Writing

Most of the heroes of literary works created in the 19th century passed a kind of test of the strongest feeling - love. The authors again and again asked themselves a question, trying to answer it in their creations: can love last until the end of life, will it destroy, or, conversely, will it become the only salvation?

For I. A. Bunin, love is always tragic, and sometimes it does not save, but, on the contrary, leads to death. His lyrical hero does not acquire family happiness, high feelings are not destroyed either by everyday life and everyday life. The story "Sunstroke" is a prime example of this attitude.

This work tells about the experiences associated with love. The author looks at everything through the eyes of his hero, but the heroine becomes the main character. It is no coincidence that Bunin avoids mentioning names: after all, the name gives the plot concreteness, evokes in each reader some of his own, individual associations, while the writer strives for imagery, generalization.

The beginning of the story is traditional - HE and She get to know each other on the ship, feel a strong attraction and quickly understand each other, enter into a hasty relationship (perhaps without even introducing themselves to each other). The next day turns out to be a disappointment, the hero and heroine pretend that nothing special has happened to them. Soon she leaves without leaving any information about herself. He understands that they will most likely not have to see each other again, and does not experience any worries about this.

But after a while, strange things begin to happen to the hero, the "lieutenant". A carefully disguised feeling unsuccessfully seeks a way out, dooming a fleeting lover to long moral suffering. At the end of the story, the lieutenant again finds himself on the ship, feeling insanely tired, disappointed, he "feels ten years older."

Let us now turn to the title of the story - "Sunstroke". The first impression is the feeling of something lightning fast, inevitable, fighting on the spot and leaving behind grief and suffering. The presence of nature in the story is constant, it not only represents a certain background, but also, as it were, participates in the composition of the plot: “Ahead was darkness and lights. From the darkness a strong, soft wind was blowing in the face, and the lights were rushing somewhere to the side ... ". The romantic atmosphere of a warm night becomes the reason that pushed Him and Her to each other. Further, we see how the picture of the dawn becomes a kind of epitaph of a suddenly flared up feeling: “... the dark summer dawn was extinguished far ahead, gloomy, sleepy and multicolored reflected in the river, still here and there shining trembling ripples ... Far below it, under this dawn, and floated and floated back the lights scattered in the darkness around ... "

The author managed to achieve an amazing effect - the space itself characterizes the feelings and thoughts of the heroes: the landscape described at the beginning indicates that He and Her are still ahead, that a man and a woman will certainly find happiness in each other's arms. But the lights floating away into the distance personify the monotony of life, its routine, in which there is no place for a high, bright feeling.

In the descriptions of the heroes, there are many very accurate details noted by the writer, indicating the nature of the feeling that has arisen, for example, the mutual attraction of young bodies. The heroine's hand, “small and strong, smelled like tan ... She was all strong and dark under this linen dress after a whole month of lying under the southern sun”. There is no spiritual beginning in this love - only physiology, stimulated by the romantic atmosphere of the trip. The author describes the further actions of the man and the woman, deliberately adding to the narrative an excessive number of verbs - "rushed", "left", "got up", "passed" - in this way the necessary dynamics is achieved, emphasizing the thoughtlessness of the accomplished act.

The title for this fleeting but very passionate novel - "sunstroke" - was invented by the heroine. It is she who shows the maximum prudence and tact, saying goodbye to her beloved. She is not going to prolong their relationship - Bunin emphasizes her attitude to what is happening with the word "easy": "in an easy and happy spirit," "just as easy." The lieutenant is also not ready to continue this casual relationship.

But the further development of the plot confuses all the cards. The hero understands that he is experiencing "a completely new feeling - that strange, incomprehensible feeling that did not exist at all while they were together, which he could not even imagine, starting yesterday this, as he thought, was just a funny acquaintance, and about which already you couldn't tell her now. " Memories of an old event become a terrible torment for the lieutenant. He does not know how he will continue to live, tormented by uncertainty. All his further existence seems to him vulgar, meaningless, useless: "How wild, scary everything everyday, ordinary, when the heart is struck - yes, amazed, he now understood this, - this terrible sunstroke, too much happiness ...". And only after describing these tragic experiences, Bunin first draws the reader's attention to the appearance of his hero ("... an ordinary officer's face, gray from sunburn, with whitish mustache faded in the sun and bluish whiteness of his eyes"), perhaps because only after realizing his love the lieutenant becomes a person, acquires some kind of appearance.

