Analysis of the story “Antonov Apples” by I.A. Bunina. Bunin Ivan Alekseevich Antonov apples

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin. Antonov apples I ...I remember an early fine autumn. August was full of warm rains, as if falling on purpose for sowing, with rains right at the right time, in the middle of the month, around the feast of St. Lawrence. And “autumn and winter live well if the water is calm and there is rain on Laurentia.” Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs settled in the fields. It is too good sign: “There’s a lot of netting in the Indian summer - autumn is vigorous”... I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinned garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and - the smell of Antonov apples, the smell honey and autumn freshness. The air is so clean, it’s as if there is no air at all; voices and the creaking of carts can be heard throughout the garden. These Tarkhans, bourgeois gardeners, hired men and poured apples in order to send them to the city at night - certainly on the night when it is so nice to lie on a cart, look at the starry sky, smell the tar in fresh air and listen to how the long convoy carefully creaks in the dark along the high road. The man pouring out the apples eats them with a juicy crackle one after another, but such is the establishment - the tradesman will never tear it off, but will also say: “Go ahead, eat your fill - there’s nothing to do!” Everyone drinks honey while draining. And the cool silence of the morning is disturbed only by the well-fed cackling of blackbirds on the coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming sound of apples being poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden one can see far away the road to the large hut, strewn with straw, and the hut itself, near which the townspeople acquired an entire household over the summer. Everywhere there is a strong smell of apples, especially here. There are beds in the hut, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, and dishes in the corner. Near the hut there are mats, boxes, all sorts of tattered belongings, and an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with lard is cooked on it, in the evening the samovar is heated, and a long strip of bluish smoke spreads across the garden, between the trees. On holidays, there is a whole fair around the hut, and red headdresses are constantly flashing behind the trees. There is a crowd of lively single-yard girls in sundresses that smell strongly of paint, the “lords” come in their beautiful and rough, savage costumes, a young elder woman, pregnant, with a wide, sleepy face and as important as a Kholmogory cow. On her head there are “horns” - braids are placed on the sides of the crown and covered with several scarves, so that the head seems huge; the legs, in ankle boots with horseshoes, stand stupidly and firmly; the sleeveless jacket is corduroy, the curtain is long, and the poneva is black and purple with brick-colored stripes and lined at the hem with a wide gold “prose”... - Household butterfly! - the tradesman says about her, shaking his head. - Now they are also being transferred... And the boys in white fluffy shirts and short porticoes, with white open heads, all come up. They walk in twos and threes, shuffling their bare feet, and glance sideways at the shaggy shepherd dog tied to an apple tree. Of course, only one buys, because the purchases are only for a penny or an egg, but there are many buyers, trade is brisk, and the consumptive tradesman in a long frock coat and red boots is cheerful. Together with his brother, a burry, nimble half-idiot who lives with him “out of mercy,” he trades in jokes, jokes and even sometimes “touches” the Tula harmonica. And until the evening there is a crowd of people in the garden, you can hear laughter and talking around the hut, and sometimes the tramp of dancing... By night the weather becomes very cold and dewy. Having inhaled the rye aroma of new straw and chaff on the threshing floor, you cheerfully walk home for dinner past the garden rampart. Voices in the village or the creaking of gates can be heard unusually clearly in the chilly dawn. It's getting dark. And here’s another smell: there’s a fire in the garden, and there’s a strong wafting of fragrant smoke from cherry branches. In the darkness, in the depths of the garden, there is a fabulous picture: as if in a corner of hell, a crimson flame is burning near the hut, surrounded by darkness, and someone’s black silhouettes, as if carved from ebony wood, are moving around the fire, while giant shadows from them walk across the apple trees . Either a black hand several arshins in size will fall across the entire tree, then two legs will clearly appear - two black pillars. And suddenly all this will slide from the apple tree - and the shadow will fall along the entire alley, from the hut to the very gate... Late at night, when the lights in the village go out, when the diamond constellation Stozhar is already shining high in the sky, you run into the garden again. Rustle through the dry leaves, like a blind man, you will reach the hut. There in the clearing it is a little lighter, and the Milky Way is white above your head. - Is it you, barchuk? - someone quietly calls out from the darkness. - I am. Are you still awake, Nikolai? - We can't, sir sleep. And it must be too late? There, it seems, a passenger train is coming... We listen for a long time and discern a trembling in the ground, the trembling turns into noise, grows, and now, as if already right outside the garden, the noisy beat of the wheels is being accelerated: rumbling and knocking, the train rushes by... closer, closer, louder and angrier... And suddenly it begins to subside, stall, as if going into the ground... - Where is your gun, Nikolai? - But next to the box, sir. You throw up a single-barreled shotgun, heavy as a crowbar, and shoot straight away. The crimson flame will flash towards the sky with a deafening crack, blind for a moment and extinguish the stars, and a cheerful echo will ring out like a ring and roll across the horizon, fading far, far away in the clean and sensitive air. - Wow, great! - the tradesman will say. - Spend it, spend it, little gentleman, otherwise it’s just a disaster! Again, all the wind on the shaft was shaken off... And the black sky was lined with fiery stripes by falling stars. You look for a long time into its dark blue depths, overflowing with constellations, until the earth begins to float under your feet. Then you will wake up and, hiding your hands in your sleeves, quickly run along the alley to the house... How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world! II "Vigorous Antonovka - for a fun year." Village affairs are good if the Antonovka is born: that means “the grain is born... I remember a harvest year. At early dawn, when the roosters are still crowing and the huts are smoking black, you used to open the window into a cool garden filled with a lilac fog, through which the morning sun shines brightly here and there, and you can’t stand it - you order to saddle up the horse as quickly as possible, and you yourself will run to wash yourself. To the pond. Almost all the small leaves have flown off from the coastal vines, and the branches show through in the turquoise sky. The water under the vines has become clear, icy and as if heavy. It instantly drives away the laziness of the night, and, having washed and had breakfast in the common room with the workers, hot potatoes and black bread with coarse raw salt, you feel with pleasure the slippery leather of the saddle under you, driving through Vyselki for hunting. Autumn is the time of patronal holidays, and the people at this time are tidy and happy, the appearance of the village is not at all the same as at other times. If the year is fruitful and a whole golden city rises on the threshing floors, and geese on the river cackle loudly and sharply in the morning, then the village is not at all bad . In addition, our Vyselki have been famous for their “wealth” since time immemorial, since the time of our grandfather. The old men and women lived in Vyselki for a very long time - the first sign of a rich village - and they were all tall, big and white, like a harrier. All you heard was: “Yes,” Agafya waved off her eighty-three year old!” - or conversations like this: - And when will you die, Pankrat? Perhaps you will be a hundred years old? - How would you like to speak, father? - How old are you, I ask! - I don’t know, sir, father. - Do you remember Platon Apollonich? “Why, sir, father,” I clearly remember. - Well, you see. That means you are no less than a hundred. The old man, who stands stretched out in front of the master, smiles meekly and guiltily. Well, they say, what to do - it’s my fault, it’s healed. And he probably would have prospered even more if he had not eaten too much onions in Petrovka. I remember his old woman too. Everyone used to sit on a bench, on the porch, bent over, shaking his head, gasping for breath and holding onto the bench with his hands, all thinking about something. “About her goods,” the women said, because, indeed, she had a lot of “goods” in her chests. But she doesn’t seem to hear; he looks half-blindly into the distance from under sadly raised eyebrows, shakes his head and seems to be trying to remember something. She was a big old woman, kind of dark all over. Paneva is almost from the last century, the chestnuts are like those of a deceased person, the neck is yellow and withered, the shirt with rosin joints is always white and white - “you could even put it in a coffin.” And near the porch lay a large stone: I bought it for my grave, as well as a shroud, an excellent shroud, with angels, with crosses and with a prayer printed on the edges. The courtyards in Vyselki also matched the old people: brick, built by their grandfathers. And the rich men - Savely, Ignat, Dron - had huts in two or three connections, because sharing in Vyselki was not yet fashionable. In such families they kept bees, were proud of their gray-iron-colored bull stallion, and kept their estates in order. On the threshing floors there were dark, thick hemp fields; there were barns and barns covered with hair; in the bunks and barns there were iron doors, behind which canvases, spinning wheels, new sheepskin coats, type-setting harnesses, and measures bound with copper hoops were stored. Crosses were burned on the gates and on the sleds. And I remember that sometimes it seemed extremely tempting to me to be a man. When you used to drive through the village on a sunny morning, you kept thinking about how good it would be to mow, thresh, sleep on the threshing floor in brooms, and on a holiday to rise with the sun, under the thick and musical blast from the village, wash yourself near the barrel and put on a clean pair of clothes. a shirt, the same trousers and indestructible boots with horseshoes. If, I thought, add to this healthy and beautiful wife in festive attire, and a trip to mass, and then lunch with his bearded father-in-law, lunch with hot lamb on wooden plates and with rushes, with honeycomb honey and mash - it’s impossible to wish for more! Even in my memory, very recently, the lifestyle of the average nobleman had much in common with the lifestyle of a wealthy peasant in its homeliness and rural, old-world prosperity. Such, for example, was the estate of Aunt Anna Gerasimovna, who lived about twelve versts from Vyselki. By the time you get to this estate, it’s already completely impoverished. With dogs in packs you have to walk at a pace, and you don’t want to rush - it’s so much fun in an open field on a sunny and cool day! The terrain is flat, you can see far away. The palate is light and so spacious and deep. The sun sparkles from the side, and the road, rolled by carts after the rains, is oily and shines like rails. Fresh, lush green winter crops are scattered around in wide schools. A hawk will fly up from somewhere in the transparent air and freeze in one place, fluttering its sharp wings. And clearly visible telegraph poles run into the clear distance, and their wires, like silver strings, slide along the slope clear skies. Falcons sit on them - completely black icons on music paper. I didn’t know or see serfdom, but I remember feeling it at my aunt Anna Gerasimovna’s. You drive into the yard and immediately feel that it is still quite alive here. The estate is small, but all old, solid, surrounded by hundred-year-old birch and willow trees. There are many outbuildings - low, but homely - and all of them are precisely made of dark oak logs under thatched roofs. The only thing that stands out for its size, or better yet, is its length, is the blackened human one, from which the last Mohicans peek out.

