Composition by A.I. Kuprin Life and work of Kuprin: a short description Features of Kuprin's creative manner

The most traditional in the literature of the "knowledgeists" was, perhaps, creativity Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin (1870-1937), although the writer in his earliest works was clearly influenced by the decadent motives of the modernists. Kuprin, whose work took shape during the years of the revolutionary upsurge, was especially close to the theme of the "enlightenment" of a simple Russian person, eagerly seeking the truth of life. The writer devoted mainly his work to the development of this topic. His art, as K. Chukovsky said, was characterized by a special vigilance of "seeing the world", "concreteness" of this vision, a constant striving for knowledge. The "cognitive" pathos of Kuprin's work was combined with a passionate personal interest in the victory of good over all evil. Therefore, most of his works "are characterized by violent dynamics, drama, excitement."

The biography of A. I. Kuprin is similar to an "adventure novel". By the abundance of meetings with people, life observations, she resembled the biography of Gorky. Kuprin wandered around Russia a lot, performing a wide variety of work) ": he was a feuilletonist, a loader, sang in a church choir, played on stage, worked as a land surveyor, served at a factory of the Russian-Belgian society, studied medicine, fished in Balaklava.

In 1873, after the death of her husband, Kuprin's mother, who came from a family of impoverished Tatar princes, found herself without any means and moved from the Penza province to Moscow. Kuprin spent his childhood with her in the Moscow Widow's House on Kudrinskaya, then he was assigned to an orphanage and a cadet corps. In these state institutions, as Kuprin later recalled, an atmosphere of violent respect for elders, impersonality and speechlessness reigned. The regime of the cadet corps, in which Kuprin spent 12 years, left a mark on his soul for the rest of his life. Here arose in him a sensitivity to human suffering, hatred of all violence against a person. Kuprin's mood of that time was expressed in his student poems of 1884-1887. Kuprin translates from Heine and Beranger, writes poetry in the spirit of the civil lyrics of A. Tolstoy, Nekrasov, Nadson. In 1889, already being a cadet, he published his first prose work - the story "The Last Debut". 1

At an early stage of his creative development, Kuprin experienced a strong influence of Dostoevsky, which manifested itself in the stories "In the Dark", "Moonlit Night", "Madness", "The Caprice of a Diva" and others that were later included in the book "Miniatures" (1897). He writes about "fateful moments", the role of chance in a person's life, analyzes the psychology of passions. Kuprin's work of those years was influenced by the naturalistic concept of human nature, in which the biological principle prevails over the social. In some stories of this cycle, he wrote that the human will is helpless in the face of the spontaneous accident of life, that the mind cannot learn the mysterious laws that govern human actions ("Happy Hag", "Moonlit Night").

A decisive role in overcoming literary clichés coming from Dostoevsky's interpreters - the decadents of the 1890s - was played by Kuprin's work in periodicals and his direct acquaintance with the real Russian life of that time. Since the early 1890s, he has been actively collaborating in provincial Russian newspapers and magazines - in Kiev, Volyn, Zhitomir, Odessa, Rostov, Samara, writes feuilletons, reports, editorials, poems, essays, stories, tests himself in almost all genres of journalism ... But most often and most willingly Kuprin writes essays. And they demanded knowledge of the facts of life. Essay work helped the writer overcome the influence of literary traditions that were inorganic for his outlook on the world; it became a stage in the development of his realism. Kuprin wrote about production processes, about the labor of metallurgists, miners, artisans, the brutal exploitation of workers in factories and mines, about foreign joint-stock campaigns that filled the Russian Donetsk basin, etc. Many of the motives of these essays will be reflected in his story "Moloch".

The peculiarity of Kuprin's essay of the 1890s, which in its form usually represents a conversation between the author and the reader, was the presence of broad generalizations, clarity of plot lines, a simple and at the same time detailed depiction of production processes. In his essays, he will continue the traditions of the Russian democratic essay literature of the previous decades. G. Uspensky had the greatest influence on Kuprin the essayist.

The work of the journalist, forcing Kuprin to turn to the pressing problems of the time, contributed to the formation of democratic views in the writer, the development of a creative style. In the same years Kuprin published a series of stories about people rejected by society, but keeping high moral and spiritual ideals ("Petitioner", "Painting", "Blessed", etc.). The ideas and images of these stories were traditional for Russian democratic literature.

Kuprin's creative quest of this time ended with the story "Moloch" (1896). Kuprin shows more and more sharpening contradictions between capital and forced labor. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he was able to grasp the social characteristics of the latest forms of capitalist development in Russia. The angry protest against the monstrous violence against man, on which the industrial flourishing in the world of Moloch is based, the satirical display of the new masters of life, the exposure of shameless predation in the country of foreign capital - all this informed the story of great public acuteness. Kuprin's story called into question the theories of bourgeois progress, preached at that time by sociologists.

The tale is called "Moloch" - after the idol of the Ammonites, a small Semitic tribe of antiquity, which left nothing in history except the name of a bloodthirsty idol, into whose red-hot mouth people were thrown into sacrifice. For Kuprin, Molokh is both a plant where human lives die, and its owner is Kvashnin, but above all it is a symbol of capital that forms the psyche of Kvashnin, disfigures moral relations in the Zinenko family, morally corrupts Svezhevsky, and cripples Bobrov's personality. Kuprin condemns the world of Moloch - possessiveness, morality, civilization based on the slave labor of the majority, but condemns from the standpoint of the natural requirements of human nature.