With the changes in the attitude of the hero to life, the surrounding reality also changes. Small, but very capacious, significant details allow us to be convinced of this, to understand the full depth of the feelings and experiences of the lieutenant.

There is one very characteristic detail in Bunin's stories: the love described by the author never has a future, there is no further development of events. For various reasons, heroes cannot find mutual, long-term happiness, they are initially doomed to mental suffering and long torment. And in the story "Sunstroke" we see another realization of the author's understanding of human relationships: "Having fallen in love, we die ..."

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The reader, experienced in literary masterpieces, is accustomed to the refined, elegant style of Bunin. This writer, who penned the wonderful text "Sunstroke", certainly knows how to write about love. In the works of this author, one can feel a lot of tenderness, passion, as well as sincere, warm love - the very one that binds two souls by kinship.

Ivan Bunin sat down to work on this text in the 1820s, and by 1825 the work was published. Oddly enough, while working on the story, the writer was inspired by nature: it was the Maritime Alps that influenced the future atmosphere of Sunstroke. In addition, during this period the author was occupied with the theme of love in literature, and the new text just fell into the stream of this theme. At the same time, Bunin wrote some other works - also about love. Bunin talks not just about love, but about mutual, warm, emotional feelings. However, every love, every relationship is somehow associated with bitterness. So, in this work, for example, the pain of separation is felt.

Sensuality, bodily perceptibility of Bunin's masterpiece is possibly connected with the realistic direction of the work. There is some specificity in the compositional structure of the text. For example, the beginning of a work is not an exposition familiar to the reader, but a starting point. We'll talk about other details in the deeper analysis of Sunstroke below.

Excerpts from the history of text writing

So, as we noted above, the date of birth of this masterpiece is 1825. The fact that the author was already busy working on other texts devoted to love topics explains the depth of the psychologism of Sunstroke. As the story progressed, the author sometimes shared details and news with friends. So, G. Kuznetsova, after conversations with the writer, noted that Bunin is inspired, first of all, by nature. Ivan Alekseevich can see some kind of picture, which will then be constantly remembered by him, spinning in his imagination. And - for the most part - these were not even holistic pictures, but only fragments. From what picture, from what image was "Sunstroke" born? Everything is simple to the point of banality: Bunin suddenly remembered how pleasant it was to walk on the deck in the afternoon, when his eyes still painfully feel the bright sun after the darkness of the ship's night. This is a journey by the Volga. It's summer, it's hot outside. But what the end of "Sunstroke", the writer came up with much later.

About thematic nuances of the work

Turning to the analysis of this work, it is worth, first of all, to reflect on the key problems. When characterizing these problems, motives are especially clearly traced, which - both in Russian and in European literature - have gained immense popularity. This, of course, is love, pain, separation. The author approaches the disclosure of these motives from the position of a subtle and skillful psychologist. Therefore - because of his approach - in a sense, Bunin is still an original, because the author managed to envelop his creation in an atmosphere that was embodied even in feature films based on Sunstroke.

Bunin is interested in sincerity, open, ardent love, as well as the problems that love ultimately generates. Relationships, especially when it comes to feelings between a man and a woman, are always parallel to certain problems and conflicts. I remember French philosophy, in particular Jacques Lacan, who believed that the other person (the “Other”) would always be dark for us. That is, it is impossible to know another person. Therefore, relationships are filled with internal contradictions, because feelings and circumstances of life are often incompatible. Ivan Alekseevich demonstrates that love arises for internal reasons, but continues to live and develop precisely for external reasons.

Artistic and plot features of the work

As we noted above, the author makes the main emphasis on psychologism. Ivan Alekseevich builds a labyrinth of images, but no matter how confusing the picture is, a couple of people still remain in the center of the story. We are talking about the main characters of the Bunin masterpiece: this is a lieutenant and a stranger whom this man meets on the ship.

The narrative is opened by the events that unfolded in the afternoon on the deck. People went out for a walk after the heat and darkness of the ship's night. So, walking, here two young people get to know each other. It is easy to see that sympathy instantly arose between the lieutenant and the unknown beauty. The passion turned out to be so strong that the man invites the stranger to get off the ship at the nearest station and spend the night in a hotel. Note that these relations were built not only on platonic attraction. There was also bodily interaction. The night, full of passion, flew by completely unnoticed. In the morning it was time to part. Oddly enough, despite the fact that the young people met only yesterday and hardly knew each other, the separation was not an easy matter.