I remember an early fine autumn. August was full of warm rains, as if falling on purpose for sowing - with rains right at the right time, in the middle of the month, around the feast of St. Lawrence. And “autumn and winter live well if the water is calm and there is rain on Laurentia.” Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs settled in the fields. that’s also a good sign: “There’s a lot of shady trees in the Indian summer - vigorous autumn”... I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinning garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and - the smell Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness. The air is so clean, it’s as if there is no air at all; voices and the creaking of carts can be heard throughout the garden. These Tarkhans, bourgeois gardeners, hired men and poured apples in order to send them to the city at night - certainly on the night when it is so nice to lie on a cart, look into starry sky, feel the smell of tar in the fresh air and listen to how a long convoy carefully creaks in the dark along the main road. The man pouring the apples eats them with a juicy crackle one after another, but such is the establishment - the tradesman will never cut it off, but will also say:

Come on, eat your fill - there’s nothing to do! Everyone drinks honey while pouring.

And the cool silence of the morning is disturbed only by the well-fed cackling of blackbirds on the coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming sound of apples being poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden one can see far away the road to the large hut, strewn with straw, and the hut itself, near which the townspeople acquired an entire household over the summer. Everywhere there is a strong smell of apples, especially here. There are beds in the hut, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, and dishes in the corner. Near the hut there are mats, boxes, all sorts of worn-out belongings, and an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with lard is cooked on it, in the evening the samovar is heated, and a long strip of bluish smoke spreads across the garden, between the trees. On holidays, there is a whole fair around the hut, and red headdresses are constantly flashing behind the trees. There is a crowd of lively single-yard girls in sundresses that smell strongly of paint, the “lords” come in their beautiful and rough, savage costumes, a young elder woman, pregnant, with a wide, sleepy face and as important as a Kholmogory cow. She has “horns” on her head - braids are placed on the sides of the crown and covered with several scarves, so that the head seems huge; the legs, in ankle boots with horseshoes, stand stupidly and firmly; the sleeveless vest is corduroy, the curtain is long, and the poneva is black and purple with brick-colored stripes and lined at the hem with a wide gold “prose”...

