Story by I.A. Bunin's "Easy Breathing" belongs to the circle of works that require particularly careful reading. The conciseness of the text determines the semantic deepening of artistic detail.
The complex composition, the abundance of ellipsis, and the figure of silence make you stop and think at moments of unexpected “bends” in the plot. The content of the story is so multifaceted that it could well become the basis of an entire novel. Indeed, each of us, reflecting on the next ellipsis, as if complements, “adds on” the text in accordance with our perception. Perhaps this is precisely where the mystery of Bunin’s story lies: the writer seems to call us to co-creation, and the reader unwittingly becomes a co-author.
It is customary to begin the analysis of this work by talking about the composition. What is unusual about the structure of the story? As a rule, students immediately note the features of the composition: a violation of the chronology of events. If you highlight the semantic parts of the text, you will find that each part breaks off at the moment of the highest emotional stress. What idea is embodied in such a complex artistic form? To answer this question, we carefully read the content of each paragraph.
At the beginning of the work, it is worth noting the interweaving of contrasting motifs of life and death. The description of the city cemetery and the monotonous ringing of a porcelain wreath create a sad mood. Against this background, the portrait of a high school student with joyful, amazingly lively eyes is especially expressive (the author himself emphasizes this contrast with the phrase amazingly alive).
Why is the next sentence (This is Olya Meshcherskaya) highlighted in a separate paragraph? Perhaps in large work this sentence would precede detailed description the heroine, her portrait, character, habits. In Bunin's story, the name mentioned does not mean anything, but we are already involved in the action, intrigued. Many questions arise: “Who is this girl? What is the reason for it early death?..” The reader is already ready for the unfolding of the melodramatic plot, but the author deliberately hesitates to answer, maintaining the tension of perception.
What is unusual? portrait characteristics heroines? There is something missing in the description of the schoolgirl Meshcherskaya: there is no detailed portrait, the image is barely outlined in individual strokes. Is this a coincidence? Definitely not. After all, everyone has their own idea of attractiveness, youth, beauty... Comparison with friends highlights the ideological basis of the image - simplicity and naturalness: How carefully some of her friends combed their hair, how clean they were, how they watched her restrained movements! And she wasn't afraid of anything<...>Without any worries or effort, and somehow imperceptibly, everything that distinguished her from the entire gymnasium in the last two years came to her - grace, elegance, dexterity, the clear sparkle of her eyes... Creating the complete appearance of the heroine is a matter of our imagination.
The mention that Olya is very careless, flighty, and almost drove high school student Shenshin to suicide sounds alarming... However, the ellipsis, a device of silence, cuts off storyline, which would be enough for a separate story.
In the next paragraph, the words “last winter” again remind us of the tragic ending. There is something painful in Meshcherskaya’s irrepressible joyful excitement (she went completely crazy with joy). In addition, the author tells us that she only seemed to be the most carefree and happy (our detente - A.N., I.N.). So far this is a barely outlined internal dissonance, but soon the heroine, without losing her simplicity and calmness, will tell her irritated boss about her relationship with 56-year-old Malyutin: Sorry, madame, you are mistaken: I am a woman. And you know who is to blame for this? Dad's friend and neighbor, and your brother Alexey Mikhailovich Malyutin. This happened last summer in the village... We are at a loss: what is this - early depravity? cynicism?
There's hardly any contrast between appearance And state of mind the heroine comes to the surface, the author again interrupts the narrative, leaving the reader in thought, forcing him to go back in search of an answer to the question: “What kind of person is Olya Meshcherskaya? Careless anemone or deep, controversial personality? The answer must be hidden somewhere in this paragraph. We re-read it and stop at the meaningful “seemed”, behind which, perhaps, is hidden the solution: maybe this carelessness and lightness is just an attempt to hide a whole nature heartache, personal tragedy?.
What follows is a detached, “protocol” story about Olya’s death, avoiding false pathos. The Cossack officer who shot Meshcherskaya is depicted in a distinctly unattractive manner: ugly, plebeian-looking, who had absolutely nothing in common with the circle to which Olya Meshcherskaya belonged... Why did the heroine meet with this man? Who was he to her? Let's try to find the answer in the girl's diary.