What is sunstroke?

The man and woman are amazed at what happened. In their opinion, a much more likely explanation for the events, this sudden and all-consuming passion is sunstroke than feelings.

It is here that Bunin hides a commentary on the title chosen for the text. Probably, the author means a metaphor in this context: there is a kind of assimilation of sunstroke to a sudden mental shock, a passion that has come without warning, which overshadows any rational arguments.

This passion simply refuses to take into account external circumstances:

"What the hell! - he thought, getting up, again starting to walk around the room and trying not to look at the bed behind the screen. - What is it with me? And what is special about it and what actually happened? Indeed, it’s like some kind of sunstroke! And most importantly, how can I now, without her, spend the whole day in this backwater? "...

- No, no, dear, - she said in response to his request to go on together, - no, you must stay until the next steamer. If we go together, everything will be ruined. It will be very unpleasant for me. I give you my word of honor that I am not at all what you might think of me. Nothing even similar to what happened has never happened to me, and there will never be any more. I was definitely eclipsed ... Or rather, we both got something like a sunstroke ...

A stranger asks a man to accompany her to the pier. And again, it seems, sunstroke hits the lieutenant, because the man, forgetting about the rules of decency, publicly kisses his beloved. The separation hit the hero hard. A man wanders around the city, trying to recover, recover from sunstroke. Gradually, the hero returns to the hotel, longingly examines the bed, which has not yet been removed. The feeling of emptiness is unbearable for the lieutenant. The hero reflects on who the stranger was. Probably, the girl went to her family, to her husband. Maybe to the children. And this love is doomed, because initially they could not be together.

The hero spends time throwing. A man has a desire to write a letter to a stranger. However, suddenly the lieutenant realizes that he does not know the girl's address or name. Gradually, getting lost in walks through the streets of the boondocks, the man comes to his senses. But looking in the mirror, he discovers: now he looks ten years older. So, Bunin shows that love, indeed, sometimes spits on external circumstances. This feeling of suddenness and unpredictability is by nature. But is a moment of happiness worth ten years of suffering?

The lieutenant was sitting under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older ...

Compositional features of "Sunstroke"

For his work, Bunin chooses a simple composition. Still, there are some surprises in this simplicity. The structure of the text is linear, the events are arranged diachronously, that is, all the elements logically follow one after the other. But the familiar exposition, the introduction, is not to be found here: the case immediately begins with a plot. Probably, Ivan Alekseevich used this technique to further emphasize the central idea of ​​the text.

The first significant event of the work is the acquaintance of young people on the deck of the ferry. Gradually, the author reveals more and more details about the characters in the text. The second event, the writer brings to the scene, when a man and a woman stay overnight in a provincial hotel. Finally, the third event, which is at the same time the culmination, is the episode of the separation of the newly-made lovers. As a denouement, Bunin offers the lieutenant's awareness of his feelings for an unfamiliar beauty, love, which, like a wound, gradually heals, heals, and is forgotten. But this wound nevertheless left a deep scar. But if the wounds leave marks on the skin, then love hurts the very soul. Thus, introducing a similar ending in his story, the author invites readers to draw their own conclusions.

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Finally, there is one more compositional feature in the text - the use of framing by the author. The point is that events are tied up on the deck of the ship and end there, when the lieutenant leaves his beloved on the dock, and she sits on the ship.

"Sunstroke" as an outcast of Russian literature

Of course, Bunin's work rightfully occupies an honorable place in the pantheon of Russian literature. However, something here still stands out from her traditions. For example, Russian literature has always been famous for such a trait as chastity. Because for the writers love was presented - first of all - as a sublime, platonic feeling. It was precisely a spiritual, not a bodily phenomenon. However, Bunin, apparently, thinks a little differently. Ivan Alekseevich is already focusing attention not only on mutual understanding, attraction of souls, spiritual community, similarity of interests, etc., but on the attraction of bodies, on physical attraction. As we remember (in the same "Anna Karenina" by Tolstoy, for example), earlier in Russian literature, bodily attraction, and even more so on the side, was severely condemned. And the heroes got what they deserved. However, Lieutenant Bunina also receives - in a sense - what he deserves, but this man is punished rather for not seeing a sincere and strong feeling in time. And not at all for the connection with the woman on the side:

And the lieutenant somehow easily agreed with her. In a light and happy spirit, he drove her to the dock, just in time for the departure of the pink Airplane, kissed her on deck in front of everyone and barely had time to jump onto the gangway, which had already moved back. He returned to the hotel just as easily, carelessly. However, something has changed. The number without her seemed somehow completely different than it was with her. He was still full of her - and empty. It was weird! ..