Economic butterfly! - the tradesman says about her, shaking his head. - These are now being translated...

And the boys in fancy white shirts and short porticoes, with white open heads, all come up. They walk in twos and threes, shuffling their bare feet, and glance sideways at the shaggy shepherd dog tied to an apple tree. Of course, only one buys, because the purchases are only for a penny or an egg, but there are many buyers, trade is brisk, and the consumptive tradesman in a long frock coat and red boots is cheerful. Together with his brother, a burry, nimble half-idiot who lives with him “out of mercy,” he trades in jokes, jokes and even sometimes “touches” the Tula harmonica. And until the evening there is a crowd of people in the garden, you can hear laughter and talking around the hut, and sometimes the clatter of dancing...

By nightfall the weather becomes very cold and dewy. Having inhaled the rye aroma of new straw and chaff on the threshing floor, you cheerfully walk home for dinner past the garden rampart. Voices in the village or the creaking of gates can be heard unusually clearly in the chilly dawn. It's getting dark. And here’s another smell: there’s a fire in the garden, and there’s a strong wafting of fragrant smoke from cherry branches. In the darkness, in the depths of the garden, there is a fabulous picture: as if in a corner of hell, a crimson flame, surrounded by darkness, is burning near the hut, and someone’s black silhouettes, as if carved from ebony, are moving around the fire, while giant shadows from them walk across the apple trees . Either a black hand several arshins in size will fall across the entire tree, then two legs will clearly appear - two black pillars. And suddenly all this will slide from the apple tree - and the shadow will fall along the entire alley, from the hut to the gate itself...

Late at night, when the lights in the village go out, when the diamond constellation Stozhar is already shining high in the sky, you will run into the garden again. Rustle through the dry leaves, like a blind man, you will reach the hut. There in the clearing it is a little lighter, and the Milky Way is white above your head.

Is that you, barchuk? - someone quietly calls out from the darkness.

Me: Are you still awake, Nikolai?

We can't sleep. And it must be too late? Look, there seems to be a passenger train coming...

We listen for a long time and notice trembling in the ground. the trembling turns into noise, grows, and now, as if just outside the garden, the wheels are rapidly beating out the noisy beat: rumbling and knocking, the train rushes... closer, closer, louder and angrier... And suddenly it begins to subside, stall, as if going into the ground...

Where is your gun, Nikolai?

But next to the box, sir.

You throw up a single-barreled gun, heavy as a crowbar, and shoot straight away. The crimson flame will flash towards the sky with a deafening crack, blind for a moment and extinguish the stars, and a cheerful echo will ring out like a ring and roll across the horizon, fading far, far away in the clean and sensitive air.

Wow, great! - the tradesman will say. - Spend it, spend it, little gentleman, otherwise it’s just a disaster! Again they shook off all the gunk on the shaft...

And the black sky is lined with fiery stripes of falling stars. You look for a long time into its dark blue depths, filled with constellations, until the earth begins to float under your feet. Then you will perk up and, hiding your hands in your sleeves, quickly run along the alley to the house... How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world!

II

“Vigorous Antonovka - to have a fun year" Village affairs are good if the Antonovka crop is cropped: that means the grain crop is cropped... I remember a fruitful year.

At early dawn, when the roosters are still crowing and the huts are smoking black, you would open a window into a cool garden filled with a lilac fog, through which the morning sun shines brightly here and there, and you can’t resist - you order to quickly saddle the horse, and you yourself will run wash at the pond. Almost all of the small foliage has flown off the coastal vines, and the branches are visible in the turquoise sky. The water under the vines became clear, icy, and seemingly heavy. It instantly drives away the night's laziness, and, having washed and had breakfast in the common room with the workers, hot potatoes and black bread with coarse raw salt, you enjoy feeling the slippery leather of the saddle under you as you ride through Vyselki to hunt. Autumn is the time for patronal feasts, and at this time the people are tidy and happy, the appearance of the village is completely different from what it was at other times. If the year is fruitful and a whole golden city rises on the threshing floors, and geese cackle loudly and sharply on the river in the morning, then it’s not bad at all in the village. In addition, our Vyselki have been famous for their “wealth” since time immemorial, since the time of our grandfather. The old men and women lived in Vyselki for a long time - the first sign of a rich village - and they were all tall, big and white, like a harrier. All you heard was: “Yes,” Agafya waved off her eighty-three year old!” - or conversations like this:

And when will you die, Pankrat? I suppose you will be a hundred years old?

How would you like to speak, father?

How old are you, I ask!

I don’t know, sir, father.

Do you remember Platon Apollonovich?

Well, sir, father, I clearly remember.

The old man, who stands stretched out in front of the master, smiles meekly and guiltily. Well, they say, what to do - it’s my fault, it’s healed. And he probably would have prospered even more if he had not eaten too much onions in Petrovka.

I remember his old woman too. He used to sit on a bench, on the porch, bent over, shaking his head, gasping for breath and holding onto the bench with his hands, all thinking about something. “About her good,” the women said, because, indeed, she had a lot of “good” in her chests. But she doesn’t seem to hear; he looks half-blindly into the distance from under sadly raised eyebrows, shakes his head and seems to be trying to remember something. She was a big old woman, kind of dark all over. Poneva is almost from the last century, the chestnuts are like those of a deceased person, the neck is yellow and withered, the shirt with rosin joints is always white-white, “you could even put it in a coffin.” And near the porch lay a large stone: I bought it for my grave, as well as a shroud, an excellent shroud, with angels, with crosses and with a prayer printed on the edges.

