"Olesya" by Kuprin: analysis of the story. Analysis of “Olesya” by Kuprin: a love story with deep overtones Kuprin Olesya theme and idea of ​​the work

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin often in his works painted an ideal image of a “natural” person, one who is not subject to the corrupting influence of light, whose soul is pure, free, who is close to nature, lives in it, lives with it in one impulse. A striking example of the disclosure of the theme of a “natural” person is the story “Olesya”.

The story described in the story did not appear by chance. One day A.I. Kuprin visited the landowner Ivan Timofeevich Poroshin in Polesie, who told the writer the mysterious story of his relationship with a certain witch. It was this story, enriched with artistic fiction, that formed the basis of Kuprin’s work.

The first publication of the story took place in the magazine “Kievlyanin” in 1898; the work bore the subtitle “From Memories of Volyn,” which emphasized the real basis of the events taking place in the story.

Genre and direction

Alexander Ivanovich worked at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, when a controversy gradually began to flare up between two directions: realism and modernism, which was just beginning to make itself known. Kuprin belongs to the realistic tradition in Russian literature, so the story “Olesya” can be safely classified as a realistic work.

The genre of the work is a story, since it is dominated by a chronicle plot, reproducing the natural course of life. The reader lives through all the events, day after day, following the main character Ivan Timofeevich.

The essence

The action takes place in the small village of Perebrod, Volyn province, on the outskirts of Polesie. The young gentleman-writer is bored, but one day fate takes him to the swamp to the house of the local witch Manuilikha, where he meets the beautiful Olesya. A feeling of love flares up between Ivan and Olesya, but the young sorceress sees that death awaits her if she connects her fate with an unexpected guest.

But love is stronger than prejudice and fear, Olesya wants to deceive fate. A young witch goes to church for the sake of Ivan Timofeevich, although she is prohibited from entering there due to her occupation and origin. She makes it clear to the hero that she will commit this brave act, which could lead to irreparable consequences, but Ivan does not understand this and does not have time to save Olesya from the angry crowd. The heroine is severely beaten. In revenge, she sends a curse on the village, and that same night a terrible thunderstorm occurs. Knowing the power of human anger, Manuilikha and her pupil hastily leave the house in the swamp. When a young man comes to this home in the morning, he finds only red beads, as a symbol of his short but true love with Olesya.

The main characters and their characteristics

The main characters of the story are the master writer Ivan Timofeevich and the forest witch Olesya. Completely different, they got together, but could not be happy together.

1. Characteristics of Ivan Timofeevich. This is a kind person, sensitive. He was able to discern a living, natural principle in Oles, because he himself had not yet been completely killed by secular society. The mere fact that he left noisy cities for a village speaks volumes. The heroine is not just a beautiful girl for him, she is a mystery to him. This strange healer believes in conspiracies, tells fortunes, communicates with spirits - she is a witch. And all this attracts the hero. He wants to see and learn something new, real, not covered up by falsehood and far-fetched etiquette. But at the same time, Ivan himself is still at the mercy of the world, he is thinking about marrying Olesya, but he is confused by how she, a savage, can appear in the halls of the capital.
2. Olesya is the ideal of a “natural” person. She was born and lived in the forest, nature was her teacher. Olesya’s world is a world of harmony with the surrounding world. In addition, she is in harmony with her inner world. We can note the following qualities of the main character: she is wayward, straightforward, sincere, she does not know how to pretend or pretend. The young witch is smart and kind; one only has to remember the reader’s first meeting with her, because she was tenderly carrying chicks in her lap. One of Olesya’s main traits can be called insubordination, which she inherited from Manuilikha. They both seem to be against the whole world: they live aloof in their swamp, they do not profess an official religion. Even knowing that you can’t escape fate, the young sorceress still tries, consoles herself with the hope that everything will work out for her and Ivan. She is original and unshakable, despite the fact that love is still alive, she leaves, leaves everything, without looking back. The image and characteristics of Olesya are available.

Themes

• The main theme of the story— Olesya’s love, her readiness for self-sacrifice — is the center of the work. Ivan Timofeevich was lucky to meet a real feeling.
• Another important semantic branch is the theme of the confrontation between the ordinary world and the world of natural people. Residents of villages, capitals, Ivan Timofeevich himself are representatives of everyday thinking, permeated with prejudices, conventions, and clichés. The worldview of Olesya and Manuilikha is freedom and open feelings. In connection with these two heroes, the theme of nature appears. The environment is the cradle that raised the main character, an irreplaceable helper, thanks to which Manuilikha and Olesya live away from people and civilization without need, nature gives them everything they need for life. This topic is covered most fully in this one.
• The role of landscape in the story is huge. It is a reflection of the feelings of the characters and their relationships. So, at the beginning of a romance we see a sunny spring, and at the end the break in relations is accompanied by a strong thunderstorm. We wrote more about this in this.