The story was an important stage in Kuprin's creative development. From essays and stories, he first turned to a large literary form. But even here the writer has not yet departed from the usual methods of composition of a work of art. In the center of the story is the life story of the engineer Andrei Bobrov, a typical intellectual of democratic literature of those years. Bobrov does not accept the world of Kvashnin, he tries to fight social and moral injustice. But his protest fades away, because it has no social support. Kuprin carefully paints the inner world, the emotional experiences of the hero; all events in the story are given through his perception. According to Bobrov, he is shown only as a victim of the social order. This "sacrifice" is indicated by Kuprin at the beginning of the story. For an active protest, Bobrov is morally weak, crushed by the "horror of life." He wants to be useful to society, but he realizes that his work is only a means of enriching the Kvashnins, he sympathizes with the workers, but he does not know how to act and does not dare. A man with an acutely sensitive conscience, close to the heroes of Garshin and some of Chekhov's heroes, sensitive to other people's pain, untruth, oppression, he suffers defeat even before the start of the struggle.

Kuprin tells about the life and protest of workers against Moloch, about the first glimpses of their social consciousness. The workers revolt, but Kvashnin triumphs. Bobrov wants to be with the workers, but he realizes the groundlessness of his participation in the social struggle: he is between the fighting camps. The labor movement appears in the story only as a background of the hero's psychological throwings.

Kuprin's democratic position dictated to him the main idea of ​​the story, determined its critical pathos, but the ideals on which Kuprin's criticism was based and which are opposed to the inhuman ideals of Kvashnin's world are utopian.

On what positive ideals was Kuprin's social criticism based? Who are his goodies? In search of moral and spiritual ideals of life, which the writer contrasted with the ugliness of modern human relations, Kuprin turns to the "natural life" of the renegades of this world - vagabonds, beggars, artists, starving unrecognized artists, children of the poor urban population. This is the world of nameless people, who, as V. Borovsky wrote in his article about Kuprin, form the mass of society and which is especially clearly affected by the whole senselessness of their existence. Among these people Kuprin tried to find his good characters ("Lidochka", "Lokon", "Kindergarten", "Allez!", "The Wonderful Doctor", "In the Circus", "White Poodle", etc.). But they are victims of society, not fighters. The writer's favorite heroes were also inhabitants of remote corners of Russia, free vagabonds, people close to nature, who preserved mental health, freshness and purity of feeling, moral freedom away from society. So Kuprin came to his ideal of "natural man", free from the influence of bourgeois civilization. The opposition of the bourgeois-philistine world of natural life becomes one of the main themes of his work. It will be embodied in a variety of ways, but the inner meaning of the main conflict will always remain the same - the collision of natural beauty with the ugliness of the modern world.

In 1898 Kuprin wrote the story "Olesya" on this topic. The plot of the story is literary and traditional: an intellectual, an ordinary person, weak-willed, timid, in a remote corner of Polesie meets a girl who grew up outside of society and civilization. Kuprin gives her a bright character. Olesya is distinguished by spontaneity, integrity, spiritual wealth. The plot scheme is also traditional: meeting, birth and drama of "unequal" love. Poetising a life that is not limited by modern social and cultural frameworks, Kuprin strove to show the clear advantages of a "natural man", in which he saw the spiritual qualities that were lost in a civilized society. The meaning of the story is to assert a high "natural" human norm. The image of a "natural man" will pass through Kuprin's work from the works of the 1900s to the latest stories and stories of the emigre period.

But Kuprin the realist was quite clearly aware of the abstractness of his ideal of man; not without reason in a collision with the real world, with the "unnatural" laws of reality, the "natural" hero always suffered defeat: either he refused to fight, or became an outcast of society.

Kuprin's love for his native nature is also associated with a craving for everything that is not perverted by bourgeois civilization. For Kuprin, nature lives a full, independent life, the freshness and beauty of which, again, are opposed to the unnatural norms of human society. Kuprin, as a landscape painter, has largely assimilated the traditions of Turgenev's landscape painting.

The heyday of Kuprin's creativity falls on the years of the first Russian revolution. During this time, he became widely known to the Russian reading public. In 1901 Kuprin came to St. Petersburg and became close to the writers of Sreda. His stories are praised by Tolstoy and Chekhov. In 1902 Gorky introduced him to the circle of "Knowledge", and in 1903 this publishing house published the first volume of his stories.

During these years Kuprin lived in an atmosphere of tense social and political life. Under the influence of revolutionary events, the content of his social criticism changes: it becomes more and more specific. The theme of "natural man" also acquires a new sound. The hero of The Night Shift (1899) soldier Merkulov, who loves the earth, nature, field, native song, is no longer a conventional literary type, but a very real image of a person from the folk environment. Kuprin gives him eyes of "surprisingly delicate and pure color." Merkulov is exhausted by the barracks service, the army drill, humiliating a person. But he does not come to terms with his position, his reaction to the environment takes the form of social protest. Kuprin's "natural man" traverses a peculiar path of social concretization in the pre-revolutionary era. From the images of The Night Shift, threads stretch to the images of Kuprin's heroes of the 1900s, who see the social injustice of life.

Changes in the subject matter entailed new genre and stylistic features of the Kuprin novella. In his work, a type of short story arises, which in critics is usually called a "problem story" and is associated with the traditions of the late Chekhovian story. Such a novel is built on an ideological dispute, a clash of ideas. The ideological conflict organizes the compositional and figurative system of the work. The clash of old and new truths acquired in the process of ethical or philosophical searches can also occur in the mind of one hero. In Kuprin's work, a hero appears who finds his "truth" of life in a dispute with himself. Tolstoy's methods of analyzing the inner life of a person ("Swamp", etc.) had a great influence on Kuprin's novella of this type. The creative closeness of Kuprin to Chekhov's methods of writing is established. In the 1900s, he was included in the sphere of "Chekhov's themes". Kuprin's heroes, like Chekhov's heroes, are ordinary average people who form the "mass of society." In Chekhov's work, Kuprin saw something very close to himself - democracy, respect for man, rejection of the vulgarity of life, sensitivity to human suffering. Chekhov especially attracted Kuprin by his sensitivity to social issues of our time, by the fact that "he was worried, tormented and ill with everything that the best Russian people were ill with," as he wrote in 1904 in his article "In Memory of Chekhov." Kuprin was close to Chekhov's theme of the wonderful future of mankind, the ideal of a harmonious human personality.

