stepanovich, who loved Katya like a daughter, tried to help her with advice, wrote her long but useless letters. Now, after the crash, Katya lives on the remnants of her father's inheritance. She has lost interest in life, lies at home on the couch and reads books, but once a day she hangs Nikolai Stepanovich. She does not love his wife and Lisa, they reciprocate her.

An ordinary family dinner also brings Nikolai Stepanovich nothing but irritation. Present are his wife, Lisa, two or three of her friends from the conservatory, and Alexander Adolfovich Gnekker, a person who inspires sharp antipathy to the professor. An admirer of Liza and a contender for her hand, he visits the house every day, but no one knows what his origin is and on what means he lives. He sells someone's grand pianos somewhere, is familiar with celebrities, judges music with great authority - he took root in art, Nikolai Stepanovich draws a conclusion for himself.

He longingly recalls the former, simple and cheerful family dinners, sullenly thinks that for a long time the inner life of his wife and Lisa has eluded his observation. They are no longer the same as he knew and loved them before. Why there was a change - he does not know.

After dinner, his wife, as usual, begs him to go to Kharkov, where Gnekker is from, to make inquiries there about his parents and condition.

From a feeling of loneliness, from fear of insomnia, Nikolai Stepanovich leaves the house. Where to go? The answer has long been clear to him: to Katya.

Only at Katya's he is warm and comfortable, only she can complain about his condition. Before, he tells her, he had the feeling of a king, he could be condescending, forgiving everyone right and left. But now evil thoughts roam in his head day and night, decent only for slaves. He became excessively strict, demanding, irritable. His whole past life seems to him a beautiful, talented composition, the only thing left is not to spoil the ending, to meet death cheerfully and with a calm soul. "But I ruin the ending..."

Katya has another guest, philologist Mikhail Fedorovich. He is obviously in love with her and does not dare to admit it to her. He entertains with anecdotes from university life, and his slander also irritates Nikolai Stepanovich. He interrupts the talk about the reduction of the new generation, about the lack of ideals among young people with sharp objections. But inwardly he feels that evil, "Arakcheev" thoughts are taking over his being as well. And to the interlocutors, whom he compared with evil toads, he is drawn again every evening.

Summer is coming, the professor and his family live in the country.

At night still insomnia, but during the day instead of work - reading French books. Nikolai Stepanovich knows what creativity is and its main condition: a sense of personal freedom. His judgments about literature, theatre, science are precise and precise. But thoughts of imminent death, now in three or four months, do not leave him. The visitors are the same: doorman, dissector; dinners with the participation of the same Gnekker.

Calls in to give the professor a ride in his chaise, Katya. She understands that her life does not add up, that time and money go aimlessly. "What should I do?" she asks. "What to answer her?" - thinks Nikolai Stepanovich. It's easy to say "work hard" or "give your property to the poor" or "know thyself", but these general and formulaic advice is unlikely to help in this particular case. In the evenings, the same Mikhail Fedorovich, in love and slandering, visits Katya's dacha. And Nikolai Stepanovich, who previously condemned attacks on the university, students, literature, and the theater, is now participating in slander himself.

There are terrible nights with thunder, lightning, rain and wind, which are popularly called sparrow nights. Nikolai Stepanovich also experiences one such night.

He wakes up from the fear of sudden death, unable to control his unaccountable horror. All of a sudden, you hear groans or laughter. His wife comes running, calling him to Lisa's room. She moans from some kind of torment, throws herself on her father's neck: "My dad is good ... I don't know what's wrong with me ... It's hard!" “Help her, help her!” the wife pleads. “Do something!” "What can I do? I can't do anything," the father reflects. “There is some kind of heaviness in the girl’s soul, but I don’t understand anything, I don’t know, and I can only mutter: “Nothing, nothing .. It will pass ... Sleep, sleep ...”

A few hours later he is in his room, still awake, hears a knock on the window. This is Katya. And she has some heavy forebodings that night. She begs Nikolai Stepanovich to take her money from her and go somewhere for treatment. After his refusal, she dejectedly leaves.

Nikolai Stepanovich in Kharkov, where his wife insistently sent. The state of anger and irritation was replaced by a new one: complete indifference. He learns here that nothing is known about Gnekker in the city, but when a telegram arrives from his wife with the message that Gnekker has secretly married Liza, he meets the news with indifference. This frightens him: after all, indifference is paralysis of the soul, premature death.

Morning finds him sitting in bed in a hotel room, busy with the same haunting thoughts. It seems to him that he understood the cause of that weakness that led him on the eve of the end to evil, slavish thoughts, and then to indifference. The fact is that in his thoughts, feelings, judgments there is no general idea, or the god of a living person. "And if this is not there, then it means that there is nothing." If there is nothing in common that would bind everything into one whole, a serious illness, the fear of death, was enough for everything that saw the meaning and joy of life to be torn to pieces. Nikolai Stepanovich finally gives up and decides to sit and silently wait for what will happen.

There is a knock on the door, Katya is standing in front of him. She arrived, she says, just like that, drops a letter from Mikhail Fedorovich. Then, turning pale and clasping his hands, he turns to Nikolai Stepanovich: “For the sake of the true God, tell me quickly, this minute: what should I do? ... After all, you are my father, my only friend! .. You were a teacher! Tell me what to do ?"

Nikolai Stepanovich can hardly stand on his feet, he is confused.

“In all honesty, Katya, I don’t know ... Come on, Katya, have breakfast.”

Having received no answer, she leaves - where, she does not know herself. And he sees her, probably for the last time.

"Farewell, my treasure!"

Duel Tale (1891)

In a town on the Black Sea, two friends are talking while swimming. Ivan Andreyevich Laevsky, a young man of twenty-eight, shares the secrets of his personal life with military doctor Samoylenko. Two years ago, he met with a married woman, they fled from St. Petersburg to the Caucasus, telling themselves that they would start a new working life there. But the town turned out to be boring, people were uninteresting, Laevsky did not know how and did not want to work on the land in the sweat of his brow, and therefore from the first day he felt bankrupt. In his relationship with Nadezhda Fedorovna, he no longer sees anything but a lie, living with her is now beyond his strength. He dreams of running back to the north. But you can’t part with her either: she has no relatives, no money, she doesn’t know how to work. There is another difficulty: the news of the death of her husband came, which means for Laevsky and Nadezhda Fedorovna the opportunity to get married. Good Samoylenko advises his friend to do exactly this.

Everything that Nadezhda Fedorovna says and does seems to Laevsky to be a lie or similar to a lie. At breakfast, he can barely contain his irritation; even the way she swallows milk evokes heavy hatred in him. The desire to quickly sort things out and run away now does not let him go. Laevsky is accustomed to finding explanations and justifications for his life in someone’s theories, in literary types; he compares himself with Onegin and Pechorin, with Anna Karenina, with Hamlet. He is ready either to blame himself for the lack of a guiding idea, to admit that he is a loser and an extra person, or to justify himself to himself. But just as he previously believed in salvation from the emptiness of life in the Caucasus, he now believes that as soon as he leaves Nadezhda Fedorovna and goes to St. Petersburg, he will live a cultured, intelligent, cheerful life.

Samoilenko keeps something like a table d'hôte; the young zoologist von Koren and Pobedov, who has just graduated from the seminary, are dining with him.

“In the name of saving humanity, we ourselves must take care of the destruction of the frail and worthless,” says the zoologist coldly.

The laughing deacon laughs, but the stunned Samoylenko can only say: "If people are drowned and hanged, then to hell with your civilization, to hell with humanity! To hell!"

On Sunday morning Nadezhda Fyodorovna goes for a swim in the most festive mood. She likes herself, I'm sure that all the men they meet admire her. She feels guilty before Laevsky. During these two years she had run into debts in Achmianov's shop for three hundred rubles, and she was not going to say anything about it. In addition, she had twice hosted the police officer Kirilin. But Nadezhda Fyodorovna happily thinks that her soul did not participate in her betrayal, she continues to love Laevsky, and everything is already broken with Kirilin. In the bathhouse, she talks with an elderly lady, Marya Konstantinovna Bityugova, and learns that in the evening the local society is having a picnic on the banks of a mountain stream.

On the way to the picnic, von Koren tells the deacon about his plans to go on an expedition along the coast of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans; Laevsky, riding in another carriage, scolds the Caucasian landscapes. He constantly feels von Koren's dislike for himself and regrets that he went to the picnic. At the mountain spirit of the Tartar Kerbalai, the company stops.

Nadezhda Fyodorovna is in a playful mood, she wants to laugh, tease, flirt. But the persecution of Kirilin and the advice of the young Achmianov to beware of that darken her joy. Laevsky, tired of the picnic and von Koren's undisguised hatred, takes out his irritation on Nadezhda Fyodorovna and calls her a cocotte. On the way back, von Koren admits to Samoylenko that his hand would not tremble if the state or society had instructed him to destroy Laevsky.

At home, after a picnic, Laevsky informs Nadezhda Fyodorovna about the death of her husband and, feeling at home as in a prison, goes to Samoylenko. He begs his friend to help, lend him three hundred rubles, promises to arrange everything with Nadezhda Fyodorovna, to make peace with his mother. Samoylenko offers to reconcile with von Koren, but Laevsky says that this is impossible. Maybe he would have extended his hand to him, but von Koren would have turned away with contempt. After all, this is a firm, despotic nature. And his ideals are despotic. People for him are puppies and nonentities, too small to be the goal of his life. He works, goes on an expedition, breaks his neck there, not in the name of love for his neighbor, but in the name of such abstractions as humanity, future generations, an ideal breed of people ... He would order to shoot anyone who goes beyond the circle of our narrow conservative morality, and all this in the name of improving the human race... Despots have always been illusionists. With enthusiasm, Laevsky says that he clearly sees his shortcomings and is aware of them. This will help him to resurrect and become a different person, and he is passionately waiting for this rebirth and renewal.

Three days after the picnic, an excited Marya Konstantinovna comes to Nadezhda Fedorovna and invites her to be her matchmaker. But a wedding with Laevsky, Nadezhda Fyodorovna feels, is now impossible. She cannot tell Marya Konstantinovna everything: how confused her relationship with Kirilin, with the young Achmianov. From all the experiences she starts a strong fever.

Laevsky feels guilty before Nadezhda Fyodorovna. But the thought of leaving next Saturday so possessed him that he asked Samoylenko, who came to visit the patient, only if he could get money. But there is no money yet. Samoilenko decides to ask von Koren for a hundred rubles. He, after a dispute, agrees to give money for Laevsky, but only on the condition that he leaves not alone, but together with Nadezhda Fyodorovna.

The next day, Thursday, while visiting Marya Konstantinovna, Samoylenko told Laevsky about the condition set by von Koren. The guests, including von Koren, play mail. Laevsky, automatically participating in the game, thinks about how much he has to and still has to lie, what a mountain of lies prevents him from starting a new life. In order to skip it at once, and not lie in parts, you need to decide on some kind of drastic measure, but he feels that this is impossible for him. A malicious note, apparently sent by von Koren, causes him a hysterical fit. Having come to his senses, in the evening, as usual, he leaves to play cards.

On the way from the guests to the house, Nadezhda Fyodorovna is pursued by Kirilin. He threatens her with a scandal if she does not give him a date today. Nadezhda Fyodorovna is disgusted with him, she begs to let her go, but in the end she gives in. Behind them, unnoticed, young Achmianov is watching.

The next day, Laevsky goes to Samoylenko to take money from him, since it is shameful and impossible to remain in the city after a tantrum. He finds only von Koren. A short conversation follows; Laevsky understands that he knows about his plans. He keenly feels that the zoologist hates him, despises and mocks him, and that he is his most bitter and implacable enemy. When Samoilenko arrives, Laevsky, in a nervous fit, accuses him of not being able to keep other people's secrets, and insults von Koren. Von Koren seemed to be waiting for this attack, he challenges Laevsky to a duel. Samoylenko unsuccessfully tries to reconcile them.

On the evening before the duel, Laevsky is first possessed by hatred for von Koren, then, over wine and cards, he becomes careless, then anxiety seizes him. When young Achmianov takes him to some house and there he sees Kirilin, and next to him Nadezhda Fedorovna, all feelings seem to disappear from his soul.

Von Koren that evening on the embankment talks with the deacon about the different understanding of the teachings of Christ. What is love for one's neighbor? In the elimination of everything that in one way or another harms people and threatens them with danger in the present or future, the zoologist believes. Humanity is in danger from the morally and physically abnormal, and they must be rendered harmless, that is, destroyed. But where are the criteria for distinguishing, because mistakes are possible? asks the deacon. There is nothing to be afraid of getting your feet wet when a flood threatens, the zoologist replies.

On the night before the duel, Laevsky listens to the thunderstorm outside the window, goes over his past in his memory, sees only lies in it, feels guilty for the fall of Nadezhda Fyodorovna and is ready to beg her forgiveness. If it were possible to return the past, he would find God and justice, but this is just as impossible as returning a sunken star back to heaven. Before leaving for the duel, he goes to Nadezhda Fyodorovna's bedroom. She looks with horror at Laevsky, but he, having embraced her, understands that this unfortunate, vicious woman is for him the only close, dear and irreplaceable person. Sitting in a carriage, he wants to return home alive.

The deacon, leaving early in the morning to see the duel, ponders why Laevsky and von Koren can hate each other and fight duels? Wouldn't it be better for them to go down lower and direct hatred and anger to where whole streets are groaning from gross ignorance, greed, reproaches, impurity ... Sitting in a strip of corn, he sees opponents and seconds arrive. Two green rays stretch out from behind the mountains, the sun rises. No one knows exactly the rules of the duel, they recall the descriptions of duels by Lermontov, Turgenev ... Laevsky shoots first; fearing that the bullet would not hit von Koren, he makes a shot in the air. Von Koren aims the muzzle of the pistol straight at Laevsky's face. "He will kill him!" - the desperate cry of the deacon makes him miss.

Three months pass. On the day of his departure for the expedition, von Koren, accompanied by Samoylenko and the deacon, goes to the pier. Passing by Laevsky's house, they talk about the change that has taken place with him. He married Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and works from morning to evening to pay his debts... Deciding to enter the house, von Koren holds out his hand to Laevsky. He has not changed his beliefs, but admits that he was wrong about his former adversary. Nobody knows the real truth, he says. Yes, no one knows the truth, agrees Laevsky.

He watches how the boat with von Koren overcomes the waves, and thinks: it's the same in life ... In search of the truth, people take two steps forward, one step back ... And who knows? Perhaps they will swim to the real truth ...

Jumper's Story (1891, publ. 1892)

Osip Ivanovich Dymov, a titular adviser and doctor for thirty-one years, serves in two hospitals at the same time: an intern and a dissector. From nine o'clock in the morning until noon he receives patients, then he goes to dissect corpses. But his income is barely enough to cover the expenses of his wife - Olga Ivanovna, twenty-two years old, obsessed with talents and celebrities in the artistic and artistic environment, whom she receives daily in the house. Passion for people of art is fueled by the fact that she herself sings a little, sculpts, draws and, according to her friends, has an underdeveloped talent in everything at once. Among the guests of the house, the landscape painter and animal painter Ryabovsky stands out - "a fair-haired young man, about twenty-five, who had success at exhibitions and sold his last painting for five hundred rubles" (which is equal to the annual income from Dymov's private practice).

Dymov loves his wife. They met when he treated her father, on duty at night near him. She loves him too. There is "something" in Dymovo, she tells her friends: "How much self-sacrifice, sincere participation!" "... there is something strong, powerful, bearish in him," she tells the guests, as if explaining why she, an artistic nature, married such a "very ordinary and unremarkable person." Dymov (she does not call her husband except by his last name, often adding: "Let me shake your honest hand!" - which betrays an echo of Turgenev's "emancipe" in her) finds herself in the position of either a husband or a servant. That's what she calls him: "My dear maître d'!" Dymov prepares snacks, rushes to get clothes for his wife, who spends the summer at the dacha with friends. One scene is the height of Dymov's male humiliation: having arrived at his wife's dacha after a hard day and brought snacks with him, dreaming of having dinner and rest, he immediately sets off by train back at night, because Olga intends to take part in the telegrapher's wedding the next day and not can do without a decent hat, dress, flowers, gloves.

Olga Ivanovna, together with the artists, spends the rest of the summer on the Volga. Dymov remains to work and send money to his wife. On the ship, Ryabovsky confesses his love to Olga, she becomes his mistress. He tries not to think about Dymov. "Indeed: what is Dymov? why Dymov? what does she care about Dymov?" But soon Olga bored Ryabovsky; he gladly sends her to her husband when she gets bored with life in the village - in a dirty hut on the banks of the Volga. Ryabovsky - Chekhov's type of "bored" artist. He is talented but lazy. Sometimes it seems to him that he has reached the limit of his creative possibilities, but sometimes he works without rest and then he creates something significant. He is able to live only by creativity, and women do not mean much to him.

Dymov meets his wife with joy. She does not dare to confess in connection with Ryabovsky. But Ryabovsky arrives, and their romance continues languidly, causing boredom in him, boredom and jealousy in her. Dymov begins to guess about the betrayal, worries, but does not show it and works more than before. One day he says that he has defended his dissertation and he may be offered a privatdocentre in general pathology. It can be seen from his face that "if Olga Ivanovna had shared his joy and triumph with him, he would have forgiven her everything <...> but she did not understand what the privatdocentura and general pathology meant, and besides, she was afraid to be late to the theater and said nothing. Dymov's colleague Korostelev appears in the house, "a little shorn man with a rumpled face"; Dymov spends all his free time with him in scientific conversations incomprehensible to his wife.

Relations with Ryabovsky come to a standstill. One day, in his workshop, Olga Ivanovna finds a woman, obviously his mistress, and decides to break up with him. At this time, the husband becomes infected with diphtheria, sucking out films from a sick boy, which he, as a doctor, is not obliged to do. Korostelev takes care of him. A local luminary, Dr. Shrek, is invited to the patient, but he cannot help: Dymov is hopeless. Olga Ivanovna finally understands the falsity and meanness of her relationship with her husband, curses the past, and prays to God for help. Korostelev tells her about Dymov's death, cries, accuses Olga Ivanovna of having killed her husband. A great scientist could grow up from him, but the lack of time and home peace did not allow him to become what he rightfully should be. Olga Ivanovna understands that she was the cause of her husband's death, forcing him to engage in private practice and provide her with an idle life. She understands that in the pursuit of celebrities "missed" a true talent. She runs to Dymov's body, cries, calls him, realizing that she was late.

The story ends with Korostelev's simple words, emphasizing the senselessness of the situation: "But what is there to ask? You go to the church gatehouse and ask where the almshouses live. They will wash the body and clean it - they will do everything that is needed."

Chamber No. 6 Tale (1892)

Ward No. 6 for the mentally ill is located in a small hospital wing in a county town. There "it stinks of sour cabbage, wick, bugs and ammonia, and this stink at first gives you the impression that you are entering a menagerie." There are five people in the room. The first is "a thin tradesman with a shiny red mustache and tear-stained eyes." He, apparently, is ill with consumption and is sad and sighs all day long. The second is Moiseyka, a merry little fool who "got crazy about twenty years ago, when his hat workshop burned down." He alone is allowed to leave the ward and go to the city to beg, but everything that he brings is taken away by the watchman Nikita (he is one of those people who adore order in everything, and therefore beats the sick mercilessly). Moiseika loves to serve everyone. In this he imitates the third inhabitant, the only one "of the noble" - the former bailiff Ivan Dmitrievich Gromov. He is from the family of a wealthy official, who from a certain moment began to be haunted by misfortunes. First, the eldest son, Sergei, died. Then he himself was put on trial for forgery and embezzlement, and soon died in the prison hospital. The youngest son Ivan was left with his mother without funds. He studied hard and got a job. But suddenly he turned out to be sick with persecution mania and ended up in ward No. 6. The fourth occupant is "a fat, almost round man with a dull, completely senseless face." He seems to have lost the ability to think and feel; he doesn't react even when Nikita beats him brutally. The fifth and final occupant is "a thin blond man with a kind but somewhat sly face". He has delusions of grandeur, but of a strange quality. From time to time he tells his neighbors that he has received a "Stanislav of the second degree with a star" or some very rare order like the Swedish "Polar Star", but he speaks about it modestly, as if surprised himself.

After describing the patients, the author introduces us to Dr. Andrey Efimych Ragin. In his early youth, he dreamed of being a priest, but his father, a doctor of medicine and a surgeon, forced him to become a physician. His appearance is "heavy, rude, muzhik", but his manners are soft, insinuating, and his voice is thin. When he took office, the "charitable institution" was in a terrible state. Terrible poverty, unsanitary conditions. Ragin was indifferent to this. He is a smart and honest person, but he does not have the will and faith in his right to change life for the better. At first he worked very hard, but soon got bored and realized that in such conditions it was pointless to treat patients. "Besides, why prevent people from dying, if death is the normal and legal end of everyone?" From these arguments, Ragin abandoned his affairs and began to go to the hospital not every day. He developed his own way of life. After a little work, more for show, he goes home and reads. Every half an hour he drinks a glass of vodka and eats a pickled cucumber or a pickled apple. Then he has lunch and drinks beer. By evening, the postmaster Mikhail Averyanych, a former rich but ruined landowner, usually comes. He respects the doctor, and despises other townsfolk. The doctor and the postmaster have meaningless conversations and complain about their fate. When the guest leaves, Ragin continues to read. He reads everything, giving half of his salary for books, but loves philosophy and history most of all. Reading makes him happy.

Once Ragin decided to visit Ward No. 6. There he met Gromov, talked with him and soon became involved in these conversations, often visited Gromov and found strange pleasure in talking with him. They are arguing. The doctor takes the position of the Greek Stoics and preaches contempt for life's suffering, while Gromov dreams of ending suffering, calling the doctor's philosophy laziness and "sleepy madness." Nevertheless, they are drawn to each other, and this does not go unnoticed by the rest. Soon the hospital begins to gossip about visits to the doctor. Then he is invited for an explanation to the city government. This also happens because he has a competitor, assistant Yevgeny Fedorych Khobotov, an envious person who dreams of taking Ragin's place. Formally, the conversation is about the improvement of the hospital, but in fact, officials are trying to find out if the doctor has gone crazy. Ragin understands this and gets angry.

On the same day, the postmaster invites him to go together to unwind in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Warsaw, and Ragin understands that this is also connected with rumors about his mental illness. Finally, he is directly offered to "rest", that is, to resign. He accepts this indifferently and goes with Mikhail Averyanych to Moscow. On the way, the postmaster bores him with his talk, greed, gluttony; he loses Ragin's money at cards, and they return home before reaching Warsaw.

At home, everyone again begins to bother Ragin with his imaginary madness. Finally, he could not stand it and drove Khobotov and the postmaster out of his apartment. He becomes ashamed and goes to apologize to the postmaster. He persuades the doctor to go to the hospital. In the end, he is placed there by cunning: Khobotov invites him to Ward No. 6, allegedly for a consultation, then allegedly leaves for a stethoscope and does not return. The doctor becomes "sick". At first, he tries to somehow get out of the ward, Nikita does not let him in, he and Gromov start a riot, and Nikita hits Ragin in the face. The doctor understands that he will never leave the room. This plunges him into a state of complete hopelessness, and soon he dies of apoplexy. Only Mikhail Averyanych and Daryushka, his former servant, were at the funeral.

