Lush's son. Analysis of Bunin's story grammar of love composition. Other retellings and reviews for the reader's diary

The landowner Ivlev, being unoccupied with anything, decides to ride along the farthest edges of his county. He chooses the count's house as his destination. Arriving at his estate, he discovers that there is no owner himself, but only the countess. Ivlev is invited to drink tea, they have small talk, but no matter what topic the main character starts, the young woman reduces everything to the theme of love.

So smoothly they move on to discussing their common neighbor Khvoshchinsky. It turns out that the landowner Khvoshchinsky dearly loved his maid Lushka. But by the will of fate, she died while still very young. Since then, the old landowner locked himself in his estate and did not appear in the light. He lived with his son, whom Lushka once gave birth to him, and did not communicate with anyone else from the environment and did not see each other. Such love delighted everyone around, including Ivlev. He would even like to get to know the former maid in order to understand what is so special about her. But the old landowner died, and now his young son remained in charge of the big house.

Having left the countess, the hero of the story decides to stop by Khvoshchinskoye and see how it became after the death of the owner. Upon arrival, finding no other reason for the visit, Ivlev asks the young landowner to familiarize himself with the library and asks permission to buy it. After looking at all the available books, the man stops at the book "Grammar of Love". It was a small, filthy little book, with different chapters. There were sections on the heart, mind and beauty. And on the very last page, a quatrain was written down by Khvoshchinsky senior himself.

Taking one single book, Ivlev went home. All the way back, he looks over the little notes made in the margins of the Grammar and thinks about true love that can live in a person's heart. And although the young Khvoshchinsky said that his father had simply lost his mind from poverty, this does not convince the main character. He admires the depth and strength of those feelings that forced the landowner to turn his greatest love and most terrible loss into some even semblance of holy worship.

The story "Grammar of Love" shows that even in our time there are such miracles when a person can once and for all connect his fate with one person. And even having lost the object of his passion, he still does not stop loving and honoring only one person. Very few people are capable of such feelings, and when faced with such, then involuntarily there is respect for such people and their eternal affection.

Picture or drawing Grammar of love

Story title

Already the name of Bunin's work - "Grammar of Love" sounds somehow strange in such an unusual combination. It is known that this story was conceived by the writer as a short story, and created in 1915. Later, this story was included in Bunin's lyrical collection with the poetic title "Dark Alleys".

Ivan Alekseevich describes in his story a love that can flare up instantly, like a flash. Appearing from a small spark, it can flare up brightly, but not always stay.

But it is worth analyzing in more detail the meaning of the title of the work. So what is this - the grammar of love? Bunin used incompatible things in his name, an oxymoron. It is known that grammar in literal translation from Greek means "the ability to write and read letters." Hence the somewhat ironic title of the work: learning to love. But is it possible to teach a person to love? Doesn't love manifest itself in each person in its own way? There are no textbooks that would teach love, so the title of the work sounds a little strange.

In the work, the protagonist acquires a book, which bears a name consonant with the story itself. It turns out that such a book actually existed in foreign literature. Its author was a certain Hippolyte Jules Demolière. This is what Bunin refers to in his work.

The plot of the work

A certain Mr. Ivlev, in the midst of a hot summer, travels around his county. He talks with the driver, but the conversation turns out to be boring. Then the main character simply, without any purpose, began to look out the window. And fields and meadows floated by, which did not allow him to concentrate on any detail. Soon Ivnev was already driving up to the house of the countess, whose appearance did not evoke in him such a pleasant picture as nature flashing past him during the trip. Her appearance simply openly annoys the main character, and she immediately began to flirt with him. But still, she reminds Ivnev of a story that he has heard before. Now she is more interested than usual. This story involved the local landowner Khvoshchinsky, who fell madly in love with his maid Lushka.

Soon Ivnev is approaching the Khvoshchinsky estate. He quickly remembered the love story where the landowner, even after the death of his maid, spent twenty years of his life near her mattress, on which she lay dying. He also died there. And then the old estate of the landowner appeared, where a tragic love story took place. Ivnev somehow found it easy to breathe in this place. But unfortunately, the main character sees around him only devastation and desolation. And on the threshold he was met by a young man - the son of Lushka and the landowner. The young man is interesting to Ivnev. The protagonist carefully examined the fruit of different-status love.

But special attention is drawn to the house of Khvoshchinsky, which Ivnev carefully examines. Strange furniture and gloomy atmosphere of the house takes the protagonist to another world. He sees old books, reads their strange titles and tries to unravel the mystery of love. His hands are trembling, but he experiences special excitement in the room where Lushka lived. He immediately pays attention to the details, and there are not so many of them here:

Prayer book.
A box with time-blackened silver.
Lushka's necklace.