In the 1900s, Kuprin was influenced by ideas, themes, images and Gorky's creativity. Protesting against the social inertia and spiritual poverty of the bourgeoisie, he opposes the world of owners, their psychology, the freedom of thought and feeling of people rejected by this society. Gorky's images of tramps had a direct impact on some of Kuprin's images. But they were understood by Kuprin in a very peculiar way, in a way characteristic of him. If for Gorky the romanticized images of tramps were by no means the bearers of the future, the force that would rebuild the world, then Kuprin, even in the 1900s, saw the tramp as a revolutionary force in society.

The abstract nature of Kuprin's social thinking, based on general democratic ideals, was also reflected in his works on "philosophical" themes. Critics have repeatedly noted the subjectivity and social skepticism of Kuprin's story "The Evening Guest", written in 1904, on the eve of the revolution. In it, the writer spoke about the powerlessness of a lonely person lost in the world around him.

However, it is not these motives that determine the main pathos of Kuprin's work. The writer writes his best work - the story "Duel" with a dedication to M. Gorky. Kuprin informed Gorky about the idea of ​​the story in 1902. Gorky approved and supported him. The release of "Duel" caused a huge public and political resonance. During the Russo-Japanese War, in an atmosphere of revolutionary ferment in the army and navy, the story acquired special relevance and played an important role in the formation of the opposition sentiments of the Russian democratic officers. No wonder the reactionary press immediately came out with criticism of the writer's "seditious" work. Kuprin was shaking one of the main foundations of autocratic statehood - the military caste, in the lines of decay and moral decline of which he showed signs of decay of the entire social system. Gorky called "The Duel" a wonderful story. Kuprin, he wrote, did the officers a great service, helped the honest officers "to know themselves, their position in life, all his abnormality and tragedy."

The problematics of the "Duel" goes far beyond the scope of the problems of the traditional military story. Kuprin spoke about the causes of social inequality of people, about possible ways to free a person from spiritual oppression, about the relationship between the individual and society, about the relationship between the intelligentsia and the people, about the growing social consciousness of the Russian person. The "Duel" vividly expressed the progressive aspects of Kuprin's work. But at the same time in the story there were "embryos" of those "delusions" of the writer, which were especially manifested in his later works.

The plot of "The Duel" is based on the fate of an honest Russian officer, who was forced by the conditions of army barracks life to feel all the illegality of people's social relations. And again Kuprin is not talking about outstanding personalities, not about heroes, but about Russian officers and soldiers of an ordinary army garrison. Mental, spiritual, everyday aspirations of officers are small and limited. If at the beginning of the story Kuprin wrote about the bright exceptions in this world - about dreamers and idealists, then in a life without ideals, limited by the framework of caste conventions and career aspirations, they also begin to fall. Both Shurochka Nikolaeva and Romashov have a feeling of spiritual fall. Both seek to find a way out, both internally protest against the moral oppression of the environment, although the bases of their protest are different, if not opposite. The juxtaposition of these images is extremely characteristic of Kuprin. They seem to symbolize two types of attitudes towards life, two types of worldview. Shurochka is a kind of double of Nina Zinenko from Moloch, who has killed in herself a pure feeling, high love for the sake of a profitable life deal. The regimental atmosphere torments her, she strives "for space, light." "I need a society, a big, real society, light, music, worship, subtle flattery, smart interlocutors," she says. Such a life seems to her free and beautiful. For Romashov and other officers of the army garrison, she seemed to personify a protest against the bourgeois prosperity and stagnation. But, as it turns out, she is striving, in essence, for the typically philistine ideal of life. Linking her aspirations with her husband's career, she says: "... I swear - I will make him a brilliant career. I know languages, I will be able to keep myself in any society, I have - I do not know how to express it - there is such the flexibility of the soul, that I will be everywhere, I will be able to adapt to everything ... "Shurochka" adapts "and in love. She is ready to sacrifice for the sake of her aspirations both her feelings and the love of Romashov, moreover, his life.

The image of Shurochka evokes an ambivalent attitude in the reader, which is explained by the ambivalent attitude of the author himself towards the heroine. Her image is painted in light colors, but at the same time, her prudence and selfishness in love are clearly unacceptable for Kuprin. He is closer to the reckless nobility of Romashov, his noble lack of will, than the selfish will of Shurochka. In the name of the egoistic ideal, she crossed the line that separated her from the disinterested and sacrificing lives and well-being of genuine Kuprin heroines in the name of love, whose moral purity he always opposed to the narrowness of calculating philistine feelings. This image will vary in the subsequent works of Kuprin, with an emphasis on different sides of the character.

The image of Romashov is Kuprin's "natural person", but placed in specific conditions of social life. Like Bobrov, this is a weak hero, but already capable of resistance in the process of "epiphany". However, his rebellion is tragically doomed, in a clash with the calculating will of other people, his death is also predetermined.

Romashov's protest against the environment is based on aspirations and ideals completely different from those of Shurochka. He entered life with a sense of unfairness to him of fate: he dreamed of a brilliant career, in his dreams he saw himself as a hero, but real life destroyed these illusions. The criticism has repeatedly pointed to the closeness of Romashov, who is looking for the ideal of life, to the heroes of Chekhov, the heroes of the "Chekhovian style". This is true. But, unlike Chekhov, Kuprin puts his hero in front of the need for immediate action, active manifestation of his attitude to the environment. Romashov, seeing how his romantic ideas about life are crumbling, feels his own fall: "I am falling, falling ... What a life! Something cramped, gray and dirty ... We all ... have forgotten what is Another life. Somewhere, I know where, completely different people live, and their life is so full, so joyful, so real. Somewhere people struggle, suffer, love widely and strongly ... how we live! How we live! "As a result of this insight, his naive moral ideals are painfully broken. He comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to resist the environment. In this situation, Kuprin's new view of the hero's relationship to the environment is reflected. If the positive hero of his early stories is deprived of activity, but" natural man "has always suffered defeat in a collision with the environment, then the" Duel "shows the growing active resistance of man to the social and moral inhumanity of the environment.