Problems

The problems of the story are varied. Firstly, the writer acutely depicts the conflict between society and those who do not fit into it. So, once they brutally drove Manuilikha out of the village and beat Olesya herself, although both sorceresses did not show any aggression towards the villagers. Society is not ready to accept those who differ from them in at least some way, who do not try to pretend, because they want to live by their own rules, and not according to the template of the majority.

The problem of attitude towards Olesya manifests itself most clearly in the scene of her going to church. For the Russian Orthodox people of the village, it was a real insult that the one who serves evil spirits, in their opinion, appeared in the temple of Christ. At the church, where people ask for God's mercy, they themselves administered cruel and merciless judgment. Perhaps the writer wanted, on the basis of this antithesis, to show that society has distorted the idea of ​​the righteous, the good, and the just.

Meaning

The idea of ​​the story is that people who grew up far from civilization turn out to be much nobler, more delicate, more polite and kinder than “civilized” society itself. The author hints that herd life dulls the individual and erases his individuality. The crowd is submissive and indiscriminate, and is often dominated by its worst members rather than its best. Primitive instincts or acquired stereotypes, such as misinterpreted morality, direct the collective towards degradation. Thus, the inhabitants of the village show themselves to be greater savages than the two witches living in the swamp.

Kuprin's main idea is that people must turn back to nature, must learn to live in harmony with the world and with themselves, so that their cold hearts will melt. Olesya tried to open the world of real feelings to Ivan Timofeevich. He couldn't understand it in time, but the mysterious witch and her red beads will remain in his heart forever.

Conclusion

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin, in his story “Olesya,” tried to create an ideal of man, show the problems of the artificial world, and open people’s eyes to the driven and immoral society that surrounds them.

The life of the wayward, unshakable Olesya was to some extent destroyed by the touch of the secular world in the person of Ivan Timofeevich. The writer wanted to show that we ourselves destroy the beautiful things that fate gives us, simply because we are blind, blind in soul.

Criticism

The story “Olesya” is one of the most famous works of A.I. Kuprina. The strength and talent of the story were appreciated by the writer’s contemporaries.

K. Barkhin called the work a “forest symphony,” noting the smoothness and beauty of the work’s language.

Maxim Gorky noted the youth and spontaneity of the story.

Thus, the story “Olesya” occupies an important place, both in the work of A.I. himself. Kuprin, and in the history of Russian classical literature.

Interesting? Save it on your wall!

During the years of growing revolutionary sentiment, when society was in constant search for insight and the truth of life, the work of A.I. Kuprin was formed. His numerous works were based precisely on the complex psychological themes of cognition. He attracted readers with the capacious, accessible and dynamic content of his works. The most famous of them is the story “Olesya”. The analysis of this book is offered to you by the Many-Wise Litrecon.

It is interesting that in the very work of A.I. Kuprin can be divided into two periods, the line between which is clearly visible in the themes and style of writing his works.

1. At the beginning of his creative career, the writer paid a lot of attention to purely everyday topics. Most likely, this was due to the rich life experience of A.I. Kuprin, who tried himself in many fields of activity. Having felt all the hardships of life and learned the peculiarities of the life of the poor, the writer created life texts based on what he saw, heard and felt.
2. The second period of his work dates back to the February Revolution. It was then that his works were imbued with the desire for democratic change. In addition, the subject matter of the texts also changed: mainly A.I. Kuprin described the beggarly and devastated life of a Russian emigrant.

The famous story “Olesya” dates back to the early period of the writer’s work, which was first published in 1898 in the newspaper “Kievlyanin” with the subtitle “From the Memories of Volyn.” Later, in 1905, Kuprin added an introduction to the story, in which he described the history of the creation of the work itself. Here are interesting facts about the writing of “Olesya”:

1. The story “Olesya” is based on a real story from the life of landowner Ivan Timofeevich Poroshin, with whom the writer once visited. He told his own love story with the Polesie witch.
2. The work also contains autobiographical details: the main character is a writer, like the writer himself, he spent 6 months in Polesie, which also coincides with real facts.
3. Initially A.I. Kuprin wanted to publish the story in the magazine “Russian Wealth” as a continuation of the ‘Polesie cycle’. But the editors of the magazine refused the writer, so the fate of the work changed slightly. They were confused by the anti-religious background of the work: believers were negative heroes, in contrast to the “servants of the devil.”

Genre, direction

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, disputes flared up in the literary community between representatives of the two leading directions of literary thought: realism and modernism. Alexander Ivanovich adhered to the realistic tradition, therefore his story “Olesya” collected the features of this direction. For example, the love of the main characters Olesya and Ivan Timofeevich was doomed to death in reality, so the author could not exchange the truth of life for beautiful and unrealistic dreams. And yet, there is a place for romanticism in Kuprin’s work: civilization is presented in dark colors, nature plays an independent role in the work, and the main character has everything.