Looking at the necklace of a deceased woman who has experienced love, the protagonist feels an excitement that he has never felt before. But the attention of the narrator was attracted not only by the decoration of the deceased, but also by the little book with the title that Bunin gave to his story. Ivlev could not restrain himself and began leafing through this brochure. The protagonist buys this book from the young owner and leaves the estate, where a tragic love story once happened. But the verses that were written down by two lovers on the last page of the book he purchased, Ivnev reread several times.

Characteristics of the actors

There are few heroes in the novel "Grammar of Love", but their characteristic is a deep psychological portrait of each hero, which is given by Bunin for an accurate presentation of the plot and understanding of the main theme - the theme of love.
The characters in the story include:

♦ Ivlev.
♦ Countess.
♦ Landowner Khvoshchinsky.
♦ Maid Lushka.
♦ Lushka's son, a young and handsome young man.

Khvoshchinsky was once respected by all the local nobility, and this landowner was known as a "great clever man." But as soon as love happened in his life, he could only hear condemnations and see reproachful glances. When he fell in love with a maid, everything just went to dust for him. And after Lushka's death, he sat by her bed for another twenty years, not caring about anything. Here he died.

The countess, to whom the protagonist stopped by, was a large, aged woman. But this did not stop her from constantly talking about love. Trying to gain charm, she smoked, and this pushed the narrator away from her even more. She evoked a feeling of irritation in the main character.

The son of Lushka and the landowner Khvoshchinsky was interesting. Bunin describes it like this:

"Black, with beautiful eyes and very pretty, although his face was pale and motley from freckles, like a bird's egg."

He is greedy, easily agrees, and even glad to sell his parents' books, but he is always embarrassed.

Artistic features of the text

If you re-read the first line of the work several times, you can see how the month of June, when the action takes place, echoes with the name of the protagonist, on behalf of whom the story is being told - Ivlev. Here the writer uses one of the artistic and expressive means - the alliteration of sonorous sounds. By the way, these techniques, which are often used in poetry, are not accidental here, since the entire plot of the novel "Grammar of Love" is based on the correct techniques and obeys the laws of lyrics.

The writer uses in his text such a technique as irony. The beautiful margins and a certain young man, whom the writer himself calls "small", look like a contrast in the text. His appearance is clumsy and ridiculous: a cap, which was still quite new, and a jacket that sat on him baggy and clumsy. And this funny "small", pretending to be serious, was doing an important job: he was instructed to change the master's horses.

There are a lot of epithets in the text. For example, in the estate of Khvoshchinsky, he sees a tree, and immediately selects the following expressions for it: God's tree, sweet creature. In contrast, a description of the house of the landowner Khvoshchinsky is also given. Clumsy furniture, beautiful and elegant dishes. Dead bees, with which the entire floor in one of the landowner's rooms is strewn, returns Ivlev to reality. But the main line remains the line of love, which, like a magnet, attracts the main character.

Analysis of the novel

Bunin's story "Grammar of Love" begins simply and usually. It seems that nothing should be expected, but researchers of Ivan Alekseevich's work have always paid attention to the fact that the great writer attached his special importance to the very beginning of the work, its first sentences. Bunin used this technique in order to aim his reader, to prepare for what will be discussed throughout the novel. In the text, next to the poetic beginning, there are real things that have an everyday description. For example, the carriage on which the main character travels has not only a crooked top, but is also dusty. Or the coachman, about whom the writer himself says that he is economic, but does not understand jokes at all.

It is worth noting that Ivan Alekseevich, in order to more colorfully convey the state of his hero, connects to the description the nature that the nobleman sees around. At first it is vast expanses, majestic beauty. But after visiting the Countess, Ivnev's mood changes and this can already be determined by how the weather changes dramatically. It becomes boring, dirty, dark.

Imperceptibly, Bunin leads the reader to the beginning of his story, recalling the love of the landowner and the servant. After all, this thought will settle in the head of the protagonist for a long time. But the description of the house leads the reader into bewilderment. Everything in it was preserved, as before. It was as if there was a secret that only two knew. And when Ivlev leaves the Khvoshchinsky estate, the author again uses the landscape to convey his mood. He writes that it was not cloudy outside, but a cloudy golden dawn. After all, this love story left him with a complex feeling.