The impending revolution aroused the awakening of public consciousness in the Russian people. These processes of "straightening" the personality, the restructuring of the social psychology of a person in a democratic environment were objectively reflected in the work of Kuprin. Characteristically, Romashov's spiritual change comes after his meeting with the soldier Khlebnikov. Driven to despair by bullying by the sergeant major and officers, Khlebnikov is ready for suicide, in which he sees the only way out of a martyr's life. Romashov is shocked by the strength of his suffering. Seeing a man in a soldier, he begins to think not only about his own, but also about the fate of the people. In the soldiers, he sees those high moral qualities that are lost among the officers. Romashov, as it were, from their point of view, begins to evaluate the environment. The characteristics of the masses are also changing. If in "Moloch" Kuprin draws people from the people as a kind of "total" background, the sum of units, then in "Duel" the characters of the soldiers are clearly differentiated, reveal various facets of the people's consciousness.

But what is the positive basis of Kuprin's criticism; what positive ideals Kuprin now asserts; What does he see as the reasons for the emergence of social contradictions and ways to resolve them? Analyzing the story, it is impossible to answer this question unambiguously, because there is no unambiguous answer for the writer himself. Romashov's attitude to a soldier, an oppressed person, is clearly contradictory. He speaks of humanity, a fair life, but his humanism is abstract. The appeal for compassion during the years of the revolution looked naive. The story ends with the death of Romashov in a duel, although, as Kuprin told Gorky, at first he wanted to write another work about Romashov: to bring the hero out after the fight and retirement to the wide expanses of Russian life. According to the conceived story ("The Beggars") was not written.

In showing the complex spiritual life of the hero, Kuprin clearly relied on the traditions of the psychological analysis of L. Tolstoy. As with Tolstoy, the conflict of the hero's insight made it possible to add to the author's accusatory voice the protesting voice of the hero who saw the "unreality", injustice, dull cruelty of life. Following Tolstoy, Kuprin often gives a monologue of the hero for psychological disclosure of the character, as if directly introducing the reader into the inner world of Romashov.

In "The Duel" the writer uses his favorite compositional method of substituting a resonator for the hero, which, being a kind of second "I" of the author, corrects the hero, promotes the disclosure of his inner world. In conversations, disputes with him, the hero expresses his innermost thoughts and thoughts. In "Moloch" the resonating hero is Dr. Goldberg, in the story "The Duel" - Vasily Nilovich Nazansky. It is obvious that in an era of growing revolutionary "disobedience" of the masses, Kuprin himself realized the inconsistency of the call for obedience, non-resistance and patience. Realizing the limitations of such passive philanthropy, he tried to oppose it with such principles of social morality, on which, in his opinion, it would be possible to base truly harmonious relations between people. The bearer of the ideas of such social ethics is Nazansky. In criticism, this image has always been assessed ambiguously, which is explained by its internal inconsistency. Nazansky is in a radical mood, in his critical speeches and romantic forebodings of the "radiant life" one can hear the voice of the author himself. He hates the life of the military caste, he foresees the coming social upheavals. "Yes, the time will come," says Nazansky, "and it is already at the gates ... If slavery lasted for centuries, then its disintegration will be terrible. The more enormous the violence, the bloodier the reprisal will be ..." He feels that ".. .. somewhere far from our dirty, smelly campsites, a huge, new radiant life is taking place. New, brave, proud people have appeared, fiery free thoughts are arising in their minds. " Not without his influence, there is a crisis in the mind of Romashov.

Nazansky appreciates living life, its spontaneity and beauty: "Oh, how beautiful it is. How much joy only sight gives us! And then there is music, the smell of flowers, sweet female love! And there is immeasurable pleasure - the golden sun of life - human thought!" These are the thoughts of Kuprin himself, for whom high pure love is a holiday in a person's life, almost the only value in the world that uplifts him. This theme, set in the speeches of Nazansky, will sound in full force later in the writer's work ("Shulamith", "Garnet Bracelet", etc.).

Nazansky's poetic program contained the deepest contradictions. His quest eventually developed towards anarcho-individualistic ideals, towards pure aestheticism. The starting point of his program was the demand for the liberation of the individual. But this is a demand for the freedom of the individual. Only such a "free person" can, according to Nazansky, fight for social liberation. Improvement of human individuality, its subsequent "liberation", and on this basis already social transformations - these are the stages of development of human society for Nazan. His ethics are based on extreme individualism. He speaks of the society of the future as a community of free egoists and naturally comes to the denial of any civic obligations of the individual, immersing him in the sphere of intimate experiences and empathy. Nazansky, to a certain extent, expressed the ethical concept of the author himself, to which Kuprin led the logic of perception of the revolution of 1905–1907. from the standpoint of general democratic "non-partisanship". But despite this, the story played a revolutionary role in society.