The Black Monk's Story (1893, publ. 1894)

Andrey Vasilyevich Kovrin, Master, falls ill with a nerve disorder. On the advice of a doctor friend, he decides to go to the countryside. This decision coincides with an invitation to visit from her childhood friend Tanya Pesotskaya, who lives with her father, Yegor Semenych, in the Borisovka estate. April. Description of the huge crumbling house of the Pesotskys with an old park in the English style. Yegor Semenych is a passionate gardener who devoted his life to his garden and does not know to whom before his death to transfer his farm. On the night when Kovrin arrives, Yegor Semenych and Tanya sleep alternately: they watch the workers who save the trees from frost. Kovrin and Tanya go to the garden and reminisce about their childhood. It is easy to guess from the conversation that Tanya is not indifferent to Kovrin and that she is bored with her father, who does not want to know anything but the garden, and turned her into a humble assistant. Kovrin also likes Tanya, he suggests that he can seriously get carried away, but this thought rather amuses than seriously occupies him.

In the village he leads the same nervous life as in the city: he reads a lot, writes, sleeps little, smokes often and drinks wine. He is extremely impressionable. One day he tells Tanya a legend that he either heard, or read, or saw in a dream. A thousand years ago, a monk dressed in black was walking through the desert in Syria or Arabia. A few miles away, the fishermen saw another black monk, a mirage, moving across the surface of the lake. Then he was seen in Africa, in Spain, in India, even in the Far North ... Finally, he left the earth's atmosphere and now wanders in the Universe, he may be seen on Mars or on some star of the Southern Cross. The meaning of the legend is that a thousand years after the first appearance, the monk must again appear on earth, and now this time has come ... After a conversation with Tanya, Kovrin goes into the garden and suddenly sees a black monk emerging from a whirlwind from earth to sky . He flies past Kovrin; it seems to him that the monk is smiling kindly and slyly at him. Without trying to explain the strange phenomenon, Kovrin returns to the house. He is overwhelmed with joy. He sings, dances, and everyone finds that he has a special, inspired face.

In the evening of the same day Yegor Semenych comes to Kovrin's room. He starts a conversation, from which it is clear that he dreams of marrying Tanya to Kovrin .. in order to be sure of the future of his household. "If you and Tanya had a son, then I would have made a gardener out of him." Tanya and her father often quarrel. Consoling Tanya, Kovrin one day realizes that he has no closer people than she and Yegor Semenych in the whole world. Soon a black monk visits him again, and a conversation takes place between them, in which the monk admits that he exists only in Kovrin's imagination. "You are one of those few who are justly called the chosen ones of God. You serve the eternal truth." All this is very pleasant to listen to Kovrina, but he fears that he is mentally ill. To this, the monk retorts that all brilliant people are sick. "My friend, only ordinary, herd people are healthy and normal." Joyfully excited Kovrin meets Tanya and declares his love for her.

Preparations are underway for the wedding. Kovrin works hard, not noticing the hustle and bustle. He is happy. Once or twice a week he meets with a black monk and has long conversations. He was convinced of his own genius. After the wedding, Tanya and Kovrin move to the city. One night, Kovrin is again visited by a black monk, they are talking. Tanya finds her husband talking to an invisible interlocutor. She is frightened, as is Yegor Semenovich, who is visiting their house. Tanya persuades Kovrin to be treated, he agrees in fear. He realizes that he has gone mad.

Kovrin was treated and almost recovered. Together with Tanya, she spends the summer with her father-in-law in the village. Works little, does not drink wine and does not smoke. He's bored. He quarrels with Tanya and reproaches her for forcing him to be treated. "I went crazy, I had delusions of grandeur, but I was cheerful, cheerful and even happy, I was interesting and original..."

He receives an independent department. But on the day of the first lecture, he notifies by telegram that he will not read due to illness. He is bleeding from his throat. He no longer lives with Tanya, but with another woman, two years older than him - Varvara Nikolaevna, who takes care of him like a child. They go to the Crimea and stop in Sevastopol on the way. While still at home, an hour before departure, he received a letter from Tanya, but he reads it only in Sevastopol. Tanya announces the death of her father, accuses him of this death and curses him. He is seized by "anxiety, similar to fear." He clearly understands that he is mediocrity. He goes out to the balcony and sees a black monk. “Why didn’t you believe me?” he asked reproachfully, looking affectionately at Kovrin. “If you had believed me then that you were a genius, then you would have spent these two years not so sadly and meagerly.” Kovrin again believes that he is God's chosen one, a genius, not noticing that blood is coming from his throat. He calls Tanya, falls and dies: "a blissful smile froze on his face."

Literature teacher Story (1889 - 1894)

A teacher of Russian language and literature in a small provincial town, Sergei Vasilievich Nikitin, is in love with the daughter of a local landowner, Masha Shelestova, eighteen years old, who "the family has not yet lost the habit of considering small" and therefore they call her Manya and Manyusey, and when the circus visited the city, which she diligently attended, they began to call her Marie Godefroy. She is a passionate horsewoman, like her father; often with her sister and guests (mostly officers from the regiment located in the city), she goes out to ride, picking up a special horse for Nikitin, since he is an unimportant rider. Her sister Varya, twenty-three years old, is much more beautiful than Manyusya. She is smart, educated and, as it were, takes the place of her deceased mother in the house. She calls herself an old maid - which means, the author notes, "she was sure that she would marry." In the Shelestovs' house, they have views of one of the frequent guests, staff captain Polyansky, hoping that he will soon make an offer to Varya. Varya is an avid debater. Nikitin irritates her the most. She argues with him on every subject and to his objections she replies: "That's old!" or "It's flat!" This has something in common with her father, who, as usual, scolds everyone behind their backs and repeats at the same time: "This is rudeness!"

Nikitin's main torment is his youthful appearance. Nobody believes that he is twenty-six years old; His students don't respect him, and he doesn't like them himself. School is boring. He shares an apartment with a teacher of geography and history, Ippolit Ippolitich Ryzhitsky, a most boring person, "with a rude and unintelligent face, like that of a craftsman, but good-natured." Ryzhitsky constantly says platitudes: “Now it’s May, soon it will be real summer. And summer is not like winter. death, in delirium, he repeats: "The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea ... Horses eat oats and hay ..."

In love with Manya, Nikitin loves everything in the Shelestovs' house. He does not notice the vulgarity of their lives. “The only thing he didn’t like was the abundance of dogs and cats and the Egyptian pigeons, which moaned dejectedly in a large cage on the terrace,” however, here Nikitin assures himself that they moan “because they don’t know how to express their joy otherwise.” As they get to know the hero, the reader understands that Nikitin is already infected with provincial laziness. For example, one of the guests finds out that the language teacher did not read Lessing. He feels awkward and gives himself the floor to read, but forgets about it. All his thoughts are occupied by Manya. Finally, he declares his love and goes to ask for the hand of Mani from his father. The father does not mind, but "like a man" advises Nikitin to wait: "It's only the peasants who marry early, but there, you know, rudeness, and why are you? What a pleasure it is to put on shackles at such a young age?"

The wedding took place. Her description is in Nikitin's diary, written in an enthusiastic tone. Everything is fine: a young wife, their inherited house, minor household chores, etc. It would seem that the hero is happy. Life with Manya reminds him of "shepherd's idylls." But somehow, during a great post, after returning home after playing cards, he speaks with his wife and learns that Polyansky has transferred to another city. Manya thinks that he acted "badly" by not making the expected proposal to Varya, and these words strike Nikitin unpleasantly. "So," he asked, restraining himself, "if I went to your house, I certainly had to marry you?" "Of course. You yourself understand this very well."

Nikitin feels trapped. He sees that he did not decide his fate, but some dull, extraneous force determined his life. The beginning of spring contrastsly emphasizes the feeling of hopelessness that has taken possession of Nikitin. Behind the wall, Varya and Shelestov, who came to visit, are having lunch. Varya complains of a headache, and the old man goes on and on about “how unreliable young people today are and how little gentlemanliness they have.”

“This is rudeness!” he said. “So I will tell him directly: this is rudeness, gracious sovereign!”

Nikitin dreams of fleeing to Moscow and writes in his diary: "Where am I, my God?! I am surrounded by vulgarity and vulgarity ... There is nothing more terrible, more insulting, more dreary than vulgarity. Run away from here, run away today, otherwise I will go crazy!"

Seagull Comedy (1895 - 1896)

The action takes place in the estate of Peter Nikolaevich Sorin. His sister, Irina Nikolaevna Arkadina, is an actress, visiting his estate with her son, Konstantin Gavrilovich Treplev, and with Boris Alekseevich Trigorin, a novelist, quite famous, although he is not yet forty. They speak of him as a smart, simple, somewhat melancholic and very decent person. As for his literary activity, then, according to Treplev, it is "cute, talented <...> but <...> after Tolstoy or Zola you don't want to read Trigorin."

Konstantin Treplev himself is also trying to write. Considering modern theater a prejudice, he is looking for new forms of theatrical action. Those gathered in the estate are preparing to watch a play staged by the author among natural scenery. The only role to play in it should be Nina Mikhailovna Zarechnaya, a young girl, the daughter of wealthy landowners, with whom Konstantin is in love. Nina's parents are categorically against her passion for the theater, and therefore she must come to the estate secretly.

Konstantin is sure that his mother is against staging the play and, having not yet seen it, passionately hates her, since the novelist, whom she loves, may like Nina Zarechnaya. It also seems to him that his mother does not love him, because his age - and he is twenty-five years old - reminds her of his own years. In addition, Konstantin is haunted by the fact that his mother is a famous actress. He thinks that since he, like his father, is now deceased, a Kiev bourgeois, he is tolerated in the company of famous artists and writers only because of his mother. He also suffers because his mother lives openly with Trigorin and her name constantly appears on the pages of newspapers, that she is stingy, superstitious and jealous of someone else's success.

While waiting for Zarechnaya, he tells his uncle about all this. Sorin himself loves the theater and writers very much and admits to Treplev that he himself once wanted to become a writer, but it did not work out. Instead, he served twenty-eight years in the judiciary.

Among those waiting for the performance are also Ilya Afanasyevich Shamraev, a retired lieutenant, Sorin's manager; his wife - Polina Andreevna and his daughter Masha; Evgeny Sergeevich Dorn, doctor; Semen Semenovich Medvedenko, teacher. Medvedenko is unrequitedly in love with Masha, but Masha does not reciprocate, not only because they are different people and do not understand each other. Masha loves Konstantin Treplev.

Finally Zarechnaya arrives. She managed to escape from the house only for half an hour, and therefore everyone hastily begins to gather in the garden. There are no scenery on the stage: only the curtain, the first stage and the second stage. But there is a magnificent view of the lake. The full moon is above the horizon and is reflected in the water. Nina Zarechnaya, all in white, sitting on a large stone, reads a text in the spirit of decadent literature, which Arkadina immediately notes. Throughout the reading, the audience is constantly talking, despite Treplev's remarks. Soon he gets tired of it, and he, having lost his temper, stops the performance and leaves. Masha hurries after him to find him and calm him down. Meanwhile, Arkadina introduces Trigorin to Nina, and after a short conversation, Nina leaves for home.

Nobody liked the play except Masha and Dorn. He wants to say more nice things to Treplev, which he does. Masha confesses to Dorn that she loves Treplev and asks for advice, but Dorn cannot advise her.

Several days pass. The action shifts to the croquet court. The father and stepmother of Nina Zarechnaya left for Tver for three days, and this gave her the opportunity to come to the estate of Sorina, Arkadina and Polina Andreevna are going to the city, but Shamraev refuses to provide them with horses, citing the fact that all the horses in the field are harvesting rye. There is a small quarrel, Arkadina almost leaves for Moscow. On the way to the house, Polina Andreevna almost confesses her love to Dorn. Their meeting with Nina at the very house makes it clear to her that Dorn does not love her, but Zarechnaya.

Nina walks around the garden and is surprised that the life of famous actors and writers is exactly the same as the life of ordinary people, with their everyday quarrels, skirmishes, tears and joys, with their troubles. Treplev brings her a dead seagull and compares this bird with himself. Nina tells him that she almost ceased to understand him, since he began to express his thoughts and feelings with symbols. Konstantin tries to explain himself, but, seeing Trigorin appearing, he quickly leaves.

Nina and Trigorin remain alone. Trigorin is constantly writing down something in his notebook. Nina admires the world in which, according to her, Trigorin and Arkadina live, she admires enthusiastically and believes that their life is filled with happiness and miracles. Trigorin, on the contrary, paints his life as a painful existence. Seeing a seagull killed by Treplev, Trigorin writes a new story in a book for a short story about a young girl who looks like a seagull. "A man came by chance, saw her, and from nothing to do, destroyed her."

A week passes. In the dining room of Sorin's house, Masha confesses to Trigorin that she loves Treplev and, in order to tear this love out of her heart, marries Medvedenko, although she does not love him. Trigorin is going to leave for Moscow with Arkadina. Irina Nikolaevna is leaving because of her son, who shot himself and is now going to challenge Trigorin to a duel. Nina Zarechnaya is also planning to leave, as she dreams of becoming an actress. She comes to say goodbye (primarily to Trigorin). Nina gives him a medallion containing lines from his book. Having opened the book in the right place, he reads: “If you ever need my life, then come and take it.” Trigorin wants to follow Nina, because it seems to him that this is the very feeling that he has been looking for all his life. Having learned about this, Irina Arkadina begs on her knees not to leave her. However, having agreed verbally, Trigorin agrees with Nina about a secret meeting on the way to Moscow.

Two years pass. Sorin is already sixty-two years old, he is very sick, but also full of a thirst for life. Medvedenko and Masha are married, they have a child, but there is no happiness in their marriage. Both her husband and child are disgusting to Masha, and Medvedenko himself suffers greatly from this.

Treplev tells Dorn, who is interested in Nina Zarechnaya, her fate. She ran away from home and made friends with Trigorin. They had a child, but soon died. Trigorin had already fallen out of love with her and again returned to Arkadina. On stage, Nina seemed to be getting even worse. She played a lot, but very "rudely, tastelessly, with howls." She wrote letters to Treplev, but never complained. She signed the letters Chaika. Her parents do not want to know her and do not let her even close to the house. Now she is in the city. And she promised to come. Treplev is sure that he will not come.

However, he is wrong. Nina appears quite unexpectedly. Konstantin once again confesses his love and fidelity to her. He is ready to forgive her everything and devote his whole life to her. Nina does not accept his sacrifices. She still loves Trigorin, which Treplev admits to. She leaves for the provinces to play in the theater and invites Treplev to look at her acting when she becomes a great actress.

Treplev, after her departure, tears up all his manuscripts and throws them under the table, then goes into the next room. Arkadina, Trigorin, Dorn and others gather in the room he left. They are going to play and sing. A shot is fired. Dorn, saying that it was obviously his test tube that burst, leaves to the noise. Returning, he takes Trigorin aside and asks him to take Irina Nikolaevna somewhere, because her son, Konstantin Gavrilovich, shot himself.

Mezzanine House An Artist's Story (1896)

The narrator (the narration is in the first person) recalls how six or seven years ago he lived on the estate of Belokurov in one of the districts of the T-th province. The owner "was up very early, walked around in a coat, drank beer in the evenings and kept complaining to me that he did not find sympathy anywhere and in anyone." The narrator is an artist, but in the summer he became so lazy that he wrote almost nothing. "Sometimes I left the house and wandered somewhere until late in the evening." So he wandered into an unfamiliar estate. Near the gate stood two girls: one "older, thin, pale, very beautiful" and the second - "young - she was seventeen or eighteen years old, no more - also thin and pale, with a big mouth and big eyes." For some reason, both faces looked familiar. He came back feeling like he had a good dream.

Soon a carriage appeared in Belokurov's estate, in which one of the girls, the eldest, was sitting. She came with a signature sheet to ask for money for the fire victims. Having signed in the list, the narrator was invited to visit, in the words of the girl, "how the admirers of his talent live." Belokurov said that her name is Lydia Volchaninova, she lives in the village of Shelkovka with her mother and sister. Her father once occupied a prominent position in Moscow and died in the rank of Privy Councilor. Despite good means, the Volchaninovs lived in the country without a break, Lida worked as a teacher, receiving twenty-five rubles a month.

On one of the holidays they went to the Volchaninovs. Mother and daughters were at home. "Mother, Ekaterina Pavlovna, once, apparently, beautiful, now damp beyond her years, sick with shortness of breath, sad, absent-minded, tried to keep me talking about painting." Lida told Belokurov that the chairman of the council, Balagan, "distributed all the posts in the county to his nephews and sons-in-law and does what he wants." "Young people should make a strong party out of themselves," she said, "but you see what kind of youth we have. Shame on you, Pyotr Petrovich!" The younger sister Zhenya (Miss, because in childhood she called that "Miss", her governess) seemed like a child. During dinner, Belokurov, gesticulating, knocked over a gravy boat with his sleeve, but no one except the narrator seemed to notice this. When they returned, Belokurov said: “A good upbringing is not that you don’t spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you don’t notice if someone else does it. <...> Yes, a wonderful, intelligent family. .."

The narrator began to visit the Volchaninovs. He liked Misya, she also sympathized with him. "We walked together, picked cherries for jam, rode in a boat <...> Or I wrote a sketch, and she stood nearby and looked with admiration." He was especially attracted by the fact that in the eyes of a young provincial woman he looked like a talented artist, a famous person. Linda disliked him. She despised idleness and considered herself a laboring person. She did not like his landscapes because they did not show the needs of the people. In turn, Lida did not like him. Once he started a dispute with her and said that her charitable work with the peasants was not only not beneficial, but also harmful. “You come to their aid with hospitals and schools, but by doing so you do not free them from their fetters, but, on the contrary, enslave them even more, because by introducing new prejudices into their lives, you increase the number of their needs, not to mention the fact that what kind of books they should pay the zemstvo and, therefore, bend their backs more strongly. Lidin's authority was indisputable. Mother and sister respected, but also feared her, who took over the "male" leadership of the family.

Finally, the narrator confessed his love to Zhenya in the evening, when she accompanied him to the gates of the estate. She answered him in kind, but immediately ran to tell her mother and sister everything. "We have no secrets from each other ..." When he came to the Volchaninovs the next day, Lida dryly announced that Ekaterina Pavlovna and Zhenya had gone to her aunt's in the Penza province, then, probably, to go abroad. On the way back, a boy caught up with him with a note from Misyu: “I told my sister everything, and she demands that I part with you ... I was unable to upset her with my disobedience. God will give you happiness, forgive me. If you knew how my mother and I weep bitterly!" He never saw the Volchaninovs again. Once, on the way to the Crimea, he met Belokurov in the carriage, and he said that Lida still lives in Shelkovka and teaches children. She managed to rally a "strong party" of young people around her, and at the last zemstvo elections they "rolled" Balagin. "About Zhenya, Belokurov only said that she did not live at home and was unknown where." Gradually, the narrator begins to forget about the "house with a mezzanine", about the Volchaninovs, and only in moments of loneliness does he remember them and: "... little by little, for some reason, it begins to seem to me that they also remember me, they are waiting for me and that we I'll see you... I'm sorry, where are you?"

In the ravine A Tale (1899, publ. 1900)

The village of Ukleevo is known for the fact that “at the wake of the manufacturer Kostyukov, the old deacon saw grainy caviar among the snacks and began to eat it greedily; they pushed him, pulled his sleeve, but he seemed to be stiff with pleasure: he did not feel anything and only ate. and there were four pounds in the jar." Since then, they said about the village: "This is the same place where the deacon ate all the caviar at the funeral." There are four factories in the village - three cotton and one leather, which employ about four hundred workers. The tannery infected the river and the meadow, the peasant cattle suffered from diseases, and the factory was ordered to close, but it works in secret, and the bailiff and the county doctor receive bribes for this.

There are two "decent houses" in the village; Grigory Petrovich Tsybukin, a tradesman, lives in one. For the sake of appearance, he keeps a grocery store, and earns on the sale of vodka, cattle, grain, stolen goods and "whatever he needs." He buys wood, gives money at interest, "in general, the old man ... resourceful." Two sons: the eldest Anisim serves in the city in the detective department; the younger Stepan helps his father, but there is little help from him - he is in poor health and deaf. Help comes from his wife Aksinya, a beautiful and slender woman who keeps pace everywhere and in everything: “old Tsybukin looked at her cheerfully, his eyes lit up, and at that time he regretted that it was not her eldest son who was married to her, but her younger, deaf who obviously knows little about female beauty."

Tsybukin widows, "but a year after the wedding of his son, he could not stand it and got married himself." With a bride named Varvara Nikolaevna, he was lucky. She is a prominent, beautiful and very religious woman. Helps the poor, pilgrims. One day Stepan noticed that she took two octopuses of tea from the shop without asking, and reported to his father. The old man did not get angry and, in front of everyone, told Varvara that she could take whatever she wanted. In his eyes, his wife, as it were, atones for his sins, although Tsybukin himself is not religious, does not like beggars and angrily shouts at them: "God forbid!"

Anisim is rarely at home, but often sends gifts and letters with such phrases, for example: "Dear father and mother, I am sending you a pound of flower tea to satisfy your physical need." His character combines ignorance, rudeness, cynicism and sentimentality, the desire to appear educated. Tsybukin adores the elder, is proud that he "went on the scientific side." Varvara does not like that Anisim is unmarried, although he is in his twenty-eighth year. She sees this as a disorder, a violation of the correct, as she understands it, course of things. Anisima decide to marry. He agrees calmly and without enthusiasm; however, he seems to be pleased that a beautiful bride has been found for him. He himself is unprepossessing, but he says: "Well, yes, I'm not crooked either. Our Tsybukin family, I must say, are all beautiful." The bride's name is Lipa. A very poor girl, for whom to enter the Tsybukins' house, from any point of view, is a gift of fate, for they take her without a dowry.

She is terribly afraid and at the shows she looks as if she wanted to say: “Do with me what you want: I believe you.” Her mother Praskovya is even more timid and answers everyone: “What are you, have mercy, sir... You have a lot of satisfied, sir."

Anisim arrives three days before the wedding and brings everyone as a gift silver rubles and fifty dollars, the main charm of which is that all the coins are brand new. On the way he obviously drank and with an air of importance tells how at some commemoration he drank grape wine and ate sauce, and dinner cost two and a half a person. "Which men are our countrymen, and for them, too, two and a half. They didn't eat anything. Somehow the man understands the sauce!" Old Tsybukin does not believe that dinner can cost so much, and looks adoringly at his son.

Detailed description of the wedding. They eat and drink a lot of bad wine and disgusting English bitters, made from “I don't know what”. Anisim quickly gets drunk and boasts of a city friend named Samorodov, calling him "a special person." He boasts that by appearance he can recognize any thief. A woman screams in the yard: "Our blood sucked, Herods, there is no death for you!" Noise, mess. Drunk Anisim is pushed into the room where Lipa is being undressed, and the door is locked. Five days later, Anisim leaves for the city. He speaks with Varvara, and she complains that they do not live like a god, that everything is built on deceit. Anisim replies: "Who is assigned to what, mother <...> After all, there is no God anyway, mother. Why take it apart!" He says that everyone steals and does not believe in God: the foreman, and the clerk, and the sexton. “And if they go to church and observe fasts, it’s so that people don’t speak badly about them, and in case that, perhaps, there really will be a Last Judgment.” Saying goodbye, Anisim says that Samorodov has implicated him in some dark business: "I will be rich or perish." At the station, Tsybukin asks his son to stay "at home, in business", but he refuses.