The writer in his work argued that love cannot have any barriers and distances, no prejudices can stop the beautiful attraction of souls. But this feeling is elusive and fleeting. Most often, love is associated with tragedy, broken and crippled destinies, with bitterness. Ivan Alekseevich regrets that true love, flashing quickly, is becoming a thing of the past. He believes that modern people are no longer capable of madly and sincerely loving. And the countess is a bright representative of those women who put in the first place not an exalted feeling, but the attraction of the flesh. Therefore, it causes both the writer and his hero only irritation.

Someone Ivlev was driving one day at the beginning of June to the far end of his county.

A tarantass with a crooked, dusty top was given to him by his brother-in-law, on whose estate he spent the summer. He hired a trio of horses, small but well-built, with thick, knocked-down manes, in the village, from a rich peasant. They were ruled by the son of this peasant, a young man of eighteen, stupid, economic. He kept thinking dissatisfied about something, seemed to be offended by something, did not understand jokes. And, making sure that you would not talk to him, Ivlev gave himself up to that calm and aimless observation that goes so well to the fret of hooves and the rumble of bells.

At first it was pleasant to drive: a warm, dull day, a well-trodden road, a lot of flowers and larks in the fields; from the loaves, from the low gray rye, which stretched as far as the eye could see, a sweet breeze blew, carrying flower dust along their jambs, in places it smoked with it, and far from it it was even foggy. The fellow, in a new cap and clumsy luster jacket, sat straight up; the fact that the horses were completely entrusted to him and that he was dressed up made him especially serious. And the horses coughed and ran unhurriedly, the left tie-down at times scratched the wheel, at times tightened, and all the time a worn horseshoe flashed under it like white steel.

- Shall we visit the Count? asked the fellow, without turning around, when a village appeared ahead, closing the horizon with its vines and garden.

- What for? Ivlev said.

The little one was silent for a while, and, knocking down a large gadfly stuck to the horse with a whip, answered gloomily:

- Yes, drink tea ...

- Don't have tea in your head, - said Ivlev, - You feel sorry for all the horses.

“A horse is not afraid of riding, it is afraid of the stern,” the fellow answered instructively.

Ivlev looked around: the weather had become dull, molting clouds had pulled in from all sides and it was already drizzling - these modest days always end in regular rains ... An old man who plowed near the village said that there was only one young countess at home, but still stopped by. The little one pulled on his coat and, contented that the horses were resting, calmly soaked in the rain on the goats of the tarantass, which stopped in the middle of a dirty yard, near a stone trough, rooted into the ground, poked by the hooves of cattle. He looked at his boots, straightened the harness on the root with a whip; and Ivlev sat in the drawing-room darkened by the rain, chatting with the countess and waiting for tea; there was already the smell of a burning torch, the green smoke of the samovar was thickly floating past the open windows, which the barefoot girl stuffed on the porch with bundles of chips of brightly blazing red-brown fire, dousing them with kerosene. The countess was in a wide pink bonnet, with an open powdered chest; she smoked, inhaling deeply, often straightening her hair, exposing her tight and round arms to her shoulders; puffing and laughing, she kept talking on love and, among other things, she talked about her close neighbor, the landowner Khvoshchinsky, who, as Ivlev knew from childhood, was obsessed with love to his maid Lushka, who died at an early age. “Ah, this legendary Lushka! Ivlev remarked jokingly, slightly embarrassed by his confession. “Because this eccentric idolized her, devoted his whole life to crazy dreams about her, I was almost in love with her in my youth, imagined, thinking about her, God knows what, although she, they say, was not at all good herself.” - "Yes? said the Countess, not listening. He died this winter. And Pisarev, the only one whom he sometimes allowed to see him out of old friendship, claims that in everything else he was not at all crazy, and I fully believe this - he was simply not the current couple ... ”Finally, the barefoot girl with unusual caution filed on an old silver tray a glass of strong blue tea from a pond and a basket of cookies infested with flies.

When we went further, the rain broke up for real. I had to raise the top, cover myself with a red-hot, shriveled apron, and sit bent over. Horses rumbled like capercaillie, trickles ran down their dark and shiny haunches, grass rustled under the wheels of some boundary among the bread, where the kid rode in the hope of shortening the path, a warm rye spirit gathered under the horseback, interfering with the smell of an old tarantass ... "So Is it true, Khvoshchinsky is dead, thought Ivlev. - We must definitely stop by, at least to look at this deserted sanctuary of the mysterious Lushka ... But what kind of person was this Khvoshchinsky? Crazy or just some kind of stunned, all focused soul? According to the stories of old landowners, Khvoshchinsky's peers, he was once known in the county as a rare clever man. And suddenly this love fell on him, this Lushka, then her unexpected death - and everything went to dust: he shut himself up in the house, in the room where Lushka lived and died, and spent more than twenty years sitting on her bed - not only did not go anywhere. he went out, and even at his estate he didn’t show himself to anyone, he sat through the mattress on Lushka’s bed and attributed to Lushka’s influence literally everything that happened in the world: a thunderstorm sets - it’s Lushka that sends a thunderstorm, war is declared - that means Lushka decided that, crop failure happened - the men did not please Lushka ...