Bunin's heroine does not seem frivolous or desperate. The writer even emphasizes that the woman seemed only slightly embarrassed, but she looked good, smiled, and was happy:

We slept little, but in the morning, coming out from behind the screen by the bed, having washed and dressed in five minutes, she was as fresh as at seventeen. Was she embarrassed? No, very little. She was still simple, cheerful and - already reasonable ...

This connection at first brought the characters a sense of lightness, but then it began to remind (at least one of the lovers) that affection does not pass easily. Unlike Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and, perhaps, Dobrolyubov, Bunin does not see anything reprehensible in such a plot. On the contrary, such an act gives the heroine mystery and intellectuality.

Understanding Eros

Perhaps Bunin was fond of new philosophical trends, or he was addicted to European art ... Whatever it was, but the Russian writer in this story raises the problem of Eros. Ivan Alekseevich rethinks his attitude to love. Eros is a kind of powerful, elemental force close to passion. In fact, if we turn to ancient Greek culture, we will see that the Greeks did not have one word for love. There are at least five such words. Storge, for example, was understood as a sublime, kinship relationship, as the love of parents for children. Mania is something as low as attachment, close to addiction. Agape is the highest type of love, because this is how people love God. Filia is a reliable, calm family love, as well as feelings between friends. Finally, Eros is what is used to create order (space) from chaos. Perhaps for this reason - because of the complexity of Eros - it was this type of love that most occupied the minds of writers, philosophers, artists ...

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Eros, with his power, raises young people, Bunin's heroes, above external circumstances. Paradoxically, the reader knows almost nothing about these heroes. The author does not describe in detail the appearance, does not give age, even the names remain hidden in the darkness. Bunin gives only the necessary minimum: strokes, hints, sketches.

The reader is told that the man is a lieutenant. Something is said about the hero's appearance - the very minimum. The girl is really married, moreover, the stranger has a daughter of three years. The heroine returns from Anapa, where she was on vacation. Bunin, however, becomes more detailed in describing the character: the woman is cheerful, simple, natural behavior and gestures are characteristic of the heroine.

But reality, momentary events are the smaller part of the story. Most of them are the memories that torment the hero as he wanders around the provincial town. In the memory of a man, images of gesture, habits, smiles, words, details of the appearance of a stranger endlessly arise. An important detail is the searing motive of this meeting and connection. Ivan Alekseevich depicts this metaphorically - through the image of a hot cheek and a palm that is applied to it. This image is repeated two times in the text:

She closed her eyes, put her hand to her cheek with her palm outward, laughed with a simple, charming laugh ...
She again put her hand on the back of her hot cheek ...

Repetitions only intensify the burning of the abrasions from the memory.

The labyrinth, which we talked about at the beginning of this article, is associated with the wanderings of a man around the city - in the hope of being forgotten. Indeed, at the end of the narrative, the events cease to seem so crazy, turning into a simple - albeit memorable, bright as a flash - adventure. Sitting in a cab carriage and going to the pier to also leave the city, where everything is saturated with memories of a stranger, the lieutenant, step by step, returns to everyday life. What happened yesterday? Just sunstroke.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin today, perhaps more than other writers of the early XX century, deserves the title of a classic. The turbulent revolutionary era in which he lived could not but affect his human and literary worldview, but Bunin, unlike other great artists - Gorky, Sholokhov, Zamyatin - remained faithful to the path of serving literature as such, which he had chosen in his youth, regardless of its class, ideological, social orientation. Of course, Bunin has works that are highly topical (let us recall at least "Cursed Days"), and his statements about the events in Russia at that time are more than definite from a political point of view, but still, this is not the main thing for the writer. The main content of his works was what worried and occupied us throughout our history: the problems of the relationship between man and the world, good and evil, eternal and momentary, and this is what prompts us today to read and re-read Bunin, re-experiencing what we experienced before we are millions of people. The one who said for the first time is truly right: the classics are always modern. And, of course, one of the eternal themes embodied in Bunin's work is love. The writer's understanding of the main human feeling is far from trivial. Let's try to figure out what it is and why in the works of Bunin love appears as a "sunstroke".