The courtyards in Vyselki also matched the old people: brick, built by their grandfathers. And the rich men - Savely, Ignat, Dron - had huts in two or three connections, because sharing in Vyselki was not yet fashionable. In such families they kept bees, were proud of their gray-iron-colored bull stallion, and kept their estates in order. On the threshing floors there were dark and thick hemp trees, there were barns and barns covered with hair; in the bunks and barns there were iron doors, behind which canvases, spinning wheels, new sheepskin coats, type-setting harnesses, and measures bound with copper hoops were stored. Crosses were burned on the gates and on the sleds. And I remember that sometimes it seemed extremely tempting to me to be a man. When you used to drive through the village on a sunny morning, you kept thinking about how good it would be to mow, thresh, sleep on the threshing floor in blankets, and on a holiday to rise with the sun, under the thick and musical blast from the village, wash yourself near a barrel and put on a clean pair of clothes. a shirt, the same trousers and indestructible boots with horseshoes. If, I thought, we add to this a healthy and beautiful wife in festive attire and a trip to mass, and then dinner with a bearded father-in-law, a dinner with hot lamb on wooden plates and with rushes, with honeycomb honey and mash - it’s impossible to wish for more. !

Even in my memory, very recently, the lifestyle of the average nobleman had much in common with the lifestyle of a wealthy peasant in its homeliness and rural, old-world prosperity. Such, for example, was the estate of Aunt Anna Gerasimovna, who lived about twelve versts from Vyselki. By the time you get to this estate, you are already completely dry. With dogs in packs you have to walk at a pace, and you don’t want to rush - it’s so much fun in an open field on a sunny and cool day! The terrain is flat, you can see far away. The sky is light and so spacious and deep. The sun sparkles from the side, and the road, rolled by carts after the rains, is oily and shines like rails. Suddenly, fresh, lush green winter crops spread out in wide schools. A hawk will soar from somewhere in the transparent air and freeze in one place, fluttering its sharp wings. And clearly visible telegraph poles run into the clear distance, and their wires, like silver strings, slide along the slope of the clear sky. Falcons sit on them - completely black icons on music paper.

I didn’t know or see serfdom, but I remember feeling it at my aunt Anna Gerasimovna’s. You drive into the yard and immediately feel that it is still quite alive here. The estate is small, but all old, solid, surrounded by hundred-year-old birch and willow trees. There are many outbuildings - low, but homely - and all of them are precisely made of dark oak logs under thatched roofs. The only thing that stands out is its size, or, better yet, its length, only the blackened human one, from which the last Mohicans of the courtyard class peek out - some decrepit old men and women, a decrepit retired cook, looking like Don Quixote. When you drive into the yard, they all pull themselves up and bow low and low. A gray-haired coachman, heading from the carriage barn to pick up a horse, takes off his hat while still at the barn and walks around the yard with his head naked. He worked as a postilion for his aunt, and now he takes her to mass - in the winter in a cart, and in the summer in a strong, iron-bound cart, like those that priests ride on. My aunt’s garden was famous for its neglect, nightingales, turtle doves and apples, and the house was famous for its roof. He stood at the head of the courtyard, right next to the garden - the branches of the linden trees hugged him - he was small and squat, but it seemed that he would not last a century - so thoroughly did he look from under his unusually high and thick thatched roof, blackened and hardened by time. Its front façade always seemed to me to be alive, as if an old face was looking out from under a huge hat with sockets of eyes - windows with mother-of-pearl glass from the rain and sun. And on the sides of these eyes there were porches - two old large porches with columns. Well-fed pigeons always sat on their pediment, while thousands of sparrows rained from roof to roof... And the guest felt gloomy in this nest under the turquoise autumn sky!

You will enter the house and first of all you will hear the smell of apples, and then others: old furniture mahogany, dried linden color, which has been lying on the windows since June... In all the rooms - in the servant's room, in the hall, in the living room - it is cool and gloomy: this is because the house is surrounded by a garden, and the upper glass of the windows is colored: blue and purple. Everywhere there is silence and cleanliness, although it seems that the chairs, tables with inlays and mirrors in narrow and twisted gold frames have never been moved. And then you hear a cough: your aunt comes out. It is small, but, like everything around, it is durable. She has a large Persian shawl draped over her shoulders. She will come out importantly, but affably, and now, amid endless conversations about antiquity, about inheritances, treats begin to appear: first “duli”, apples, - Antonovsky, “pain-lady”, borovinka, “fertile” - and then an amazing lunch: completely pink boiled ham with peas, stuffed chicken, turkey, marinades and red kvass, - strong and sweet, sweet... The windows to the garden are raised, and the cheerful autumn coolness blows from there...

III

Behind last years one thing supported the fading spirit of the landowners - hunting. Previously, dark estates, like the estate of Anna Gerasimovna. were not uncommon. There were also decaying, but still living in grand style, estates with a huge estate, with a garden of twenty dessiatines. True, some of these estates have survived to this day, but there is no longer life in them... There are no troikas, no riding “Kirghiz”, no hounds and greyhounds, no servants and no owner of all this - the landowner-hunter, like my late brother-in-law Arseny Semenych.

Since the end of September, our gardens and threshing floors have been empty, and the weather, as usual, has changed dramatically. The wind tore and tore the trees for days on end, and the rains watered them from morning to night. Sometimes in the evening, between the gloomy low clouds, the flickering golden light of the low sun made its way in the west, the air became clean and clear, and sunlight sparkled dazzlingly between the leaves, between the branches that moved like a living net and were agitated by the wind. The liquid shone coldly and brightly in the north above the heavy lead clouds. blue sky, and from behind these clouds ridges of snowy mountain-clouds slowly emerged. Stopin, you’re at the window and you think: “Maybe, God willing, the weather will clear up.” But the wind did not subside. It disturbed the garden, tore up the continuously flowing stream of human smoke from the chimney, and again drove up the ominous strands of ash clouds. They ran low and fast - and soon, like smoke, they clouded the sun. Its shine faded, the window into the blue sky closed, and the garden became deserted and boring, and the rain began to fall again... at first quietly, carefully, then more and more thickly and, finally, it turned into a downpour with storm and darkness. A long, anxious night was coming...

From such a bashing, the garden emerged almost completely naked, covered with wet leaves and somehow quiet and resigned. But how beautiful it was when clear weather came again, clear and cold days of early October, the farewell holiday of autumn! The preserved foliage will now hang on the trees until the first winter. The black garden will shine through the cold turquoise sky and dutifully wait for winter, warming itself in the sunshine. And the fields are already turning sharply black with arable land and brightly green with overgrown winter crops... It's time to hunt!