Diary entries - important point in revealing character. For the first time, Olya and I are left alone, we become witnesses to a real confession: I don’t understand how this could happen, I’m crazy, I never thought I was like this! Now I have only one way out... After these words, the tragic scene of Meshcherskaya’s death is filled with new meaning. The heroine of the story, who seemed attractive to us, but too frivolous, turns out to be a mentally broken person who has experienced deep disappointment. By mentioning Faust and Margarita, Bunin draws an analogy between the unfortunate fate of Gretchen and the trampled life of Olya.
So, it’s all due to a deep mental wound. Maybe Olya herself provoked the murder by laughing angrily at the officer and committing suicide with someone else’s hands?..
The closed composition takes us back to the beginning of the story. The intense emotional tone of the confession is replaced by a picture of the city, cemetery peace. Now our attention is focused on the image of a classy lady, to which, at first glance, the author pays unreasonably much attention. This woman is the cool lady Olya Meshcherskaya, a middle-aged girl who has long lived in some kind of fiction that replaces her real life. At first, her brother, a poor and unremarkable ensign, was such an invention - she united her whole soul with him, with his future, which for some reason seemed brilliant to her. When he was killed near Mukden, she convinced herself that she was an ideological worker... The character is certainly unattractive. What is his role? Maybe he should highlight all the best in the appearance of the main character?
Comparing the images of Meshcherskaya and her classy lady, we come to the conclusion that these are two “semantic poles” of the story. Comparison shows not only differences, but also certain similarities. Olya, young woman, plunged headlong into life, flashed and went out like a bright flash; a cool lady, a middle-aged girl, hiding from life, smoldering like a burning torch. The main thing is that none of the heroines could find themselves, both - each in their own way - squandered all the best that was given to them initially, with which they came into this world.
The ending of the work returns us to the title. It is no coincidence that the story is called not “Olya Meshcherskaya”, but “Easy Breathing”. What is this - light breathing? The image is complex, multifaceted and undoubtedly symbolic. The heroine herself gives a literal interpretation of it: Easy breathing! But I have it - listen to how I sigh... But each of us understands this image in our own way. Probably, it combines naturalness, purity of soul, faith in the bright beginning of existence, thirst for life, without which Man is unthinkable. All this happened in Olya Meshcherskaya, and now this light breathing has again dissipated in the world, in this cloudy sky, in this cold spring wind (our detente - A.N., I.N.). The highlighted word emphasizes the cyclical nature of what is happening: “light breathing” again and again takes on earthly forms. Maybe it is now embodied in one of us? As we see, in the finale the narrative acquires worldwide, pan-human significance.
Re-reading the story, we again and again admire the skill of Bunin, who imperceptibly guides the reader’s perception, directs thought to the underlying reasons for what is happening, deliberately not allowing him to get carried away by the entertaining intrigue. By recreating the appearance of the heroes, restoring the omitted links of the plot, each of us becomes a creator, as if writing his own story about the meaning human life, about love and disappointment, oh eternal questions human existence.
Narushevich A.G., Narushevich I.S.
Interpretation of the story by I.A. Bunin "Easy Breathing //" Russian Literature. - 2002. - No. 4. - P. 25-27.
The theme of love occupies one of the leading places in the writer’s work. In mature prose, there are noticeable tendencies to comprehend the eternal categories of existence - death, love, happiness, nature. He often describes “moments of love” that have a fatal nature and a tragic overtones. He pays great attention female characters, mysterious and incomprehensible.
The beginning of the novel “Easy Breathing” creates a feeling of sadness and sadness. The author prepares the reader in advance for the fact that the tragedy of human life will unfold in the following pages.
The main character of the novel, Olga Meshcherskaya, a high school student, stands out very much among her classmates with her cheerful disposition and obvious love of life, she is not at all afraid of other people's opinions, and openly challenges society.