- Are you going to Khvoshchinskoe, or something? shouted Ivlev, leaning out into the rain.

"To Khvoshchinskoye," the fellow, with water flowing from his drooping cap, said indistinctly through the sound of the rain. - On Pisarev top ...

Ivlev did not know such a path. Places became poorer and more deaf. The frontier was over, the horses went at a pace and lowered the rickety tarantass with a blurry pothole down the hill; into some as yet unmowed meadows, the green slopes of which stood out sadly against the low clouds. Then the road, now disappearing, then resuming, began to move from one side to another along the bottoms of ravines, along gullies in alder bushes and willows ... There was someone's small apiary, several stocks standing on a slope in tall grass, reddening with strawberries. .. We drove around some old dam, sunk in nettles, and a long-dry pond - a deep yaruga, overgrown with weeds taller than human height ... A pair of black sandals rushed out of them with a cry into the rainy sky ... and on the dam, among the nettles, a large old bush bloomed with small pale pink flowers, that sweet tree, which is called "God's tree" - and suddenly Ivlev remembered the places, remembered that he had ridden here more than once in his youth ...

“They say she drowned herself here,” the fellow said unexpectedly.

Are you talking about Khvoshchinsky's mistress, or what? Ivlev asked. “That’s not true, she didn’t even think of drowning herself.

“No, she drowned herself,” said the fellow. - Well, I just think that he most likely went crazy from poverty from his own, and not from her ...

And, after a pause, he added rudely:

“But we have to stop by again… to this, to Khvoshchino… Look how tired the horses are!”

"Do me a favor," said Ivlev.

On a hillock, where a road made of tin from rainwater led, in the place of a reduced forest, among wet, rotting wood chips and leaves, among stumps and young aspen shoots, smelling bitter and fresh, a hut stood alone. Not a soul was around, only buntings, sitting on tall flowers in the rain, rang to the whole rare forest that rose behind the hut, but when the troika, splashing through the mud, caught up with its threshold, a whole horde of huge dogs escaped from somewhere, black, chocolate, smoky, and boiled around the horses with a furious bark, soaring up to their very muzzles, turning over in flight and spinning even under the top of the tarantass. At the same time, and just as unexpectedly, the sky above the tarantass was split by a deafening clap of thunder, the fellow rushed furiously to beat the dogs with a whip, and the horses galloped among the aspen trunks that flashed before their eyes ...

Khvoshchinskoye was already visible behind the forest. The dogs fell behind and immediately became silent, busily ran back, the forest parted, and the fields opened again in front. It was evening, and the clouds were either parting or now coming in from three sides: on the left - almost black, with blue gaps, on the right - gray-haired, rumbling with continuous thunder, and from the west, because of the Khvoshchinsky estate, because of the slopes above the river valley , - dull blue, in dusty stripes of rain, through which mountains of distant clouds rose pink. But over the tarantass the rain thinned, and, rising, Ivlev, all covered with mud, with pleasure heaped back the heavy top and breathed freely in the fragrant dampness of the field.

He looked at the approaching estate, saw at last what he had heard so much about, but as before it seemed that Lushka lived and died not twenty years ago, but almost in time immemorial. Along the valley, the trace of a small river was lost in the kug, white fishing flew over it. Farther on, on a semimountain, lay rows of hay, darkened by the rain; among them, far apart, were scattered old silvery poplars. The house, rather large, once whitewashed, with a shiny wet roof, stood on a completely bare spot. There was no garden around, no buildings, only two brick pillars in place of the gate and burdock along the ditches. When the horses waded across the river and climbed the mountain, some woman in a summer coat for men, with sagging pockets, she drove turkeys through the mugs. The facade of the house was unusually dull: there were few windows in it, and all of them were small, sitting in thick walls. But the gloomy porches were huge. From one of them, a young man in a gray gymnasium blouse, belted with a wide belt, black, with beautiful eyes and very pretty, looked in surprise at the approaching, although his face was pale and mottled with freckles, like a bird's egg.