The spirit of the revolution was reflected in other works of the writer, written at that time. The story "Staff Captain Rybnikov" conveys the dramatic atmosphere of the end of the Russo-Japanese War. Kuprin, like Veresaev, writes about the shame of defeat, the decay of the army tops. The story "Resentment" is permeated with the growth of a sense of human dignity, a sense of the moral improvement of life that the revolution brought. At the same time the story "Gambrinus" (1907) was written - one of the best works of fiction of the writer. The story covers the time from the Russian-Japanese war to the reaction after the defeat of the revolution of 1905–1907. The hero of the story, the Jewish violinist Sashka, becomes a victim of the Black Hundred pogromists. A crippled man, with a disfigured hand that can no longer hold the bow, returns to the tavern to play his fisherman friends on a pitiful pipe. The pathos of the story lies in the affirmation of man’s indestructible craving for art, which, like love, in Kuprin’s view is a form of embodiment of the eternal beauty of life. Thus, again, the social problem in this story is translated by Kuprin into the plane of ethical and aesthetic problems. Sharply criticizing the system that crippled a person, the social and moral Black Hundreds, Kuprin suddenly shifts the emphasis from social criticism to the assertion of the eternity of art, overcoming everything temporary and transient: "Nothing! A person can be crippled, but art will endure everything and win everything." The story ends with these author's words.

In the 1900s, Kuprin's style changed. Psychologism and its characteristic "everyday life" are combined with a direct author's emotional expression of the idea. This is typical of "The Duel" and many stories of that time. Nazansky's monologues are highly emotional, full of tropes, rhythmized. High lyricism and oratorical pathos ("The Duel", "Gambrinus", etc.) burst into the fabric of the epic narrative. The images are sometimes exaggerated, the figurative system of the work is based on sharp psychological contrasts. Just like Veresaev, Kuprin at this time gravitates towards allegory, legend ("Happiness", "Legend"). This is reflected in the general trends in the development of Russian realistic prose in the 1900s.

In the era of reaction, Kuprin's vacillations between progressive democratic views and anarcho-individualist sentiments are revealed. From Gorky's "Knowledge" the writer leaves for the publishing house "Rosehip", is published in Artsybashev's collections "Earth", falls under the influence of decadent sentiments that were so characteristic of certain circles of the Russian intelligentsia in the era of reaction. Social skepticism, a sense of the hopelessness of social aspirations become the pathos of a number of his works of those years. Gorky, in his article "Destruction of the Personality" (1909), wrote about Kuprin's story "Seasickness" with pain and grief, regretting that the story had objectively found itself in the stream of literature that questioned high human feelings. The temporary failures of the revolution are absolutized by the writer. Skeptically assessing the immediate prospects of social development, Kuprin asserts only high human experiences as the true values ​​of life. As before, Kuprin sees love as the only enduring value. "There were kingdoms and kings, but not a trace of them remained ... There were long, merciless wars ... But time has erased even the very memory of them. The love of the poor girl from the vineyard and the great king will never pass and will not be forgotten." - so he writes in 1908 in the story "Shulamith", created based on the biblical "Song of Songs". This is a romantic poem about the selflessness and nobility of love triumphant in the world of lies, hypocrisy and vice, love that is stronger than death.

During these years, the writer's interest in the world of ancient legends, history, and antiquity is growing. In his work, an original fusion of the prose of life and poetry, real and legendary, real and romantic feelings arises. Kuprin gravitates towards the exotic, develops fantastic plots. He returns to the themes of his early novels. Once again, the motives of the irresistible power of chance sound in his works, again the writer indulges in reflections on the deep alienation of people from each other.

The crisis of realism of the writer was evidenced by his failure in a large narrative form. In 1909, the first part of Kuprin's great story "The Pit" appeared in Artsybashev's "Land" (the second part was published in 1915). The story reveals the clear descent of Kuprin realism to naturalism. The work consists of scenes, portraits, details characterizing the life of the inhabitants of the brothel. And all this is outside the general logic of character development. Private conflicts are not limited to general conflict. The story is clearly divided into descriptions of individual details of everyday life. The work is built according to a scheme characteristic of Kuprin, here even more simplified: meaning and beauty in the life of nature, evil in civilization. Kuprin, as it were, personifies in his heroines the truth of "natural" existence, but a truth that is desecrated and perverted by the philistine world order. In describing their lives, Kuprin loses a sense of the vital contradictions of the concrete Russian reality of that time. The abstractness of the author's thought limited the critical power of the story against social evil.

And again the question arises about the values ​​that Kuprin asserts in this period in his work. Sometimes the writer is confused, filled with skepticism, but he sacredly honors humanity, speaks of the high purpose of man in the world, the strength of his spirit and feelings, the life-giving forces of the life of nature, of which man is a part. Moreover, the living principles of life are associated by the writer with the folk environment.

In 1907 Kuprin wrote - under the obvious influence of L. Tolstoy - the story "Emerald" about the cruelty and hypocrisy of the laws of the human world. In 1911 he creates the story "Garnet Bracelet". This is "one of the most fragrant" stories about love, as K. Paustovsky said about him. The artist contrasts the vulgarity of the world with sacrificial, unselfish, reverent love. The little official Zheltkov cannot and does not allow anyone to touch the secret. As soon as a breath of vulgarity touches her, the hero commits suicide. For Kuprin, love is the only value, the only means of moral transformation of the world. In the dream of love, Zheltkov finds salvation from the vulgarity of real life. In the illusory, imaginary world, the heroes of the stories "Travelers", "Holy Lies" (1914) are also saved.

However, in a number of stories written in the same years, Kuprin tried to point out real signs of high spiritual and moral values ​​in reality itself. In 1907-1911. he writes a cycle of essays "Listrigones" about the Crimean fishermen, about the integrity of their natures, brought up by labor and closeness to nature. But even these images are characterized by a certain abstract idealization (Balaklava fishermen are also "Listrigones" - fishermen of the Homeric epic). Kuprin synthesizes in the "listrigons" of the XX century. eternal features of "natural man", the son of nature, the seeker. The essays are interesting for the writer's attitude to the values ​​of life: in reality Kuprin was attracted by the lofty, bold, and strong. In search of these principles, he turned to Russian folk life. Kuprin's works of the 1910s are distinguished by the utmost refinement and maturity of artistic skill.