During the last winter, many changes occurred in the girl’s life. At this time, Olga Meshcherskaya was in the full bloom of her beauty. There were rumors about her that she could not live without fans, but at the same time she treated them very cruelly. In her last winter, Olya completely surrendered to the joys of life, she attended balls and went to the skating rink every evening.
Olya always tried to look good, she wore expensive shoes, expensive combs, perhaps she would have dressed according to latest fashion, if all the schoolgirls didn’t wear uniforms. The headmistress of the gymnasium made a remark to Olga about appearance that such jewelry and shoes should be worn adult woman, and not a simple student. To which Meshcherskaya openly stated that she has the right to dress like a woman, because she is one, and none other than the brother of the headmistress herself, Alexei Mikhailovich Malyutin, is to blame for this. Olga's answer can be fully regarded as a challenge to the society of that time. A young girl, without a shadow of modesty, puts on things that are inappropriate for her age, behaves like a mature woman and at the same time openly argues for her behavior with rather intimate things.
Olga's transformation into a woman took place in the summer at the dacha. When my parents were not at home, Alexey Mikhailovich Malyutin, a friend of their family, came to visit them at their dacha. Despite the fact that he did not find Olya’s father, Malyutin still stayed as a guest, explaining that he wanted it to dry out properly after the rain. In relation to Olya, Alexey Mikhailovich behaved like a gentleman, although the difference in their ages was huge, he was 56, she was 15. Malyutin confessed his love to Olya and said all kinds of compliments. During the tea party, Olga felt bad and lay down on the ottoman, Alexey Mikhailovich began to kiss her hands, talk about how he was in love, and then kissed her on the lips. Well, then what happened happened. We can say that on Olga’s part it was nothing more than an interest in the secret, a desire to become an adult.
After this there was a tragedy. Malyutin shot Olga at the station and explained this by saying that he was in a state of passion, because she showed him her diary, which described everything that happened, and then Olgino’s attitude to the situation. She wrote that she was disgusted with her boyfriend.
Malyutin acted so cruelly because his pride was hurt. He was no longer a young officer, and also single; he naturally was pleased to console himself with the fact that the young girl expressed her sympathy for him. But when he found out that she felt nothing but disgust for him, it was like a bolt from the blue. He himself usually pushed women away, but here they pushed him away. Society was on Malyutin’s side; he justified himself by saying that Olga allegedly seduced him, promised to become his wife, and then left him. Since Olya had a reputation as a heartbreaker, no one doubted his words.
The story ends with the fact that Olga Meshcherskaya’s classy lady, a dreamy lady living in her imaginary ideal world, comes to Olya’s grave every holiday and silently watches her for several hours. For lady Olya, the ideal of femininity and beauty.
Here “light breathing” means an easy attitude to life, sensuality and impulsiveness, which were inherent in Olya Meshcherskaya.
Type: Ideological and artistic analysis of the work
Thirty-three years away from his homeland - that’s how long Ivan Alekseevich Bunin spent abroad. The last thirty-three years of his generally long life. They were not easy for the writer - nostalgia tormented Bunin every day. That is why the action of most of the writer’s works created abroad takes place at home, in Russia. A special place among them is occupied by stories dedicated to love themes.
Pearl creative heritage I.A. Bunin's story “Easy Breathing” is rightfully considered. The sense of beauty is so tenderly conveyed here, the image of the main character, endowed with tragic fate…
In addition, the construction and composition of the work itself is unusual. This story is completely broken chronological framework, the text is replete with contrasts, without which it would probably be impossible to understand the author’s intention.
So, from the very first lines of the story there is an ambivalent feeling. On the one hand, the reader is presented with a picture depicting a cemetery, “spacious... the monuments are still visible far away through the bare trees, and the cold wind rings and rings the porcelain wreath at the foot of the cross.” On the other hand, “a photographic portrait of a high school student with joyful, amazingly lively eyes.” Life and death, joy and sadness - this is the symbol of the fate of the main character of the story, Olya Meshcherskaya.
