“Easy breathing” composition
The story “Easy breathing” written by I. Bunin in 1916. It reflects the philosophical motifs of life and death, beautiful and ugly, which were in the center of the writer’s attention. In this story Bunin develops one of the leading problems for his creative work: love and death. According to artistic skill “Easy breathing” is considered the pearl of Bunin’s prose.
The narrative moves in the opposite direction, from the present to the past, the beginning of the story is its finale. From the first lines, the author immerses the reader in the sad atmosphere of the cemetery, describes the grave of a beautiful girl whose life was ridiculously and terribly interrupted in the prime of life: “In the cemetery, above your clay embankment, there is a new oak cross, strong, heavy, smooth.
April, the days are gray; monuments of the cemetery, a spacious county, are still visible through bare trees, and the cold wind rings and rings at the foot
In the same cross, a rather large, convex porcelain medallion is embedded, and in the medallion there is a photograph of the schoolgirl with joyful, strikingly alive eyes.
This is Olya Meshcherskaya. ”
Bunin makes us feel sad at the sight of the grave of a fifteen-year-old girl, bright and beautiful, who died early in the spring, that was the spring of her life, and she is like a bud in the future, a beautiful flower. it will never come. “The young life, beauty has disappeared, now eternity is over Olya:” it’s ringing – it’s ringing “, not stopping,” cold wind with a porcelain wreath “on her grave.
The author introduces us to the life of the heroine of the story, the schoolgirl Oli Meshcherskaya, at her fourteen and fifteen years. In all its appearance there is a delighted surprise at the extraordinary changes that are taking place with it. She quickly became prettier, turning into a girl, her soul was filled with energy and happiness. The heroine is stunned, she does not yet know what to do with herself, new and so beautiful,
Involuntarily recalled is the story of “Violets”, written by a friend of Bunin and the talented Russian novelist AI Kuprin. It depicts the explosive awakening of the youth of the cadet-seventh-year student Dmitry Kazakov, who can not prepare for the exam from overwhelmed feelings, collects violets behind the walls of the educational building with tenderness. The young man does not understand what is happening to him, but from happiness he is ready to embrace the whole world and fall in love with the first girl he met.
Olya Meshcherskaya from Bunin is a kind, sincere and direct person. With her happiness and positive energy, the girl charges everything around, attracts people to her. Girls from the lower grades of the gymnasium crowd run after it, for them it is an ideal.
The last winter of Oli’s life seemed to be specially beautiful: “The winter was snowy, sunny, frosty, the sun went down early for the high spruce forest of the snowy gymnasium, always fair, radiant, promising for tomorrow frost and sunshine, walking in Sobornaya Street; the city garden, the pink evening, the music and this crowd sliding in the rink at the rink, in which Olya Meshcherskaya seemed the most carefree, the happiest. ” But only it seemed. This psychological detail points to the natural awakening of natural forces in the youth of each person, when the mind is still asleep and does not control the senses. Unexpected, inexperienced Olya easily flies through life like a butterfly on a fire. And misfortune is already following her trail. Bunin was able to fully convey the tragedy of this dizzying flight.
Freedom in judgment, absence of fear, manifestation of wild joy, demonstration of happiness are considered in the society as defiant behavior. Olya does not understand how irritating others are. Beauty, as a rule, causes envy, misunderstanding, does not know how to protect itself in a world where everything exceptional is persecuted.
In addition to the main character in the story, there are four more images, one way or another associated with the young schoolgirl. This is the headmistress of the gymnasium, the classy lady of Olya, Alexei’s father Olya Mikhailovich Milutin and a certain Cossack officer.
None of them refers to the girl in a human way, does not even attempt to understand her inner world. The headmistress, on duty, reproaches Meshcherskaya for a woman’s hair, shoes. An elderly man, Milutin took advantage of Olya’s inexperience and seduced her. Apparently, an occasional admirer, a Cossack officer, took Meshcherskaya’s behavior for the windiness and debauchery. He shoots a girl at the train station and kills her. Fifteen-year-old girl is far away from the fatal temptress. She, a naive schoolgirl, shows him a sheet from a notebook-diary. As a child, she does not know the way out of the love situation and tries to fence herself off from the annoying admirer with her own childish and confusing records, showing them as some kind of document. How could this not be understood? But, having committed a crime, an ugly, plebeian-looking officer blames everything for the girl he killed.
Bunin understood love primarily only as a passion that suddenly burst out. And passion is always destructive. Love at Bunin walks next to death. The story “Easy breathing” is no exception. Such was the concept of love of the great writer. But Bunin asserts: death is not all-powerful. Short, but bright life of Olya Meshcherskaya left a trace in many souls. “A Little Woman in Mourning”, a classy lady named Olya, often comes to the grave, recalls her “pale face in a coffin” and a conversation that she once involuntarily overheard. Olya told her friend that the main thing in a woman is “easy breathing”: “But I have it, – you listen, as I breathe, – in fact, is it true?”
The story ends with the words of the author: “Now this light breathing has again dissipated in the world, in this cloudy sky, in this cold wind”. Beauty can not be destroyed, it will be reborn again.
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