And now I see myself in the estate of Arseny Semenych, in big house, in a hall full of sun and smoke from pipes and cigarettes. There are a lot of people - all the people are tanned, with weathered faces, in jackets and long boots. They have just had a very hearty lunch, are flushed and excited by noisy conversations about the upcoming hunt, but do not forget to finish the vodka after dinner. And in the yard a horn blows and dogs howl in different voices. The black greyhound, Arseny Semenych's favorite, climbs onto the table and begins to devour the remains of the hare with sauce from the dish. But suddenly he lets out a terrible squeal and, knocking over plates and glasses, rushes off the table: Arseny Semenych, who came out of the office with an arapnik and a revolver, suddenly deafens the room with a shot. The hall fills even more with smoke, and Arseny Semenych stands and laughs.

It's a pity that I missed! - he says, playing with his eyes.

He is tall, thin, but broad-shouldered and slender, and has a handsome gypsy face. His eyes sparkle wildly, he is very dexterous, wearing a crimson silk shirt, velvet trousers and long boots. Having frightened both the dog and the guests with a shot, he jokingly and importantly recites in a baritone voice:

It's time, it's time to saddle the agile bottom

And throw the ringing horn over your shoulders! - and says loudly:

Well, however, there is no need to waste golden time!

I can still feel how greedily and capaciously my young breast breathed in the cold of a clear and damp day in the evening, when you used to ride with Arseny Semenych’s noisy gang, excited by the musical din of dogs abandoned in the black forest, to some Krasny Bugor or Gremyachiy Island, Its name alone excites the hunter. You ride on an angry, strong and squat “Kyrgyz”, holding it tightly with the reins, and you feel almost fused with it. He snorts, asks to trot, rustles noisily with his hooves on the deep and light carpets of black crumbling leaves, and every sound resounds echoingly in the empty, damp and fresh forest. A dog barked somewhere in the distance, another, a third answered it passionately and pitifully - and suddenly the whole forest began to rattle, as if it were all made of glass, from violent barking and screaming. A shot rang out loudly among this din - and everything “cooked” and rolled off into the distance.

“Oh, take care!” - an intoxicating thought flashes through your head. You whoop at your horse and, like someone who has broken free from a chain, you rush through the forest, not understanding anything along the way. Only the trees flash before my eyes and the mud from under the horse’s hooves hits my face. You will jump out of the forest, you will see a motley pack of dogs on the greenery, stretched out on the ground, and you will push the “Kirghiz” even more against the beast - through the greenery, shoots and stubbles, until you finally roll over to another island and the pack disappears from sight along with its mad barking and a groan. Then, all wet and trembling from exertion, you rein in the foaming, wheezing horse and greedily swallow the icy dampness of the forest valley. The cries of hunters and the barking of dogs fade away in the distance, and there is dead silence around you. The half-opened timber stands motionless, and it seems that you have found yourself in some kind of protected palace. The ravines smell strongly of mushroom dampness, rotten leaves and wet tree bark. And the dampness from the ravines is becoming more and more noticeable, the forest is getting colder and darker... It's time to spend the night. But collecting dogs after a hunt is difficult. For a long time and hopelessly and sadly the horns ring in the forest, for a long time one can hear the screaming, swearing and squealing of dogs... Finally, already completely in the dark, a band of hunters bursts into the estate of some almost unknown bachelor landowner and fills the entire courtyard of the estate with noise, which is illuminated lanterns, candles and lamps brought out from the house to greet guests...

It happened that with such a hospitable neighbor the hunt lasted for several days. At early morning dawn, in the icy wind and the first wet winter, they went into the forests and fields, and at dusk they returned again, all covered in dirt, with flushed faces, smelling of horse sweat, the hair of a hunted animal - and the drinking began. The bright and crowded house is very warm after a whole day in the cold in the field. Everyone walks from room to room in unbuttoned coats, drink and eat randomly, noisily conveying to each other their impressions of the killed seasoned wolf, which, baring its teeth, rolling its eyes, lies with its fluffy tail thrown to the side in the middle of the hall and paints its pale and already cold blood on the floor After vodka and food, you feel such sweet fatigue, such the bliss of youthful sleep, that you can hear people talking as if through water. Your weathered face is burning, and if you close your eyes, the whole earth will float under your feet. And when you lie down in bed, in a soft feather bed, in a corner old room with an icon and a lamp, the ghosts of fiery-colored dogs flash before your eyes, a sensation of galloping aches throughout your whole body, and you won’t notice how you will drown along with all these images and sensations in sweetness and healthy sleep, even forgetting that this room was once the prayer room of an old man, whose name is surrounded by gloomy serf legends, and that he died in this prayer room, probably on the same bed.

When I happened to oversleep the hunt, the rest was especially pleasant. You wake up and lie in bed for a long time. There is silence throughout the whole house. You can hear the gardener carefully walking through the rooms, lighting the stoves, and the firewood crackling and shooting. Ahead lies a whole day of peace in the already silent winter estate. Slowly get dressed, wander around the garden, find an accidentally forgotten cold and wet apple in the wet swarm of leaves, and for some reason it will seem unusually tasty, not at all like the others. Then you’ll get to work on books—grandfather’s books in thick leather bindings, with gold stars on morocco spines. These books, similar to church breviaries, smell wonderful with their yellowed, thick, rough paper! Some kind of pleasant sour mold, old perfume... The notes in their margins are also good, large and with round soft strokes made with a quill pen. You unfold the book and read: “A thought worthy of ancient and modern philosophers, the color of reason and feelings of the heart”... And you can’t help but get carried away by the book itself. This is “The Noble Philosopher,” an allegory published a hundred years ago by the support of some “chevalier of many orders” and printed in the printing house of the order of public charity, a story about how “a noble philosopher, having time and the ability to reason, to what the human mind can ascend to, I once received the desire to compose a plan of light in the vast area of ​​​​his village "... Then you stumble upon the "satirical and philosophical works of Mr. Voltaire" and for a long time you revel in the sweet and mannered syllable of the translation: "My sirs! Erasmus composed a praise for tomfoolery in the sixth and tenth century (mannered pause - semicolon); you command me to extol reason before you...” Then from Catherine’s antiquity you will move on to romantic times, to almanacs, to sentimentally pompous and long novels... The cuckoo jumps out of the clock and crows mockingly and sadly at you in an empty house. And little by little a sweet and strange melancholy begins to creep into my heart...