The genre of the work is a story. Main features: chronicle plot, a small number of characters and the author’s assessment of events experienced in real life. In addition, we see other features characteristic of the story: the entire plot revolves around one hero - Ivan Timofeevich, whose character is revealed against the background of what is happening.

Composition and Conflict

The composition of the work is a retrospective, as the author delves into memories from the past, when fate brought him to Polesie. There he became acquainted with the amazing story of the intellectual Ivan Timofeevich.

In addition to the retrospective, the composition is based on numerous contrasts. We can say that the whole story is a collection of various conflicts. Even at the very beginning we see the struggle between technological progress and the quiet, peaceful life in pagan Polesie. The reader sees a vivid confrontation between civilization and wild nature, which live according to different laws. Nature and civilization are the main conflict in the story “Olesya”. The author sees depravity, vulgarity and stupidity in the city and people, but in nature - nobility, beauty and true generosity.

In addition, the plot is based on one of the main conflicts: Olesya and people (village residents). It becomes clear that this confrontation is so strong that it cannot be eliminated. Olesya’s efforts (going to church) only led to tragic consequences both for herself and for the village that suffered from the witch’s spell.

The gist: what is the story about?

The essence of the work “Olesya” is very simple. In the small village of Perebrod on the outskirts of Polesie, the young writer Ivan Timofeevich, by the will of fate, wanders during another forest hike to the house of the local witch Manuilikha. At that moment, the hero could not even imagine what this chance meeting would lead to.

There he meets the beautiful Olesya, who enchants him. From this moment their fantastic love story begins. The young sorceress is trying in every possible way to avoid meeting with Ivan, because the cards prophesied her death from an unexpected guest. Olesya's fate was sealed.

The main characters and their characteristics

The main characters of the story are the young witch Olesya and the writer-nobleman Ivan Timofeevich. The main character is a young village girl of 25 years old who lives in the forest with her grandmother Manuilikha. Olesya is illiterate, but at the same time very smart. She loves nature and a quiet life away from people. Ivan Timofeevich, the central character of the story, on the contrary, is a very literate and well-read person in his occupation. He came to Polesie on official business, but as fate would have it, he fell in love with a young witch.

The reader sees that for the peasants the witch's lair is a forbidden place where no person should set foot, but Kuprin's attitude towards Olesya and her grandmother is completely different. We do not see negative ratings in the description. On the contrary, he puts the main character in a more favorable light, because even her illiteracy does not look bad against the backdrop of kindness and modesty.

Themes

The theme of the book “Olesya” is romantic and realistic at the same time:

1. The main theme of the story "Olesya"- the love story of Olesya and Ivan Timofeevich. In the center is a pure and real feeling, for which the main character is ready to make any sacrifice. For the sake of her chosen one, she goes to shame, knowing in advance about the pain that she will have to endure.
2. Despite the fact that the theme of love occupies a central place, the work also clearly shows theme of the relationship between nature and man, which begins to unfold from the very beginning of the work. The author shows us the confrontation between civilization and wild nature.
3. Against the backdrop of nature, the natural man theme, brought up by the cradle of nature. This is how Olesya and Manuilikha were - open and free from prejudices and clichés. We can say that the main character embodies that very moral ideal, because she is distinguished by kindness, responsiveness and fortitude. She does not seek to master the chosen one, but gives him freedom.
4. Dream theme can also be seen in the text. Unlike the villagers, whose thinking is mired in prejudices, Olesya lives by a dream, not by standards.

Problems

The problems of the story “Olesya” are diverse and interesting even today:

• In first place, of course, tragic love main characters. Their love story was initially doomed to a tragic ending, because the cruelty of this world does not allow breaking standards and rules. Society is not ready to accept those who do not want to live according to patterns, which is why Olesya is forced to leave her native forests.
• The problem of cruelty permeates the entire text: the villagers go to church, but do not learn to forgive and love. They torture and kill their own kind (for example, a horse thief who had nails driven into his heels), but at the same time maintain a semblance of decency and piety.
• The author clearly reveals world of human feelings against the background of a love line. In his story, not everything is as clear as we would like. Ivan's love is sincere, but at the same time he is not able to stand up for her. Kuprin describes his hesitations, funny for real feelings: how will Olesya look in a dress among his friends? Should she go to church? But the heroine openly admits that she will not be jealous and captivate her chosen one: he is free, and let him not take her into his world, it is enough to simply give her love here and now.
• The problem of fate also occupies an important place in the story. The writer shows how cruelly fate can play with people's lives. This is not so much a predestination of fortune-telling as a logical arrangement of forces and circumstances: Olesya is not a match for the master. After all, even a great and pure feeling cannot overcome what was previously predetermined by fate.