I needed to explain my arrival somehow. Going up to the porch and identifying himself, Ivlev said that he wanted to look and, perhaps, buy a library, which, as the countess said, was left over from the deceased, and the young man, blushing deeply, immediately led him into the house. “So this is the son of the famous Lushka!” Ivlev thought, looking around at everything that was on the way, and often looking around and saying whatever he could, just to look once more at the owner, who seemed too young for his age. He answered hastily, but in monosyllables, confused, apparently, both from shyness and from greed; that he was terribly delighted at the opportunity to sell the books and imagined that he would sell them dearly, was evident in his first words, in the awkward haste with which he declared that books like his could not be obtained for any money. Through a semi-dark passage, where straw red from dampness was laid, he led Ivlev into a large hall.

Is this where your father lived? asked Ivlev, entering and taking off his hat.

“Yes, yes, here,” the young man hastened to answer. - That is, of course, not here ... after all, they mostly sat in the bedroom ... but, of course, they were here too ...

“Yes, I know, he was ill,” said Ivlev.

The young man flushed.

- That is, what is sick? he said, and there was a more masculine note in his voice. “It’s all gossip, they weren’t mentally ill at all ... They just read everything and didn’t go out anywhere, that’s all ... No, please don’t take off your cap, it’s cold here, we don’t live in this half ...

True, it was much colder in the house than outside. In the inhospitable entrance hall, covered with newspapers, on the windowsill of the window, sad from the clouds, stood a bast quail cage. A gray bag jumped on the floor by itself. Bending down, the young man caught him and laid him on a bench, and Ivlev realized that a quail was sitting in the bag; then they entered the hall. This room, with windows to the west and north, occupied almost half of the entire house. Through one window, on the gold clearing behind the clouds of dawn, one could see a hundred-year-old, all black weeping birch. The front corner was entirely occupied by a goddess without glasses, lined and hung with images; among them stood out both in size and antiquity an image in a silver robe, and on it, turning yellow with wax, as if with a dead body, lay wedding candles in pale green bows.

“Forgive me, please,” Ivlev began, overcoming shame, “is your father ...

“No, it is,” muttered the young man, instantly understanding him. - They bought these candles after her death ... and they even always wore a wedding ring ...

The furniture in the hall was clumsy. But in the piers there were beautiful slides full of tea utensils and narrow, tall glasses in gold rims. And the floor was all covered with dry bees that clicked underfoot. The living room was also strewn with bees, completely empty. Having passed it and some other gloomy room with a couch, the young man stopped near a low door and took a large key from his trousers pocket. Turning it with difficulty in the rusty keyhole, he opened the door, muttered something, and Ivlev saw a closet with two windows; against one wall of it stood a bare iron bunk, against the other two bookcases made of Karelian birch.

- Is this the library? Ivlev asked, approaching one of them.

And the young man, hastening to answer in the affirmative, helped him open the cupboard, and greedily began to follow his hands.

Strange books made up this library! Ivlev opened thick bindings, turned away a rough gray page and read: "The accursed tract" ... "Morning star and night demons" ... "Reflections on the mysteries of the universe" ... "A wonderful journey to a magical land" ... "The newest dream book "... But the hands still trembled slightly. So that's what that lonely soul fed on, that forever closed itself off from the world in this closet and left it so recently ... But, perhaps, this soul was really not completely insane? “There is being,” Ivlev recalled Baratynsky’s poems, “there is being, but what name should we call it? It is neither a dream nor a vigil, it is between them, and in a man it borders on madness with understanding ... ”It cleared in the west, gold looked from there from behind beautiful purple clouds and strangely illuminated this poor shelter of love, love incomprehensible, into what -some kind of ecstatic life that turned a whole human life, which, perhaps, should have been the most ordinary life, had it not been for some mysterious Lushka in her charm ...

Taking a stool from under the bed, Ivlev sat down in front of the closet and took out cigarettes, imperceptibly looking around and memorizing the room.

- Do you smoke? he asked the young man standing over him.

He blushed again.

“I smoke,” he muttered, and tried to smile. - That is, not that I smoke, rather I indulge ... But, by the way, allow me, I am very grateful to you ...

And, awkwardly taking a cigarette, he lit a cigarette with trembling hands, went to the windowsill and sat down on it, blocking out the yellow light of dawn.

- And what's that? Ivlev asked, leaning over to the middle shelf, on which lay only one very small book, resembling a prayer book, and there was a casket, the corners of which were trimmed in silver, darkened with time.

"That's right... In this box is the necklace of the deceased mother," the young man stammered, but trying to speak casually.

- Can I have a look?