Here is “The Secrets of Alexis”, here is “Victor, or the Child in the Forest”: “Midnight strikes! Sacred silence takes the place of daytime noise and cheerful songs of the villagers. Sleep spreads its dark wings over the surface of our hemisphere; he shakes off the poppy and dreams... Dreams... How often do they continue only the suffering of the ill-fated! roses and lilies, “the pranks and frolics of young rascals,” the lily hand, Lyudmila and Alina... And here are the magazines with the names of Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, lyceum student Pushkin. And with sadness you will remember your grandmother, her polonaises on the clavichord, her languid reading of poems from Eugene Onegin. And the old dreamy life will appear before you... Nice girls and women once lived in noble estates! Their portraits look at me from the wall, aristocratically beautiful heads in ancient hairstyles meekly and femininely lower their long eyelashes onto sad and tender eyes...

IV

The smell of Antonov apples disappears from the landowners' estates. These days were so recent, and yet it seems to me that almost a whole century has passed since then. The old people in Vyselki died, Anna Gerasimovna died, Arseny Semenych shot himself... The kingdom of small-scale landowners, impoverished to the point of beggary, is coming. But this miserable small-scale life is also good!

So I see myself again in the village, in late autumn. The days are blue and cloudy. In the morning I get into the saddle and with one dog, a gun and a horn, I go into the field. The wind rings and hums in the barrel of a gun, the wind blows strongly towards, sometimes with dry snow. I wander through the empty plains all day long... Hungry and frozen, I return to the estate at dusk, and my soul becomes so warm and joyful when the lights of the Vyselok flash and the smell of smoke and housing draws me out of the estate. I remember in our house they told us to “be at dusk” at this time, not to light a fire and to have conversations in the semi-darkness. Entering the house, I find the winter frames already filled, and this puts me in a peaceful winter mood even more. In the footman's room, the worker feeds the stove, and I, as in childhood, squat down next to a heap of straw, already smelling sharply of winter freshness, and look first into the blazing stove, then at the windows, behind which the dusk, turning blue, sadly dies. Then I go to the people's room. It’s bright and crowded there: the girls are chopping cabbage, the chops are flashing by, I listen to their rhythmic, friendly knocking and friendly, sad-cheerful, village songs... Sometimes some small-scale neighbor will come and take me away for a long time... Nice and small-scale life!

The small-timer gets up early. Stretching tightly, he rises from bed and rolls a thick cigarette made of cheap, black tobacco or simply shag. The pale light of an early November morning illuminates a simple, bare-walled office, yellow and crusty fox skins, above the bed and a stocky figure in trousers and a belted blouse, and the mirror reflects the sleepy face of a Tatar warehouse. There is dead silence in the dim, warm house. Behind the door in the corridor, the old cook, who lived in the manor house when she was a girl, is snoring. This, however, does not stop the master from hoarsely shouting to the whole house:

Lukerya! Samovar!

Then, putting on his boots, throwing a jacket over his shoulders and not buttoning his shirt, he goes out onto the porch. The locked hallway smells like a dog; Lazy stretching, yawning and smiling, the hounds surround him.

Burp! - he says slowly, in a condescending bass voice, and walks through the garden to the threshing floor. His chest breathes widely with the sharp air of dawn and the smell of a naked garden, chilled during the night. Leaves curled up and blackened by frost rustle under boots in a birch alley that has already been cut down by half. Silhouetted against the low gloomy sky, ruffled jackdaws sleep on the crest of the barn... It will be a glorious day for hunting! And, stopping in the middle of the alley, the master looks for a long time into the autumn field, at the deserted green winter fields through which calves roam. Two hound bitches squeal at his feet, and Zalivy is already behind the garden: jumping over the prickly stubble, he seems to be calling and asking to go to the field. But what will you do now with the hounds? The animal is now in the field, on the rise, on the black trail, and in the forest he is afraid, because in the forest the wind rustles the leaves... Oh, if only greyhounds!

Threshing begins in Riga. The drum of the thresher hums slowly, dispersing. Lazily pulling on the lines, resting their feet on the dung circle and swaying, the horses walk in the drive. In the middle of the drive, spinning on a bench, the driver sits and shouts monotonously at them, always whipping only one brown gelding, who is the laziest of all and completely sleeps while walking, fortunately his eyes are blindfolded.

Well, well, girls, girls! - the sedate waiter shouts sternly, donning a wide canvas shirt.

The girls hastily sweep away the current, running around with stretchers and brooms.

With God blessing! - says the server, and the first bunch of starnovka, launched for testing, flies into the drum with a buzzing and squealing and rises up from under it like a disheveled fan. And the drum hums more and more insistently, the work begins to boil, and soon all the sounds merge into the general pleasant noise of threshing. The master stands at the gate of the barn and watches how red and yellow scarves, hands, rakes, straw flash in its darkness, and all this moves and fusses regularly to the roar of the drum and the monotonous cry and whistle of the driver. Proboscis flies towards the gate in clouds. The master stands, all gray from him. He often glances at the field... Soon, soon the fields will turn white, winter will soon cover them...

Winter, first snow! There are no greyhounds, there is nothing to hunt in November; but winter comes, “work” with the hounds begins. And here again, as in the old days, small-scale families gather together, drink with their last money, and disappear for whole days in the snowy fields. And in the evening, on some remote farm, the outbuilding windows glow far away in the darkness of the winter night. There, in this small outbuilding, clouds of smoke float, tallow candles burn dimly, a guitar is being tuned...

At dusk the wind began to blow wildly,
“My gates were wide,” someone begins in a deep tenor. And others clumsily, pretending that they are joking, pick up with sad, hopeless daring:
My gates were wide open.
Covered the path with white snow...

The narrator remembers the place of his childhood once upon a time in the past. After all, when he was little, he lived in a village, which was then considered even a very rich village, because it was there that a lot of things grew and were sold.

The village was called Vyselki. The houses, oddly enough for a village, were made of brick, and this was the first sign at that time that the village was rich. And people lived there for a long time, especially old people and grandmothers. This also showed that the village was very wealthy. By the way, the provision of all the people who lived in this village, oddly enough, was similar. Even those who should have been poor by social level were, in fact, quite wealthy, almost like the richest people in the village.