Ideological contradictions of Kuprin manifested themselves during the First World War. Chauvinistic motives sounded in his publicistic speeches. After October, Kuprin worked with Gorky at the World Literature publishing house, engaged in translations, and participated in the work of literary and artistic associations. But in the fall of 1919 he emigrated - first to Finland, then to France. Since 1920 Kuprin has been living in Paris.

Kuprin's works of the emigre period differ sharply in content and style from the works of the pre-revolutionary period. Their main meaning is longing for the abstract ideal of human existence, a sad look into the past. The consciousness of being cut off from the Motherland turns into a tragic feeling of doom. A new stage of Kuprin's enthusiasm for L. Tolstoy begins, first of all, for his moral teaching. Concentrating on this topic, Kuprin writes fairy tales, legends, fantastic stories, in which reality and fables, miraculous and everyday life, are fancifully intertwined. The theme of fate, the power of chance over a person, the theme of unknowable formidable forces, before which a person is powerless, begins to sound again. The relationship between man and nature is perceived in a different way, but man must obey it, merge with it; only in this way can he, according to Kuprin, keep a "living soul". This is a new twist on the "state of nature" theme.

The peculiarities of Kuprin's work of the émigré period are synthesized in the novel Zhaneta (1932–1933), a work about the loneliness of a man who lost his homeland and did not find a place in a foreign country. It tells the story of the touching attachment of an old lonely professor who found himself in exile for a little Parisian girl - the daughter of a street newspaperwoman. The professor wants to help Zhaneta to comprehend the endless beauty of the world, in the good of which, despite the bitter vicissitudes of fate, he does not stop believing. The novel ends with the friendship of the old professor and the "princess of four streets" - little dirty Janeta - dramatically cut short: the parents take the girl away from Paris, and the professor is left alone again, which is brightened up only by the company of his only friend - Friday's black cat. In this novel, Kuprin managed with artistic force to show the collapse of the life of a person who had lost his homeland. But the philosophical implication of the novel is different - in the assertion of the purity of the human soul, its beauty, which a person should not lose under any life circumstances, despite adversity and disappointment. So in "Janet" the idea of ​​"Garnet Bracelet" and other works by Kuprin of the pre-October decade was transformed.

This period of the writer's creativity is characterized by a departure into personal experiences. Kuprin's major work as an emigrant is his memoir Juncker (1928–1932), in which he talks about his life at the Moscow Alexander School. This is mainly the history of the life of the school. The character of the autobiographical hero is given outside of spiritual and intellectual development. The social circumstances of Russian life are excluded from the work. Only occasionally do critical notes break through in the novel, and sketches of the bursak regime of the tsarist military educational institution appear.

Unlike many emigrant writers, Kuprin did not lose faith in the kindness of a person. He spoke about the eternal wisdom of life, the triumph of good, called to admire the beauty of nature, understanding which, a person will be "much more worthy of noble immortality than all the inventors of machines ..."

In everything that Kuprin wrote at that time, the same note always made its way - longing for his native country. At the end of his life, Kuprin found the strength to return home to Russia.

• Cit. on: A. I. Kuprin Sobr. cit .: in 9 volumes, Moscow, 1964.Vol. 1.P. 29.
• Cm.: Gorky M. Sobr. cit .: in 30 volumes, vol. 28, p. 337.

The creativity of Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin was formed during the years of the revolutionary upsurge. All his life he was close to the theme of the insight of a simple Russian man who eagerly sought the truth of life. Kuprin devoted all his work to the development of this complex psychological

Themes. His art, in the words of his contemporaries, was characterized by a special vigilance of seeing the world, concreteness, a constant striving for knowledge. At the early stage of his work, Kuprin was strongly influenced by Dostoevsky. It manifested itself in the stories "In the Dark", "Moonlit Night", "Madness". He writes about fateful moments, the role of chance in a person's life, analyzes the psychology of a person's passions. Some stories of that period say that the human will is helpless in the face of spontaneous chance, that the mind cannot cognize the mysterious laws that govern man. A decisive role in overcoming the literary clichés emanating from Dostoevsky was played by direct acquaintance with the life of people, with real Russian reality.

He begins to write essays. Their peculiarity is that the writer usually conducted a leisurely conversation with the reader. Clear storylines, simple and detailed depiction of reality were clearly visible in them.

Kuprin's first creative quests ended with the largest thing that reflected reality. It was the story "Moloch". In it, the writer shows the contradictions between capital and human forced labor. He was able to grasp the social characteristics of the latest forms of capitalist production. The angry protest against the monstrous violence against man, on which the industrial flourishing in the world of Moloch is based, the satirical display of the new masters of life, the exposure of the shameless predation of foreign capital in the country - all this cast doubt on the theory of bourgeois progress.

In search of moral and spiritual ideals of life, which the writer contrasted with the ugliness of modern human relations, Kuprin turns to the life of vagabonds, beggars, drunken artists, starving unrecognized artists, children of the poor urban population. This is the world of nameless people who form the mass of society. Among them, Kuprin tried to find his goodies. He writes the stories "Lidochka", "Lock", "Kindergarten", "In the circus" - in these works Kuprin's heroes are free from the influence of bourgeois civilization.

Poetising a life unbounded by modern social cultural frameworks. Kuprin strove to show the clear advantages of a "natural man" in which he saw the spiritual qualities lost in a civilized society (the story "Olesya", where a bourgeois meets a girl who grew up far from civilization and is distinguished by spontaneity and simplicity).

In 1902 Kuprin conceived the story "Duel". In this work, he shook one of the main foundations of autocracy - the military caste, in the lines of decay and moral decline of which he showed signs of decay of the entire social system. The story reflects the progressive aspects of Kuprin's work. The plot is based on the fate of an honest Russian officer, who was forced by the conditions of army barracks to feel the illegality of people's social relations. Again Kuprin is not talking about an outstanding personality, but about a simple Russian officer Romashov. The regimental atmosphere torments him, he does not want to be in the army garrison. He became disillusioned with military service. He begins to fight for himself and his love. And the death of Romashov is a protest against the social and moral inhumanity of the environment.