It turns out that Anisim's coins are counterfeit. He did them with Samorodov and is now going on trial. This shocks the old man. He mixed the fake coins with the real ones, he can't tell them apart. And although he himself cheated all his life, making counterfeit money does not fit into his consciousness and gradually drives him crazy. The son is condemned to hard labor, despite the efforts of the old man. Aksinya begins to run everything in the house. She hates Lipa and the child she gave birth to, realizing that in the future the main inheritance will go to them. In front of Lipa, she scalds the baby with boiling water, and he, after a short torment, dies. Lipa runs away from home and meets strangers along the way; one of them says in consolation: "Life is long, there will be both good and bad, everything will be. Great Mother Russia!" When Lipa comes home, the old man says to her: “Oh, Lipa ... your granddaughter didn’t save you ...” She turns out to be guilty, not Aksinya, whom the old man is afraid of. Lipa goes to her mother. Aksinya finally becomes the head of the house, although formally the old man is considered the owner. She enters into a share with the Khrymin merchant brothers - together they open a tavern at the station, turn frauds, walk, have fun. Stepan is given a gold watch. Old Tsybukin sinks so much that he does not remember food, he does not eat anything for days when they forget to feed him. In the evenings, he stands on the street with the peasants, listens to their conversations - and one day, following them, he meets Lipa and Praskovya. They bow to him, but he is silent, tears trembling in his eyes. It looks like he hasn't eaten in a long time. Lipa gives him a porridge pie. "He took it and began to eat <...> Lipa and Praskovya went on and crossed themselves for a long time."

Three Sisters Drama (1901)

The action takes place in a provincial town, in the house of the Prozorovs.

Irina, the youngest of the three Prozorov sisters, is twenty years old. "It's sunny and cheerful outside," and a table is laid in the hall, guests are waiting - officers of the artillery battery stationed in the city and its new commander, Lieutenant Colonel Vershinin. Everyone is full of joyful expectations and hopes. Irina: “I don’t know why my soul is so light! .. It’s like I’m on sails, there is a wide blue sky above me and big white birds are flying around.” The Prozorovs are scheduled to move to Moscow in the fall. The sisters have no doubt that their brother Andrei will go to university and eventually become a professor. Kulygin, the teacher of the gymnasium, the husband of one of the sisters, Masha, is benevolent. Chebutykin, a military doctor who once madly loved the late mother of the Prozorovs, lends himself to the general joyful mood. "My bird is white," he kisses Irina touched. Lieutenant Baron Tuzenbach enthusiastically speaks about the future: "The time has come <...> a healthy, strong storm is being prepared, which <...> will blow away laziness, indifference, prejudice to work, rotten boredom from our society." Vershinin is just as optimistic. With his appearance, Masha's "merehlyundia" passes. The atmosphere of unconstrained cheerfulness is not disturbed by the appearance of Natasha, although she herself is terribly embarrassed by a large society. Andrei proposes to her: "Oh, youth, wonderful, beautiful youth! <...> I feel so good, my soul is full of love, delight ... My dear, good, pure, be my wife!"

But already in the second act, major notes are replaced by minor ones. Andrey does not find a place for himself out of boredom. He, who dreamed of a professorship in Moscow, is not at all attracted by the position of secretary of the zemstvo council, and in the city he feels "alien and lonely." Masha is finally disappointed in her husband, who once seemed to her "terribly learned, smart and important", and among his fellow teachers she simply suffers. Irina is not satisfied with her work on the telegraph: “What I wanted so much, what I dreamed about, that’s what it doesn’t have. Work without poetry, without thoughts ...” Olga returns from the gymnasium tired, with a headache. Not in the spirit of Vershinin. He still continues to assure that "everything on earth must change little by little," but then he adds: "And how I would like to prove to you that there is no happiness, should not be and will not be for us ... We must only to work and work..." In Chebutykin's puns, with which he amuses those around him, hidden pain breaks through: "No matter how you philosophize, loneliness is a terrible thing..."

Natasha, gradually taking over the whole house, escorts the guests who were waiting for the mummers. "Philistine!" - Masha says to Irina in her hearts.

Three years have passed. If the first act was played out at noon, and it was “sunny, cheerful” outside, then the remarks for the third act “warn” about completely different - gloomy, sad - events: “Behind the scenes, the alarm is sounded on the occasion of a fire that started a long time ago. open door you can see the window, red from the glow. The Prozorovs' house is full of people fleeing the fire.

Irina sobs: "Where? Where has everything gone? <...> and life is leaving and will never return, we will never, never go to Moscow ... I am in despair, I am in despair!" Masha thinks in alarm: "Somehow we will live our lives, what will become of us?" Andrey cries: "When I got married, I thought that we would be happy ... everyone is happy ... But my God ..." Tuzenbach, perhaps even more disappointed: "What was I like then (three years ago. - In B.) I dreamed of a happy life! Where is it? In a drinking bout Chebutykin: “My head is empty, my soul is cold. Maybe I’m not a person, but I just pretend that I have arms and legs ... and a head; maybe I don’t exist at all, but it only seems to me that I walk, eat, sleep. (Crying.)". And the more stubbornly Kulagin repeats: "I am satisfied, I am satisfied, I am satisfied," the more obvious it becomes that everyone is broken, unhappy.

And finally, the last action. Autumn is coming. Masha, walking along the alley, looks up: "And migratory birds are already flying ..." The artillery brigade leaves the city: it is being transferred to another place, either to Poland, or to Chita. The officers come to say goodbye to the Prozorovs. Fedotik, taking a photo for memory, remarks: "... silence and calm will come in the city." Tuzenbach adds: "And terrible boredom." Andrey speaks out even more categorically: "The city will become empty. It is as if they will cover it with a cap."

Masha breaks up with Vershinin, whom she fell in love with so passionately: "Unsuccessful life ... I don't need anything now ..." Olga, becoming the head of the gymnasium, understands: "It means not to be in Moscow." Irina decided - "if I am not destined to be in Moscow, then so be it" - to accept the offer of Tuzenbach, who retired: "The baron and I are getting married tomorrow, tomorrow we are leaving for a brick one, and the day after tomorrow I am already at school, a new life.<...> And all of a sudden, it was as if wings had grown in my soul, I cheered up, it became much easier and again I wanted to work, work ... " Chebutykin in emotion: "Fly, my dears, fly with God!"

He also blesses Andrey for the “flight” in his own way: “You know, put on a hat, pick up a stick and go away ... go away and go, go without looking back. And the farther you go, the better.”

But even the most modest hopes of the heroes of the play are not destined to come true. Solyony, in love with Irina, provokes a quarrel with the baron and kills him in a duel. The broken Andrei does not have enough strength to follow Chebutykin's advice and pick up the "staff": "Why do we, having barely begun to live, become boring, gray, uninteresting, lazy, indifferent, useless, unhappy? .."

The battery leaves the city. Sounds like a military march. Olga: "Music plays so cheerfully, cheerfully, and I want to live! <...> and, it seems, a little more, and we will find out why we live, why we suffer ... If only we knew! (Music plays quieter and quieter .) If only to know, if only to know!" (Curtain.)

The heroes of the play are not free migratory birds, they are imprisoned in a strong social "cage", and the personal destinies of everyone who has fallen into it are subject to the laws by which the whole country lives, which is experiencing general trouble. Not "who", but "what?" dominates man. This main culprit of misfortunes and failures in the play has several names - "vulgarity", "baseness", "sinful life" ... The face of this "vulgarity" looks especially visible and unsightly in Andrey's thoughts: "Our city has existed for two hundred years, in it has a hundred thousand inhabitants, and not a single one that would not be like the others ... <...> They only eat, drink, sleep, then die ... others will be born, and they also eat, drink, sleep, and, so as not to become stupefied with boredom, diversify their lives with nasty gossip, vodka, cards, litigation ... "

The Cherry Orchard Comedy (1904)

The estate of the landowner Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya. Spring, cherry trees bloom. But the beautiful garden is soon to be sold for debts. For the past five years, Ranevskaya and her seventeen-year-old daughter Anya have lived abroad. Ranevskaya's brother Leonid Andreevich Gaev and her adopted daughter, twenty-four-year-old Varya, remained on the estate. Ranevskaya's affairs are bad, there are almost no funds left. Lyubov Andreevna always littered with money. Her husband died six years ago from alcoholism. Ranevskaya fell in love with another person, got along with him. But soon her little son Grisha died tragically by drowning in the river. Lyubov Andreevna, unable to bear her grief, fled abroad. The lover followed her. When he fell ill, Ranevskaya had to settle him in her dacha near Menton and take care of him for three years. And then, when he had to sell the dacha for debts and move to Paris, he robbed and abandoned Ranevskaya.

Gaev and Varya meet Lyubov Andreevna and Anya at the station. At home, the maid Dunyasha and the familiar merchant Yermolai Alekseevich Lopakhin are waiting for them. Lopakhin's father was a serf of the Ranevskys, he himself became rich, but he says about himself that he remained "a peasant a peasant." The clerk Epikhodov arrives, a man with whom something constantly happens and who is called "thirty-three misfortunes."

Finally, the carriages arrive. The house is filled with people, everyone is pleasantly excited. Everyone talks about their own. Lyubov Andreevna looks at the rooms and through tears of joy recalls the past. The maid Dunyasha is impatient to tell the young lady that Epikhodov proposed to her. Anya herself advises Varya to marry Lopakhin, and Varya dreams of marrying Anya off as a rich man. The governess Charlotte Ivanovna, a strange and eccentric person, boasts about her amazing dog, the neighbor landowner Simeonov-Pishik asks for a loan. He hears almost nothing and the old faithful servant Firs mutters all the time.

Lopakhin reminds Ranevskaya that the estate should soon be sold at auction, the only way out is to break the land into plots and lease them to summer residents. Lopakhin's proposal surprises Ranevskaya: how can you cut down her favorite wonderful cherry orchard! Lopakhin wants to stay longer with Ranevskaya, whom he loves "more than his own", but it's time for him to leave. Gaev delivers a welcoming speech to the hundred-year-old "respected" cabinet, but then, embarrassed, again begins to senselessly utter his favorite billiard words.

Ranevskaya did not immediately recognize Petya Trofimov: so he changed, became uglier, the “dear student” turned into an “eternal student”. Lyubov Andreevna cries, remembering her little drowned son Grisha, whose teacher was Trofimov.

Gaev, left alone with Varya, tries to talk about business. There is a rich aunt in Yaroslavl, who, however, does not like them: after all, Lyubov Andreevna did not marry a nobleman, and she did not behave "very virtuously." Gaev loves his sister, but still calls her "vicious", which causes Ani's displeasure. Gaev continues to build projects: his sister will ask Lopakhin for money, Anya will go to Yaroslavl - in a word, they will not allow the estate to be sold, Gaev even swears about it. The grouchy Firs finally takes the master, like a child, to sleep. Anya is calm and happy: her uncle will arrange everything.

Lopakhin does not cease to persuade Ranevskaya and Gaev to accept his plan. The three of them had lunch in the city and, returning, stopped in a field near the chapel. Just here, on the same bench, Epikhodov tried to explain himself to Dunyasha, but she had already preferred the young cynical footman Yasha to him. Ranevskaya and Gaev do not seem to hear Lopakhin and talk about completely different things. So without convincing "frivolous, unbusinesslike, strange" people of anything, Lopakhin wants to leave. Ranevskaya asks him to stay: "it's still more fun with him."

Anya, Varya and Petya Trofimov arrive. Ranevskaya starts talking about a "proud man." According to Trofimov, there is no point in pride: a rude, unhappy person should not admire himself, but work. Petya condemns the intelligentsia, who are incapable of work, those people who philosophize importantly, and treat peasants like animals. Lopakhin enters the conversation: he just works "from morning to evening", dealing with big capital, but he is becoming more and more convinced that there are few decent people around. Lopakhin does not finish, Ranevskaya interrupts him. In general, everyone here does not want and does not know how to listen to each other. There is silence, in which the distant, sad sound of a broken string is heard.

Soon everyone disperses. Left alone, Anya and Trofimov are happy to have the opportunity to talk together, without Varya. Trofimov convinces Anya that one must be "above love", that the main thing is freedom: "all Russia is our garden", but in order to live in the present, one must first redeem the past with suffering and labor. Happiness is near: if not they, then others will definitely see it.

Comes the twenty-second of August, the day of trading. It is on this evening, quite inopportunely, that a ball is being held in the estate, a Jewish orchestra is invited. Once upon a time generals and barons danced here, and now, as Firs complains, both the postal clerk and the head of the station "are not willing to go." Charlotte Ivanovna entertains guests with her tricks. Ranevskaya anxiously awaits the return of her brother. The Yaroslavl aunt nevertheless sent fifteen thousand, but they are not enough to buy the estate.

Petya Trofimov "reassures" Ranevskaya: it's not about the garden, it's been over for a long time, we need to face the truth. Lyubov Andreevna asks not to condemn her, to feel sorry for her: after all, without a cherry orchard, her life loses its meaning. Every day Ranevskaya receives telegrams from Paris. At first she tore them up right away, then - after reading them first, now she doesn't vomit anymore. "That wild man", whom she loves after all, begs her to come. Petya condemns Ranevskaya for her love for "a petty scoundrel, a nonentity." Angry Ranevskaya, unable to restrain herself, takes revenge on Trofimov, calling him "a funny eccentric", "a freak", "clean": "You must love yourself ... you must fall in love!" Petya tries to leave in horror, but then stays, dancing with Ranevskaya, who asked for his forgiveness.

Finally, the embarrassed, joyful Lopakhin and the tired Gaev appear, who, without saying anything, immediately goes to his room. The Cherry Orchard was sold and Lopakhin bought it. The "new landowner" is happy: he managed to outbid the rich Deriganov at the auction, giving ninety thousand in excess of the debt. Lopakhin picks up the keys thrown on the floor by the proud Varya. Let the music play, let everyone see how Yermolai Lopakhin "suffices the cherry orchard with an ax"!

Anya comforts her crying mother: the garden has been sold, but there is a whole life ahead. There will be a new garden, more luxurious than this, "quiet deep joy" awaits them ...

The house is empty. Its inhabitants, having said goodbye to each other, disperse. Lopakhin is going to Kharkov for the winter, Trofimov returns to Moscow, to the university. Lopakhin and Petya exchange barbs. Although Trofimov calls Lopakhin a "predatory beast" necessary "in the sense of metabolism," he still loves in him "a tender, subtle soul." Lopakhin offers Trofimov money for the journey. He refuses: over the "free man", "in the forefront going" to "higher happiness", no one should have power.

Ranevskaya and Gaev even cheered up after the sale of the cherry orchard. Previously, they were worried, suffering, but now they have calmed down. Ranevskaya is going to live in Paris for the time being on the money sent by her aunt. Anya is inspired: a new life begins - she will finish the gymnasium, she will work, read books, "a new wonderful world" will open before her. Simeonov-Pishchik suddenly appears out of breath and, instead of asking for money, on the contrary, distributes debts. It turned out that the British found white clay on his land.

Everyone settled down differently. Gaev says that now he is a bank servant. Lopakhin promises to find a new job for Charlotte, Varya got a job as a housekeeper to the Ragulins, Epikhodov, hired by Lopakhin, remains on the estate, Firs must be sent to the hospital. But nevertheless, Gaev sadly says: "Everyone is leaving us ... we suddenly became unnecessary."

Between Varya and Lopakhin, an explanation must finally occur. For a long time, Varya has been teased by "Madame Lopakhina." Varya likes Yermolai Alekseevich, but she herself cannot propose. Lopakhin, who also speaks well of Vara, agrees to "put an end immediately" to this matter. But when Ranevskaya arranges their meeting, Lopakhin, without deciding, leaves Varia, using the very first pretext.

"It's time to go! On the road!" - with these words, they leave the house, locking all the doors. All that remains is old Firs, whom everyone seemed to take care of, but whom they forgot to send to the hospital. Firs, sighing that Leonid Andreevich went in a coat, and not in a fur coat, lies down to rest and lies motionless. The same sound of a broken string is heard. "There is silence, and only one can hear how far in the garden they knock on wood with an ax."

Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko 1853 - 1921

In bad society. From the childhood memories of my friend Story (1885)

The childhood of the hero took place in the small town of Knyazhye-Veno in the Southwestern Territory. Vasya - that was the name of the boy - was the son of a city judge. The child grew up "like a wild tree in the field": the mother died when the son was only six years old, and the father, absorbed in his grief, paid little attention to the boy. Vasya wandered around the city for days on end, and the pictures of city life left a deep imprint in his soul.

The city was surrounded by ponds. In the middle of one of them on the island stood an ancient castle that once belonged to a count's family. There were legends that the island was filled with captured Turks, and the castle stands "on human bones." The owners left this gloomy dwelling a long time ago, and it gradually collapsed. Its inhabitants were urban beggars who had no other shelter. But there was a split among the poor. Old Janusz, one of the count's former servants, was given some sort of right to decide who could live in the castle and who could not. He left there only "aristocrats": Catholics and the former count's servants. The exiles found refuge in a dungeon under an old crypt near an abandoned Uniate chapel that stood on a mountain. However, no one knew their whereabouts.

Old Janusz, meeting Vasya, invites him to enter the castle, because there is now a "decent society". But the boy prefers the "bad society" of exiles from the castle: Vasya pities them.

Many members of the "bad society" are well known in the city. This is a semi-mad elderly "professor" who always mutters something quietly and sadly; the ferocious and pugnacious bayonet Junker Zausailov; drunken retired official Lavrovsky, who tells everyone incredible tragic stories about his life. And Turkevich, who calls himself General, is famous for the fact that he “denounces” respectable citizens (the police officer, the secretary of the county court and others) right under their windows. He does this in order to get vodka, and achieves his goal: the "convicted" are in a hurry to pay him off.

The head of the entire community of "dark personalities" is Tyburtsy Drab. Its origin and past are unknown to anyone. Others suggest in him an aristocrat, but his appearance is of the common people. He is known for his extraordinary learning. At fairs, Tyburtius entertains the public with lengthy speeches from ancient authors. He is considered a sorcerer.

One day, Vasya and three friends come to the old chapel: he wants to look in there. Friends help Vasya get inside through a high window. But when they see that there is still someone in the chapel, the friends run away in horror, leaving Vasya to the mercy of fate. It turns out that the children of Tyburtsy are there: nine-year-old Valek and four-year-old Marusya. Vasya often comes to the mountain to his new friends, bringing them apples from his garden. But he walks only when Tyburtius cannot catch him. Vasya does not tell anyone about this acquaintance. He tells his cowardly friends that he saw devils.

Vasya has a sister, four-year-old Sonya. She, like her brother, is a cheerful and frisky child. Brother and sister love each other very much, but Sonya's nanny prevents their noisy games: she considers Vasya a bad, spoiled boy. The father is of the same opinion. He does not find in his soul a place for love for the boy. The father loves Sonya more because she looks like her late mother.

Once in a conversation, Valek and Marusya tell Vasya that Tyburtsy loves them very much. Vasya speaks of his father with resentment. But suddenly he learns from Valek that the judge is a very fair and honest person. Valek is a very serious and intelligent boy. Marusya is not at all like the frisky Sonya, she is weak, thoughtful, "cheerless". Valek says that "the gray stone sucked the life out of her."

Vasya learns that Valek is stealing food for his hungry sister. This discovery makes a heavy impression on Vasya, but still he does not condemn his friend.

Valek shows Vasya the dungeon where all the members of the "bad society" live. In the absence of adults, Vasya comes there, plays with his friends. During the game of hide and seek, Tyburtsy unexpectedly appears. The children are frightened - after all, they are friends without the knowledge of the formidable head of the "bad society". But Tyburtsiy allows Vasya to come, taking from him a promise not to tell anyone where they all live. Tyburtsy brings food, prepares dinner - according to him, Vasya understands that the food is stolen. This, of course, confuses the boy, but he sees that Marusya is so happy with the food ... Now Vasya comes to the mountain without hindrance, and the adult members of the "bad society" also get used to the boy, love him.

Autumn comes, and Marusya falls ill. In order to somehow entertain the sick girl, Vasya decides to ask Sonya for a while for a big beautiful doll, a gift from her late mother. Sonya agrees. Marusya is delighted with the doll, and she even gets better.

Old Janusz comes to the judge several times with denunciations of members of the "bad society". He says that Vasya communicates with them. The nanny notices the absence of the doll. Vasya is not allowed out of the house, and a few days later he runs away secretly.

Marcus is getting worse. The inhabitants of the dungeon decide that the doll needs to be returned, but the girl will not notice this. But seeing that they want to take the doll away, Marusya cries bitterly... Vasya leaves the doll to her.

And again Vasya is not allowed out of the house. The father is trying to get his son to confess where he went and where the doll went. Vasya admits that he took the doll, but says nothing more. The father is angry... And at the most critical moment, Tyburtsy appears. He is carrying a doll.

Tyburtsy tells the judge about Vasya's friendship with his children. He is amazed. The father feels guilty before Vasya. It was as if a wall had collapsed that had separated father and son for a long time, and they felt like close people. Tyburtsy says that Marusya is dead. The father lets Vasya say goodbye to her, while he sends through Vasya money for Tyburtsy and a warning: it is better for the head of the "bad society" to hide from the city.

Soon, almost all "dark personalities" disappear somewhere. Only the old "professor" and Turkevich remain, to whom the judge sometimes gives work. Marusya is buried in the old cemetery near the collapsed chapel. Vasya and his sister take care of her grave. Sometimes they come to the cemetery with their father. When the time comes for Vasya and Sonya to leave their native city, they pronounce their vows over this grave.

The Blind Musician's Tale (1886)

In the south-west of Ukraine, in a family of wealthy village landowners Popelsky, a blind boy is born. At first, no one notices his blindness, only his mother guesses this from the strange expression on the face of little Petrus. Doctors confirm a terrible guess.

Peter's father is a good-natured man, but rather indifferent to everything except the household. Uncle, Maxim Yatsenko, has a fighting character. In his youth, he was known everywhere as a "dangerous bully" and justified this characterization: he left for Italy, where he entered the Garibaldi detachment. In the battle with the Austrians, Maxim lost his leg, received many wounds and was forced to return home to live out his life in inactivity. The uncle decides to take up the upbringing of Petrus. He has to fight blind maternal love: he explains to his sister Anna Mikhailovna, Petrus' mother, that excessive care can harm the boy's development. Uncle Maxim hopes to raise a new "fighter for the cause of life."

Spring is coming. The child is alarmed by the noise of the awakening nature. Mother and uncle are taking Petrus for a walk on the river bank. Adults do not notice the excitement of a boy who cannot cope with the abundance of impressions. Petrus loses consciousness. After this incident, mother and uncle Maxim try to help the boy comprehend sounds and sensations.

Petrus loves to listen to the play of the groom Joachim on the pipe. The groom made his wonderful instrument himself; unhappy love disposes Joachim to sad melodies. He plays every evening, and on one of these evenings a blind panich comes to his stable. Petrus learns to play the pipe from Joachim. The mother, seized with jealousy, writes the piano out of the city. But when she starts playing, the boy almost loses his senses again: this complex music seems to him rough, noisy. Joachim is of the same opinion. Then Anna Mikhailovna understands that in a simple game the groom is much more than a living feeling. She secretly listens to Joachim's tune and learns from him. In the end, her art conquers both Petrus and the groom. Meanwhile, the boy begins to play the piano as well. And Uncle Maxim asks Joachim to sing folk songs to the blind panich.

Petrus has no friends. The village boys shy away from him. And in the neighboring estate of the elderly Yaskulsky, the daughter of Evelina, the same age as Petrus, is growing up. This beautiful girl is calm and reasonable. Evelina accidentally meets Peter on a walk. At first she does not realize that the boy is blind. When Petrus tries to feel her face, Evelina gets scared, and when she learns about his blindness, she cries bitterly with pity. Peter and Evelina become friends. Together they take lessons from Uncle Maxim, Children grow up, and their friendship becomes stronger.