Also, he remembered Aunt Anna Gerasimovna. And especially her estate. Her estate, which was not too large, but beautiful, and also durable, and also her habitat seemed so ancient, and therefore very unusual.

Also, what the children really remembered and liked was that around her house there had been century-old trees for a long time, which was very beautiful and natural. Also, she had a garden in which there were many apple trees, because this is what she was famous for in the first place. Even nightingales and turtle doves were there, because the birds also liked the garden.

The roof was thatched and very thick, and therefore everyone admired this roof. And what smells were there in Aunt Anna’s house? After all, in the house, first of all, the smell of old furniture, as well as apples, ripe, juicy and tasty.

Even the narrator remembered his brother-in-law. After all, this was a man who loved to hunt. And, besides, a lot of people, friends and their acquaintances always gathered in his house. It was always noisy there, or almost always, everyone was having fun at the dinner parties that he gave as a landowner.

Also, he always had a lot of dogs, as he needed them for hunting. The narrator remembers himself at such a dinner party, as he was with everyone after a hearty meal - on a black horse that rushes too fast, as it seems. Everything around flashes - trees, people on horses, and the path ahead is barely visible.

The dogs are barking, everyone is rushing, there is no stopping. Then, when it gets very dark, all the hunters, with nowhere to go, tired, burst into the house of some hunter near the forest, and stay there overnight. It happens that they live there for several days.

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Story by I.A. Bunin's “Antonov Apples” is one of those works where the writer with sad love remembers the irrevocably gone “golden” days. The author worked in an era of fundamental changes in society: the entire beginning of the twentieth century was drenched in blood. It was possible to escape from the aggressive environment only by remembering the best moments.

The idea for the story came to the author in 1891, when he was visiting his brother Eugene at the estate. The smell of Antonov apples with which they were filled autumn days, reminded Bunin of those times when the estates flourished, and the landowners did not become poor, and the peasants reverently treated everything lordly. The author was sensitive to the culture of the nobility and the old-time way of life, and deeply felt their decline. That is why a cycle of epitaph stories stands out in his work, which tell about the long-gone, “dead”, but still so dear old world.

The writer hatched his work for 9 years. “Antonov Apples” was first published in 1900. However, the story continued to be refined and changed, Bunin polished the literary language, gave the text even more imagery, and removed everything unnecessary.

What is the work about?

“Antonov Apples” represent an alternation of pictures of noble life, united by the memories of the lyrical hero. At first he remembers early autumn, the golden garden, picking apples. All this is managed by the owners, who lived in a hut in the garden, organizing a whole fair there on holidays. The garden is filled with different faces of peasants who amaze with contentment: men, women, children - all of them in the most good relations with each other and with the landowners. The idyllic picture is complemented by pictures of nature at the end of the episode main character exclaims: “How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world!”

A fruitful year in the ancestral village of the protagonist Vyselka pleases the eye: everywhere there is contentment, joy, wealth, simple happiness of the men. The narrator himself would like to be a man, not seeing any problems in this lot, but only health, naturalness and closeness to nature, and not at all poverty, lack of land and humiliation. From the peasant life he moves on to the noble life of former times: serfdom and immediately after, when the landowners were still playing main role. An example is the estate of Aunt Anna Gerasimovna, where prosperity, severity, and serf-like obedience of the servants were felt. The decor of the house also seems to be frozen in the past, even conversations are only about the past, but this also has its own poetry.

Hunting, one of the main entertainments of the nobility, is especially discussed. Arseny Semenovich, the brother-in-law of the main character, organized large-scale hunts, sometimes for several days. The whole house was filled with people, vodka, cigarette smoke, and dogs. The conversations and memories about this are remarkable. The narrator saw these amusements even in his dreams, falling into a slumber on soft feather beds in some corner room under the images. But it’s also nice to sleep through the hunt, because in the old estate there are books, portraits, and magazines all around, the sight of which fills you with “sweet and strange melancholy.”

But life has changed, it has become “beggarly”, “small-scale”. But there are remnants in it too former greatness¸ poetic echoes of former noble happiness. So, on the threshold of a century of change, the landowners had only memories of carefree days.

The main characters and their characteristics

1. The disparate paintings are connected through a lyrical hero who represents the author's position in the work. He appears before us as a man with a subtle mental organization, dreamy, receptive, and divorced from reality. He lives in the past, grieving for it and not noticing what is actually happening around him, including in the village environment.
2. The main character's aunt Anna Gerasimovna also lives in the past. Order and neatness reign in her house, antique furniture is perfectly preserved. The old woman also talks about the times of her youth, and about her inheritance.
3. Shurin Arseny Semenovich is distinguished by his young, dashing spirit; in hunting conditions these reckless qualities are very organic, but what is he like in everyday life, on the farm? This remains a secret, because in his face the culture of the nobility is poeticized, just like the previous heroine.
4. There are many peasants in the story, but they all have similar qualities: folk wisdom, respect for landowners, dexterity and thrift. They bow low, run at the first call, and, in general, maintain a happy noble life.

Problems

The problematics of the story “Antonov Apples” mainly focus on the theme of the impoverishment of the nobility, their loss of their former authority. According to the author, the life of a landowner is beautiful, poetic, in village life there is no place for boredom, vulgarity and cruelty, owners and peasants coexist perfectly with each other and are inconceivable separately. Bunin’s poeticization of serfdom also clearly emerges, because it was then that these beautiful estates flourished.

Another important issue raised by the writer is also the problem of memory. In the turning point, crisis era in which the story was written, I want peace and warmth. It is precisely this that a person always finds in childhood memories, which are colored with a joyful feeling; only good things usually arise in memory from that period. This is beautiful and Bunin wants to leave it in the hearts of readers forever.