Life, which has fallen under the all-seeing Bunin's gaze, amazes not only with the power of artistic depiction, but also with its subordination to some internal laws unknown to man. They rarely break through to the surface: most people never experience their fatal impact. As if paying tribute to the modernist sentiments of that time, Bunin is looking for examples of a volcanic eruption of passion, which tragically subdues a person to his blind forces.

Actually, this interpretation is already guessed in some of the pre-revolutionary works of the writer. Let us recall "Ignat", "Chang's Dreams" or the 1916 story "Son", which, as it were, precedes the "Case of the Cornet Elagin". Isn't Emile's murder of Madame Moreau and the subsequent unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide dictated by the same inexorable reasons as the death of the artist Sosnovskaya at the hands of Elagin?

Like Emil's meeting with Madame Moreau, Elagin's acquaintance and rapprochement with Sosnovskaya means not just love, but "a terrible flowering, painful disclosure, the first mass of sex." Elagin says to the investigator: "... our unhappy meeting with her is fate, God's will." And in another place the author himself characterizes Sosnovskaya: "Her life was continuous languor, an incessant thirst to get away from the hateful earthly world."

Here, as in other stories of the 1920s ("The Devouring Fire", "Many Waters", "Transfiguration"), death is the resolver of all contradictions. And later, in the novels of the famous collection "Dark Alleys", the same voice of despair is heard, as if saying "no" to human happiness. After a long separation and quarrels, Alexei Meshchersky and Natalie ("Natalie") are united, but soon the heroine dies in premature birth. Far from Russia, two emigrants meet - the waitress of the Parisian canteen Olga Alexandrovna and General Nikolai Platonovich, both expelled from their homeland, both lonely, but fate punishes them for the last time: suddenly the general dies ("In Paris"),

Yes, it may seem that these and many other works of Bunin are colored with pessimism. Gorky's statement is known: “Bunin rewrites the Kreutzer Sonata under the title“ Mitya's Love ””. It seems to me that it is possible and even necessary to argue with this, because in Bunin's "love" stories there is not even a trace of that ascetic denial of the flesh that pervades the work of L.N. Tolstoy.

Mitya's love for Katya is a feeling of extraordinary strength and purity, which, in comparison with Katya's "ordinary" hobby, looks almost supernatural. For Mitya, a tragic contradiction was laid from the very moment of the inception of their love. “Even then, it often seemed as if there were two Katya: one that Mitya began to insist on from the first minute he met her, and the other was genuine, ordinary, painfully different from the first.” Mitya dies when this other Katya breaks the ideal he created, and his rapprochement with the brisk village young woman Alenka only exacerbates the feeling of a terrible loss. True love is the greatest blessing, and it is by no means limited to the sphere of the platonic, but it cannot be replaced by sensuality alone, as if the writer tells us.

A chaste young man feels robbed, devastated in a world where love is just an object of trade, either in a rustic way (“for five for piglets”), or “inspired” by Katya's “service to art”. Mitya cannot live with such love. With his character, structure of feelings, strength and steadfastness of love, Mitya is similar to the heroes of the early Bunin stories, for example, to Andrei Streshnev (“The Last Date”), who cannot “just love” and was cruelly deceived by Vera. By the way, like Katya, Vera explains her act by her love for art, in this case, for music.

The extraordinary strength and sincerity of feelings is characteristic of the heroes of Bunin's stories, and they do not relish the intimate sides of the relationship between a man and a woman. Where love is, everything is sacred. A certain lieutenant met on the ship an unfamiliar, seductive woman, married and quite decent ("Sunstroke"). What is it? An ordinary adulterer? A "steamship" novel? “I give you my word of honor,” the woman says to the lieutenant, “I am not at all what you might think of me. It was as if an eclipse had come over me. Or rather, we both got something like sunstroke. " The sensual impulse of the heroes of the story gradually and as if against their will introduces the lieutenant and the woman into the enchanted world of new relationships, which affect them strongly and painfully, and all the more terrible because they parted forever and, as it were, died for each other. A road trip develops into a real shock, from which the heart will never recover. It is difficult to find another story that, in such a succinct form and with such power, would convey the drama of a person who suddenly knew genuine, too happy love. So happy that if the intimacy with this little woman lasted, love would have gone away immediately, leaving only the pain caused by the "sunstroke".