Uncle Maxim invites his old friend Stavruchenko to visit with his student sons, folk lovers and folklore collectors. Their cadet friend comes with them. Young people bring liveliness to the quiet life of the estate. Uncle Maxim wants Peter and Evelina to feel that a bright and interesting life is flowing nearby. Evelina understands that this is a test for her feelings for Peter. She firmly decides to marry Peter and tells him about it.

A blind young man plays the piano in front of the guests. Everyone is shocked and predicts his fame. For the first time, Peter realizes that he too is capable of doing something in life.

The Popelskys pay a return visit to the Stavruchenkov estate. The hosts and guests are going to the N-sky monastery. On the way, they stop near the gravestone, under which the Cossack ataman Ignat Kary is buried, and next to him is the blind bandura player Yurko, who accompanied the ataman on campaigns. Everyone sighs for the glorious past. And Uncle Maxim says that the eternal struggle continues, although in other forms.

In the monastery, everyone is escorted to the bell tower by the blind bell-ringer, the novice Egory. He is young and his face is very similar to Peter. Egory is embittered at the whole world. He rudely scolds the village children who are trying to get into the bell tower. After everyone goes downstairs, Peter remains to talk to the bell ringer. It turns out that Yegoriy is also born blind. There is another bell-ringer in the monastery, Roman, who has been blind since the age of seven. Egory is jealous of Roman, who has seen the world, seen his mother, remembers her... When Peter and Egory finish their conversation, Roman arrives. He is kind, gentle with a flock of children.

This meeting makes Peter understand the depth of his misfortune. He seems to become different, as embittered as Egory. In his conviction that all those born blind are evil, Peter tortures those close to him. He asks for an explanation of the incomprehensible difference in colors for him. Peter reacts painfully to the touch of sunlight on his face. He even envies the poor blind, whose hardships make them forget their blindness for a while.

Uncle Maxim and Peter go to the N-th miraculous icon. Blind people beg nearby. The uncle invites Peter to taste the share of the poor. Peter wants to leave as soon as possible so as not to hear the songs of the blind. But Uncle Maxim makes him give everyone a piece of soap.

Peter is seriously ill. After recovery, he announces to his family that he will go with Uncle Maxim to Kyiv, where he will take lessons from a famous musician.

Uncle Maxim really goes to Kyiv and from there writes soothing letters home. Meanwhile, Pyotr, secretly from his mother, along with poor blind men, among whom is an acquaintance of Maxim's uncle Fyodor Kandyba, goes to Pochaev. In this journey, Peter gets to know the world in its diversity and, empathizing with the grief of others, forgets about his sufferings.

Peter returns to the estate a completely different person, his soul is healed. The mother is angry with him for deceit, but soon forgives. Peter tells a lot about his wanderings. Uncle Maxim also comes from Kyiv. The trip to Kyiv has been canceled for a year.

In the same autumn, Peter marries Evelina. But in his happiness, he does not forget about his travel companions. Now, on the edge of the village, there is a new hut of Fyodor Kandyba, and Peter often comes to him.

Peter has a son. The father is afraid that the boy will be blind. And when the doctor informs that the child is undoubtedly sighted, Peter is overwhelmed with such joy that for a few moments it seems to him that he himself sees everything: heaven, earth, his loved ones.

Three years pass. Peter becomes known for his musical talent. In Kyiv, during the "Contracts" fair, a large audience gathers to listen to a blind musician, whose fate is already legendary.

Among the public and uncle Maxim. He listens to the musician's improvisations, which are intertwined with the motives of folk songs. Suddenly, the song of the poor blind breaks into the lively melody. Maxim understands that Peter was able to feel life in its fullness, to remind people of other people's suffering. Realizing this and his merit, Maxim is convinced that he did not live his life in vain.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin 1870-1953

Antonov apples - Story (1900)

The author-narrator recalls the recent past. He recalls the early fine autumn, the whole golden dried up and thinned garden, the delicate aroma of fallen leaves and the smell of Antonov apples: gardeners pour apples onto carts to send them to the city. Late at night, running out into the garden and talking with the watchmen guarding the garden, he looks into the dark blue depths of the sky overflowing with constellations, looks for a long, long time, until the earth floats under his feet, feeling how good it is to live in the world!

The narrator recalls his Vyselki, which since the time of his grandfather have been known in the district as a rich village. Old men and women lived there for a long time - the first sign of well-being. The houses in Vyselki were brick and strong. The average noble life had much in common with the rich peasant life. He remembers his aunt Anna Gerasimovna, her estate is small, but solid, old, surrounded by hundred-year-old trees. The aunt's garden was famous for its apple trees, nightingales and doves, and the house for its roof: its thatched roof was unusually thick and high, blackened and hardened with time. First of all, the smell of apples was felt in the house, and then other smells: old mahogany furniture, dried lime blossom.

The narrator recalls his late brother-in-law Arseniy Semenych, a landowner-hunter, in whose big house a lot of people gathered, everyone had a hearty dinner, and then went hunting. A horn blows in the yard, dogs howl in different voices, the owner's favorite, a black greyhound, climbs onto the table and devours the remains of a hare with sauce from the dish. The author recalls himself riding an evil, strong and squat "Kyrgyz": trees flash before his eyes, the cries of hunters, the barking of dogs are heard in the distance. From the ravines it smells of mushroom dampness and wet tree bark. It is getting dark, the whole gang of hunters tumble into the estate of some almost unknown bachelor hunter and, it happens, stays with him for several days. After a whole day spent hunting, the warmth of a crowded house is especially pleasant. When it happened to oversleep hunting the next morning, one could spend the whole day in the master's library, leafing through old magazines and books, looking at the notes in their margins. Family portraits look from the walls, an old dreamy life rises before my eyes, my grandmother is remembered with sadness,

But the old people died in Vyselki, Anna Gerasimovna died, Arseniy Semenych shot himself. There comes the kingdom of small landed nobles, impoverished to beggary. But this small local life is good too! The narrator happened to visit a neighbor. He gets up early, orders the samovar to be put on, and, putting on his boots, goes out onto the porch, where he is surrounded by hounds. It will be a glorious day for hunting! Only they don’t hunt along the black trail with hounds, oh, if only greyhounds! But he has no greyhounds ... However, with the onset of winter, again, as in the old days, small locals come to each other, drink with their last money, disappear for whole days in snowy fields. And in the evening, on some remote farmstead, the windows of an outbuilding glow in the dark: candles burn there, clouds of smoke float, they play the guitar, they sing ...

The Village - A Tale (1910)

Russia. Late XIX - early. XNUMXth century The Krasov brothers, Tikhon and Kuzma, were born in the small village of Durnovka. In their youth, they were engaged in petty trade together, then they quarreled, and their paths diverged. Kuzma went to work for hire. Tikhon rented an inn, opened a tavern and a shop, began buying up grain from the landowners, acquiring land for a pittance, and, becoming a fairly wealthy owner, even bought a manor estate from an impoverished descendant of the previous owners. But all this did not bring him joy: his wife gave birth only to dead girls, and there was no one to leave everything that he had gained. Tikhon did not find any consolation in the dark, dirty village life, except for the tavern. Began to drink. By the age of fifty, he realized that there was nothing to remember from the past years, that there was not a single close person and he himself was a stranger to everyone. Then Tikhon decided to make peace with his brother.

Kuzma was a completely different person by character. Since childhood, he dreamed of studying. A neighbor taught him to read and write, a market “freethinker”, an old accordion player, supplied him with books and introduced him to disputes about literature. Kuzma wanted to describe his life in all its poverty and terrible routine. He tried to compose a story, then began to write poetry and even published a book of simple verses, but he himself understood all the imperfections of his creations. And this business did not bring in any income, and a piece of bread was not given for nothing. Many years passed in search of work, often fruitless. Having seen enough of human cruelty and indifference in his travels, he started drinking, began to sink lower and lower and came to the conclusion that he must either go to a monastery or commit suicide.

Here Tikhon found him, offering his brother to take over the management of the estate. It seems that a quiet place was found. Having settled in Durnovka, Kuzma became cheerful. At night, he walked with a mallet - he guarded the estate, during the day he read newspapers and made notes in an old office book about what he saw and heard around. But gradually he began to overcome his longing: there was no one to talk to. Tikhon rarely appeared, talking only about the economy, about the meanness and malice of the peasants, and about the need to sell the estate. The cook, Avdotya, the only living creature in the house, was always silent, and when Kuzma fell seriously ill, leaving him to himself, without any sympathy, she went to spend the night in the servants' room.

Kuzma recovered with difficulty from his illness and went to his brother. Tikhon greeted the guest cordially, but there was no mutual understanding between them. Kuzma wanted to share what he read from the newspapers, but Tikhon was not interested. For a long time he had been obsessed with the idea of ​​arranging Avdotya's wedding with one of the village boys. Once he had sinned with her for the sake of his indomitable desire to have a child - even if it was illegal. The dream did not come true, and the woman was disgraced throughout the village. Now Tikhon, who rarely went to church, decided to justify himself before God. He asked his brother to take care of this matter. Kuzma opposed the undertaking: he felt sorry for the unfortunate Avdotya, in whose fiancés Tikhon identified a real "liver cutter", who beat his own father, had no inclination to the household and was tempted only by the promised dowry. Tikhon stood his ground, Avdotya meekly submitted to an unenviable fate, and Kuzma was forced to yield to his brother.

The wedding was played in a routine manner. The bride sobbed bitterly, Kuzma blessed her with tears, the guests drank vodka and sang songs. The irrepressible February blizzard accompanied the wedding train to the dull chime of bells.

The Gentleman from San Francisco - The Story (1915)

A gentleman from San Francisco, who is never mentioned by name in the story, since, as the author notes, no one remembered his name either in Naples or Capri, he is sent with his wife and daughter to the Old World for two whole years in order to to have fun and travel. He worked hard and is now rich enough to afford such a vacation.

At the end of November, the famous "Atlantis", which looks like a huge hotel with all amenities, sets sail. Life on the ship is measured: they get up early, drink coffee, cocoa, chocolate, take baths, do gymnastics, walk along the decks to whet their appetite; then - go to the first breakfast; after breakfast they read the newspapers and calmly wait for the second breakfast; the next two hours are devoted to rest - all decks are filled with long reed chairs, on which travelers lie, covered with rugs, looking at the cloudy sky; then - tea with cookies, and in the evening - that which is the main goal of this entire existence - dinner.

A fine orchestra exquisitely and tirelessly plays in a huge hall, behind the walls of which the waves of a terrible ocean go with a rumble, but decollete ladies and men in tailcoats and tuxedos do not think about it. After dinner, dancing begins in the ballroom, men in the bar smoke cigars, drink liquors, and they are served by Negroes in red coats.

Finally, the ship arrives in Naples, the family of the gentleman from San Francisco stays in an expensive hotel, and here their life also flows according to routine: early in the morning - breakfast, after - visits to museums and cathedrals, second breakfast, tea, then - cooking for dinner and in the evening - a plentiful dinner. However, December in Naples turned out to be unsuccessful this year: wind, rain, mud on the streets. And the family of the gentleman from San Francisco decides to go to the island of Capri, where, as everyone assures them, it is warm, sunny and lemons bloom.

A small steamboat, waddling on the waves from side to side, transports a gentleman from San Francisco with his family, seriously suffering from seasickness, to Capri. the funicular takes them to a small stone town on top of a mountain, they settle in a hotel where they are warmly welcomed by everyone, and they are preparing for dinner, already quite recovered from seasickness. Having dressed before his wife and daughter, the gentleman from San Francisco goes to the cozy, quiet reading room of the hotel, opens the newspaper - and suddenly the lines flash before his eyes, the pince-nez flies off his nose, and his body, wriggling, slides to the floor. Another guest who was present at the same time of the hotel, screaming, runs into the dining room, everyone jumps up from their seats, the owner tries to calm the guests, but the evening is already irreparably ruined.

The gentleman from San Francisco is transferred to the smallest and worst room; wife, daughter, servants stand and look at him, and now what they expected and feared has happened - he is dying. The wife of a gentleman from San Francisco asks the owner to allow the body to be transferred to their apartment, but the owner refuses: he appreciates these rooms too much, and tourists would begin to avoid them, since the whole of Capri would immediately become aware of what had happened. The coffin is also not available here - the owner can offer a long crate of soda water bottles.

At dawn, a cab driver carries the body of the gentleman from San Francisco to the pier, a steamboat transports him through the Gulf of Naples, and the same Atlantis, on which he arrived with honor in the Old World, is now carrying him, dead, in a tarred coffin, hidden from the living. deep down in the black hold. Meanwhile, on the decks, the same life continues as before, everyone has breakfast and dinner in the same way, and the ocean is still terrifying behind the glass of the portholes.

Easy Breath - Short Story (1916)

The exposition of the story is a description of the grave of the main character. What follows is a summary of her story. Olya Meshcherskaya is a prosperous, capable and playful high school student, indifferent to the instructions of her class lady. At the age of fifteen she was a recognized beauty, had the most admirers, danced the best at balls and skated. There were rumors that one of the high school students in love with her attempted suicide because of her frivolity.

In the last winter of her life, Olya Meshcherskaya "went completely crazy with fun." Her behavior leads the boss to make another remark, reproaching her, among other things, for dressing and behaving not like a girl, but like a woman. At this point, Meshcherskaya interrupts her with a calm message that she is a woman and the friend and neighbor of her father, brother of the boss, Alexei Mikhailovich Malyutin, is to blame for this.

A month after this conversation, an ugly Cossack officer shot Meshcherskaya on the station platform among a large crowd of people. He announced to the bailiff that Meshcherskaya was close to him and swore to be his wife. On this day, seeing him to the station, she said that she had never loved him, and offered to read a page from her diary, which described how Malyutin had seduced her.

It followed from the diary that this happened when Malyutin came to visit the Meshcherskys and found Olya alone at home. Describes her attempts to occupy the guest, their walk in the garden; Malyutin's comparison of them with Faust and Margarita. After tea, she pretended to be unwell, and lay down on the couch, and Malyutin moved to her, first kissed her hand, then kissed her on the lips. Further, Meshcherskaya wrote that after what happened next, she feels such disgust for Malyutin that she is unable to survive it.

The action ends at the cemetery, where every Sunday her cool lady comes to the grave of Olya Meshcherskaya, who lives in an illusory world that replaces reality for her. The subject of her previous fantasies was her brother, a poor and unremarkable ensign, whose future seemed to her brilliant. After the death of her brother, Olya Meshcherskaya takes his place in her mind. She goes to her grave every holiday, keeps her eyes on the oak cross for hours, remembers her pale face in the coffin among the flowers and once overheard words that Olya said to her beloved friend. She read in one book what beauty a woman should have - black eyes, black eyelashes, longer than usual hands, but the main thing is light breathing, and she (Oli) has it: "... you listen to how I I sigh, is it true?

Life of Arseniev YOUTH - Novel (1927-1933, published 1952)

Alexey Arsenyev was born in the 70s. XIX century in central Russia, on his father’s estate, on the Kamenka farm. His childhood years were spent in the silence of discreet Russian nature. Endless fields with the aromas of herbs and flowers in the summer, vast expanses of snow in the winter gave rise to a heightened sense of beauty, which shaped his inner world and remained for the rest of his life. For hours he could watch the movement of clouds in the high sky, the work of a beetle entangled in ears of grain, the play of the sun's rays on the parquet floor of the living room. People gradually came into his circle of attention. His mother occupied a special place among them: he felt his “inseparability” with her. My father attracted me with his love of life, cheerful disposition, breadth of nature, and also with his glorious past (he participated in the Crimean War). The brothers were older, and in children's fun the younger sister Olya became the boy's friend. Together they explored the secret corners of the garden, the vegetable garden, the manor buildings - everywhere had its own charm.

Then a man named Baskakov appeared in the house, who became Alyosha's first teacher. He had no pedagogical experience, and, having quickly learned the boy to write, read, and even French, he did not really introduce the student to the sciences. Its influence was in a different way - in a romantic attitude towards history and literature, in the worship of Pushkin and Lermontov, who forever captured Alyosha's soul. Everything acquired in communication with Baskakov gave impetus to the imagination and poetic perception of life. These carefree days ended when it was time to enter the gymnasium. Parents took their son to the city and settled with the tradesman Rostovtsev. The atmosphere was miserable, the environment completely alien. Lessons in the gymnasium were conducted by the state, among the teachers there were no people of any interest. During all his gymnasium years, Alyosha lived only with a dream of a vacation, of a trip to his relatives - now in Baturino, the estate of his deceased grandmother, since his father, short of money, sold Kamenka.

When Alyosha moved to the 4th grade, a misfortune happened: brother Georgy was arrested for involvement in the "socialists". He lived for a long time under a false name, hid, and then arrived in Baturin, where, on the denunciation of the clerk of one of the neighbors, the gendarmes took him. This event was a big shock for Alyosha. A year later, he left the gymnasium and returned to his parental home. At first, the father scolded, but then he decided that his son’s vocation was not service and not household (especially since the household was in complete decline), but “poetry of the soul and life” and that, perhaps, a new Pushkin or Lermontov would come out of him. Alyosha himself dreamed of devoting himself to "verbal creativity." His development was greatly facilitated by long conversations with George, who was released from prison and deported to Baturin under police supervision. From a teenager, Alexei turned into a young man, he matured physically and spiritually, felt in himself growing strength and the joy of being, read a lot, thought about life and death, wandered around the neighborhood, visited neighboring estates.

Soon he experienced his first love, having met in the house of one of his relatives a young girl Ankhen, who was visiting there, and experienced separation from her as a true grief, because of which even the St. Petersburg magazine received on the day of her departure with the publication of his poems did not bring real joy. But then there followed a slight passion for young ladies who came to neighboring estates, and then a relationship with a married woman who served as a maid on the estate of brother Nikolai. This "madness", as Alexey called his passion, ended due to the fact that Nikolai finally calculated the culprit of the unseemly story.

In Alexei, the desire to leave the almost ruined native nest and start an independent life was ripening more and more tangibly. Georgiy by this time had moved to the stalls, and the younger brother decided to go there too. From the first day, a lot of new acquaintances and impressions fell upon him. The surroundings of George differed sharply from the village. Many of the people included in it went through student circles and movements, visited prisons and exiles. At the meetings, conversations were in full swing about the pressing issues of Russian life, the form of government and the rulers themselves were condemned, the need to fight for the constitution and the republic was proclaimed, and the political positions of literary idols - Korolenko, Chekhov, Tolstoy were discussed. These table conversations and disputes fueled Alexei's desire to write, but at the same time he was tormented by his inability to put it into practice.

A vague mental disorder prompted some kind of change. He decided to see new places, went to the Crimea, was in Sevastopol, on the banks of the Donets, and, having already decided to return to Baturino, stopped by Orel on the way to look at the "city of Leskov and Turgenev." There he found the editorial office of Golos, where he had planned to find a job even earlier, met the editor Nadezhda Avilova and received an offer to cooperate in the publication. After talking about business, Avilova invited him to the dining room, received him at home, and introduced her cousin Lika to the guest. Everything was unexpected and pleasant, but he could not even imagine what an important role fate had assigned to this chance acquaintance.

At first there were just cheerful conversations and walks that gave pleasure, but gradually sympathy for Lika turned into a stronger feeling. Captured by him, Alexei constantly rushed between Baturin and Orel, abandoned classes and lived only by meeting with a girl, she either brought him closer to her, then pushed him away, then again called him out on a date. Their relationship could not go unnoticed. One fine day, Lika's father invited Alexei to his place and ended a rather friendly conversation with a decisive disagreement with the marriage with his daughter, explaining that he did not want to see them both languishing in need, for he understood how uncertain the young man's position was.

Upon learning of this, Lika said that she would never go against her father's will. However, nothing has changed. On the contrary, there was a final rapprochement. Alexei moved to Orel under the pretext of working at Golos and lived in a hotel, Lika settled with Avilova under the pretext of studying music. But little by little, the difference in natures began to show: he wanted to share his memories of his poetic childhood, his observations on life, his literary predilections, and all this was alien to her. He was jealous of her gentlemen at city balls, to partners in amateur performances. There was misunderstanding with each other.

One day Lika's father came to Oryol, accompanied by a rich young tanner Bogomolov, whom he introduced as a contender for his daughter's hand and heart. Lika spent all her time with them. Alex stopped talking to her. She ended up refusing Bogomolov, but nevertheless left Oryol with her father. Alexei was tormented by separation, not knowing how and why to live now. He continued to work in Golos, again began to write and print what was written, but he languished in the squalor of Oryol's life and again decided to embark on wanderings. Having changed several cities, without staying anywhere for a long time, he finally could not stand it and sent a telegram to Lika: "I will be there the day after tomorrow." They met again. Existence apart for both proved unbearable.

A life together began in a small town, where Georgy moved. Both worked in the administration of Zemstvo statistics, were constantly together, visited Baturin. Relatives reacted to Lika with cordial warmth. Everything seemed to be fine. But the roles gradually changed: now Lika lived only with her feelings for Alexei, and he could no longer live only with her. He went on business trips, met different people, reveled in the feeling of freedom, even entered into casual relationships with women, although he still could not imagine himself without Lika. She saw the changes, languished in loneliness, was jealous, was offended by his indifference to her dream of a wedding and a normal family, and in response to Alexei's assurances of the immutability of his feelings, she somehow said that, apparently, she was something like air for him. , without which there is no life, but which you do not notice. Lika could not completely renounce herself and live only by what he lives, and, in despair, having written a farewell note, she left Orel.

Alexei's letters and telegrams remained unanswered until Leakey's father informed her that she had forbidden her hiding place to be opened to anyone. Alexei almost shot himself, quit his service, did not show up anywhere. An attempt to see her father was not successful: he was simply not accepted. He returned to Baturino, and a few months later learned that Aika had come home with pneumonia and died very soon. It was at her request that Alexei was not informed of her death.

He was only twenty years old. There was still much to be experienced, but time did not erase this love from memory - it remained for him the most significant event in his life.

Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev 1871-1919

Life of Basil of Thebes - Story (1903)

Like an ant - a grain of sand to a grain of sand - Father Vasily built his life: he married, became a priest, gave birth to a son and a daughter. Seven years later, life crumbled to dust. His son drowned in the river, his wife began to drink with grief. Father Vasily does not find peace in the temple either - people shun him, the headman openly despises him. Even on a name day, only the clergy come to him, respectable fellow villagers do not honor the priest with attention. At night, a drunken wife demands affection from him, imploring hoarsely: "Give me back my son, priest! Give me back, you damned one!" And her passion conquers a chaste husband.

A boy is born, in memory of his late brother they call him Vasily. It soon becomes clear that the child is an idiot; life becomes even more unbearable. Before, it seemed to Father Vasily: the earth is tiny, and on it he is alone, huge. Now this land is suddenly inhabited by people, they all go to him for confession, and he, ruthlessly and shamelessly demanding the truth from everyone, repeats with restrained anger: "What can I do? That I am God? Ask him!" He called grief to him - and grief comes and goes from all over the earth, and he is powerless to reduce earthly grief, but only repeats: "Ask him!" - already doubting the desire of God to alleviate human suffering.

One day during Great Lent, a crippled beggar confessed to him. He makes a terrible confession: ten years ago he raped a girl in the forest, strangled her and buried her. The villain told many priests his secret - and no one believed him; he himself began to think that this was an evil tale, and, telling it the next time, he came up with new details and changed the appearance of the poor victim. Father Vasily is the first to believe what he hears, as if he himself had committed a crime. Falling to his knees in front of the killer, the priest shouts: “There is hell on earth, there is hell in heaven! Where is heaven? Are you a man or a worm? Where is your God, why did he leave you? Don’t believe in hell, don’t be afraid! There will be no hell! heaven, with the righteous, with the saints, above all - I’m telling you this!..”