“Please… although it’s very simple… you can’t be interested…”

And, opening the casket, Ivlev saw a frayed lace, a bunch of cheap blue balls that looked like stone ones. And such excitement seized him at the sight of these balls, which once lay on the neck of the one who was destined to be so loved and whose vague image could no longer but be beautiful, which rippled in the eyes from the heartbeat. Having seen enough, Ivlev carefully put the box back in its place; then took up the book. It was a tiny, charmingly published almost a hundred years ago, "The Grammar of Love, or the Art of be in love and be mutually loved.

“Unfortunately, I cannot sell this book,” the young man said with difficulty. - She is very expensive ... they even put her under their pillow ...

"But maybe you'll let me see it at least?" Ivlev said.

“Please,” the young man whispered.

And, overcoming awkwardness, vaguely languishing with his gaze, Ivlev began to slowly leaf through the Grammar of Love. It was all divided into small chapters: “On beauty, on the heart, on the mind, on signs of love, on attack and defense, on disagreement and reconciliation, on Platonic love” ... Each chapter consisted of short, elegant, sometimes very subtle maxims , and some of them were delicately marked with pen, red ink. “Love is not a simple episode in our life,” Ivlev read. Our reason contradicts the heart and does not convince it. “Women are never as strong as when they arm themselves with weakness. We adore a woman because she rules over our ideal dream. Vanity chooses, true love does not choose. - A beautiful woman should occupy the second step; the first belongs to a lovely woman. This becomes the mistress of our hearts: before we give an account of it to ourselves, heart ours is becoming a slave of love forever...” Then came the “explanation of the language of flowers”, and again something was noted: “Wild poppy - sadness. Heather-ice - your charm is imprinted in my heart. Graveyard - sweet memories. Sad geranium - melancholy. Wormwood is an eternal sorrow... And on a blank page at the very end there was a small, beaded quatrain written in the same red ink. The young man craned his neck, looking into the Grammar of Love, and said with a mock grin:

They made it up themselves...

Half an hour later, Ivlev said goodbye to him with relief. Of all the books, he bought only this little book for a high price. The cloudy golden dawn faded in the clouds beyond the fields, shone in the puddles, it was wet and green in the fields. The fellow was in no hurry, but Ivlev did not urge him. Maly told me that the woman who had been chasing turkeys through the burdocks the other day was the deacon's wife, and that young Khvoshchinsky lived with her. Ivlev did not listen. He kept thinking about Lushka, about her necklace, which left him with a complex feeling, similar to what he once experienced in an Italian town when looking at the relics of a saint. “She entered my life forever!” he thought. And, taking the Grammar of Love out of his pocket, he slowly reread in the light of dawn the verses written on its last page.

The hearts of those who love will say to you:

"Live in sweet legends!"

And grandchildren, great-grandchildren will show

This Grammar of Love.