Such is love according to Bunin. Blind fate, the drama of inconsistencies, the tragedy of hopelessness. You can grumble and complain when you receive a sunstroke, but you cannot live without the sun. One can complain about an evil fate that has led to destructive love, but one cannot live without it at all. It seems to me that this is exactly what I.A. Bunin in his works, and to this day they are dear to us and loved by us because in them the skill of a great artist is combined with an original and at the same time very close to any person vision of the world in which we live and die and in between, of course we love.

Illustration for the story "Sunstroke" by IA Bunin

In the work of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, love is always tragic, and sometimes it does not save, but leads to death. The heroes of his famous works do not know family and quiet happiness, so as not to break the love boat about everyday life.

Story "Sunstroke" amazing and diverse in its own way. The writer analyzes in it a serious personal problem: a choice that has consequences. The heroes make their choice and find themselves far from each other, with no hope of reunion.

This work tells about the unexpected love that broke out between the main characters - a lieutenant and a beautiful stranger. Ivan Bunin does not give them names in order to show that they are ordinary people, and their history is not at all unique. The couple is not ready for a big and bright feeling, and they have absolutely no time to understand it, since they have only one night, which they spend enjoying each other. When the time comes to say goodbye, the lieutenant does not think about what mortal melancholy will attack him after his beloved leaves the ship forever. Precisely before his eyes, his whole life passes, which is measured, and is now evaluated from the height of the tender feeling that has imprisoned him in chains.

The meeting between the lieutenant and the stranger became a "sunstroke" for both of them: blinded with passion, and then devastated their souls. IA Bunin shows us that every person has a need to love and be loved, but in his story this love is devoid of illusions. Not everyone can take on such a great responsibility - be in love... For the heroes of this story, love turned out to be an immense happiness, which they could not afford.

"A beautiful stranger…"

Obviously, with this work, the author wanted to show the dramatic outcome of love. Bunin never wrote about happy love. In his opinion, the reunion and kinship of souls is a completely different feeling, which has nothing to do with passion that rises to heaven. True love, as already mentioned, comes and goes suddenly, like sunstroke.

Meanwhile, each of us is free to choose how to act in a given situation. The meeting of the heroes was an attempt to drown out the disturbing voice of a yearning heart.

Love, which the lieutenant realized too late, almost ruins him, deprives him of the joy of life; he feels "ten years older." As if looking for salvation from the surging tenderness, he rushes into the city, wanders the market, passes people and feels terribly alone. This bittersweet feeling prevents him from thinking and looking at the world soberly. He knows for sure that he will never meet his stranger again.

The love that Bunin describes in his works has no future. His heroes can never find happiness, they are doomed to suffer. "Sunstroke" once again reveals Bunin's concept of love: "Having fallen in love, we die ..." .

Dorofeeva Alexandra

"Accidental" love in the story of I.A. Bunin "Sunstroke"

In many Bunin's stories, love completely captures a person, captures all his thoughts and powers. And so that it does not disappear and does not dry up, you need to part forever. The author insistently and invariably asserts: marriage can only vulgarize love.

His heroes yearn for love and, scorched by it, perish. The writer's love does not last long, it is like a short, bright and dazzling flash that penetrates the souls of lovers to the depths, in the end, leads to tragedy - suicide, death, nothingness.

All his life a person has been trying to find an answer to the question: “What is love? Sunstroke, vexation of spirit or grace? "

In 1925, in the coastal Alps, Bunin wrote the story "Sunstroke".

If in "Light Breath" Bunin tells us about unfulfilled love, about a dream that is called love, then in "Sunstroke" he tells us about the drama of people who have known genuine, too happy love ( by chance, all of a sudden!), which the writer compares with "Sunstroke".

In this work, in contrast to the works of the early work of the writer, love is mutual, but still tragic! The plot is very simple. On the ship he and she accidentally meet, warmed up by wine, warmth of the night and romantic mood. The heroes, getting off the ship, spend the night at the hotel, and in the morning they leave. That's all.

But behind a very simple and banal plot, there is a conflict between the heroes and themselves.

Let's start with the heroine. As in many of her other stories, the writer hides her name. Moreover, not only we, the readers, do not know her name, but also the person, the lieutenant, to whom she gave herself completely. Why doesn't she identify herself? Is she really afraid that the lieutenant will look for her, persecute her, that he will go to her city, where her husband and three-year-old daughter are left? No, that's not the point. This romantic nature is convinced that love will be devoid of mystery, mystery, if she reveals her name.