That night, on the eve of Good Friday, Father Vasily confesses to his wife that he cannot go to church. He decides to survive somehow the summer, and in the fall to take off his dignity and leave with his family wherever his eyes look, far, far away ...

This decision brings peace to the house. The soul rests for three months. And at the end of July, when Father Vasily was at the hayfield, a fire breaks out in his house and his wife burns alive.

He wandered for a long time in the garden of the old deacon, who served with him and sheltered with his daughter and son after the fire. And the thoughts of Father Vasily are wonderful: the fire - was it not the same fiery pillar as the one that showed the Jews the way in the desert? God decided to turn his whole life into a desert - is it not so that he, Basil of Thebes, would no longer wander along the old, well-trodden paths? ..

And for the first time in many years, bowing his head humbly, he says that morning: "Thy holy will be done!" - and the people who saw him that morning in the garden meet an unfamiliar, completely new, as from another world, person who asks them with a smile: "Why are you looking at me like that? Am I a miracle?"

Father Vasily sends his daughter to the city to his sister, builds a new house, where he lives alone with his son, reading the Gospel aloud to him and himself, as if for the first time hearing about the healing of the blind man, about the resurrection of Lazarus. In the church, he now serves daily (and before - only on holidays); imposed monastic vows on himself, a strict fast. And this new life of his is even more alarming for fellow villagers. When the peasant Semyon Mosyagin, appointed by Father Vasily as a worker to the church elder, dies, everyone agrees that the priest is to blame.

The headman enters Father Vasily at the altar and directly declares: “Get out of here! You’re causing only misfortune here. Even a chicken doesn’t dare kill itself for no reason, but people are dying because of you.” And then Father Vasily, who had been afraid of the elder all his life, who was the first to take off his hat when meeting him, expels him from the temple, like a biblical prophet, with anger and flame in his gaze...

The funeral service for Seeds takes place on Spirits Day. In the temple - the smell of decay, outside the windows it is dark, like at night. Anxiety runs through the crowd of worshipers. And a thunderstorm breaks out: interrupting the reading of the memorial prayers, Father Vasily laughs silently and triumphantly, like Moses, who has seen God, and, going up to the coffin where the ugly, swollen body lies, loudly proclaims: "I tell you - get up!"

The dead man does not obey him, does not open his eyes, does not rise from the grave. "Do not want?" - Father Vasily shakes the coffin, pushes the dead man out of it. The people run out of the temple in fear, believing that demons have taken possession of their quiet and absurd shepherd. And he continues to cry out to the dead man; but rather the walls will collapse than the dead man will obey him ... Yes, he is not fighting with the dead man - he is fighting with God, in whom he believed infinitely and therefore has the right to demand a miracle!

Seized with rage, Father Vasily runs out of the church and rushes through the village, into the open field, where he lamented more than once his bitter fate, his incinerated life. There, in the middle of the field, the next day the peasants will find him - sprawled in such a position, as if he continued to run even dead ...

The Tale of the Seven Hanged Men - (1906)

An old, corpulent, diseased man sits in a strange house, in a strange bedroom, in a strange armchair, and examines his body with bewilderment, listens to his feelings, tries hard and cannot fully master the thoughts in his head: "Fools! They think that, telling me about the impending assassination attempt on me, telling me the hour when I was to be torn to pieces by a bomb, they delivered me from the fear of death! They, fools, think that they saved me by secretly bringing me and my family to this strange house where I am saved, where I am safe and at peace! It is not death that is terrible, but the knowledge of it. If someone knew for sure the day and hour when he must die, he could not live with this knowledge. And they say to me: "At one o'clock in the afternoon, Your Excellency!.."

The minister, on whom the revolutionaries were preparing an assassination attempt, thinks on that night, which could be his last night, about the bliss of not knowing the end, as if someone had told him that he would never die.

The intruders, detained at the time set by the denunciation with bombs, infernal machines and revolvers at the entrance to the minister's house, spend the last nights and days before hanging, to which they will be hastily sentenced, in equally painful reflections.

How can it be that they, young, strong, healthy, will die? And is it death? “Am I afraid of her, the devil?” one of the five bombers, Sergei Golovin, thinks about death. “I feel sorry for my life! A magnificent thing, no matter what the pessimists say. It didn’t grow, it didn’t grow, but then it suddenly grew - why? .. "

In addition to Sergei, the son of a retired colonel (at the last meeting, his father wished him to meet death like an officer on the battlefield), there are four more in the prison cell. The son of a merchant, Vasya Kashirin, who gives all his strength not to show the horror of death crushing him to the executioners. An unknown named Werner, who was considered the instigator, who has his own mental judgment about death: it doesn’t matter at all whether you killed or didn’t kill, but when you are killed, thousands kill - you alone, they kill out of fear, which means that you won death for you no more. Unknown, nicknamed Musya, looking like a teenage boy, thin and pale, ready at the hour of execution to join the ranks of those bright, holy, best ones who from time immemorial go through torture and execution to the high sky. If she had been shown her body after death, she would have looked at it and said: "It is not me," and the executioners, scientists and philosophers would have retreated with a shudder, saying: "Do not touch this place. It is holy!" The last among those sentenced to hanging was Tanya Kovalchuk, who seemed like a mother to her like-minded people, so caring and loving were her eyes, smile, fears for them. She did not pay any attention to the trial and the sentence, she completely forgot about herself and thought only of others.

With five "politicals" waiting to be hanged on the same crossbar, Estonian Janson, a laborer who barely speaks Russian, convicted of murdering the owner and attempted rape of the mistress (he did all this foolishly, having heard that a similar thing happened on a neighboring farm), and Mikhail Golubets nicknamed Gypsy, the last in a series of atrocities of which was the murder and robbery of three people, and the dark past went into a mysterious depth. Misha himself, with complete frankness, calls himself a robber, flaunts both what he has done and what awaits him now. Janson, on the contrary, is paralyzed by both his deed and the verdict of the court, and repeats the same thing to everyone, putting into one phrase everything that he cannot express: "I don't need to be hanged."

Hours and days are passing. Until the moment when they are gathered together and then taken together out of town, into the March forest - to hang, the convicts, one by one, master the idea, which seems wild, absurd, incredible to everyone in their own way. The mechanical man Werner, who treated life as a complex chess problem, will instantly be cured of contempt for people, disgust even for their appearance: he will rise above the world, as if in a hot air balloon, and will be moved by how beautiful this world is. Musya dreams of one thing: so that people in whose kindness she believes do not feel sorry for her and do not declare her a heroine. She thinks of her comrades, with whom she is destined to die, as friends, into whose house she will enter with greetings on laughing lips. Seryozha exhausts his body with the gymnastics of the German doctor Müller, conquering fear with a keen sense of life in a young flexible body. Vasya Kashirin is close to insanity, all people seem to him like dolls, and, like a drowning man clutching at a straw, he clutches at the words that surfaced in his memory from somewhere in his early childhood: “Joy to all who mourn,” he pronounces them touchingly... but the tenderness immediately evaporates, he barely remembers the candles, the priest in a cassock, the icons and the hated father bowing in the church. And he becomes even more scared. Janson turns into a weak and stupid animal. And only Gypsy, until the very last step towards the gallows, swaggers and grins. He experienced horror only when he saw that everyone was being led to death in pairs, and he would be hanged alone. And then Tanechka Kovalchuk gives way to him in a pair with Musya, and Tsyganok leads her by the arm, warning her and feeling the way to death, as a man should lead a woman.

The sun is rising. They put the bodies in a box. The spring snow is just as soft and fragrant, in which the worn galosh lost by Sergey turns black.

Judas Iscariot - The Story (1907)

Among the disciples of Christ, so open, understandable at first glance, Judas from Carioth stands out not only for his notoriety, but also for his dual appearance: his face seems to be sewn from two halves. One side of the face is constantly moving, dotted with wrinkles, with a black sharp eye, the other is deadly smooth and seems disproportionately large from a wide-open, blind, thorn-covered eye.

When he appeared, none of the apostles noticed. What made Jesus draw him closer to himself and what attracts this Judas to the Teacher are also unanswered questions. Peter, John, Thomas look - and are unable to comprehend this closeness of beauty and ugliness, meekness and vice - the closeness of Christ and Judas sitting next to the table.

Many times the apostles asked Judas about what compels him to do bad deeds, he answers with a grin: every person has sinned at least once. The words of Jude are almost similar to what Christ tells them: no one has the right to condemn anyone. And the apostles faithful to the Teacher humble their anger at Judas: "It's nothing that you are so ugly. Not so ugly come across in our fishing nets!"

"Tell me, Judas, was your father a good man?" - "And who was my father? The one who whipped me? Or the devil, the goat, the rooster? How can Judas know everyone with whom his mother shared a bed?"

Jude's answer shakes the apostles: whoever glorifies his parents is doomed to perdition! "Tell me, are we good people?" - "Ah, they tempt poor Judas, offend Judas!" - the red-haired man from Karyota grimaces.

In one village they are accused of stealing a kid, knowing that Judas is walking with them. In another village, after the preaching of Christ, they wanted to stone Him and the disciples; Judas rushed to the crowd, shouting that the Teacher was not possessed by a demon at all, that He was just a deceiver who loves money, just like him, Judas, - and the crowd humbled himself: "These strangers are not worthy to die at the hands of an honest one!"

Jesus leaves the village in anger, moving away from it with long steps; the disciples follow him at a respectful distance, cursing Judas. “Now I believe that your father is the devil?” Foma throws him in the face. Fools! He saved their lives, but once again they did not appreciate him ...

Somehow, at a halt, the apostles decided to have fun: measuring their strength, they pick up stones from the ground - who is bigger? - and thrown into the abyss. Judas lifts the heaviest piece of rock. His face shines with triumph: now it is clear to everyone that he, Judas, is the strongest, most beautiful, best of the twelve. "Lord," Peter prays to Christ, "I don't want Judas to be the strongest. Help me to overcome him!" - "And who will help Iscariot?" Jesus replies sadly.

Judas, appointed by Christ to keep all their savings, hides a few coins - this is revealed. The students are outraged. Judas is brought to Christ - and He again stands up for him: "No one should count how much money our brother embezzled. Such reproaches offend him." In the evening at dinner, Judas is cheerful, but he is pleased not so much by reconciliation with the apostles, but by the fact that the Teacher again singled him out from the general row: “How can a man who was kissed so much today for stealing not be cheerful? John, what is love for one's neighbor? Isn't it fun to be a hook on which one hangs damp virtue to dry, and the other mind wasted by moths?

The mournful last days of Christ are approaching. Peter and John are arguing over which of them is more worthy to sit at the right hand of the Teacher in the Kingdom of Heaven - the cunning Judas points out to everyone his primacy. And then, when asked how he still thinks in good conscience, he proudly answers: "Of course, I!" The next morning, he goes to the high priest Anna, offering to bring the Nazarene to justice. Annas is well aware of the reputation of Judas and drives him away for several days in a row; but, fearing a rebellion and interference by the Roman authorities, he contemptuously offers Judas thirty pieces of silver for the life of the Teacher. Judas is outraged: “You don’t understand what they are selling you! He is kind, he heals the sick, he is loved by the poor! This price turns out that for a drop of blood you give only half an obol, for a drop of sweat - a quarter of an obol ... screams? And groans? And the heart, lips, eyes? You want to rob me!" "Then you won't get anything." Hearing such an unexpected refusal, Judas is transformed: he must not cede the right to the life of Christ to anyone, and in fact there will surely be a villain who is ready to betray Him for an obol or two ...

Judas surrounds the One whom he betrayed with caress in the last hours. Affectionate and helpful he is with the apostles: nothing should interfere with the plan, thanks to which the name of Judas will forever be called in the memory of people along with the name of Jesus! In the Garden of Gethsemane, he kisses Christ with such painful tenderness and longing that if Jesus were a flower, not a drop of dew would fall from His petals, he would not sway on a thin stalk from the kiss of Judas. Step by step, Judas follows in the footsteps of Christ, not believing his eyes when He is beaten, condemned, led to Golgotha. The night is thickening... What is the night? The sun is rising... What is the sun? Nobody shouts: "Hosanna!" No one defended Christ with weapons, although he, Judas, stole two swords from Roman soldiers and brought them to these "faithful disciples"! He is alone - to the end, to the last breath - with Jesus! His horror and dream come true. Iscariot rises from his knees at the foot of the Calvary cross. Who will wrest victory from his hands? Let all nations, all future generations flow here at this moment - they will find only a pillory and a dead body.

Judas looks at the ground. How small she suddenly became under his feet! Time no longer passes by itself, neither in front nor behind, but, obediently, it moves with all its bulk only together with Judas, with his steps on this small earth.

He goes to the Sanhedrin and throws them in the face, like a ruler: "I deceived you! He was innocent and pure! You killed a sinless one! It was not Judas who betrayed him, but you, betrayed him to eternal disgrace!"

On this day, Judas speaks like a prophet, which the cowardly apostles do not dare: "I saw the sun today - it looked at the earth with horror, asking:" Where are the people here? "Scorpions, animals, stones - everyone echoed this question. If you say the sea and the mountains, how much people valued Jesus, they will come down from their places and fall on your heads! .. "

“Which of you,” Iscariot addresses the apostles, “will go with me to Jesus? You are afraid! You say that it was His will? You explain your cowardice by the fact that He ordered you to carry His word on earth? But who will believe His word in your cowardly and unfaithful lips?"

Judas “climbs the mountain and tightens the noose around his neck in full view of the whole world, completing his plan. The news of Judas the traitor spreads throughout the world. Not faster or quieter, but with time this news continues to fly...

Maxim Gorky 1868-1936

Philistines - A play (1901, publ. 1902)

Bessemenov Vasily Vasilyevich, 58 years old, foreman of the painting shop, who is aiming for a deputy to the city duma from the shop class, lives in a prosperous house; Akulina Ivanovna, his wife; son Peter, a former student expelled for participating in unauthorized student meetings; daughter Tatyana, a school teacher who has been sitting too long in brides; Bessemenov's pupil Nil, a machinist in a railway depot; the church chorister Teterev and the student Shishkin are freeloaders;

Elena Nikolaevna Krivtsova is a young widow of a prison warden who rents rooms in the house, and Stepanida is a cook who does all the menial work in the house with the help of the girl Poli, a seamstress, daughter of a distant relative of Bessemenov Perchikhin, a songbird merchant and a drunkard. In addition to them, Tsvetaeva, a young teacher, a friend of Tatyana, often visits the house.

The action of the play takes place in an atmosphere of constantly flaring up and fading scandals between Bessemenov and his children. The father is dissatisfied with the irreverence of the children towards him, as well as the fact that both have not yet found their place in life. In his opinion, both of them have become too "educated" and therefore proud. It prevents them from living. Tatyana just has to get married, and Peter - it is profitable to marry and work to increase his father's wealth. As the action develops, it becomes clear that the children not so much do not want to live "like a father", but simply cannot because of their weakened will, loss of interest in life, etc. Education really did not benefit them; it only confused them, deprived them of the will to live and their strong philistine roots.

This is the main tragedy of the Bessemenov family. In the case of Peter, according to Teterev, who plays a kind of reasoner role in the play, this tragedy should be decided in favor of his father: Peter will leave Krivtsova, whom he is still in love with against the will of his parents, will inevitably follow the path of his father and also become an exemplary tradesman. In the case of Tatyana, who is hopelessly in love with Nil, who is already bound by mutual love with Fields, the question is open: most likely, Tatyana will remain the unfortunate victim of the contradiction between her bourgeois roots and the new trends of the times.

These trends are most clearly expressed by Nil, the most "progressive" hero and, obviously, the future socialist-revolutionary, to which Bessemenov alludes. Nil reflects the aesthetics of struggle and labor close to Gorky, inextricably linked. For example, he loves to forge, but not because he loves work in general, but because he likes to sort of fight with metal, suppressing its resistance. At the same time, Neil's will and purposefulness have a downside: he is ruthless to Tatyana, who is in love with him, and to Bessemenov, who raised him.

Along the way, marginal plots unfold in the play: Teterev's love for Field, in which he sees his last salvation from drunkenness and boredom of life; the fate of Perchikhin, a man not of this world, living only with love for birds and the forest; the tragedy of Krivtsova, who is in love with life, but has lost her place in it. The most interesting of the secondary characters is Grouse. This man is too huge (both physically and spiritually) for that wretched life, the owners of which are Bessemenov and others like him so far. But he is unlikely to find a place in that life, the owners of which will be people like Neil. His image is the image of the eternal exile of life.

The play ends on a tragic note. After a failed attempt to commit suicide, Tatyana realizes her doom and uselessness among people. In the last scene, she falls on the keys of the piano, and a discordant loud sound is heard ...

At the bottom. Paintings - Play (1902, publ. 1903)

The play contains, as it were, two parallel actions. The first is social and everyday and the second is philosophical. Both actions develop in parallel, not intertwined. There are, as it were, two planes in the play: external and internal.

External plan. In the doss house, owned by Mikhail Ivanovich Kostylev (51 years old) and his wife Vasilisa Karlovna (26 years old), live, according to the author's definition, "former people", that is, people without a solid social status, as well as working, but poor people. These are: Satin and Actor (both under 40 years old), Vaska Pepel, a thief (28 years old), Andrey Mitrich Kleshch, a locksmith (40 years old), his wife Anna (30 years old), Nastya, a prostitute (24 years old), Bubnov (45 years old), Baron (33 years old), Alyoshka (20 years old), Tatarin and Crooked Goiter, hookers (age not named). Kvashnya, a dumpling vendor (under 40 years old) and Medvedev, Vasilisa's uncle, a policeman (50 years old), appear in the house. There is a very difficult relationship between them, scandals are often tied up. Vasilisa is in love with Vaska and persuades him to kill her elderly husband in order to be the sole mistress (in the second half of the play, Vaska beats Kostylev and accidentally kills him; Vaska is arrested). Vaska is in love with Natalya, Vasilisa's sister (20 years old); Vasilisa mercilessly beats her sister out of jealousy. Satin and the Actor (a former actor of provincial theaters by the name of Sverchkov-Zavolzhsky) are completely degraded people, drunkards, gamblers, Satin is also a sharpie. The baron is a former nobleman who squandered his entire fortune and is now one of the most miserable people in the rooming house. The tick tries to earn money with his metalwork tool; his wife Anna falls ill and needs medicine; at the end of the play, Anna dies, and the Tick finally sinks "to the bottom."

In the midst of drunkenness and scandals, the wanderer Luka appears in the rooming house, pitying people. He promises many an unrealizable bright future. He predicts happiness for Anna after death. The actor talks about a free hospital for alcoholics. Vaska and Natasha are advised to leave home, etc. But at the most tense moment, Luka actually runs away, leaving hopeful people. The actor is driven to suicide. In the finale, the bunkhouses sing a song, and when Satin hears about the death of the Actor, he says annoyed and bitterly: "Eh ... He ruined the song ... fool!"

Internal plan. In the play, two philosophical “truths” collide: Luke and Satine. The nochlezhka is a kind of symbol of humanity that finds itself in a dead end, which by the beginning of the 20th century. has lost faith in God, but has not yet gained faith in itself. Hence the general feeling of hopelessness, lack of perspective, which, in particular, is expressed by Actor and Bubnov (a pessimistic reasoner) in the words: “What next” and “And the threads are rotten...” The world has become dilapidated, weakened, and is coming to an end . Satin prefers to accept this bitter truth and not lie to himself or people. He suggests to Mite that he stop working. If everyone stops working, what will happen? “They’ll die of hunger...” answers Kleshch, but in doing so he only reveals the meaningless essence of labor, which is aimed only at maintaining life, and not at bringing any meaning into it. Satin is a kind of radical existentialist, a person who accepts the absurdity of the universe, in which “God died” (Nietzsche) and the Emptiness, Nothingness, was exposed. Luke adheres to a different view of the world. He believes that it is the terrible meaninglessness of life that should evoke special pity for man ". If a person needs a lie to continue living, he needs to lie to him, to console him. Otherwise, the person will not stand the “truth" and will die. So Luke tells a parable about a seeker of a righteous land and a scientist who showed him on a map that there is no righteous land . The offended man left and hanged himself (a parallel with the future death of the Actor). Luke is not just an ordinary wanderer, a comforter, but also a philosopher. In his opinion, a person is obliged to live despite the meaninglessness of life, because he does not know his future, he is only a wanderer in the universe, and even our earth is a wanderer in space. Luke and Satin argue. But Satin somehow accepts Luke’s “truth.” In any case, it is the appearance of Luke that provokes Satin into his monologue about Man, which he pronounces, imitating the voice of his opponent (an important stage directions in the play). Satin does not want to pity and console a person, but, by telling him the whole truth about the meaninglessness of life, to encourage him to self-respect and rebellion against the universe. A person, having realized the tragedy of his existence, should not despair, but, on the contrary, feel his worth. The whole meaning of the universe is in it alone. There is no other meaning (for example, Christian). "Man - that sounds proud!" "Everything is in man, everything is for man."

Mother - Roman (1906)

The novel is set in Russia in the early 1900s. Factory workers with their families live in the working settlement, and the whole life of these people is inextricably linked with the factory: in the morning, with the factory whistle, the workers rush to the factory, in the evening it throws them out of its stone bowels; on holidays, meeting each other, they only talk about the factory, drink a lot, get drunk - they fight. However, the young worker Pavel Vlasov, unexpectedly for his mother Pelageya Nilovna, the widow of a locksmith, suddenly begins to live a different life: on holidays he goes to the city, brings books, reads a lot. To his mother's bewildered question, Pavel replies: "I want to know the truth and therefore I read forbidden books; if they find them in my possession, they will put me in prison."

After some time, Pavel's comrades begin to gather in the Vlasovs' house on Saturday evenings: Andrey Nakhodka - "a crest from Kanev", as he introduces himself to his mother, who recently arrived in the suburb and entered the factory; several factory guys from the suburbs, whom Nilovna had known before; people from the city come: a young girl Natasha, a teacher who left Moscow from rich parents; Nikolai Ivanovich, who sometimes comes instead of Natasha to deal with the workers; thin and pale young lady Sashenka, also, like Natasha, who left the family: her father is a landowner, a zemstvo chief. Pavel and Sashenka love each other, but they cannot get married: they both believe that married revolutionaries are lost for business - they need to earn a living, an apartment, raise children. Gathering in the house of the Vlasovs, the members of the circle read books on history, talk about the hard lot of the workers of the whole earth, about the solidarity of all working people, and often sing songs. At these meetings, the mother hears the word "socialists" for the first time.

Mother really likes Nakhodka, and he also fell in love with her, affectionately calls her "nenko", says that she looks like his late foster mother, but he does not remember his own mother. After some time, Pavel and his mother offer Andrei to move into their house, and the Little Russian gladly agrees.

Leaflets appear at the factory, which speak of workers' strikes in St. Petersburg, of the injustice of the factory's order; leaflets call on the workers to unite and fight for their interests. The mother understands that the appearance of these sheets is connected with the work of her son, she is both proud of him and fears for his fate. After some time, the gendarmes come to the Vlasovs' house with a search. The mother is scared, but she tries to suppress her fear. Those who came did not find anything: having been warned in advance about the search, Pavel and Andrey took away forbidden books from the house; nevertheless Andrey is arrested.

An announcement appears at the factory stating that the directorate will deduct a penny from each ruble earned by the workers - to drain the swamps surrounding the factory. The workers are dissatisfied with this decision of the management, several elderly workers come to Pavel for advice. Pavel asks his mother to go to the city to take his note to the newspaper so that the story with the "swamp penny" gets into the nearest issue, and he goes to the factory, where, having led a spontaneous rally, in the presence of the director, he sets out the workers' demands for the abolition of the new tax. However, the director orders the workers to resume work, and everyone disperses to their places. Pavel is upset, he believes that the people did not believe him, did not follow his truth, because he is young and weak - he did not manage to tell this truth. At night, the gendarmes again appear and this time they take Pavel away.