Details

Details in the story “Olesya” play a special role. So, for example, even the embodiment of love has its innovative facets: at the beginning of the emergence of pure and sincere feelings, we see how nature rejoices and pours out sunlight, but at the end of the work, with the death of love, nature also dies: an icy hail strikes the seedlings of the villagers.

The language of the story is quite simple. A.I. Kuprin tried to make the work as accessible as possible to the common man who seeks to comprehend the truth of life. The author tried not to overload the text with creative and expressive means in order to convey his main thoughts to the readers.

Meaning

The main idea of ​​the story “Olesya” is that there is essentially nothing behind a “civilized” society, because people who grew up far from civilization can turn out to be much smarter and more prudent. A natural person outside the crowd does not lose his individuality and does not submit to stereotypical thinking. The crowd is submissive and indiscriminate, and is often dominated by its worst members rather than its best.

In this regard, the main idea can be highlighted - the need for people to turn to nature to restore harmony. Olesya thus became an example of a pure and open person living in connection with the environment.

Criticism

The story “Olesya” is a famous work by A.I. Kuprin, which was appreciated by the writer’s contemporaries. K. Barkhin called the work a “forest symphony,” noting the literary beauty of the work’s language.

“I like this thing because it is completely imbued with the mood of youth. After all, if you wrote it now, you would write it even better, but that spontaneity would no longer be in it...” (M. Gorky - A. Kuprin according to the memoirs of Kuprina-Iordanskaya, “Years of Youth”, 1960)

The story was rated very highly by Soviet critics, who saw in it a protest against bourgeois society:

Kuprin associates with the protest against the internal enslavement of man the motives of a certain restlessness, lack of placement in the bosom of capitalist society, vagrancy in the spirit of Hamsun... interest in lumpenproletarians who stand “outside society”, admiration of whole, untouched “children of nature” (“Listrigons”, “Olesya” , “Forest Wilderness”, etc.).” (article “Russian literature” in the “Literary Encyclopedia in 11 volumes”, Moscow, 1929 -1939, volume 10 (1937))

Thus, the story “Olesya” occupies an important place, both in the work of A.I. himself. Kuprin, and in the history of Russian classical literature.

"Olesya"

In 1897, Kuprin served as an estate manager in the Rivne district of the Volyn province. The writer discovered the amazing nature of the Polesie region and the dramatic fate of its inhabitants. Based on what he saw, he created a cycle of “Polessye Stories”, which included “Olesya” - a story about nature and love.

The story begins with a description of a picturesque corner where the hero spent six months. He talks about the unsociability of Polesie peasants, about the traces of Polish rule, about customs and superstitions. In the world standing on the threshold of the 20th century with its rapid development of natural sciences, technology and social transformations, traditional ideas about good and evil, love and hate, enemies and friends have been preserved. Sometimes it seems to the hero that he has found himself in some kind of forbidden world in which time has stopped. Here people believe not only in God, but also in devils, goblins, and water creatures. The space is divided into its own - pure, Christian - and pagan: it is inhabited by evil forces that can bring grief and illness. All these sketches are necessary in order to introduce the reader to the atmosphere of Polesie places and explain the reason for the negative attitude of the peasants towards the hero’s romance with the “witch”.

Nature, with its beauty and charm, with its enlightening effect on the human soul, determines the entire flavor of the story. The winter forest landscape promotes a special state of mind; the solemn silence emphasizes detachment from the world. The hero’s meetings with Olesya take place in winter and spring, when renewed nature and the revived forest awaken feelings in the souls of two people. The beauty of Olesya, the proud strength emanating from her, embodies the strength and charm of the world around her. The greatness of the pristine nature of this region is inseparable from the beautiful heroine, whose name seems to echo the words “forest” and “Polesie”.

Kuprin sketches a portrait in which earthly and sublime principles are intricately combined: “My stranger, a tall brunette of about twenty to twenty-five years old, behaved easily and harmoniously. A spacious white shirt wrapped freely and beautifully around her young, healthy breasts. The original beauty of her face, once seen, could not be forgotten, but it was difficult, even after getting used to it, to describe it. His charm lay in those large, shiny, dark eyes, to which the thin eyebrows, broken in the middle, gave an elusive shade of slyness, power and naivety; in the dark-pink color of the skin, in the willful curve of the lips, of which the lower, somewhat fuller, protruded forward with a decisive and capricious look.”

Kuprin managed to vividly embody the ideal of a natural person, free, original and whole, living in harmony and harmony with nature, “who grew up in the open air of the old forest as slender and as powerful as young fir trees grow,” which is close to Tolstoy’s traditions.