Next, the author describes the girl’s childhood. More precisely, he moves from the story about the heroine’s cloudless childhood and adolescence to the tragic events of the last year she lived: “Without any of her worries or efforts and somehow imperceptibly, everything that so distinguished her in the last two years from the entire gymnasium came to her, - grace, elegance, dexterity, clear sparkle of the eyes.” Olya really stood out from the crowd of high school students and others external beauty, but also with its spontaneity. The heroine was not afraid to be funny, she was not afraid that her hair would become disheveled, her knees would become exposed when she fell, or her fingers would get dirty. Perhaps that is why children from junior classes– Olya was sincere and natural in her actions. Perhaps that is why the heroine had the most fans.
Olya Meshcherskaya was considered flighty: “Last winter Meshcherskaya went completely crazy with fun.” The author clearly shows the difference between the apparent, external and true, internal state of the heroine: the half-childish state of a schoolgirl running around during recess and her shocking admission that she is already a woman.
Further in the story are given brief information that a month after the conversation in the classy lady’s room, “a Cossack officer, ugly and plebeian in appearance, who had ... nothing in common with the circle to which Olya Meshcherskaya belonged, shot her.” At the trial, this officer stated that Olya seduced him (she, a young schoolgirl, seduced him, a fifty-year-old man!), promised to be his wife, but at the station she admitted that she had never loved him and had not thought about marrying him. Then the heroine gave the Cossack a page from her diary to read, where she described her condition and the events of that memorable day when she was close to this officer: “I don’t understand how this could happen, I’m crazy, I never thought I was like this! Now I have only one way out... I feel such disgust for him that I can’t get over it!” Despite these words, it seems to me that Olya was not completely aware of the seriousness of what was happening, her soul is pure and innocent, she is still just a child with pretensions to “adulthood.”
Bunin endows the story “Easy Breathing” with a complex composition: from the fact of the heroine’s death to a description of her childhood, then to the recent past and its origins. In the finale, the writer seems to return to the first lines of his story, to the “April days.” He describes "a little woman in mourning, wearing black kid gloves, and carrying an ebony umbrella." This is the cool lady Olya Meshcherskaya, who goes to her grave every Sunday and “peers for hours at her face.”
It seems to me that the image of a classy lady in this story is not at all accidental. He seems to set off Olya, contrasts with her. The teacher, unlike the main character of the story, lives in fiction, which replaces her real life. In fact, the cool lady is the last link that closes the chain of people who are extremely indifferent to Olya. Bunin paints a masterful, very convincing picture of the spiritual poverty of Meshcherskaya’s environment. The idea that in a monotonous, soulless world pure impulses are doomed brings a tragic tone to the story.
Why does a cool lady go to Olya’s grave? Olya’s death captivated her with a new “dream”. The teacher recalls “Oli’s pale face in the coffin” and the fact that she once overheard the heroine’s conversation with her friend. Olya Meshcherskaya told her friend that she read in her father’s book about “what kind of beauty a woman should have”: “There, you know, it says so much that you can’t remember everything... but the main thing is, do you know what? Easy breath! But I have it...”
Really, main character had a light, natural breath - a thirst for some special, unique destiny. It is no coincidence, in my opinion, that Olya’s cherished dream is mentioned at the end of the story. Meshcherskaya’s inner burning is genuine and could evoke a great feeling. But this was prevented by Olya’s mindless fluttering through life and her vulgar surroundings. The author shows us the girl’s undeveloped wonderful capabilities, her enormous potential. All this, according to Bunin, cannot disappear, just as the craving for beauty, happiness, perfection, and easy breathing will never disappear...
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Bunin called his story "Easy Breathing." How can breathing be easy? After all, this is already something initially easy, familiar. Breathing is given by nature, it is natural for every person. All people are accustomed to breathing, and breathing is not a difficult job for anyone. Light breathing is something elusive and very short-lived.
The personification of “easy breathing” is Olya Meshcherskaya. Her image is contrasted with another: the image of the gentleman from San Francisco. The gentleman from San Francisco planned out his whole life day by day, he always knew (or at least thought he knew) when, where and what he would do, he clearly imagined his future and planned to start " real life"only after fifty-eight years. All his fifty-eight years he did not live, but existed according to a strictly established routine. His life did not take place due to the fact that he thought too much, trying to foresee everything. He killed his soul and became incapable to enjoy the beauty of nature, from artistic values. The gentleman from San Francisco opposed himself to nature, isolated himself from it, but in this contradiction nature won, and man turned out to be pitiful and useless to anyone.