In 1909 Kuprin wrote the story “The Pit”. Here Kuprin pays tribute to naturalism. He shows the inhabitants of the brothel. The whole story consists of scenes, portraits and clearly breaks down into individual details of everyday life. However, in a number of stories written in the same years, Kuprin tried to point out real signs of high spiritual and moral values ​​in reality itself. “Garnet Bracelet” is a story about love. This is what Paustovsky said about him: this is one of the most “fragrant” stories about love.

In exile, he wrote the novel "Janet". This work is about the tragic loneliness of a man who has lost his homeland. This is a story about the touching affection of an old professor who ended up in exile for a little Parisian girl - the daughter of a street newspaper lady. Kuprin's emigrant period is characterized by withdrawal into himself.

Essays on topics:

1. A feature of Chekhov's work is the absence of any important events in the lives of the heroes that could show the reader the author's intention. Chekhov always ...

The life and work of Kuprin represent an extremely complex and variegated picture. It is difficult to summarize them. All the experience of life taught him to call for humanity. All of Kuprin's stories and novellas have the same meaning - love for a person.

Childhood

In 1870, in the dull and waterless town of Narovchat, Penza province.

Orphaned very early. When he was one year old, his father, a petty clerk, died. There was nothing remarkable in the city, except for the artisans who made sieves and barrels. The kid's life went on without joys, but there were enough resentments. She and her mother went to friends and obsequiously begged for at least a cup of tea. And the "benefactors" stuck out their hand for a kiss.

Wanderings and studies

Mother 3 years later, in 1873, left for Moscow with her son. She was taken to a widow's house, and her son from the age of 6, in 1876 - to an orphanage. Later Kuprin will describe these establishments in the stories "The Runaways" (1917), "Holy lie", "At rest". These are all stories about people whom life has mercilessly thrown out. This is how the story of Kuprin's life and work begins. It is difficult to tell about this briefly.

Service

When the boy grew up, he was able to be attached first to a military gymnasium (1880), then to a cadet corps and, finally, to a cadet school (1888). The training was free, but painful.

So dragged on the long and bleak 14 war years with their senseless drills and humiliations. The continuation was the adult service in the regiment, which was stationed in small towns near Podolsk (1890-1894). The first story, which will be published by A. I. Kuprin, opening a military theme - "Inquiry" (1894), then "Lilac Bush" (1894), "Night shift" (1899), "Duel" (1904-1905) and others ...

Years of wandering

In 1894 Kuprin resolutely and abruptly changes his life. He retires and lives very poorly. Alexander Ivanovich settled in Kiev and began writing feuilletons for newspapers, in which he paints the life of the city with colorful strokes. But the knowledge of life was lacking. What did he see besides military service? He was interested in everything. And Balaklava fishermen, and Donetsk factories, and the nature of Polissya, and unloading watermelons, and balloon flight, and circus artists. He thoroughly studied the life and everyday life of the people who made up the backbone of society. Their language, jargons and customs. It is almost impossible to briefly convey the life and work of Kuprin saturated with impressions.

Literary activity

It was during these years (1895) Kuprin became a professional writer, constantly publishing his works in various newspapers. He meets Chekhov (1901) and everyone around him. And earlier he became friends with I. Bunin (1897) and then with M. Gorky (1902). One after another, stories come out that make society shudder. Moloch (1896) about the severity of capitalist oppression and the lack of rights of the workers. "Duel" (1905), which cannot be read without anger and shame for the officers.

The writer chastely touches the theme of nature and love. "Olesya" (1898), "Shulamith" (1908), "Garnet Bracelet" (1911) is known all over the world. He knows the life of animals: "Emerald" (1911), "Starlings". Around these years, Kuprin can already support his family for literary earnings and get married. His daughter is born. Then he gets divorced, and in his second marriage he also has a daughter. In 1909 Kuprin was awarded the Pushkin Prize. The life and work of Kuprin, briefly described, can hardly fit into several paragraphs.

Emigration and return home

Kuprin did not accept the October Revolution with the instinct and heart of the artist. He leaves the country. But, being published abroad, he yearns for his homeland. Age and illness fail. Finally, he nevertheless returned to his beloved Moscow. But, having lived here for a year and a half, he, seriously ill, dies in 1938 at the age of 67 in Leningrad. This is how Kuprin's life and work ends. The summary and description do not convey the vivid and rich impressions of his life, reflected in the pages of the books.

About prose and biography of the writer

The essay briefly presented in our article suggests that each master of his own destiny. When a person is born, he is caught up in the stream of life. He brings someone into a stagnant swamp, and so he leaves there, someone flounders, trying to somehow cope with the current, and someone just floats with the current - where he will take it. But there are people to whom Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin belongs, who have stubbornly rowed against the stream all their lives.

Born in a provincial, unremarkable town, he will love him forever and will return to this uncomplicated dusty world of harsh childhood. The bourgeois and meager Narodchats he will love inexplicably.

Maybe for the carved platbands and geraniums on the windows, maybe for the vast fields, or maybe for the smell of dusty earth nailed down by rain. And maybe this scarcity will pull him in his youth, after the army drill, which he experienced for 14 years, to recognize Russia in all the fullness of its colors and dialects. Wherever his paths-roads will take him. And in the woods of Polissya, and in Odessa, and to metallurgical plants, and to the circus, and in the skies on an airplane, and to unload bricks and watermelons. A person, full of inexhaustible love for people, for their life, learns everything, and will reflect all his impressions in stories and stories that will be read by contemporaries and which are not outdated even now, a hundred years after they were written.