The heroine's chosen one, Ivan Timofeevich, in his own way humane and kind, educated and intelligent, is endowed with a “lazy” heart. Fortune telling to her betrothed, Olesya says: “Your kindness is not good, not heartfelt. You are not master of your word. You love to have the upper hand over people, but although you don’t want to, you obey them.”

And so these different people fell in love with each other: “The moon rose, and its radiance strangely colorful and mysteriously blossomed the forest...<.„>And we walked, hugging each other, among this smiling living legend, without a single word, overwhelmed by our happiness and the eerie silence of the forest.” Magnificent nature with its play of colors echoes the heroes, as if enchanted by the beauty of youth. But the forest fairy tale ends tragically. And not only because the cruelty and meanness of the surrounding world bursts into Olesya’s bright world. The writer poses a larger question: could this girl, a child of nature, free from all conventions, live in a different environment? The theme of divided love is replaced in the story by another, constantly heard in Kuprin’s work - the theme of unattainable happiness.

At the end of the nineteenth century A.I. Kuprin was the manager of an estate in the Volyn province. Impressed by the beautiful landscapes of that region and the dramatic fate of its inhabitants, he wrote a series of stories. The highlight of this collection is the story “Olesya,” which tells about nature and true love.

The story “Olesya” is one of the first works of Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin. It amazes with its depth of images and unusual plot twist. This story takes the reader to the end of the nineteenth century, when the old way of Russian life collided with extraordinary technical progress.

The work begins with a description of the nature of the region, where the main character Ivan Timofeevich came on estate business. It's winter outside: snowstorms give way to thaws. The way of life of the inhabitants of Polesie seems unusual to Ivan, who is accustomed to the bustle of the city: an atmosphere of superstitious fears and fear of innovation still reigns in the villages. Time seemed to stand still in this village. It is not surprising that it was here that the main character met the sorceress Olesya. Their love is doomed from the very beginning: too different heroes appear before the reader. Olesya is a Polesie beauty, proud and determined. In the name of love, she is ready to do anything. Olesya is devoid of cunning and self-interest, selfishness is alien to her. Ivan Timofeevich, on the contrary, is incapable of making fateful decisions; in the story he appears as a timid person, unsure of his actions. He cannot fully imagine his life with Olesya as his wife.

From the very beginning, Olesya, who has the gift of foresight, feels the inevitability of the tragic end of their love. But she is ready to accept the full severity of the circumstances. Love gives her confidence in her own strength, helps her to withstand all the hardships and adversities. It is worth noting that in the image of the forest witch Olesya, A.I. Kuprin embodied his ideal of a woman: decisive and courageous, fearless and sincerely loving.

Nature became the background for the relationship between the two main characters of the story: it mirrors the feelings of Olesya and Ivan Timofeevich. Their life for a moment turns into a fairy tale, but only for a moment. The climax of the story is Olesya's arrival at the village church, from where the locals drive her away. At night of the same day, a terrible thunderstorm breaks out: a strong hail destroyed half of the crop. Against the background of these events, Olesya and her grandmother understand that the superstitious villagers will certainly blame them for this. So they decide to leave.

Olesya's last conversation with Ivan takes place in a hut in the forest. Olesya does not tell him where she is going and asks him not to look for her. In memory of herself, the girl gives Ivan a string of red corals.

The story makes you think about what love is as people understand it, what a person is capable of in its name. Olesya’s love is self-sacrifice; it is her love, it seems to me, that is worthy of admiration and respect. As for Ivan Timofeevich, the cowardice of this hero amuses one to doubt the sincerity of his feelings. After all, if you really love someone, would you allow your loved one to suffer?

Brief analysis of Olesya Kuprin's story for grade 11

The work “Olesya” was written by Kuprin when people involved in herbal medicine were treated with caution. And although many came to them for treatment, they did not particularly allow Orthodox peasants into their circle, considering them to be sorcerers and blaming them for all their troubles. This happened with the girl Olesya and her grandmother Manuilikha.

Olesya grew up in the middle of the forest, learned many secrets associated with herbs, learned to tell fortunes, and charm diseases. The girl grew up unselfish, open, and reasonable. Ivan simply could not help but like her. Everything contributed to the establishment of their relationship, which grew into love. Nature itself helped the love events develop, the sun was shining, the breeze played with the leaves, birds chirped around.