Olya Meshcherskaya was “one of the pretty, rich and happy girls.” “Without any worries or efforts, somehow imperceptibly came to her everything that so distinguished her from the entire gymnasium - grace, elegance, dexterity, the clear sparkle of her eyes” - nature gave her what many would like to have. Olya herself was a part of nature: she did not try to restrain her movements and feelings, did not hide her emotions. Olya stood out among the “crowd of brown school dresses” because she knew how to find joy in every day. Probably, not many people were able to notice that the winter was “snowy, sunny, frosty”; not many could lift their spirits by the fact that “the sun set early behind the high spruce forest of the gymnasium garden, invariably fine, radiant, promising frost and sun for tomorrow ".
Olya considered other people to be the same as her. Therefore, she notices around her only the beautiful features of what surrounds her. She notices that the boss, although gray-haired, is youthful, that her office is “extraordinarily clean and large,” and that she notices “the warmth of a shiny Dutch dress and the freshness of lilies of the valley on the desk.” Walking into this “unusually clean and large office,” she did not think that she would be scolded there. All she notices about Malyutin is that although he is fifty-six years old, “he is still very handsome and always well dressed, and his eyes are very young, black, and his beard is gracefully divided into two long parts and completely silver.”
Olya’s elegance, elegance, and dexterity reflected the same graceful, beautiful spiritual world, she was not capable of any vile act. Olya thought that other people were just like her, that their good appearance and good clothes reflect the same pure soul, like hers. She tried to find out as much as possible more peace, whom she loved, every day brought her a huge number of impressions, meetings, feelings that she could not help but “go crazy with fun.” Olya was cheerful, happy with life and naive, so she did not think that the world around her might not actually be as beautiful as it seemed to her. She never thought that the people she liked could turn out to be scoundrels and take advantage of her beauty, youth, and naivety.
Striving to learn and experience as much as possible, Olya did not notice that what was natural for her was against the rules established in society. The schoolgirls had to be restrained in their movements - and she “rushed like a whirlwind from the first-graders chasing her”, it was necessary to drown in the “crowd of brown dresses” - but she had a woman’s hairstyle, expensive combs in her hair and “shoes worth twenty rubles”, it is necessary was to be modest - but she declared that she was “already a woman, not a high school student.” When Olya realized that she was mistaken about Malyutin, that he forced her to do something that was not allowed by the rules, she became disgusted not only with Malyutin, but also with herself.
"I never thought I was like this!" Yes, Olya didn’t think, she just lived. I.A. Bunin said that he was “always attracted by the image of a woman brought to the limit of her “uterine essence.” “Only we call it the womb, but I called it light breathing. Such naivety and ease in everything, both in audacity and in death, is “easy breathing,” not thinking.”
After Olya’s death, her cool lady began visiting her grave. For what? Maybe because she realized that Olya Meshcherskaya short life lived a more interesting life than she did. After all, a cool lady is “an elderly girl who has long been living with some kind of fiction that replaces her real life.” The boss and the cool lady scolded Olya for her hairstyle, behavior, clothes because they didn’t have what she had: neither beautiful hair, no graceful movements, no youth. They did not know how to enjoy the snowy winter and the shining sun. Their essence was only enough for them to sit at their desk with knitting in their hands and gray hair.
If all people were as pure, naive, beautiful as Olya was, and if everyone knew how to enjoy every day, then everyone would be happy. But not everyone has easy breathing. Olya was too different from the society in which she lived. People envied her, did not understand her joy, her happiness, but she did not understand people. Olya could not live by the laws by which society lived. The light breath had to dissipate “in this cloudy sky, in this cold spring wind,” because it cannot be tied to the ground.