Subject

• The main theme of Bunin's Antonov Apples is the nobility and its way of life. It is immediately clear that the author is proud of his own class, therefore he places it very highly. Village landowners are also glorified by the writer because of their connection with the peasants, who are clean, highly moral, and morally healthy. In rural worries there is no place for melancholy, melancholy and bad habits. It is in these remote estates that the spirit of romanticism, moral values ​​and concepts of honor are alive.
• The theme of nature occupies a large place. Paintings native land written freshly, cleanly, with respect. The author's love for all these fields, gardens, roads, and estates is immediately visible. In them, according to Bunin, lies the true, real Russia. The nature surrounding the lyrical hero truly heals the soul and drives away destructive thoughts.

Meaning

Nostalgia is the main feeling that covers both the author and many readers of that time after reading Antonov Apples. Bunin is a true artist of words, so his village life is an idyllic picture. The author carefully avoided all the sharp corners; in his story, life is beautiful and devoid of problems, social contradictions, which in reality had accumulated by the beginning of the twentieth century and inevitably led Russia to change.

The meaning of this story by Bunin is to create a picturesque canvas, to plunge into a bygone but alluring world of serenity and prosperity. For many people, escapism became a solution, but it was short-lived. Nevertheless, “Antonov Apples” is an exemplary work in artistic terms, and you can learn from Bunin the beauty of his style and imagery.

I remember an early fine autumn. August was full of warm rains, as if falling on purpose for sowing, with rains right at the right time, in the middle of the month, around the feast of St. Lawrence. And “autumn and winter live well if the water is calm and there is rain on Laurentia.” Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs settled in the fields. This is also a good sign: “There is a lot of shade in the Indian summer - autumn is vigorous”... I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinning garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and - the smell Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness. The air is so clean, it’s as if there is no air at all; voices and the creaking of carts can be heard throughout the garden. These Tarkhans, bourgeois gardeners, hired men and poured apples in order to send them to the city at night - certainly on a night when it is so nice to lie on a cart, look into the starry sky, smell tar in the fresh air and listen to how carefully it creaks in the dark a long convoy along the high road. The man pouring the apples eats them with a juicy crackle one after another, but such is the establishment - the tradesman will never cut it off, but will also say:
- Go ahead, eat your fill, there’s nothing to do! Everyone drinks honey while pouring.
And the cool silence of the morning is disturbed only by the well-fed cackling of blackbirds on the coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming sound of apples being poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden one can see far away the road to the large hut, strewn with straw, and the hut itself, near which the townspeople acquired an entire household over the summer. Everywhere there is a strong smell of apples, especially here. There are beds in the hut, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, and dishes in the corner. Near the hut there are mats, boxes, all sorts of tattered belongings, and an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with lard is cooked on it, in the evening the samovar is heated, and a long strip of bluish smoke spreads across the garden, between the trees. On holidays, there is a whole fair around the hut, and red headdresses are constantly flashing behind the trees. There is a crowd of lively single-yard girls in sundresses that smell strongly of paint, the “lords” come in their beautiful and rough, savage costumes, a young elder woman, pregnant, with a wide, sleepy face and as important as a Kholmogory cow. She has “horns” on her head - the braids are placed on the sides of the crown and covered with several scarves, so that the head seems huge; the legs, in ankle boots with horseshoes, stand stupidly and firmly; the sleeveless jacket is corduroy, the curtain is long, and the poneva is black and purple with brick-colored stripes and lined at the hem with a wide gold “prose”...
- Economic butterfly! - the tradesman says about her, shaking his head. - These are now being translated...
And the boys in fancy white shirts and short porticoes, with white open heads, all come up. They walk in twos and threes, shuffling their bare feet, and glance sideways at the shaggy shepherd dog tied to an apple tree. Of course, only one buys, because the purchases are only for a penny or an egg, but there are many buyers, trade is brisk, and the consumptive tradesman in a long frock coat and red boots is cheerful. Together with his brother, a burry, nimble half-idiot who lives with him “out of mercy,” he trades in jokes, jokes and even sometimes “touches” the Tula harmonica. And until the evening there is a crowd of people in the garden, you can hear laughter and talking around the hut, and sometimes the clatter of dancing...
By nightfall the weather becomes very cold and dewy. Having inhaled the rye aroma of new straw and chaff on the threshing floor, you cheerfully walk home for dinner past the garden rampart. Voices in the village or the creaking of gates can be heard unusually clearly in the chilly dawn. It's getting dark. And here’s another smell: there’s a fire in the garden, and there’s a strong wafting of fragrant smoke from cherry branches. In the darkness, in the depths of the garden, there is a fabulous picture: as if in a corner of hell, a crimson flame is burning near the hut, surrounded by darkness, and someone’s black silhouettes, as if carved from ebony wood, are moving around the fire, while giant shadows from them walk across the apple trees . Either a black hand several arshins in size will fall across the entire tree, then two legs will clearly appear - two black pillars. And suddenly all this will slide from the apple tree - and the shadow will fall along the entire alley, from the hut to the gate itself...
Late at night, when the lights in the village go out, when the diamond constellation Stozhar is already shining high in the sky, you will run into the garden again.
Rustle through the dry leaves, like a blind man, you will reach the hut. There in the clearing it is a little lighter, and the Milky Way is white above your head.
- Is it you, barchuk? - someone quietly calls out from the darkness.
- I am. Are you still awake, Nikolai?
- We can't sleep. And it must be too late? Look, there seems to be a passenger train coming...
We listen for a long time and discern trembling in the ground, the trembling turns into noise, grows, and now, as if already just outside the garden, the noisy beat of the wheels is rapidly beating out: rumbling and knocking, the train rushes by... closer, closer, louder and angrier... And suddenly it begins to subside, die out, as if going into the ground...
- Where is your gun, Nikolai?
- But next to the box, sir.
You throw up a single-barreled shotgun, heavy as a crowbar, and shoot straight away. The crimson flame will flash towards the sky with a deafening crack, blind for a moment and extinguish the stars, and a cheerful echo will ring out like a ring and roll across the horizon, fading far, far away in the clean and sensitive air.
- Wow, great! - the tradesman will say. - Spend it, spend it, little gentleman, otherwise it’s just a disaster! Again they shook off all the gunk on the shaft...

And the black sky is lined with fiery stripes of falling stars. You look for a long time into its dark blue depths, overflowing with constellations, until the earth begins to float under your feet. Then you will wake up and, hiding your hands in your sleeves, quickly run along the alley to the house... How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world!