Ivan Timofeevich, a naive young man, having met the spontaneous Olesya, decided to subjugate her to himself. This can be seen in how he persuades her to attend church. To which the girl agrees, knowing that this cannot be done. He persuades her to leave with him and marry him. He even thought about my grandmother, if she didn’t want to live with us, there were almshouses in the city. For Olesya, this state of affairs is completely unacceptable; it is a betrayal of a loved one. She grew up in harmony with nature and for her many things of civilization are incomprehensible. Despite the fact that the young people are dating and at first glance everything is fine with them, Olesya does not trust her feelings. Fortune telling with cards, she sees that their relationship will not continue. Ivan will never be able to understand her and accept her for who she is, and the society in which he lives even more so. People like Ivan Timofeevich like to subjugate themselves, but not everyone succeeds in this and rather they themselves follow the lead of circumstances.

Olesya and her grandmother make a wise decision so as not to ruin their lives and Ivan Timofeevich secretly leaves their home. It is difficult for people from different social groups to find a common language and it is even more difficult to integrate into a new environment. Throughout the entire work, the author shows how different these two lovers are. The only thing that connects them is love. Olesya's is pure and selfless, while Ivan's is selfish. The entire work is built on the opposition of two personalities.

Analysis of the story for grade 11

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Introduction

1. The concept of natural personality

2. The originality of realism

3. The role of romance

Conclusion

Literature

Introduction

As part of the work, an analysis of the story of the Russian writer Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin (1870 - 1938) “Olesya” (1898) is carried out.

In 1897, A. Kuprin served as an estate manager in the Rivne district of the Volyn province. The amazing nature and peculiarities of life of the Polesie region, the dramatic fate of its inhabitants inspired the writer to create the cycle “Polesie Stories”, which included “Olesya”.

“Olesya” is one of Kuprin’s first major works, and one of his most favorite, which he later spoke about. This is a story about nature and the tragic love of “representatives of different worlds” - a young gentleman Ivan Timofeevich, who came to Polesie from a big city for six months, and a young girl Olesya, who has extraordinary abilities.

The goals and objectives of the work include:

consideration of the concept of “natural personality” in the story;

the originality of the realism of the writer’s artistic style;

the role of the romantic component in the story.

1. The concept of natural personality

The concept of a “natural personality,” reflected in A. Kuprin’s story “Olesya,” comes from the ideas of the French writer and thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Rousseauism. The main provisions of this concept are as follows:

contrasting bourgeois civilization with the simple life of people in the lap of nature, far from cities, where selfishness and hypocrisy reign and in which true love is doomed;

civilization does not bring happiness to people;

the idea of ​​“natural man,” man of nature, which consists in contrasting man with nature with “man created by a civilized society.” In Kuprin's story, this conflict can be described as “two worlds.”

A. Kuprin, with his characteristic artistic expressiveness, sketches a portrait of the main character of the story, in which both earthly and sublime principles are intricately combined:

“My stranger, a tall brunette of about twenty to twenty-five years old, behaved easily and slenderly. A spacious white shirt wrapped freely and beautifully around her young, healthy breasts. Once seen, the original beauty of her face could not be forgotten, but it was difficult, even after getting used to it, to describe it. His charm lay in those large, shiny, dark eyes, to which the thin eyebrows, broken in the middle, gave an elusive shade of slyness, power and naivety; in the dark-pink tone of the skin, in the willful curve of the lips, of which the lower, somewhat fuller, protruded forward with a decisive and capricious look.”

It is likely that the initial feeling that arose in the protagonist of the story, the young master Ivan Timofeevich, was based on “vague” instinctive drives, but further communication with Olesya is reinforced by spiritual closeness. Kuprin brilliantly combines this transformation of the main character with descriptions of nature.

The main character Olesya is an ideal “child of nature”, far from civilized society. However, she has a combination of rare qualities that are inaccessible to both the main character and ordinary residents.

She, in Kuprin’s words, “has access to that unconscious, instinctive, vague, strange knowledge obtained by chance experience, which, ahead of exact science by entire centuries, lives, mixed with funny and wild beliefs, in the dark, closed mass of the people, passed on as the greatest secret from generation to generation."

First of all, the young master Ivan Timofeevich is attracted by the romantic “certain aura of mystery surrounding her, the superstitious reputation of a witch, life in the forest thicket among the swamp, and especially this proud confidence in one’s own strength, which was evident in the few words addressed to me.”

In the image of Olesya, Kuprin embodied the ideal of a natural person, a free, original and whole person, living in harmony with nature, “who grew up in the open air of the old forest as slender and as powerful as young Christmas trees grow.”

Of course, Kuprin most vividly and fully reveals the characters of the main characters, representatives of radically different worlds - in love, in selfless and honest love.

The birth of love coincides with the spring awakening of nature - the main characters are happy while they live the same life with nature and obey its laws:

“The naive, charming fairy tale of our love continued for almost a whole month, and to this day, together with the beautiful appearance of Olesya, these blazing evening dawns, these dewy, fragrant lilies of the valley and honey mornings, full of cheerful freshness and ringing bird noise, live with an unfading force in my soul, these hot, languid lazy June days...”