Can the young and beautiful Shulamith, the beloved of Tsar Solomon, become old, can the forest sorceress Olesya stop loving a timid city dweller, can Sasha, the musician from Gambrinus (1907), stop playing? And Artaud (1904) is still loyal to his masters, who love him endlessly. The writer saw all this with his own eyes and left it to us on the pages of his books, so that we could be horrified by the heavy tread of capitalism in Moloch, the nightmare life of young women in the Pit (1909-1915), the terrible death of the beautiful and innocent Emerald ...

Kuprin was a dreamer who loved life. And all the stories passed through his attentive gaze and sensitive intelligent heart. Maintaining friendship with writers, Kuprin never forgot neither the workers, nor the fishermen, nor the sailors, that is, those who are called ordinary people. They were united by an inner intelligence, which is given not by education and knowledge, but by the depth of human communication, the ability to sympathize, and natural delicacy. He was very upset about emigration. In one of his letters he wrote: "The more talented a person is, the more difficult it is for him without Russia." Not counting himself as a genius, he simply yearned for his homeland and, upon returning, died after a serious illness in Leningrad.

Based on the presented essay and chronology, you can write a short essay "The life and work of Kuprin (briefly)".

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

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

Education and the beginning of the creative path

At the age of six, Kuprin was sent to the class of the Moscow Orphanage School, from which he left in 1880. After that, Alexander Ivanovich studied at the military academy, the Alexander military school. The training time is described in such works of Kuprin as: "At the Turn (Cadets)", "Juncker". The Last Debut is Kuprin's first published story (1889).

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

The flowering of creativity

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

Kuprin builds his stories of those times on life experiences gleaned during his wanderings.

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

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

Emigration and the last years of life

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

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

Russian writer Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin (1870―1938) was born in the town of Narovchat, Penza province. A man of difficult fate, a career soldier, then a journalist, emigrant and "returnee" Kuprin is known as the author of works included in the golden collection of Russian literature.

Stages of life and creativity

Kuprin was born into a poor noble family on August 26, 1870. His father worked as a secretary at the regional court, his mother came from a noble family of Tatar princes Kulunchakov. In addition to Alexander, two daughters grew up in the family.

The family's life changed dramatically when the head of the family died of cholera a year after the birth of his son. Mother, a native Muscovite, began to look for an opportunity to return to the capital and somehow arrange the life of the family. She managed to find a place with a boarding house in the Kudrinsky widow's house in Moscow. Three years of the life of little Alexander passed here, after which, at the age of six, he was sent to an orphanage. The atmosphere of the widow's house is conveyed by the story "Holy Lies" (1914), written by an already mature writer.

The boy was admitted to study at the Razumovsky orphanage, then, after graduation, he continued his studies at the Second Moscow Cadet Corps. Fate, it seems, ordered him to be a military man. And in the early works of Kuprin, the theme of everyday life in the army, relationships among the military is raised in two stories: "An Army Warrant Officer" (1897), "At the Turning Point (Cadets)" (1900). At the peak of his literary talent, Kuprin wrote the story "The Duel" (1905). The image of her hero, second lieutenant Romashov, according to the writer, was copied from himself. The publication of the story caused a great discussion in society. In the army environment, the work was perceived negatively. The story shows the aimlessness, the bourgeois limitation of the life of the military class. The autobiographical story "Juncker", written by Kuprin already in exile, in 1928-32, became a kind of completion of the "Cadets" and "Duel" dilogy.

Army life was completely alien to Kuprin, who was prone to rebellion. Retirement from military service took place in 1894. By this time, the first stories of the writer began to appear in magazines, which had not yet been noticed by the general public. After leaving military service, wanderings began in search of earnings and life experiences. Kuprin tried to find himself in many professions, but the journalism experience gained in Kiev became useful for starting professional literary work. The next five years were marked by the appearance of the author's best works: the stories "Lilac Bush" (1894), "Painting" (1895), "Lodging" (1895), "Watchdog and Zhulka" (1897), "The Wonderful Doctor" (1897), " Breget "(1897), the story" Olesya "(1898).

Capitalism, which Russia is entering, depersonalized the working man. Anxiety in the face of this process leads to the emergence of a wave of workers' riots, which are supported by the intelligentsia. In 1896 Kuprin wrote the story "Moloch" - a work of great artistic power. In the story, the spiritless power of the machine is associated with an ancient deity who demands and receives human lives as a sacrifice.

"Moloch" was written by Kuprin upon his return to Moscow. Here, after wandering, the writer finds a home, enters the literary circle, gets to know and closely converges with Bunin, Chekhov, Gorky. Kuprin got married and in 1901 moved with his family to St. Petersburg. The magazines publish his stories "Swamp" (1902), "White Poodle" (1903), "Horse thieves" (1903). At this time, the writer is actively engaged in public life, he is a candidate for the State Duma of the 1st convocation. Since 1911 he has lived with his family in Gatchina.

Kuprin's work between the two revolutions was marked by the creation of love stories "Shulamith" (1908) and "Garnet Bracelet" (1911), which differ in their light mood from the works of literature of those years by other authors.

During the period of two revolutions and the civil war, Kuprin was looking for an opportunity to be useful to society, collaborating, then with the Bolsheviks, then with the Socialist-Revolutionaries. 1918 was a turning point in the life of the writer. He emigrates with his family, lives in France and continues to work actively. Here, in addition to the novel "Juncker", were written the story "Yu-yu" (1927), the tale "Blue Star" (1927), the story "Olga Sur" (1929), more than twenty works in total.

In 1937, after an entry permit approved by Stalin, the already very sick writer returned to Russia and settled in Moscow, where, a year after returning from emigration, Alexander Ivanovich died. Buried Kuprin in Leningrad at the Volkovskoye cemetery.