Moscow. February. 1915

Someone Ivlev was driving one day at the beginning of June to the far end of his county. A tarantass with a crooked, dusty top was given to him by his brother-in-law, on whose estate he spent the summer. He hired a trio of horses, small but well-built, with thick, knocked-down manes, in the village, from a rich peasant. They were ruled by the son of this peasant, a young man of eighteen, stupid, economic. He kept thinking dissatisfied about something, seemed to be offended by something, did not understand jokes. And, making sure that you would not talk to him, Ivlev gave himself up to that calm and aimless observation that goes so well to the fret of hooves and the rumble of bells. At first it was pleasant to drive: a warm, dull day, a well-trodden road, a lot of flowers and larks in the fields; from the loaves, from the low gray rye, which stretched as far as the eye could see, a sweet breeze blew, carrying flower dust along their jambs, in places it smoked with it, and far from it it was even foggy. The fellow, in a new cap and clumsy luster jacket, sat straight up; the fact that the horses were completely entrusted to him and that he was dressed up made him especially serious. And the horses coughed and ran unhurriedly, the left tie-down at times scratched the wheel, at times tightened, and all the time a worn horseshoe flashed under it like white steel. - Shall we visit the Count? asked the fellow, without turning around, when a village appeared ahead, closing the horizon with its vines and garden. - What for? Ivlev said. The little one was silent for a while, and, knocking down a large gadfly stuck to the horse with a whip, answered gloomily:- Yes, drink tea ... - Don't have tea in your head, - said Ivlev, - You feel sorry for all the horses. “A horse is not afraid of riding, it is afraid of the stern,” the fellow answered instructively. Ivlev looked around: the weather had become dull, molting clouds had pulled in from all sides and it was already drizzling - these modest days always end in regular rains ... An old man who plowed near the village said that there was only one young countess at home, but still stopped by. The little one pulled on his coat and, contented that the horses were resting, calmly soaked in the rain on the goats of the tarantass, which stopped in the middle of a dirty yard, near a stone trough, rooted into the ground, poked by the hooves of cattle. He looked at his boots, straightened the harness on the root with a whip; and Ivlev sat in the drawing-room darkened by the rain, chatting with the countess and waiting for tea; there was already the smell of a burning torch, the green smoke of the samovar was thickly floating past the open windows, which the barefoot girl stuffed on the porch with bundles of chips of brightly blazing red-brown fire, dousing them with kerosene. The countess was in a wide pink bonnet, with an open powdered chest; she smoked, inhaling deeply, often straightening her hair, exposing her tight and round arms to her shoulders; inhaling and laughing, she kept talking about love and, among other things, talked about her close neighbor, the landowner Khvoshchinsky, who, as Ivlev knew from childhood, was obsessed with love for his maid Lushka, who died in early youth. “Ah, this legendary Lushka! Ivlev remarked jokingly, slightly embarrassed by his confession. “Because this eccentric idolized her, devoted his whole life to crazy dreams about her, I was almost in love with her in my youth, imagined, thinking about her, God knows what, although she, they say, was not at all good herself.” - "Yes? said the Countess, not listening. He died this winter. And Pisarev, the only one whom he sometimes allowed to see him out of old friendship, claims that in everything else he was not at all crazy, and I fully believe this - he was simply not the current couple ... ”Finally, the barefoot girl with unusual caution filed on an old silver tray a glass of strong blue tea from a pond and a basket of cookies infested with flies. When we went further, the rain broke up for real. I had to raise the top, cover myself with a red-hot, shriveled apron, and sit bent over. Horses rumbled like capercaillie, trickles ran down their dark and shiny haunches, grass rustled under the wheels of some boundary among the bread, where the kid rode in the hope of shortening the path, a warm rye spirit gathered under the horseback, interfering with the smell of an old tarantass ... "So Is it true, Khvoshchinsky is dead, thought Ivlev. - We must definitely stop by, at least to look at this deserted sanctuary of the mysterious Lushka ... But what kind of person was this Khvoshchinsky? Crazy or just some kind of stunned, all focused soul? According to the stories of old landowners, Khvoshchinsky's peers, he was once known in the county as a rare clever man. And suddenly this love fell on him, this Lushka, then her unexpected death - and everything went to dust: he shut himself up in the house, in the room where Lushka lived and died, and spent more than twenty years sitting on her bed - not only did not go anywhere. he went out, and even at his estate he didn’t show himself to anyone, he sat through the mattress on Lushka’s bed and attributed to Lushka’s influence literally everything that happened in the world: a thunderstorm sets - it’s Lushka that sends a thunderstorm, war is declared - that means Lushka decided that, crop failure happened - the men did not please Lushka ... - Are you going to Khvoshchinskoe, or something? shouted Ivlev, leaning out into the rain. "To Khvoshchinskoye," the fellow, with water flowing from his drooping cap, said indistinctly through the sound of the rain. - On Pisarev top ... Ivlev did not know such a path. Places became poorer and more deaf. The frontier was over, the horses went at a pace and lowered the rickety tarantass with a blurry pothole down the hill; into some as yet unmowed meadows, the green slopes of which stood out sadly against the low clouds. Then the road, now disappearing, then resuming, began to move from one side to another along the bottoms of ravines, along gullies in alder bushes and willows ... There was someone's small apiary, several stocks standing on a slope in tall grass, reddening with strawberries. .. We drove around some old dam, sunk in nettles, and a long-dry pond - a deep