The central place in Bunin’s work is occupied by a cycle of stories that made up the collection “ Dark alleys" When the book was published in 1943, it became the only one in Russian literature where all the stories were about love. In thirty-eight short stories, the author presents the reader with the vicissitudes of love. Short, dazzling, illuminating the souls of lovers like a flash. Love that visited this world for a moment, like a light breath, and is ready to disappear at any moment.
The theme of love in the writer’s work
Bunin's work is unique. Outwardly, in terms of theme, it looks traditional: life and death, loneliness and love, past and future, happiness and suffering. Bunin then breeds these extreme points existence, it quickly brings us closer together. And fills the space between them with only sensations, deep and strong. The essence of his art is accurately reflected in Rilke’s words: “Like metal, it burns and cuts with its cold.”
The eternal themes that the writer addresses are expressed in his works with extreme brightness and tension. Bunin literally destroys routine and familiar ideas, and from the first lines immerses the reader in true life. He doesn’t just reveal the fullness of his characters’ feelings, their innermost thoughts, and isn’t afraid to show their true essence.
There are many hymns about love, beautiful and touching. But Bunin dared not only to talk about this sublime feeling, but also to show what dangers it was exposed to. Bunin's heroes live in anticipation of love, search for it and often die, scorched by it. easy breathing. Ivan Bunin shows that love-passion blinds a person and leads to a dangerous point, without understanding who is in front of her - a young girl who first encountered this feeling, or a man who has known a lot in life, an elegant landowner or a peasant who does not even have good boots .
Bunin is perhaps the first writer in whose work the feeling of love plays such a significant role - in all its overflows and transitions, shades and nuances. Cruelty and at the same time the charm of genuine feeling equally determine the mental life of Bunin’s heroes and explain what is happening to them. Love can be happiness and it can be tragedy. The story of such love is shown in one of famous stories Bunin "Easy Breathing"
History of the concept
At the beginning of the 20th century, the question of the meaning of life was widely discussed in literature. Moreover, the previously established pattern common to everyone in the form of a clear goal was replaced by a new one. The most popular became living life, which called for a sense of the value of life, which, regardless of the content, is a value in itself.
These ideas were embodied in their works by many writers of that time, and they were reflected in the work of Bunin. The work “Easy Breathing” is one of them. The author also told the story of this short story. One winter, while walking around Capri, he accidentally wandered into a small cemetery, where he saw a grave cross with a photograph of a young girl with living and with joyful eyes. He immediately made her into Olya Meshcherskaya in his mind and began to create a story about her with amazing speed.
Easy breath
In his diary, Bunin wrote about one memory from childhood. She died when he was seven years old younger sister, the favorite of the whole house. He ran across the snowy yard and, as he ran, looked into the dark February sky and thought that her little soul was flying there. In my entire being little boy there was some kind of horror, a feeling of an incomprehensible event.
The girl, death, cloudy sky, winter, horror are forever stuck in the writer’s mind. And as soon as the writer saw a photograph of a young girl on a grave cross, childhood memories came to life and echoed in him. Perhaps this is why Ivan Bunin was able to write “Easy Breathing” with amazing speed, because internally he was already ready for it.
“Easy Breathing” is Bunin’s famous and most sensual short story. K. Paustovsky, having read this story in one of the April issues of the newspaper “ Russian word", where he was first published in 1916, wrote about the deep emotional shock that everything inside him trembled with sadness and love.
Paustovsky reread the same words several times about Olya Meshcherskaya’s light breathing. Having become familiar with Bunin’s story “Easy Breathing”, with the content of this touching short story, many readers could repeat Paustovsky’s words: “This is not a story, but an insight, life itself with its awe and love.”
Carefree youth
Olya Meshcherskaya was a noisy and cheerful schoolgirl. Playful and carefree, Olga became noticeably prettier by the age of fifteen. A thin waist, slender legs and gorgeous hair made her a beauty. She danced and skated better than anyone, was known as the favorite of the freshmen, but became a headache for the boss and her class lady.