A few days later, Yegor Ivanovich comes to Nilovna - one of those who went to meetings with Pavel before his arrest. He tells his mother that, in addition to Pavel, 48 more factory workers were arrested, and it would be good to continue delivering leaflets to the factory. The mother volunteers to carry leaflets, for which she asks a friend who sells lunches for workers at the factory to take her to be her assistant. Everyone entering the factory is searched, but the mother successfully smuggles the leaflets and passes them to the workers.

Finally Andrei and Pavel are released from prison and begin to prepare for the celebration of the First of May. Pavel is going to carry the banner ahead of the column of demonstrators, although he knows that for this he will be sent to prison again. On the morning of May XNUMX, Pavel and Andrei do not go to work, but go to the square, where the people have already gathered. Pavel, standing under the red banner, declares that today they, members of the Social Democratic Labor Party, are openly raising the banner of reason, truth, and freedom. "Long live the working people of all countries!" - with this slogan of Paul, the column headed by him moved along the streets of the settlement. However, a chain of soldiers came out to meet the demonstration, the column was crushed, Pavel and Andrei, who was walking next to him, were arrested. Automatically picking up a fragment of a pole with a fragment of a banner torn by the gendarmes from the hands of her son, Nilovna goes home, and in her chest there is a desire to tell everyone that the children are following the truth, they want a different, better life, the truth for everyone.

A few days later, the mother moves to the city to Nikolai Ivanovich - he promised Pavel and Andrey, if they were arrested, to immediately take her to him. In the city, Nilovna, running the simple household of the lonely Nikolai Ivanovich, begins active underground work: alone or together with Nikolai’s sister Sophia, disguised as either a nun, or a pilgrim pilgrim, or a lace merchant, she travels around the cities and villages of the province, delivering forbidden books, newspapers, proclamation. She loves this job, she loves talking to people, listening to their stories about life. She sees that the people live half-starved among the enormous riches of the earth. Returning from trips to the city, the mother goes on dates with her son in prison. On one of these dates, she manages to give him a note inviting his comrades to arrange an escape for him and his friends. However, Pavel refuses to escape; Sashenka, who was the initiator of the escape, is most upset by this.

Finally, the day of judgment arrives. Only the relatives of the defendants were allowed into the hall. Mother was waiting for something terrible, waiting for a dispute, finding out the truth, but everything goes quietly: the judges speak indifferently, indistinctly, reluctantly; witnesses - hastily and colorless. The speeches of the prosecutor and lawyers also do not touch the mother's heart. But then Paul begins to speak. He does not defend himself - he explains why they are not rebels, although they are judged as rebels. They are socialists, their slogans are - down with private property, all means of production - to the people, all power - to the people, labor is obligatory for all. They are revolutionaries and will remain so until all their ideas win. Everything that the son says is known to the mother, but only here, at the trial, does she feel the strange, captivating power of his faith. But now the judge reads the verdict: send all the defendants to the settlement. Sasha is also waiting for the verdict and is going to declare that he wants to be settled in the same area as Pavel. The mother promises her to come to them when their children are born, to nurse her grandchildren.

When the mother returns home, Nikolai informs her that it was decided to publish Pavel's speech at the trial. The mother volunteers to take her son's speech for distribution to another city. At the station, she suddenly sees a young man whose face and attentive gaze seem strangely familiar to her; she remembers that she had met him earlier both in court and near the prison, and she understands that she has been caught. The young man calls the watchman and, pointing at her with his eyes, says something to him. The watchman approaches the mother and reproachfully says: "The thief! The old one is already there, but there too!" "I'm not a thief!" - choking with resentment and indignation, the mother screams and, snatching bundles of proclamations from her suitcase, holds them out to the people around her: "This is the speech of my son, yesterday he was judged by political politicians, he was among them." The gendarmes push people aside as they approach their mother; one of them grabs her by the throat, preventing her from speaking; she wheezes. There are sobs in the crowd.

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin 1870-1938

Duel - A Tale (1905)

Returning from the parade ground, Lieutenant Romashov thought: "I won't go today: you can't annoy people every day." Every day he stayed with the Nikolaevs until midnight, but in the evening of the next day he again went to this cozy house.

"You have received letters from the mistress," Gainan, a cheremis, sincerely attached to Romashov, reported. The letter was from Raisa Alexandrovna Peterson, with whom they had been dirty and boring (and for quite a long time) deceived her husband. The cloying smell of her perfume and the vulgarly playful tone of the letter evoked an unbearable disgust. Half an hour later, embarrassed and annoyed with himself, he knocked on the door of the Nikolaevs. Vladimir Yefimitch was busy. For two years in a row he had failed the exams at the academy, and Alexandra Petrovna, Shurochka, did everything so that the last chance (it was allowed to enter only up to three times) was not missed. Helping her husband to prepare, Shurochka had already mastered the whole program (only ballistics was not given), Volodya was moving very slowly.

With Romochka (as she called Romashov), Shurochka began to discuss a newspaper article about fights recently allowed in the army. She sees in them a severe necessity for Russian conditions. Otherwise, a card sharper like Archakovsky or a drunkard like Nazansky will not be brought out among the officers. Romashov did not agree to enlist Nazansky in this company, who said that the ability to love is given, like talent, not to everyone. Once this man was rejected by Shurochka, and her husband hated the lieutenant.

This time Romashov stayed by Shurochka's side until they started talking that it was time for bed.

... At the next regimental ball, Romashov plucked up the courage to tell his mistress that it was all over. Petersonikha vowed revenge. And soon Nikolaev began to receive anonymous letters with hints of a special relationship between the second lieutenant and his wife. However, there were enough ill-wishers besides her. Romashov did not allow non-commissioned officers to fight and strongly objected to the "dentists" from among the officers, and promised Captain Plum that he would file a report against him if he allowed the soldiers to be beaten.

Romashov and the authorities were dissatisfied. In addition, money was getting worse, and the barman was no longer lending even cigarettes. The soul was bad because of the feeling of boredom, the meaninglessness of service and loneliness.

At the end of April, Romashov received a note from Alexandra Petrovna. She reminded of their common name day (Queen Alexandra and her faithful knight George). Having borrowed money from Lieutenant Colonel Rafalsky, Romashov bought perfume and at five o'clock was already at the Nikolaevs, the picnic turned out to be noisy. Romashov sat next to Shurochka, almost did not listen to Osadchy's rantings, toasts and flat jokes of the officers, experiencing a strange state, similar to a dream. His hand sometimes touched Shurochka's hand, but neither he nor she looked at each other. Nikolaev, it seems, was dissatisfied. After the feast, Romashov wandered into the grove. Footsteps were heard behind. It was Shurochka. They sat down on the grass. "I'm in love with you today," she admitted. Romochka appeared to her in a dream, and she terribly wanted to see him. He began to kiss her dress: "Sasha ... I love you ..." She admitted that she was worried about his closeness, but why is he so miserable. They have common thoughts, desires, but she must abandon him. Shurochka got up: let's go, they'll miss us. On the way, she suddenly asked him not to visit them again: her husband was besieged by anonymous letters.

In mid-May, a review took place. The corps commander drove around the companies lined up on the parade ground, looked at how they marched, how they performed rifle techniques and reorganized to repel unexpected cavalry attacks, and was dissatisfied. Only the fifth company of Captain Stelkovsky, where they did not torture with steps and did not steal from the common cauldron, deserved praise.

The most terrible thing happened during the ceremonial march. Even at the beginning of the review, Romashov seemed to be picked up by some kind of joyful wave, he seemed to feel like a particle of some formidable force. And now, walking ahead of his half-company, he felt himself the object of general admiration. Shouts from behind made him turn around and turn pale. The formation was mixed up - and it was precisely because he, Lieutenant Romashov, ascending in his dreams to the heavens, all this time shifted from the center of the ranks to the right flank. Instead of delight, public disgrace fell on his lot. To this was added an explanation with Nikolaev, who demanded that everything be done to stop the flow of anonymous letters, and also not to visit their house.

Going through what had happened in his memory, Romashov imperceptibly reached the railroad track and in the darkness made out the soldier Khlebnikov, the subject of bullying and ridicule in the company. "You wanted to kill yourself?" - he asked Khlebnikov, and the soldier, choking with sobs, told that they beat him, laughed, the platoon commander extorted money, and where to get it. And the teaching is beyond his power: from childhood he suffers from a hernia.

Romashov suddenly felt his grief so trifling that he embraced Khlebnikov and spoke of the need to endure. From that time on, he understood: the faceless companies and regiments consist of such Khlebnikovs, aching with their grief and having their own fate.

The forced distance from the officer society allowed me to focus on my thoughts and find joy in the very process of the birth of a thought. Romashov saw more and more clearly that there were only three worthy vocations: science, art, and free physical labor.

At the end of May, a soldier hanged himself in Osadchy's company. After this incident, unrestrained drunkenness began. At first they drank in the assembly, then they moved to Schleifersha. This is where the scandal erupted. Bek-Agamalov rushed with a saber at those present (“Everyone get out of here!”), And then his anger turned to one of the young ladies, who called him a fool. Romashov intercepted his hand: "Beck, you will not hit a woman, you will be ashamed all your life."

The revelry in the regiment continued. Romashov found Osadchy and Nikolaev in the meeting. The latter pretended not to notice him. They sang around. When silence finally reigned, Osadchy suddenly began a memorial service for the suicide, interspersed with dirty curses. Romashov was furious: "I won't allow it! Be silent!" In response, for some reason, already Nikolaev, with a face distorted by anger, shouted to him: "You yourself are a disgrace to the regiment! You and various Nazanskys!" "And what does Nazansky have to do with it?

Or do you have reasons to be dissatisfied with him?" Nikolaev swung, but Romashov managed to throw the rest of the beer in his face.

On the eve of the meeting of the officers' court of honor, Nikolaev asked the enemy not to mention the name of his wife and anonymous letters. As expected, the court determined that the quarrel could not be ended by reconciliation.

Romashov spent most of the day before the duel at Nazansky, who urged him not to shoot. Life is an amazing and unique phenomenon. Is he really so devoted to the military class, does he really believe in the supposedly higher meaning of the army order so that he is ready to put his very existence at stake?

In the evening, Romashov found Shurochka at his house. She began to say that she had spent years arranging her husband's career. If Romochka refuses to fight for the sake of her love, then there will still be something dubious about it, and Volodya will almost certainly not be allowed to take the exam. They must certainly shoot, but not one of them must be wounded. The husband knows and agrees. Saying goodbye, she threw her hands around his neck: "We will not see each other again. So we will not be afraid of anything ... Once ... we will take our happiness ..." - and pressed her hot lips to his mouth.

... In an official report to the regimental commander, Staff Captain Dietz reported the details of the duel between Lieutenant Nikolaev and Lieutenant Romashov. When, on command, the opponents went towards each other, Lieutenant Nikolaev wounded the second lieutenant in the right upper abdomen with a shot, and he died seven minutes later from an internal hemorrhage. Attached to the report was the testimony of a junior doctor in Znoiko.

Garnet Bracelet - A Tale (1911)

A bundle with a small jewelry case in the name of Princess Vera Nikolaevna Sheina was handed over by the messenger through the maid. The princess reprimanded her, but Dasha said that the messenger immediately ran away, and she did not dare to tear the birthday girl away from the guests.

Inside the case was a gold, low-grade puffy bracelet covered with garnets, among which was a small green stone. The letter enclosed in the case contained congratulations on the day of the angel and a request to accept the bracelet that belonged to the great-grandmother. A green stone is a very rare green garnet that communicates the gift of providence and protects men from violent death. The letter ended with the words: "Your obedient servant G.S.Zh. before death and after death."

Vera took the bracelet in her hands - inside the stones, alarming dense red living lights lit up. "Just like blood!" she thought as she returned to the living room.

Prince Vasily Lvovich was demonstrating at that moment his humorous home album, which had just been opened on the "story" "Princess Vera and the telegraph operator in love." "Better not," she pleaded. But the husband has already begun commenting on his own drawings full of brilliant humor. Here is a girl, named Vera, receives a letter with kissing doves, signed by telegrapher P.P.Zh. Here is young Vasya Shein returning Vera's wedding ring: "I dare not interfere with your happiness, and yet it is my duty to warn you: telegraphers are seductive, but insidious." But Vera marries the handsome Vasya Shein, but the telegraph operator continues to persecute. Here he, disguised as a chimney sweep, enters the boudoir of Princess Vera. Here, having changed clothes, he enters their kitchen as a dishwasher. Here, at last, he is in a lunatic asylum, etc.

"Gentlemen, who wants tea?" Vera asked. After tea, the guests began to leave. The old general Anosov, whom Vera and her sister Anna called grandfather, asked the princess to explain what was true in the prince's story.

G.S.Z. (and not P.P.Z.) began harassing her with letters two years before her marriage. Obviously, he constantly watched her, knew where she was at the parties, how she was dressed. When Vera, also in writing, asked not to bother her with his persecution, he fell silent about love and limited himself to congratulations on holidays, as well as today, on her name day.

The old man was silent. "Maybe it's a maniac? Or maybe, Verochka, it was the kind of love that crossed your life path that women dream of and that men are incapable of more."

After the guests left, Vera's husband and her brother Nikolai decided to find an admirer and return the bracelet. The next day they already knew the address of G.S.Zh. It turned out to be a man of about thirty to thirty-five. He did not deny anything and admitted the indecency of his behavior. Finding some understanding and even sympathy in the prince, he explained to him that, alas, he loves his wife and neither deportation nor prison will kill this feeling. Except death. He must confess that he has squandered government money and will be forced to flee the city, so that they will not hear from him again.

The next day, in the newspaper, Vera read about the suicide of G. S. Zheltkov, an official of the control chamber, and in the evening the postman brought his letter.

Zheltkov wrote that for him all life consisted only in her, in Vera Nikolaevna. It is the love that God rewarded him for something. leaving, he repeats in delight: "Hallowed be thy name." If she remembers him, then let her play the D major part of Beethoven's "Appassionata", he thanks her from the bottom of his heart for the fact that she was his only joy in life.

Vera could not help but go to say goodbye to this man. Her husband fully understood her impulse.

The face of the person lying in the coffin was serene, as if he had learned a deep secret. Vera raised his head, placed a large red rose under his neck, and kissed him on the forehead. She understood that the love that every woman dreams of had passed her by.

Returning home, she found only her college friend, the famous pianist Jenny Reiter. "Play something for me," she asked.

And Jenny (oh miracle!) began to play the place in "Appassionata", which Zheltkov indicated in the letter. She listened, and in her mind words were composed, like couplets, ending with a prayer: "Hallowed be thy name."

"What happened to you?" asked Jenny, seeing her tears. "... He has forgiven me now. All is well," Vera replied.

Alexander Alexandrovich Blok 1880-1921

The Stranger Lyric Drama (1906)

a street tavern, vulgar and cheap, but with a claim to romance: huge identical ships sail along the walls ... A slight touch of unreality: the owner and the sex look alike, like twins, one of the visitors is "the spitting image of Verlaine", the other is "the spitting image of Hauptman". Drunken companies, loud noise. Separate remarks, fragmentary dialogues add up to broken music of tavern vulgarity, addictive like a whirlpool. When a light allegro predicted the tonality of the action, the Poet appears: wasted, worn out in taverns, drunkenly reveling in the fact that he intends to "tell his soul to a figurehead" (sexual) Vague poetic longing, a flickering dream of a "Stranger" in rustling silks, whose shining face shines through a dark veil, contrasting with the drunken vulgarity advancing from all sides, intensifying its pressure, but at the same time, as if generated by it. And the languid melody of a dream is woven into the rude tavern cries, and the shabby Man in a coat offers the Poet a cameo with a marvelous image, and everything sways in smoke, floats, and "the walls part. The finally tilted ceiling reveals the sky - winter, blue, cold."

Janitors are dragging the intoxicated Poet across the bridge. The astrologer follows the course of the stars: "Ah, the star is falling, the star is flying ... Fly here! Here! Here!" - sings the verse of his adagio. Summoned by him, a beautiful woman appears on the bridge - the Stranger. She is all in black, her eyes are full of surprise, her face still retains a starry brilliance. Towards her smoothly goes Blue - beautiful, like her, too, perhaps, torn from heaven. He speaks to her in the dreamy language of the stars, and the winter air is filled with the music of the spheres - eternal and therefore bewitchingly sleepy, cold, incorporeal. And the "falling maiden-star" craves "earthly speeches." "Do you want to hug me?" "I dare not touch you." - "Do you know passion?" - "My blood is silent"... And Blue disappears, melts, swirling with a snow column. And the Stranger is picked up by the passing Master - an oily, lustful dandy.

Crying on the bridge Astrologer - mourning a fallen star. The poet is crying, waking up from a drunken dream and realizing that he had missed his dream. The snow is falling more and more thickly, it brings down the wall, the snow walls are compacted, folding into ...

...The walls of the large living room. Guests are gathering, "a general hum of meaningless conversations", as if secular, in a higher tone than conversations in a tavern, but exactly about the same thing. Separate remarks are repeated word for word ... And when the Master flies in, having taken the Stranger away, and utters the already sounded phrase: "Kostya, friend, yes she is at the door", when everyone suddenly begins to feel the strangeness of what is happening, vaguely guess what it was, it was , it was, - then the Poet appears. And behind him enters the Stranger, embarrassing the guests and hosts with his unexpected appearance, forcing the street don Juan to embarrassingly hide. But the polished meanness of the living room is impenetrable; the conversation swirled again in the same tavern circle. Only the Poet is thoughtful and quiet, looking at the Stranger - not recognizing... The belated Astrologer politely asks if he managed to catch up with the vanished vision. "My searches were fruitless," the Poet replies coldly. In his eyes "emptiness and darkness. He forgot everything"... The unrecognized maiden disappears. "There is a bright star outside the window."

Balaganchik - Lyric drama (1906)

On the stage there is an ordinary theater room with three walls, a window and a door. Mystics of both sexes in frock coats and fashionable dresses sit at the table with a concentrated look. Pierrot is sitting by the window in a white robe. The mystics are waiting for the arrival of Death, Pierrot is waiting for the arrival of his bride Columbine, Suddenly and out of nowhere a girl of extraordinary beauty appears. She is dressed in white, with a braided braid over her shoulders. Enthusiastic Pierrot kneels down in prayer. The mystics lean back in their chairs in horror: “She has arrived! There is emptiness in her eyes! Her features are as pale as marble! This is Death!” Pierrot tries to dissuade the Mystics, saying that this is Columbine, his bride, but the Chairman of the mystical meeting assures Pierrot that he is mistaken, this is Death. Confused Pierrot rushes to the exit, Columbine follows him. Harlequin appears and takes Columbine away, taking her hand. The mystics hang lifelessly on their chairs - it seems like empty frock coats are hanging. The curtain closes, the Author jumps onto the stage, trying to explain to the public the essence of the play he wrote: it is about the mutual love of two young souls; a third person blocks their path, but the barriers finally fall, and lovers are united forever. He, the Author, does not recognize any allegories... However, he is not allowed to finish; a hand sticking out from behind the curtain grabs the Author by the collar, and he disappears behind the scenes.

The curtain opens. There is a ball on stage. To the sounds of dance, masks spin, knights, ladies, and clowns stroll. Sad Pierrot, sitting on a bench, pronounces a monologue: “I stood between two lanterns // And listened to their voices, // How they whispered, covered with cloaks, // The night kissed their eyes. // ... Ah, then in the cab's sleigh // He made my friend sit down! // I wandered in the frosty fog, // I watched them from afar. // Ah, he entangled her in nets // And, laughing, he rang his bell! But when he wrapped her up, - // Ah, my friend fell face down! // ...And all night through the snowy streets // We wandered - Harlequin and Pierrot... // He pressed himself against me so tenderly, // A feather tickled my nose! // He whispered to me: “Brother my, we are together, // Inseparable for many days... // We will be sad with you about the bride, // About your cardboard bride!" Pierrot sadly leaves.

Couples in love pass in front of the audience one after another. two people, imagining that they are in church, talking quietly, sitting on a bench; two passionate lovers, their movements are swift; a pair of medieval lovers - she quietly, like an echo, repeats the last words of his every phrase. Harlequin appears: “Through the sleepy and snowy streets // I dragged the fool along with me! // The world opened up to rebellious eyes, // The snowy wind sang above me! /... Hello, world! You are with me again! // Your soul is close I’ve been here for a long time! // I’m going to breathe your spring // Through your golden window!” Harlequin jumps out of the painted window - the paper bursts. In a paper tear against the background of the rising dawn, Death stands - in long white robes with a scythe on his shoulder.

Everyone runs away in horror. Suddenly Pierrot appears, he slowly walks across the entire stage, stretching out his arms towards Death, and as he approaches, her features begin to come to life - and against the backdrop of dawn, Columbine stands at the window. Pierrot approaches, wants to touch her hand - when suddenly the head of the Author pokes between them, who wants to connect the hands of Columbine and Pierrot. Suddenly the scenery soars and flies upward, the masks scatter, and Pierrot lies helpless on the empty stage. Piteously and dreamily, Pierrot pronounces his monologue: “Oh, how bright is the one who left // (The ringing comrade took her away). // She fell (she was made of cardboard). // And I came to laugh at her. // <. ..> And here I stand, pale-faced, // But it’s a sin for you to laugh at me. // What to do! She fell on her face... // I’m very sad. Do you find it funny?”

Twelve - Poem (1918)

The action takes place in revolutionary Petrograd in the winter of 1917/18. Petrograd, however, acts both as a concrete city and as the center of the Universe, a place of cosmic cataclysms.

The first of the twelve chapters of the poem describes the cold, snow-covered streets of Petrograd, tormented by wars and revolutions. People make their way along slippery paths, looking at slogans, cursing the Bolsheviks. At spontaneous rallies, someone - "must be a writer - Vitya" - speaks of sold Russia. Among the passers-by - "a sad comrade priest", a bourgeois, a lady in astrakhan fur, intimidated old women. There are fragmentary screams from some nearby meetings. It's getting dark, the wind is picking up. Status - poet? one of the passers-by? - described as "malice", "sad malice", "black malice, holy malice".

The second chapter: a detachment of twelve people is walking through the night city. The cold is accompanied by a feeling of complete freedom; people are ready to do anything to protect the new world from the old - "let's fire a bullet at Holy Rus' - into the condo, into the hut, into the fat-ass." On the way, the fighters discuss their friend, Vanka, who got along with the “rich” girl Katya, scold him as a “bourgeois”: instead of defending the revolution, Vanka spends time in taverns.

Chapter three is a dashing song, apparently performed by a squad of twelve. A song about how, after the war, in torn coats and with Austrian guns, "guys" serve in the Red Guard. The last verse of the song is a promise of a world fire, in which all the "bourgeois" will perish. Blessing for the fire is requested, however, from God.

The fourth chapter describes the same Vanka: with Katya in a scorcher they rush through Petrograd. A handsome soldier hugs his girlfriend, says something to her; she, contented, laughs merrily.

The next chapter is Vanka's words addressed to Katya. He reminds her of her past - a prostitute who moved from officers and cadets to soldiers. Katya's wild life was reflected in her beautiful body - with scars and scratches from the stab blows of abandoned lovers. In rather rude terms (“Al, didn’t you remember, cholera?”), the soldier reminds the walking young lady of the murder of some officer, to whom she clearly had something to do. Now the soldier demands his own - "dance!", "get lost!", "put to sleep with you!", "sin!"