Ivan Timofeevich, in moments of this spiritual uplift, at the peak of emotional closeness with Olesya, compares himself with a “pagan god” or “a young, strong animal,” enjoying “light, warmth, conscious joy of life and calm, healthy, sensual love:

“Not once did boredom, fatigue, or the eternal passion for a wandering life stir in my soul during this time.”

Revealing the character of Olesya, the writer puts his dream into her image - the dream of a Personality not influenced by the environment. However, the prejudices and conventions of the environment turn out to be stronger than all the feelings overwhelming the main character, which determines the tragic outcome of this story.

2. The originality of realism

The originality of A. Kuprin’s realism lies in the combination of incompatible worlds, the so-called dual worlds, that is, the division of the world into the real and the ideal, which are opposed to each other.

So, initially, the romantics contrasted the classicist “imitation of nature” with the creative activity, fantasy and originality of the artist with his right to transform the real world. In this regard, the movement of romanticism was initially designated as a “protest against God”, against primordial predestination. In other words, the romantic is not satisfied with reality, and he creates, in contrast to it, in parallel with it, or for the purpose of harmonization, his own reality, his own world.

Based on this, “two worlds” is a clear classic feature of traditional romanticism.

The initial pages of "Olesya" can be characterized stylistically as realism, since it describes in sufficient detail the life of the Polesie peasants. And only after Olesya appears in the story, romanticism is already inseparably adjacent to realism.

In other words, the work describes the love of a real person and a romantic ideal heroine. Ivan Timofeevich finds himself in the attractive and mysterious world of Olesya, unknown to him, and she - in his reality. The ideality of Olesya, in addition to the listed properties, also lies in the fact that she is ready to sacrifice herself and accept the real world, with all its cruelties. Thus, the work exhibits features of both realism and romanticism.

The first conflict of the story lies in the uniqueness of the traditions of Polesie, where Christian traditions are closely intertwined with pagan ones. Civilization and wild nature live according to completely different laws.

However, despite the extensive history of human development and evolution (lifestyle changes, cultural and social changes, etc.) and all the specific moments of human civilization (the development of natural sciences, technology and social transformations), humans have retained basic traditional ideas about good and evil, love and hate, about enemies and friends.

Initially, the main character thinks that he has found himself in some kind of protected world in which time has stopped. This feeling is conveyed to the reader.

The world appears before us in two realities - real (where there is one form of time) and magical (where time and space flow according to different laws).

A detailed description of the space of Polesie, which is divided into its own - pure, Christian - and pagan, in which evil forces live, is necessary in order to explain to the reader the reason for the negative attitude of the peasants towards the “witch” Olesya.

Ivan Timofeevich, the hero on whose behalf the reader learns about all events, is a kind of “border” separating the real and ideal worlds. The real world is St. Petersburg and its “high society”; The ideal world is the forest in which Olesya lives with her grandmother.

Ivan Timofeevich himself talks about St. Petersburg Oles with undisguised disgust:

“So these are the tall buildings. And filled from top to bottom with people. These people live in small kennels, like birds in cages, ten people in each, so that there is not enough air for everyone. And others live below, under the ground itself, in dampness and cold; It happens that they don’t see the sun in their room all year round.”

Olesya answers Ivan Timofeevich:

“Well, I wouldn’t trade my forest for your city for anything. I’ll even come to the market in Stepan, it’ll make me so disgusted. They push, they make noise, they scold... And such melancholy will take me beyond the forest - I would drop everything and run without looking back... God be with him, with your city, I would never live there.”

From the confrontation of these worlds another conflict arises. This conflict is social: people brought up in such different conditions simply cannot be together and are doomed to separate.

Therefore, Kuprin does not make romantic love serene and leads the heroes to difficult trials. Thus, the “forest fairy tale” ends tragically. The point is not only in the circumstances of the finale, when Olesya is faced with the harshness and meanness of the world around her. Kuprin considers this issue on a larger scale, from a social point of view: how possible is it for an ideal “child of nature” to live in an environment alien to her.

These worlds are clearly opposed to each other and, as the main character correctly notes, cannot be combined:

“I didn’t even dare to imagine what Olesya would be like, dressed in a fashionable dress, talking in the living room with the wives of my colleagues, torn from this charming frame of the old forest, full of legends and mysterious forces.”

Thus, the story touches not only on the theme of love, but also on the theme of unattainable happiness.

The uniqueness of Kuprin’s realism also lies in the fact that this fairy-tale world into which the main character finds himself is devoid of idealism - the villagers appear evil and narrow-minded. Olesya, knowing their mentality and having experienced their rejection, tries to protect herself and protect herself from them:

“Are we touching anyone? We don't even need people. Once a year I just go to a place to buy soap and salt... And I also give my grandmother tea - she loves tea from me. Or at least not see anyone at all.”