One morning the headmistress called Olya to her place, began to scold her for her pranks and noticed that an adult hairstyle, expensive combs and shoes did not suit the young girl. Olya interrupts her and says that she is already a woman. And he tells the astonished lady that the father’s friend is to blame for this, and her, the head of the gymnasium, is her brother, 56-year-old Alexey Mikhailovich Malyutin.
Diary of Olya Meshcherskaya
A month after Olya’s confession to the head of the gymnasium, officer Malyutin shoots a young girl on the platform. At the trial, he stated that she seduced him and promised to become his wife. But suddenly she declared that she did not love him, and that talk about marriage was just a mockery of him, and gave him to read her diary, where it was written about him, about Malyutin. He read this diary and immediately shot at her on the platform.
The girl wrote in her diary that in the summer the family vacationed in the village. Parents and brother left for the city. His friend, the Cossack officer Malyutin, came to see his father and was very upset when he did not find his friend. It had just rained outside, and Olga invited Malyutin to visit. Over tea he joked a lot and said that he was in love with her. Olya, a little tired, lay down on the ottoman, Malyutin began to kiss her hand, then her lips, and Olya could not understand how it all happened. But now she feels a strong disgust for him
Porcelain medallion
The spring city has become tidy. Every Sunday, along a clean, pleasant road, a woman in mourning goes to the cemetery. She stops at a grave with a heavy oak cross on which is a porcelain medallion with a photograph of a young schoolgirl with strikingly lively eyes. The woman looked at the medallion and thought, is it possible to combine this pure look with the horror that is now associated with the name Olya?
Olga's cool lady is no longer young, living in a world she has invented. At first all her thoughts were occupied by her brother, an unremarkable ensign. But after his death, Olya took a place in her mind, to whose grave she comes every holiday. She stands for a long time, looks at the oak cross and remembers how she unwittingly witnessed Olya’s conversation with her friend.
Olga told me that she read in one book what it looks like beautiful woman- eyes boiling with resin, eyelashes black as night, slender figure, longer than usual arms, sloping shoulders. And most importantly, the beauty should have easy breathing. And she, Olya, had it.
Door to eternity
The overture of Bunin's short story "Easy Breathing", the analysis of which we will now consider, carries within itself a tragic denouement of the plot. In the first lines of the work, the author presents the reader with a harsh picture - a cold morning, a cemetery and shining eyes young creature on the picture. This immediately creates a further installation that the reader will perceive all events under this sign.
The author immediately takes away the unpredictability of the plot. The reader, knowing what ultimately happened, turns his attention to why it happened. Then Bunin immediately moves on to an exposition full of love for life. Slowly, richly describes every detail, filling it with life and energy. And at the moment of the highest reader interest, when Meshcherskaya says that she is a woman and it happened in the village, the author breaks off his story and strikes the reader with the following phrase: the girl was shot by a Cossack officer. What does the reader see next in Bunin’s short story “Easy Breathing,” the analysis of which we continue?
The author deprives this story of much needed development. Earthly path Oli breaks off the moment she entered the path for which she was created. “Today I have become a woman,” there is both horror and glee in this voice. This new life It can be met with piercing happiness, or it can turn into pain and horror. Naturally, the reader has many questions: how did their relationship develop? And did they develop at all? What drove the young girl to the old womanizer? Constantly destroying the sequence of events, which is what Bunin achieves in “ Easy breathing»?
Analysis of this work shows that the author destroys the cause-and-effect relationship. Neither the development of their relationship nor the motive of the girl who surrendered to the will of the rude officer is important. Both heroes in this work are just instruments of fate. And Olga’s doom lies in herself, in her spontaneous impulses, in her charm. This frantic passion for life was bound to lead to disaster.
The author, not satisfying the reader's interest in the events, could cause a negative reaction. But that did not happen. This is precisely where Bunin’s skill lies. In “Easy Breathing,” the analysis of which we are considering, the author smoothly and decisively switches the reader’s interest from the rapid pace of events to eternal peace. Suddenly interrupting the flow of time, the author describes the space - city streets, square - and introduces the reader to the fate of a classy lady. The story about her opens the door to eternity.