Sixth chapter: a scorcher carrying lovers collides with a detachment of twelve. Armed people attack the sledge, shoot at those sitting there, threatening Vanka with reprisals for appropriating a "strange girl." The cab driver, however, takes out Vanka from under the shots; Katya, with a shot through her head, remains lying on the snow.

The detachment of twelve people moves on, as cheerfully as before the skirmish with the cab driver, a “revolutionary step.” Only the murderer - Petrukha - is sad for Katya, who was once his mistress. His comrades condemn him - “now is not the time to babysit you.” Petrukha, truly cheerful, is ready to move on. The mood in the detachment is the most militant: “Lock the floors, today there will be robberies. Unlock the cellars - there are robbers walking around today!”

The eighth chapter is the confused thoughts of Petrukha, who is very sad about the shot girlfriend; he prays for the repose of her soul; He is going to disperse his longing with new murders - "you fly, bourgeois, like a little sparrow! I'll drink blood for a sweetheart, for a black-eyed ...".

Chapter nine is a romance dedicated to the death of the old world. Instead of a policeman at the crossroads, there is a freezing bourgeois, behind him - very well combined with this hunched figure - a lousy dog.

Twelve go on - through the blizzard night. Petka commemorates the Lord, marveling at the strength of the blizzard. His comrades blame him for his unconsciousness, they remind him that Petka is already stained with Katka's blood, which means that there will be no help from God.

So, "without the name of a saint," twelve people under a red flag firmly move on, ready at any moment to respond to the enemy's blow. Their procession becomes eternal - "and the blizzard dusts their eyes for days and nights without a break...".

Chapter twelve, last. A mangy dog ​​is tied behind the detachment - the old world. The soldiers threaten him with bayonets, trying to drive him away from them. Ahead, in the darkness, they see someone; trying to figure it out, people start shooting. The figure, however, does not disappear, it stubbornly goes ahead. "So they walk with a sovereign step - behind - a hungry dog, in front - with a bloody flag <...> Jesus Christ."

Andrei Bely 1880-1934

Petersburg - Roman (1913)

Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov is a senator of a very respectable family: he has Adam as his ancestor. However, if we talk about times not so distant, then during the reign of Anna Ioannovna, the Kirkiz-Kaisatsky Mirza Ab-Lai entered the Russian service, was named Andrei in baptism and received the nickname Ukhov. He was the great-great-grandfather of Apollon Apollonovich.

Apollon Apollonovich is preparing to go to the Institution, he was the head of the Institution and from there he sent circulars throughout Russia. He ran the circulars.

Apollon Apollonovich had already got up, wiped himself with eau de cologne, wrote down in his "Diary" - which will be published after his death - an idea that came to mind. He ate coffee, inquired about his son, and, having learned that his son Nikolai Apollonovich had not yet got up, he grimaced. Every morning the senator asked about his son and grimaced every morning. He sorted out the correspondence and put aside, without opening, a letter that had come from Spain from his wife Anna Petrovna. Two and a half years ago the couple parted, Anna Petrovna left with an Italian singer.

Young, in a black top hat, in a gray coat, pulling on a black glove as he walked, Apollon Apollonovich ran down the porch and got into the carriage.

The carriage flew to Nevsky. It flew in a greenish fog along the avenue that rushed to infinity, past the cubes of houses with strict numbering, past the circulating public, from which Apollon Apollonovich was reliably protected by four perpendicular walls. The senator did not like open spaces, could not bear zigzag lines. He liked the geometric regularity of cubes, parallelepipeds, pyramids, the clarity of straight lines, and the planning of St. Petersburg avenues. The islands rising in the fog, into which the arrows of the avenues pierced, aroused fear in him. The resident of the islands, the raznochinny, factory people, the inhabitants of chaos, the senator believed, threaten St. Petersburg.

From a huge gray house on the seventeenth line of Vasilyevsky Island, descending a black staircase strewn with cucumber peels, a stranger with a black mustache comes out. In his hands is a bundle, which he carefully holds. Across the Nikolaevsky bridge, in a stream of people - blue shadows in the dusk of a gray morning - the shadow of a stranger to Petersburg. He hated Petersburg for a long time.

A carriage stopped at the crossroads... Suddenly. Frightened, Apollon Apollonovich raised his gloved hands, as if trying to protect himself, leaned back into the depths of the carriage, hit the wall with a cylinder, and exposed a bare skull with huge protruding ears. The flaming, staring at him look close to the carriage of the walking commoner pierced him.

The carriage flew by. The stranger was further carried away by the flow of people.

Couple after couple flowed along the Nevsky, fragments of words formed into phrases, Neva gossip was woven: "They are going to ...", "Throw ...", "To whom ...", "To Abl ...". The provocation went on a spree along Nevsky, the words in the stranger turned into a provocation, the provocation was in himself. "Look, what courage, Elusive," the stranger heard behind him.

Out of the autumn dankness, a stranger enters the restaurant.

Apollon Apollonovich was somehow especially concentrated that day. Idle thoughts played out, a brain game started up. He remembers that he saw a stranger in his house. Out of the senator's brain game, out of an ephemeral being, a stranger came out and established himself in reality.

When the stranger disappeared at the door of the restaurant, two silhouettes appeared; fat, tall, clearly distinguished by his build, and next to him was the lousy figure of a short gentleman with a huge wart on his face. Separate phrases of their conversation were heard: "Senator Ableukhov to publish a circular ...", "The elusive one will have to...", "Nikolai Apollonovich will have to...", "The case is staged like a clockwork...", "They would receive a salary" .

The figure of an unpleasant fat man appeared at the door of the establishment, the stranger turned around, and the lady waved her cat hat to him in a friendly way. "Alexander Ivanovich ..", "Lippanchenko". The person sits down at the table. “Be careful,” the stranger warns him, noticing that the fat man wants to put his elbow on a sheet of newspaper: the sheet was covered with a knot. Lippanchenko's lips trembled. He asks to take the dangerous little bundle for storage to Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov, and at the same time to hand over the letter.

For two and a half years, Nikolai Apollonovich has not met his father for morning coffee, does not wake up before noon, walks around in a Bukhara dressing gown, Tatar shoes and a yarmulke. However, he still reads Kant and draws conclusions, builds chains of logical premises. In the morning he received a box from the dresser: in the box is a satin red domino. Nikolai Apollonovich sets off into the damp Petersburg twilight, throwing a Nikolaevka coat over his shoulders. A piece of red satin peeks out under the Nikolaevka. Memories of unsuccessful love swept over him, he remembered that foggy night when he almost threw himself from the bridge into dark waters and when the plan matured in him to make a promise to one frivolous party.

Nikolai Apollonovich enters the entrance of the house on the Moika and remains in the darkness of the entrance. A woman's shadow, burying her face in her muff, runs along the Moika and enters the entrance. The maid opens the door and screams. In the streak of light that cut through the darkness, there is a red domino in a black mask. Putting the mask forward, the domino holds out a bloody sleeve. And when the door slammed shut, the lady sees a visiting card lying at the door: a skull with bones instead of a noble crown and typed words in fashionable type - "I'm waiting for you in a masquerade there, such and such a date. Red Jester."

Sofya Petrovna Likhutina lives in the house on the Moika, she is married to lieutenant Sergei Sergeyevich Likhutin; Nikolai Apollonovich was the best man at her wedding. Nikolai Apollonovich often visited this house, where the Little Russian Lippanchenko came, and the student Varvara Evgrafovna, who was secretly in love with Ableukhov. The noble appearance of Nikolai Apollonovich first captivated Sofya Petrovna, but behind the ancient mask something frog-like suddenly opened up in him. Sofya Petrovna both loved and hated Ableukhov, attracted him, repulsed him from her, and once in anger called him the Red Jester. Ableukhov stopped coming.

In the morning, a stranger with a mustache comes to Nikolai Apollonovich. The visit is not too pleasant for Ableukhov, he remembers the recklessly given promise, he thinks to refuse, but somehow everything does not work out. And the stranger asks to take the bundle for storage, opens up, complains of insomnia, loneliness. All of Russia knows him as Elusive, but he himself is locked in his apartment on Vasilyevsky Island, he does not go anywhere. After the exile of Yakutsk, he met a special one in Helsingfors and now depends on the person.

Apollon Apollonovich arrives, his son introduces him to a university student Alexander Ivanovich Dudkin. Apollon Apollonovich recognizes him as yesterday's commoner.

A rumble rolls across Petersburg. There will be a rally. With the news of the rally, Varvara Evgrafovna comes to Sofya Petrovna and asks to convey a letter to Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov, whom, according to rumors, Sofya Petrovna is to meet at the ball at the Tsukatovs. Nikolai Apollonovich knew that Sofya Petrovna would be at the meeting. Varvara Evgrafovna always takes everyone to the rallies. In a Nikolaevka coat, worn over a red domino, he rushes into the St. Petersburg twilight.

Escaped from the stuffy hall, where speakers were speaking and shouts of "Strike!" were heard, Sofya Petrovna runs to her home. She sees on the bridge: a red domino in a black mask rushes towards her. But two steps away from Sofya Petrovna, a red domino slips and falls, revealing light-green pantalon thongs. "A frog, a freak, a red jester," Sofya Petrovna shouts and, in anger, kicks the jester. She runs home upset and in a fit tells everything to her husband. Sergei Sergeevich became terribly agitated and, pale, clenching his fists, paced the room. He forbade going to the ball to the Tsukatovs. Sofya Petrovna was offended. Offended by her husband and Ableukhov, she opened the letter brought by Varvara Evgrafovna, read it and decided to take revenge.

In the costume of Madame Pompadour, despite the prohibition of her husband, Sofya Petrovna arrived at the ball. Apollon Apollonovich also arrived. They were waiting for masks. And then a red domino appears, and then other masks. Madame Pompadour invites a red domino to dance, and in the dance she hands over a letter. Does not recognize Sofya Petrovna Ableukhov. In the corner room, he rips off the envelope, lifts the mask and reveals himself. Scandal. Red domino - Nikolai Ableukhov. And already a short gentleman with a wart informs Apollon Apollonovich about this.

Having run out of the entrance, in the alley, by the light of a lantern, Ableukhov again reads the letter. He does not believe his eyes. They remember this promise to him, they offer to blow up their own father with a time bomb, which is stored in the bundle handed to him in the form of a sardine. And then a short gentleman comes up, carries him along, leads him to a tavern. At first he appears as the illegitimate son of Apollon Apollonovich, and then as Pavel Yakovlevich Morkovin, an agent of the security department. He says that if Nikolai Apollonovich does not fulfill the requirements stated in the letter, he will arrest him.

Sergei Sergeevich Likhutin, when Sofya Petrovna left for the ball, despite the prohibition, decides to commit suicide. He shaved off his mustache and shaved his neck, smeared the rope with soap, fastened it to the chandelier and climbed onto a chair. The doorbell rang, at that moment he stepped out of his chair and ... fell. I didn't hang myself. Suicide turned out to be an even greater humiliation for Lieutenant Likhutin. This is how Sofia Petrovna discovered him. She leaned over him and wept softly.

Apollo Apollonovich firmly decided to himself that his son was a notorious scoundrel; the scandal at the ball, that is, the appearance of Nikolai Apollonovich in a red domino, makes him decide to sort things out. But at the last moment, Apollon Apollonovich finds out about the arrival of Anna Petrovna and, unexpectedly for himself, only informs his son of this and looks not with hatred, but with love. Another moment, and Nikolai Apollonovich would throw himself at his father's feet in repentance, but, noticing his movement, Apollon Apollonovich suddenly points to the door in anger and shouts that Nikolai Apollonovich is no longer his son.

In his room, Nikolai Apollonovich takes out a sardine bowl, a sardine bowl of terrible content. Without a doubt, it should be thrown into the Neva, but for now ... for now, at least delay the terrible event by turning the key of the clock mechanism twenty times.

Alexander Ivanovich wakes up broken and sick. With difficulty, he gets up and goes outside. Here Nikolai Apollonovich, excited and indignant, rushes at him. From his confused explanations, it becomes clear to Dudkin for whom the "sardine of terrible content" is intended, he also recalls the letter that he forgot to give to Nikolai Apollonovich and asked Varvara Evgrafovna to do it. Alexander Ivanovich assures Ableukhov that there has been a misunderstanding, promises to settle everything and asks to immediately throw the sardine into the Neva.

The strange word "enfranchish" beats in Alexander Ivanovich's head. He comes to a small house with a garden. The dacha overlooked the sea, a bush was beating through the window. He is met by the hostess Zoya Zakharovna Fleisch. She is talking to some Frenchman. Singing comes from the next room. Zoya Zakharovna explains that this is the Persian Shishnarfiev. The surname seemed familiar to Dudkin. Lippanchenko comes, he looks at Dudkin disdainfully, even disgustedly. He talks with a Frenchman, makes him wait for a conversation with himself.

As a high-ranking person he treats Alexander Ivanovich. And now the person has the power. Dudkin is removed, he has no influence, he is completely dependent on the person, and the person does not hesitate to threaten him. Dudkin returns home. On the stairs he is met by darkness and strange geniuses at the door of the apartment. His guest, Shishnarfiev, is waiting in the room, assuring us that Petersburg, the city in the swamp, is in fact the kingdom of the dead;

recalls the meeting in Helsingfors, when Alexander Ivanovich spoke out for the destruction of culture, saying that Satanism would replace Christianity. "Enfranches!" exclaims Dudkin. "You called me, so I came," the voice answers. The Persian thins out, turns into a silhouette, then simply disappears and speaks as if from Alexander Ivanovich himself. That's who he concluded an agreement with in Helsingfors, and Lippanchenko was only an image of these forces. But now Dudkin knows what he will do with Lippanchenko.

A heavy-voiced galloping is heard outside the window. The Bronze Horseman enters the room. He puts his hand on Dudkin's shoulder, breaking his collarbone: "Nothing: die, be patient," and pours red-hot metal into his veins.

We need to find a metal place, Dudkin understands in the morning, goes to the store and buys scissors ...

On the street, Nikolai Apollonovich meets Likhutin. The one in civilian clothes, clean-shaven, without a mustache; drags him along, takes him home for explanations, drags Ableukhov into the apartment, pushes the room into the back. Sergey Sergeevich nervously paced, it seems that he will beat Ableukhov now. Nikolai Apollonovich pitifully makes excuses...

That morning Apollon Apollonovich did not go to the Institution. In a dressing gown, with a rag in his hands, wiping the dust from the bookshelves, Anna's youthful gray-haired cavalier, who arrived with the news of the general strike, finds her with it. Apollon Apollonovich is retiring, they began to say in the Institution.

Apollon Apollonovich walks around his deserted house, enters his son's rooms. An open drawer draws his attention. Absent-mindedly, he takes some strange heavy object, goes away with it and forgets it in his office...

Nikolai Apollonovich tried to escape from Likhutin, but he was thrown into a corner and lies humiliated, with his tailcoat torn off. "I won't kill you," says Sergey Sergeevich. He dragged Ableukhov to his place, because Sofya Petrovna told him about the letter. He wants to lock up Ableukhov, go to his house, find a bomb and throw it into the Neva. Pride woke up in Nikolai Apollonovich, he is indignant that Sergey Sergeevich could consider him capable of killing his own father.

The dacha overlooked the sea, a bush was beating through the window. Ligshanchenko and Zoya Zakharovna were sitting in front of the samovar. The bush boiled. A figure was hiding in its branches, languishing and trembling. It seemed to her that the horseman was pointing with his outstretched hand at the windows of the dacha. The figurine approached the house and recoiled again... Lilpanchenko looks around, the noise outside the windows attracts his attention, he walks around the house with a candle - no one... The small figure runs up to the house, climbs into the bedroom window and hides... The candle casts fantastic shadows, Lippanchenko locks the door and goes to bed. In the ensuing phosphorescent twilight, a shadow clearly emerges and approaches him. Lippanchenko rushes to the door and feels as if a stream of boiling water went down his back, and then he felt a stream of boiling water under his navel ... When they came to his room in the morning, Lippanchenko was not there, but there was a corpse; and the figure of a man with a strange grin on his white face, sitting on a dead man, clutching scissors in his hand.

Apollon Apollonovich came to Anna Petrovna's hotel and returned home with her... Nikolai Apollonovich searches through his closets in his room in search of a sardine. Nowhere is she. The servant enters with the news - Anna Petrovna has arrived - and asks to go into the living room. After two and a half years, the Ableukhovs again dine together ... Nikolai Apollonovich decides that Lihutin has already taken the sardine in his absence. He accompanies his mother to the hotel, stops by the Likhutins, but there is darkness in the windows of their apartment, the Likhutins were not at home ...

Nikolai Apollonovich could not sleep that night. He went out into the corridor, sank down on his haunches, took a nap from fatigue. I woke up on the floor in the hallway. There was a heavy roar...

Nikolai Apollonovich ran up to the place where the door to his father's office had just been. There was no door: there was a huge failure. In the bedroom, Apollon Apollonovich sat on the bed with his arms around his knees and roared. Seeing his son, he started to run away from him, ran through the corridor and locked himself in the toilet...

Apollon Apollonovich retired and moved to the village. Here he lived with Anna Petrovna, wrote memoirs, in the year of his death they saw the light.

Nikolai Apollonovich, who had been lying in a fever all the time of the investigation, went abroad, to Egypt. He returned to Russia only after the death of his father.

Fyodor Kuzmin Sologub 1863-1927

Petty Imp - Novel (1902)

Ardalyon Borisovich Peredonov, a teacher of literature at the local gymnasium, constantly felt himself the subject of special attention from women. Still would! A state councilor (fifth grade in the ranking table!), a man in the juice, in fact, not married ... After all, Barbara is ... Barbara, in which case, you can get a side. There's only one thing - without her, perhaps, you won't get an inspector's job. (The director of the gymnasium does not favor him, the students and their parents consider him rude and unfair.) Princess Volchanskaya promised Varvara to plead for Ardalyon Borisovich, but she made the wedding a condition: it is inconvenient to plead for the roommate of her former home dressmaker. However, first the place, and then the wedding. And then just deceived.

Varvara was extremely worried about these moods of his, and she begged the widow Grushina to prepare a letter for money, supposedly from the princess, with a promise of a place if they got married.

Peredonov was overjoyed, but Vershina, who tried to pass off the dowry Marta as him, immediately rebuked him: where is the envelope? Business letter - and without an envelope! Varvara and Grushina immediately corrected the matter with a second letter sent through Petersburg acquaintances. Both Vershina and Routilov, who was wooing his sisters to Peredonov, and Prepolovenskaya, who was counting on getting a niece for him, all understood that their case was lost, Ardalyon Borisovich appointed the wedding day. Already suspicious, he was now even more afraid of envy and kept waiting for a denunciation or even an attempt on his life. Prepolovenskaya added fuel to the fire, alluding to the fact that Pavel Vasilyevich Volodin, a close friend of Ardalyon Borisovich, was visiting Peredonov for Varvara Dmitrievna's sake. This, of course, is nonsense. Varvara considers Volodin a fool, and besides, the teacher of trade in the city school receives four times less than the teacher of the gymnasium Peredonov. Ardalyon Borisovich became worried: he would marry Varvara, they would go to the inspector's place, and on the way they would poison him and bury him like Volodin, and he would be an inspector. Barbara does not let go of the knife, and the fork is dangerous. (And he hid the utensils under the bed. The Chinese eat with chopsticks.) And here is the ram, so similar to Volodin, staring blankly, probably intriguing. The main thing, they will inform - and died. After all, Natasha, Peredonov's former cook, went directly from them to the gendarme. Having met the gendarme lieutenant colonel, Ardalyon Borisovich asked not to believe what Natasha would say about him, she was lying, and her lover was a Pole.

The meeting suggested the idea of ​​visiting the city fathers and assuring them of their trustworthiness. He visited the mayor, the prosecutor, the marshal of the nobility, the chairman of the county zemstvo council, and even the police chief. And he told everyone that everything they talk about him is nonsense. Wanting to somehow smoke on the street, he suddenly saw a policeman and inquired if it was possible to smoke here. So that the almost accomplished inspector would not be replaced by Volodin, he decided to mark himself. On the chest, on the stomach, on the elbows, he put the letter P in ink.

The cat also became suspicious. Strong electricity in wool is the trouble. And he took the beast to the hairdresser - to cut his hair.

Already many times a gray nedotykomka appeared to him, rolled around at his feet, mocked him, teased him: he would lean out and hide. And even worse - cards. The ladies, two at a time, winked; aces, kings, jacks whispered, whispered, teased.

After the wedding, the director and his wife visited the Peredonovs for the first time, but it was noticeable that they moved in different circles of local society. And in the gymnasium, not everything is going smoothly with Peredonov. He visited the parents of his students and complained about their laziness and insolence. In several cases, the children were sekoma for these fictitious guilt and complained to the director.

The story with the fifth grader Sasha Pylnikov turned out to be quite wild. Grushina told me that this boy was really a girl in disguise: he was so cute and blushed all the time, he was quiet and the schoolboys teased him as a girl. And all this to catch Ardalyon Borisovich.

Peredonov reported to the director about a possible scandal: depravity would begin in the gymnasium. The director considered that Peredonov was going too far. Nevertheless, the cautious Nikolai Vlasevich, in the presence of the gymnasium doctor, was convinced that Sasha was not a girl, but the rumor did not subside, and one of the Rutilov sisters, Lyudmila, looked into Kokovkina's house, where the aunt rented a room for Sasha.

Lyudmila and Sasha became friends with a tender but restless friendship. Lyudmila awakened in him premature, still vague aspirations. She came dressed up, perfumed, sprinkled perfume on her Daphnis.

Innocent excitement for Lyudmila was the main charm of their meetings, she said to the sisters: "I don't love him at all as you think ... I innocently love him. I don't need anything from him." She shook Sasha, put her on her knees, kissed and allowed her wrists, shoulders, legs to be kissed. Once she half-begged, half-forced him to strip to the waist. And she said to him: “I love beauty ... I would like to be born in ancient Athens ... I love the body, strong, dexterous, naked ... My dear idol, godlike youth ... "

She began to dress him in her outfits, and sometimes in the chiton of an Athenian or a fisherman. Her gentle kisses aroused the desire to do something sweet or sick, tender or shameful, so that she laughed with joy or screamed with pain.

Meanwhile, Peredonov was already repeating to everyone about Pylnikov's depravity. The townspeople looked at the boy and Lyudmila with filthy curiosity. The future inspector himself behaved more and more strangely. He burned the cards winking and grimacing in his face, wrote denunciations about card figures, about the underdog, about the ram who pretended to be Volodin. But the most terrible was what happened at the masquerade. The eternal pranksters and inventors of the Rutilov sisters dressed Sasha as a geisha and did it so skillfully that he got the first ladies' prize (no one recognized the boy). The crowd, excited by envy and alcohol, demanded to remove the mask, and in response to the refusal, they tried to grab the geisha, but the actor Bengalsky saved her, carrying her out of the crowd in his arms. While the geisha was being persecuted, Peredonov decided to set fire to the underdog that had come from nowhere. He brought the match to the curtain. The fire was already noticed from the street, so the house burned down, but people escaped. Subsequent events assured everyone that the talk about Sasha and the Rutilov girls was nonsense.

Peredonov began to realize that he had been deceived. One evening Volodin came in and sat down at the table. They drank more than they ate. The guest bleated, fooled around: "They fooled you, Ardasha." Peredonov drew his knife and slashed Volodin across the throat.

When they entered to take the killer, he sat dejectedly and muttered something meaningless.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky 1893-1930

Cloud in Pants - Tetraptich Poem (1914-1915)

The poet - handsome, twenty-two years old - teases the philistine, softened thought with a bloody patch of his heart. There is no senile tenderness in his soul, but he can turn himself inside out - so that there are only solid lips. And he will be impeccably gentle, not a man, but a cloud in his pants!