But another question arises: is she in love or is she just looking for a love adventure? And we are already at the very beginning of the story convinced: he loves! Loves passionately, passionately! And this love blinds her like a sunstroke.

"The lieutenant muttered:

- Let's get off ...

- Where? she asked in surprise.

“On this pier.

- Why?

He said nothing. She put her hand back to her hot cheek again.

- Crazy ...

“Let's get off,” he repeated dully. - I beg you…

"Oh, do as you like," she said, turning away. "

She doesn't even resist her feeling. She simply cannot resist him, because it is like sunstroke, from which a person gets sick and often cannot even cope with this disease himself.

And the next morning, as if recovering from an illness, she confesses: “If we go together, everything will be ruined. It will be very unpleasant for me. I give you my word of honor that I am not at all what you might think of me. Nothing even similar to what happened has never happened to me, and there will never be any more. I was definitely eclipsed ... Or rather, we both got something like a sunstroke. "

In this small remark, the whole heroine is revealed. "I give you my word of honor that I am not at all what you might think of me." And what could the lieutenant think? That she is a fallen woman? But oh could not So thinking about her because he fell in love with her, because he too was overtaken sunstroke. And even if she was from the category of those women who are called fallen, he would not care. He was ready to follow her to the ends of the earth.

She further admits: "There has never been anything like what happened to me, and there will never be any more." Now we have no doubt: this is an honest and decent woman. She simply could not resist this love, which so unexpectedly fell on her head and wounded her right in the heart. "It is as if an eclipse has come over me ..."

But then why shouldn't she go with the lieutenant? Why does she break so abruptly with her love? We find the answer to this question in this short story later, when, unable to find a place for himself because of grief, the lieutenant recalls: “I can’t, I can’t come to this city for no reason, where is her husband, where is her three-year-old girl, in general her whole family and her whole ordinary life!” Here's the answer! After all, she is not just a woman, she is also a wife and a mother - above all, a mother! Duty for her is the duty of a wife, a duty of a mother - above all, including love, even if such love is eternal. And the fact that it will be eternal, we have no doubt. Despite the fact that the author does not tell us about the painful experiences of the heroine.

Before us there is a change in the mood of a man. At first, the lieutenant becomes sad, his heart squeezes "Tenderness." He tries to hide his confusion. Then a kind of dialogue with himself takes place, he tries to laugh, shrug his shoulders, light a cigarette, drive away sad thoughts and ... cannot. He constantly finds objects that resemble a stranger: "Hairpin, crumpled bed", "unfinished cup"; he smells her perfume. This is how anguish and longing are born. There is no trace of lightness and carelessness!

At the thought of the impossibility of meeting this woman again "He felt such pain and uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was seized by horror and despair." The author convinces the reader of the seriousness of the feelings experienced by the hero of the story. The lieutenant feels himself "Terribly unhappy in this city."

"Where to go? What to do?" he thinks, lost.

Bunin wanted to show what an abyss lay between the past and the present. “The number without her seemed somehow completely different than it was with her. He was still full of her - and empty. It was weird! She also smelled of good English cologne, her unfinished cup was still on the tray, but she was gone ... " The lieutenant had to occupy himself with something, distract himself, go somewhere, and he wanders around the city, trying to escape from obsession, not understanding what is happening to him after all. "His heart is struck with too much love, too much happiness"... Fleeting love was a shock for the lieutenant, it psychologically changed him.

“What is it with me? And what is special about it and what actually happened? Indeed, like some kind of sunstroke! "

The depth of the hero's spiritual insight is clearly expressed in the final phrase of the story: "The lieutenant was sitting under the awning on the deck, feeling ten years older." How to explain what happened to him? Maybe the hero came into contact with that great feeling that people call love, and the feeling of the impossibility of loss led him to the realization of the tragedy of being?

A woman and a man, already living a different life, constantly recall these moments of happiness: “... for many years later they recalled this moment: neither one nor the other had ever experienced anything like this in their entire life.” They seemed to be captivated by their memories for life.

As we can see, love leaves unhealed wounds in the destinies of the Bunin heroes: the torment of a loving soul, the bitterness of loss, the sweet pain of memories. And time has no power over her!