The cold wind at the beginning of the story was an element of the landscape, in the last lines it became a symbol of life - light breathing was born by nature and returned there. The natural world freezes in infinity.
Bunin wrote the story “Easy Breathing” in 1916. In the work, the author touches on the themes of love and death characteristic of the literature of this period. Despite the fact that the story is not written in chapters, the narrative is fragmented and consists of several parts arranged in a non-chronological order.
Main characters
Olya Meshcherskaya- a young schoolgirl, was killed by a Cossack officer because she said that she did not love him.
Headmistress of the gymnasium
Other characters
Cossack officer- shot Olya because of unhappy love, “ugly and plebeian in appearance.”
Cool lady Olya Meshcherskaya
“In the cemetery, over a fresh clay mound, there is a new oak cross.” A convex porcelain medallion with a photographic portrait of schoolgirl Olya Meshcherskaya “with joyful, amazingly lively eyes” is embedded in the cross.
As a girl, Olya did not stand out among other schoolchildren; she was “capable, but playful and very careless about the instructions” of the class lady. But then the girl began to develop, to “bloom.” At the age of 14, “she, with thin waist and slender legs, breasts and shape were already clearly outlined. “At fifteen she was already considered a beauty.” Unlike her prim girlfriends, Olya “wasn’t afraid—no ink stains on her fingers, no flushed face, no disheveled hair.” Without any effort, “grace, elegance, dexterity, and the clear sparkle of her eyes” came to her.
Olya danced the best at balls, skated, was the most looked after at balls, and was loved most by the junior classes. “Unnoticedly she became a girl,” and there were even rumors about her frivolity.
“Olya Meshcherskaya went completely crazy with fun during her last winter, as they said in the gymnasium.” One day, during a big break, the boss called the girl over and reprimanded her. The woman noted that Olya is no longer a girl, but not yet a woman, so she should not wear a “woman’s hairstyle,” expensive combs and shoes. “Without losing simplicity and calmness,” Meshcherskaya replied that the madame was mistaken: she was already a woman, and the father’s friend and neighbor, the boss’s brother Alexei Mikhailovich Malyutin, was to blame for this - “it happened last summer in the village.”
“And a month after this conversation,” a Cossack officer shot Olya “on the station platform, among a large crowd of people.” And Olya’s confession, which stunned the boss, was confirmed. “The officer told the judicial investigator that Meshcherskaya lured him, was close to him, vowed to be his wife,” and at the station she said that she did not love him and “gave him to read that page of the diary that talked about Malyutin.”
“On the tenth of July last year,” Olya wrote in her diary: “Everyone left for the city, I was left alone.<…>Alexey Mikhailovich arrived.<…>He stayed because it was raining.<…>He regretted that he didn’t find dad, he was very animated and behaved like a gentleman with me, he joked a lot that he had been in love with me for a long time.<…>He is fifty-six years old, but he is still very handsome and always well dressed.<…>Over tea we sat on the glass veranda, he smoked, then moved to me, began again to say some pleasantries, then examined and kissed my hand. I covered my face with a silk scarf, and he kissed me on the lips through the scarf several times... I don’t understand how this could happen, I’m crazy, I never thought I was like this! Now I have only one way out... I feel such disgust for him that I can’t get over it!..”
Every Sunday, after mass, a little woman in mourning comes to the grave of Olya Meshcherskaya - a cool lady girl. Olya became the subject of “her persistent thoughts and feelings.” Sitting at the grave, the woman remembers the pale face of the girl in the coffin and a conversation she accidentally overheard: Meshcherskaya told her friend about what she read in her father’s book, that supposedly the main thing in a woman is “light breathing” and that she, Olya, has it.
“Now this light breath has dispersed again into the world, into this cloudy sky, into this cold spring wind.”
Conclusion
In the story, Bunin contrasts the main character Olya Meshcherskaya with the head of the gymnasium - as the personification of the rules, social norms, and a cool lady - as the personification of dreams that replace reality. Olya Meshcherskaya is completely different female image– a girl who has tried on the role of an adult lady, a seductress who has neither fear of rules nor excessive daydreaming.
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