Possessing intuitive knowledge, nobility and a number of other human qualities, Olesya wins in comparison with her lover - Ivan Timofeevich, who appears before us as a typical representative of the intelligentsia, a man with a “lazy heart”, a sincere, sympathetic person, but indecisive and to some extent selfish. He was unable to sense the danger that threatened Olesya and, thanks to his exposure to the conventions and prejudices of the civilized world, without meaning to, he brought misfortune to his beloved.

Olesya feels and understands this from the very beginning, telling her lover:

“This is what happened to you: although you are a kind person, you are only weak... Your kindness is not good, not heartfelt. You are not master of your word. You like to have the upper hand over people, but although you don’t want to, you obey them. You will not love anyone with your heart, because your heart is cold, lazy, and you will bring a lot of grief to those who love you.”

Olesya, who possesses the gift of providence, inexplicable from Ivan’s point of view, feels the inevitability of a tragic end. She knows that Ivan Timofeevich is not capable of renouncing his world, but, nevertheless, she goes to self-denial, tries to try on her way of life with the world that is alien to her.

When Olesya invites Ivan to simply follow him, without any marriage, the protagonist suspects that her refusal is due to her fear of the church. However, Olesya says that for the sake of love for him, she is ready to overcome this too.

Ivan Timofeevich himself, on whose behalf the story is told, does not justify himself and does not deny the fact that, with all his love for Olesya, he depends on the conventions of the civilized world. In fact, it is precisely these conventions that determine the tragedy of the ending, and premonitions of imminent disaster and imminent separation now visit the main character:

“I looked closely at her pale, thrown-back face, into her large black eyes with bright moonlight highlights shining in them, and a vague premonition of imminent disaster suddenly crept into my soul with a sudden coldness.”

3. The role of romance

The romantic beginning of “Olesya” is discerned at the very beginning of the story, when a realistic, leisurely description of the life and customs of Polesie peasants is supplied with stories from Ivan Timofeevich’s servant, Ermola, about “witches” and a sorceress living nearby.

However, the romantic beginning appears in its entirety only with the appearance of Olesya, the daughter of the forests. The romantic image of Olesya lies not only in her ideality - isolation from people limited by their anger and the absence of base interests in fame, wealth, power, etc. The main motives for her actions are emotions. In addition to this, Olesya is familiar with the secrets of the human subconscious, for which local residents call her a “witch.”

Olesya, who does not know all the subtleties, tricks and conventions of the civilized world, thanks to her openness, makes Ivan Timofeevich, at least for a while, forget about all the prejudices of his environment.

At the same time, it should be noted that Olesya is not characterized by naivety and defenselessness - she knows what human anger and rejection are, she knows that any dissimilarity in the human community is punishable, but, nevertheless, she is capable of “action”, unlike beloved.

Olesya's love is the greatest gift to the main character, which combines sacrifice and courage, but at the same time, Kuprin puts a number of conflicts and contradictions into this gift.

Thus, A. Kuprin sees the true meaning of love in the desire to selflessly give to his chosen one the fullness of his feelings.

Conclusion

The concept of “natural personality” in A. Kuprin’s story is represented by the following points:

the opposition of two worlds - the real world, which is personified by the main character, and the ideal world, which is personified by the village girl Olesya;

the doom of true love in the civilized world;

the idea of ​​a “natural man”, a man of nature, that is, contrasting the man of nature with “a man created by a civilized society” using the example of the image of Olesya.

Revealing the character of Olesya, the writer puts his dream into her image - the dream of a Personality not influenced by the environment.

The originality of A. Kuprin’s realism lies in this same concept - in the combination of incompatible worlds, the so-called dual worlds, that is, the division of the world into the real and the ideal, which are opposed to each other.

The first conflict of the story lies in the uniqueness of the traditions of Polesie, where Christian traditions are closely intertwined with pagan ones.

The second conflict arises from the confrontation between the real and ideal worlds: lovers brought up in such different conditions simply cannot be together and are doomed to parting.

The romantic component can be traced at the very beginning of “Olesya”, when a realistic description of the life of peasants is supplied with stories of the master’s servant about “witches” and a sorceress living nearby.

However, only after Olesya appears in the story does romanticism fully coexist with realism. The main character, having found himself in this fabulous ideal world, temporarily forgets about all the conventions of modern traditional society and for a while unites with nature. However, Kuprin remains a realist, and the forest fairy tale ends tragically, which Olesya herself intuitively guessed in the first stages of meeting Ivan Timofeevich.

Kuprin personality romantic realism

Literature

1. Kuprin A.I. Selected works - M.: “Fiction”, 1985. - 655 p.

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