He recalls how once in Odessa his beloved, Maria, promised to come to him. Waiting for her, the poet melts the window glass with his forehead, his soul groans and writhes, his nerves rush about in a desperate tap dance. Already the twelfth hour falls, like the head of the executed from the chopping block. Finally, Maria appears - sharp, like "here!" - and announces that she is getting married. Trying to look absolutely calm, the poet feels that his "I" is not enough for him and someone stubbornly breaks out of him. But it is impossible to jump out of your own heart, in which a fire is blazing. One can only groan in the centuries the last cry about this fire.

The poet wants to put "nihil" ("nothing") above everything that has been done before him. He no longer wants to read books, because he understands how hard they are written, how long - before he starts to sing - the stupid roach of the imagination flounders in the mire of the heart. And until the poet finds the right words, the street writhes without a language - it has nothing to shout and talk with. In the mouth of the street, the corpses of dead words are decomposing. Only two words live, fattening - "bastard" and "borscht". And other poets rush away from the street, because these words do not sing a young lady, love and a flower under the dew. They are overtaken by street thousands - students, prostitutes, contractors - for whom a nail in their own boot is more nightmarish than Goethe's fantasy. The poet agrees with them: the smallest grain of sand of the living is more valuable than anything he can do. He, ridiculed by today's tribe, sees the sixteenth year in the crown of thorns of revolutions and feels himself to be its forerunner. In the name of this future, he is ready to trample on his soul and, bloodied, give it like a banner.

It's good when the soul is wrapped in a yellow jacket from inspections! The poet is disgusted by Severyanin, because the poet should not chirp today. He foresees that soon the lampposts will raise the bloodied carcasses of the meadowsweet, everyone will take a stone, a knife or a bomb, and the sunset will be red like a Marseillaise in the sky.

Seeing the eyes of the Mother of God on the icon, the poet asks her: why bestow radiance on the tavern crowd, which again prefers Barabbas to the spat on Calvary? Perhaps the most beautiful of the sons of the Mother of God is he, the poet and the thirteenth apostle of the Gospel, and someday children will be baptized with the names of his poems.

He again and again recalls the unfading beauty of his Mary's lips and asks for her body, as Christians ask - "give us our daily bread today." Her name is equal in majesty to God, he will take care of her body, as an invalid takes care of his only leg. But if Mary rejects the poet, he will leave, watering the road with the blood of his heart, to his father's house. And then he will offer God to arrange a carousel on the tree of the study of good and evil and ask him why he did not invent kisses without torment, and call him a dropout, a tiny god.

The poet is waiting for the sky to take off his hat to him in response to his challenge! But the universe sleeps, putting a huge ear on a paw with flared stars.

About this - Poem (1922-1923)

The theme that the poet wants to talk about has been covered many times. He himself circled in it like a poetic squirrel and wants to circle again. This theme can even push a cripple to paper, and his song will ripple in the sun with lines. There is truth and beauty hidden in this theme. This theme is preparing to jump into the recesses of instincts. Appearing to the poet, this theme scatters people and affairs like a thunderstorm. This topic, whose name is love, rises to the throat with a knife!

The poet talks about himself and his beloved in a ballad, and the mood of the ballads grows younger, because the words of the poet hurt. "She" lives in her house in Vodopyanny Lane, "he" sits in his house by the phone. The impossibility of meeting becomes a prison for him. He calls his beloved, and his call flies like a bullet through the wires, causing an earthquake on Myasnitskaya, near the post office. The calm second-cook picks up the phone and slowly goes to call the poet's beloved. The whole world is relegated somewhere, only the unknown is aiming at it with a tube. Between him and his beloved, separated by Myasnitskaya, lies the universe, through which a cable stretches like a thin thread. The poet does not feel like a respected employee of Izvestia, who will have to go to Paris in the summer, but like a bear on his ice-floe pillow. And if bears cry, then just like him.

The poet remembers himself - such as he was seven years ago, when the poem "Man" was written. Since then, he was not destined to crawl into everyday life, into family happiness like a cockerel: with ropes of his own lines, he is tied to a bridge over the river and is waiting for help. He runs through Moscow at night - along Petrovsky Park, Khodynka, Tverskaya, Sadovaya, Presnya. On Presnya, in a family burrow, his relatives are waiting for him. They are glad of his appearance at Christmas, but are surprised when the poet calls them somewhere 600 miles away, where they have to save someone standing on a bridge over the river. They do not want to save anyone, and the poet understands that relatives replace love with tea and darning of socks. He doesn't need their chicken love.

Through the Presnya mirages, the poet walks with gifts under his arms. He finds himself in the petty-bourgeois house of Fekla Davidovna. Here the angels turn pink from the iconic gloss, Jesus bows graciously, lifting a thorny wreath, and even Marx, harnessed to a scarlet frame, drags the philistine strap. The poet is trying to explain to the townsfolk that he writes for them, and not because of a personal whim. They, smiling, listen to the eminent buffoon and eat, rattling their jaws against their jaws. They, too, are indifferent to some person tied to a bridge over a river and waiting for help. The words of the poet pass through the townsfolk.

Moscow is reminiscent of Becklin's "Isle of the Dead". Once in the apartment of friends, the poet listens to how they chat with laughter about him, without ceasing to dance the two-step. Standing at the wall, he thinks of one thing: just not to hear the voice of his beloved here. He did not betray her in any of his poems, he bypasses her in curses with which horror smashes everyday life. It seems to him that only his beloved can save him - a man standing on a bridge. But then the poet understands: for seven years he has been standing on the bridge as a redeemer of earthly love, in order to pay for everyone and cry for everyone, and if necessary, he must stand for two hundred years without waiting for salvation.

He sees himself standing over Mount Mashuk. Below is a crowd of inhabitants, for whom the poet is not a verse and soul, but a hundred-year-old enemy. They shoot at him from all rifles, from all batteries, from every Mauser and Browning. On the Kremlin, poetic shreds shine like a red flag.

He hates everything that is hammered into people by the departed slave, that settled and settled by life even in the red-flag formation. But he believes with all his heartfelt faith in life, in this world. He sees the future workshop of human resurrections and believes that it is he, who did not live and did not love his own, that the people of the future will want to resurrect. Maybe his beloved will also be resurrected, and they will make up for the unloved stardom of countless nights. He asks for resurrection, if only because he was a poet and was waiting for his beloved, throwing aside everyday nonsense. He wants to live out his life in that life where love is not a servant of marriages, lust and bread, where love goes to the whole universe. He wants to live in a life where his father is at least the world, and his mother is at least the earth.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov 1899-1977

Masha - Roman (1926)

Spring 1924 Lev Glebovich Ganin lives in a Russian pension in Berlin. In addition to Ganin, mathematician Alexei Ivanovich Alferov lives in the boarding house, a man "with a thin beard and a shiny plump nose", "an old Russian poet" Anton Sergeevich Podtyagin, Clara - "a full-breasted, all in black silk, a very comfortable young lady", working as a typist and in love with Ganina, as well as ballet dancers Kolin and Gornotsvetov. "A special shade, mysterious affectation" separates the latter from other boarders, but, "speaking in conscience, one cannot blame the pigeon happiness of this harmless couple."

Last year, upon his arrival in Berlin, Ganin immediately found a job. He was a worker, and a waiter, and an extra. The money he has left is enough to leave Berlin, but for this he needs to break with Lyudmila, the connection with which has been going on for three months and he is rather tired of it. And how to break, Ganin does not know. Its window overlooks the railroad track, and therefore "the opportunity to leave teases relentlessly." He announces to the hostess that he will leave on Saturday.

Ganin learns from Alferov that his wife Masha is coming on Saturday. Alferov takes Ganin to his place to show him photographs of his wife. Ganin recognizes his first love. From that moment on, he is completely immersed in the memories of this love, it seems to him that he is exactly nine years younger. The next day, Tuesday, Ganin announces to Lyudmila that he loves another woman. Now he is free to remember how nine years ago, when he was sixteen years old, while recovering from typhus in a summer estate near Voskresensk, he created a female image for himself, which he met in reality a month later. Mashenka had "a chestnut braid in a black bow", "Tatar burning eyes", a swarthy face, a voice "mobile, burry, with unexpected chest sounds". Masha was very cheerful, loved sweets. She lived in a dacha in Voskresensk. Once, with two friends, she climbed into a gazebo in the park. Ganin spoke to the girls, they agreed to go boating the next day. But Mashenka came alone. They began to meet every day on the other side of the river, where an empty white manor stood on a hill.

When, on a black stormy night, on the eve of leaving for St. Petersburg for the beginning of the school year, he met her for the last time at this place, Ganin saw that the shutters of one of the windows of the estate were slightly open, and a human face was pressed against the glass from the inside. It was the caretaker's son. Ganin broke the glass and began to "beat his wet face with a stone fist."

The next day he left for Petersburg. Mashenka moved to St. Petersburg only in November. The "snow age of their love" has begun. It was difficult to meet, it was painful to wander in the cold for a long time, so both remembered the summer. In the evenings they talked for hours on the phone. All love requires solitude, and they had no shelter, their families did not know each other. At the beginning of the new year, Mashenka was taken to Moscow. And strangely, this separation turned out to be a relief for Ganin.

In the summer Mashenka returned. She called Ganin at the dacha and said that her father had never wanted to rent a dacha in Voskresensk again and she now lives fifty versts from there. Ganin went to her on a bicycle. Arrived after dark. Mashenka was waiting for him at the gates of the park. "I'm yours," she said. "Do whatever you want with me." But strange rustles were heard in the park, Mashenka lay too humbly and motionless. "It seems to me that someone is coming," he said and got up.

He met Mashenka a year later on a country train. She got off at the next station. They didn't see each other again. During the war years, Ganin and Mashenka exchanged affectionate letters several times. He was in Yalta, where "a military struggle was being prepared", it is somewhere in Little Russia. Then they lost each other.

On Friday, Colin and Gornotsvetov, on the occasion of receiving an engagement, Clara's birthday, Ganin's departure, and Podtyagin's supposed departure for Paris, decide to arrange a "feast". Ganin and Podtyagin go to the police department to help him with a visa. When the long-awaited visa is received, Podtyagin accidentally leaves his passport on the tram. He has a heart attack.

The festive dinner is not fun. The pull-up becomes bad again. Ganin waters the already drunk Alferov and sends him to bed, while he himself imagines how he will meet Mashenka at the station in the morning and take her away.

Having collected his things, Ganin says goodbye to the boarders sitting at the bedside of the dying Podtyagin, and goes to the station. There is an hour left before Masha's arrival. He sits down on a bench in the square near the station, where four days ago he recalled typhus, the estate, Mashenka's foreboding. Gradually, "with merciless clarity," Ganin realizes that his affair with Mashenka is over forever. "It lasted only four days - these four days were, perhaps, the happiest times of his life." The image of Mashenka remained with the dying poet in the "house of shadows". And there is no other Mashenka and cannot be. He waits for an express from the north to pass over the railway bridge. He takes a taxi, goes to another station and boards a train going to the southwest of Germany.

Protection of Luzhin - Roman (1929-1930)

By the end of the summer, ten-year-old Luzhin's parents finally decide to tell their son that after returning from the village to St. Petersburg, he will go to school. Fearing the impending change in his life, before the train arrives, little Luzhin runs away from the station back to the estate and hides in the attic, where, among other uninteresting things, he sees a chessboard with a crack. The boy is found, and a black-bearded peasant carries him from the attic to the carriage.

Luzhin Sr. wrote books, they constantly flashed the image of a blond boy who became a violinist or painter. He often thought about what might come out of his son, whose uncommonness was undeniable, but unrevealed. And the father hoped that his son's abilities would be revealed at the school, which was especially famous for its attentiveness to the so-called "inner" life of students. But a month later, the father heard coldish words from the teacher, proving that his son was understood at school even less than he himself: "The boy undoubtedly has abilities, but there is some lethargy."

During breaks, Luzhin does not participate in common childish games and always sits alone. In addition, peers find strange fun in laughing at Luzhin about his father's books, calling him by the name of one of the heroes Antosha. When parents pester their son at home with questions about school, a terrible thing happens: he knocks over a cup and saucer on the table like a madman.

Only in April does the day come for the boy when he has a hobby on which his whole life is doomed to focus. At a musical evening, a bored aunt, his mother's second cousin, gives him a simple chess lesson.

A few days later at school, Luzhin watches a chess game of classmates and feels that he somehow understands the game better than the players, although he does not yet know all its rules.

Luzhin begins to miss classes - instead of school, he goes to his aunt to play chess. So the week goes by. The caregiver calls home to find out what's wrong with him. Father answers the phone. Shocked parents demand an explanation from their son. He is bored to say anything, he yawns, listening to his father's instructive speech. The boy is sent to his room. The mother weeps and says that both father and son are deceiving her. The father thinks with sadness about how difficult it is to fulfill his duty, not to go where he is irresistibly drawn, and then there are these oddities with his son ...

Luzhin wins over the old man, who often comes to his aunt with flowers. Faced with such early abilities for the first time, the old man prophesies to the boy: "You will go far." He also explains a simple system of notation, and Luzhin, without figures and a board, can already play the parts given in the magazine, like a musician reading a score.

One day, the father, after explaining to his mother about his long absence (she suspects him of infidelity), invites his son to sit with him and play, for example, chess. Luzhin wins four games against his father, and at the very beginning of the last one he comments on one move in an unchildlike voice: "Worst answer. Chigorin advises taking a pawn." After his departure, the father sits thinking - his son's passion for chess amazes him. "She encouraged him in vain," he thinks of his aunt, and immediately recalls his explanations with his wife with longing...

The next day, the father brings a doctor who plays better than him, but the doctor also loses game after game to his son. And from that time on, the passion for chess closed the rest of the world for Luzhin. After one club performance, a photograph of Luzhin appears in the capital's magazine. He refuses to go to school. He is being asked for a week. Everything is decided by itself. When Luzhin runs away from home to his aunt, he meets her in mourning: "Your old partner is dead. Let's go with me." Luzhin runs away and does not remember if he saw the dead old man in the coffin, who once beat Chigorin - pictures of external life flash in his mind, turning into delirium. After a long illness, his parents take him abroad. Mother returns to Russia earlier, alone. One day, Luzhin sees his father in the company of a lady - and is very surprised that this lady is his St. Petersburg aunt. A few days later they receive a telegram about the death of their mother.

Luzhin plays in all major cities of Russia and Europe with the best chess players. He is accompanied by his father and Mr. Valentinov, who organizes tournaments. There is a war, a revolution, which entailed legal expulsion abroad. In the twenty-eighth year, sitting in a Berlin coffee shop, the father suddenly returns to the idea of ​​a story about a brilliant chess player who must die young. Prior to this, endless trips for his son did not make it possible to realize this plan, and now Luzhin Sr. thinks that he is ready for work. But a book thought out to the smallest detail is not written, although the author presents it, already finished, in his hands. After one of the country walks, getting wet in the downpour, the father falls ill and dies.

Luzhin continues tournaments around the world. He plays with brilliance, gives sessions and is close to playing the champion. At one of the resorts where he lives before the Berlin tournament, he meets his future wife, the only daughter of Russian emigrants. Despite Luzhin's vulnerability to the circumstances of life and outward clumsiness, the girl guesses in him a closed, secret artistry, which she attributes to the properties of a genius. They become husband and wife, a strange couple in the eyes of everyone around them. At the tournament, Luzhin, ahead of everyone, meets with his old rival Italian Turati. The game is interrupted in a draw. From overexertion, Luzhin falls seriously ill. The wife arranges life in such a way that no reminder of chess bothers Luzhin, but no one can change his sense of self, woven from chess images and pictures of the outside world. Valentinov, who has disappeared for a long time, calls on the phone, and his wife tries to prevent this man from meeting Luzhin, referring to his illness. Several times his wife reminds Luzhin that it is time to visit his father's grave. They plan to do so soon.

Luzhin's inflamed brain is busy solving an unfinished game against Turati. Luzhin is exhausted by his condition, he cannot free himself for a moment from people, from himself, from his thoughts, which are repeated in him, like moves once made. Repetition - in memories, chess combinations, flickering faces of people - becomes for Luzhin the most painful phenomenon. He "goes mad with horror before the inevitability of the next repetition" and comes up with a defense against a mysterious adversary. The main method of defense is to deliberately, voluntarily, perform some absurd, unexpected action that falls out of the general regularity of life, and thus confuse the combination of moves conceived by the opponent.

Accompanying his wife and mother-in-law shopping, Luzhin comes up with an excuse (a visit to the dentist) to leave them. “A little maneuver,” he grins in the taxi, stops the car and walks. It seems to Luzhin that he has already done all this once. He enters the store, which suddenly turns out to be a ladies’ hairdresser, in order to avoid a complete repetition with this unexpected move. At the house Valentinov is waiting for him, offering Luzhin to star in a film about a chess player, in which real grandmasters participate. Luzhin feels that cinema is an excuse for a repetition trap in which the next move is clear... “But this move will not be made.”

He returns home, with a concentrated and solemn expression, quickly walks through the rooms, accompanied by a crying wife, stops in front of her, lays out the contents of his pockets, kisses her hands and says: "The only way out. You have to drop out of the game." "We will play?" the wife asks. Here come the guests. Luzhin locks himself in the bathroom. He breaks the window and crawls through the frame with difficulty. It remains only to let go of what he is holding on to - and he is saved. There is a knock on the door, the wife's voice is clearly heard from the neighboring bedroom window: "Luzhin, Luzhin." The abyss below him splits into pale and dark squares, and he lets go of his hands.

“The door was kicked in. “Alexander Ivanovich, Alexander Ivanovich?” several voices roared.

But there was no Alexander Ivanovich."

Camera Obscura - Roman (1932-1933)

1928 Berlin. Bruno Kretschmar, a successful connoisseur of painting, who has a wife Anneliese and a daughter Irma and has never cheated on his wife for nine years of marriage, is suddenly carried away by a stranger whom he meets in the cinema. She works there as an attendant.

Her name is Magda Petere. She was sixteen years. She is from a poor family. The father is old and sick. The mother is always ready to hit her or her brother Otto, who is three years older than Magda. Parents reproached Magda with parasites, and she runs away from them to an elderly lady Lewandowska and begins to work as a model. Magda herself dreams of becoming an actress. Lewandowska is trying to set her up with a gentleman who called himself Muller. Since they like each other, Magda willingly runs away with him. He leaves in a month. Magda at first wanted to commit suicide, but then changed her mind. After Muller there were some Japanese, a fat old man "with a nose like a rotten pear." Magda is trying to find a place for an actress, but to no avail. The landlady arranges for her to work in a movie theater. Here she is met by Krechmar.

Krechmar marvels at his duality: on the one hand, "indestructible tenderness" for his wife, on the other, the desire to meet Magda. Magda finds out his phone number and calls him.

Krechmar is horrified: his wife could pick up the phone. He forbids Magda to call and offers her to rent an apartment. Magda, of course, accepts the offer, but does not stop calling. One day, the telephone operator accidentally connects Max - Anneliese's brother - with Kretschmar during his conversation with Magda. Max is stunned and immediately hangs up. He doesn't say anything to Anneliese.

Krechmar goes to see the apartment that Magda has rented. Magda confesses to him that she sent him a letter with a new address. This is a blow to Kretschmar: his wife always reads his letters, because they had no secrets from each other. He understands that it's all over. The letter cannot be returned. He stays with Magda.

Anneliese and her daughter move in with Max. Kretschmar cannot afford to let Magda into his apartment, so he moves in with her. He writes a letter to his wife saying that he still loves her and asks for forgiveness. However, there is no talk of his return. Magda attracts him, despite her vulgarity and gross shamelessness. When Magda's brother appears and demands money from her for keeping quiet about her past, Kretschmar kicks him out. Krechmar is jealous of Magda. Magda is so afraid of losing everything that Krechmar gave her that she does not dare to start any novels. Magda soon starts demanding they move to Kretschmar's old apartment. He succumbs to persuasion. They are moving. Kretschmar promises to get a divorce and marry Magda, but in fact the thought of a divorce horrifies him. Magda persuades him to finance the film, where she is promised a second female role. The film is vulgar, stupid, but Kretschmar gives money for it: if only Magda was happy.

At one of Krechmar's dinners, the American Horn appears, in whom Magda recognizes the man because of whom she wanted to give up her life. Gorn also recognizes Magda. Passion flares up again. However, everything is kept secret, since Magda is not going to lose Krechmar's money, and Horn has only unpaid debts.

Robert Horn is a cartoonist who believes that the funniest things in life are based on subtle cruelty.

Kretschmar's daughter Irma suddenly falls ill with the flu. She can no longer recover. Krechmar, whom Max went for, finds the last day of his daughter's life. She dies with him. While he is saying goodbye to his daughter, Magda is cheating on him with Gorn.

The film, in which Magda starred, is finally finished. At the viewing, the whole audience laughs at Magda: she plays so disgustingly. At home, Magda throws a tantrum and once again demands that Kretschmar marry her. He promises, but divorce is unthinkable for him. Magda and Gorn meet almost every day, having rented an apartment for these meetings.

Krechmar and Magda go on a trip to Europe. Instead of a driver, Gorn rides with them. In France, they stay at a hotel in adjoining rooms connected by a shared bathroom. Magda, pretending to bathe, gets the opportunity to meet with Gorn.

So two weeks go by. Returning from one of their walks by a suburban train, they fall into different cars. Kretschmar's friend, the writer Zegelkrantz, gets into the carriage with Magda and Gorn. Gathering material for a new novel, he records the conversation between Magda and Gorn and places it almost verbatim in his novel. A few days later, by a mountain stream, Segelkrantz reads this novel to Kretschmar, because he does not know that this couple is familiar to him.

Krechmar rushes to the hotel: he wants to kill Magda. But she swears to him that Gorn is not interested in women. Krechmar believes her, but demands to leave immediately. He himself drives the car along a winding mountain road. Because his eyes are filled with tears, he can't handle the controls. They get into an accident. Magda escapes with a slight fright, and Kretschmar goes blind.

Magda and Gorn are going to live together, taking advantage of the blindness of Krechmar, whose money they do not intend to lose. Magda rents a two-story cottage near Berlin. That's where the three of them go. Magda and Gorn meet with great caution, but then Gorn begins to act openly, although he does not speak. Krechmar constantly hears steps, coughs and other sounds. Magda slips him checks for huge sums to sign, which he, of course, signs without asking any questions. Magda dreams of becoming Krechmar's wife, because then half of his fortune would fall into her hands.

Meanwhile, Segelcrantz learns about the tragedy that happened to Kretschmar. He goes to Berlin and tells everything to Max, who has already begun to hear some rumors. Segelkrantz expresses fear that Kretschmar, now completely helpless, is completely in the hands of Gorn and Magda. Max decides to visit Kretschmar.

He arrives on time: Gorn has just come up with a new mockery of Kretschmar. Max beats Gorn with a cane and is about to take Kretschmar with him to Berlin. Krechmar first begs him to say that there was no Gorn, and then wants to see Magda. Max takes him away before she arrives.

Anneliese happily arranges Kretschmar in Irma's former room. She still loves him just the same. On the fourth day of his stay in Berlin, he remains at home alone. Suddenly, the watchman from his house calls him and says that Magda has come to pick up things and he does not know whether to let her in. Krechmar miraculously manages to get to his apartment. He pulls out his Browning and wants to kill Magda by groping. In a short fight, Magda shoots Kretschmar and kills him.

Authors of the retelling: Slava Yanko, Alexandra Vladimirova

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