yaruga, overgrown with weeds taller than human height ... A pair of black sandals rushed out of them with a cry into the rainy sky ... and on the dam, among the nettles, a large old bush bloomed with small pale pink flowers, that sweet tree, which is called "God's tree" - and suddenly Ivlev remembered the places, remembered that he had ridden here more than once in his youth ... “They say she drowned herself here,” the fellow said unexpectedly. Are you talking about Khvoshchinsky's mistress, or what? Ivlev asked. “That’s not true, she didn’t even think of drowning herself. “No, she drowned herself,” said the fellow. - Well, I just think that he most likely went crazy from poverty from his own, and not from her ... And, after a pause, he added rudely: “But we have to stop by again… to this, to Khvoshchino… Look how tired the horses are!” "Do me a favor," said Ivlev. On a hillock, where a road made of tin from rainwater led, in the place of a reduced forest, among wet, rotting wood chips and leaves, among stumps and young aspen shoots, smelling bitter and fresh, a hut stood alone. Not a soul was around, only buntings, sitting on tall flowers in the rain, rang to the whole rare forest that rose behind the hut, but when the troika, splashing through the mud, caught up with its threshold, a whole horde of huge dogs escaped from somewhere, black, chocolate, smoky, and boiled around the horses with a furious bark, soaring up to their very muzzles, turning over in flight and spinning even under the top of the tarantass. At the same time, and just as unexpectedly, the sky above the tarantass was split by a deafening clap of thunder, the fellow rushed furiously to beat the dogs with a whip, and the horses galloped among the aspen trunks that flashed before their eyes ... Khvoshchinskoye was already visible behind the forest. The dogs fell behind and immediately became silent, busily ran back, the forest parted, and the fields opened again in front. It was evening, and the clouds were either parting or now coming in from three sides: on the left - almost black, with blue gaps, on the right - gray-haired, rumbling with continuous thunder, and from the west, because of the Khvoshchinsky estate, because of the slopes above the river valley , - dull blue, in dusty stripes of rain, through which mountains of distant clouds rose pink. But over the tarantass the rain thinned, and, rising, Ivlev, all covered with mud, with pleasure heaped back the heavy top and breathed freely in the fragrant dampness of the field. He looked at the approaching estate, saw at last what he had heard so much about, but as before it seemed that Lushka lived and died not twenty years ago, but almost in time immemorial. Along the valley, the trace of a small river was lost in the kug, white fishing flew over it. Farther on, on a semimountain, lay rows of hay, darkened by the rain; among them, far apart, were scattered old silvery poplars. The house, rather large, once whitewashed, with a shiny wet roof, stood on a completely bare spot. There was no garden around, no buildings, only two brick pillars in place of the gate and burdock along the ditches. When the horses forded the river and climbed the mountain, a woman in a man's summer coat, with drooping pockets, was driving turkeys over the mugs. The facade of the house was unusually dull: there were few windows in it, and all of them were small, sitting in thick walls. But the gloomy porches were huge. From one of them, a young man in a gray gymnasium blouse, belted with a wide belt, black, with beautiful eyes and very pretty, looked in surprise at the approaching, although his face was pale and mottled with freckles, like a bird's egg. I needed to explain my arrival somehow. Going up to the porch and identifying himself, Ivlev said that he wanted to look and, perhaps, buy a library, which, as the countess said, was left over from the deceased, and the young man, blushing deeply, immediately led him into the house. “So this is the son of the famous Lushka!” Ivlev thought, looking around at everything that was on the way, and often looking around and saying whatever he could, just to look once more at the owner, who seemed too young for his age. He answered hastily, but in monosyllables, confused, apparently, both from shyness and from greed; that he was terribly delighted at the opportunity to sell the books and imagined that he would sell them dearly, was evident in his first words, in the awkward haste with which he declared that books like his could not be obtained for any money. Through a semi-dark passage, where straw red from dampness was laid, he led Ivlev into a large hall. Is this where your father lived? asked Ivlev, entering and taking off his hat. “Yes, yes, here,” the young man hastened to answer. - That is, of course, not here ... after all, they mostly sat in the bedroom ... but, of course, they were here too ... “Yes, I know, he was ill,” said Ivlev. The young man flushed. - That is, what is sick? he said, and there was a more masculine note in his voice. “It’s all gossip, they weren’t mentally ill at all ... They just read everything and didn’t go out anywhere, that’s all ... No, please don’t take off your cap, it’s cold here, we don’t live in this half ... True, it was much colder in the house than outside. In the inhospitable entrance hall, covered with newspapers, on the windowsill of the window, sad from the clouds, stood a bast quail cage. A gray bag jumped on the floor by itself. Bending down, the young man caught him and laid him on a bench, and Ivlev realized that a quail was sitting in the bag; then they entered the hall. This room, with windows to the west and north, occupied almost half of the entire house. Through one window, on the gold clearing behind the clouds of dawn, one could see a hundred-year-old, all black weeping birch. The front corner was entirely occupied by a goddess without glasses, lined and hung with images; among them stood out both in size and antiquity an image in a silver robe, and on it, turning yellow with wax, as if with a dead body, lay wedding candles in pale green bows. “Forgive me, please,” Ivlev began, overcoming shame, “is your father ... “No, it is,” muttered the young man, instantly understanding him. - They bought these candles after her death ... and they even always wore a wedding ring ... The furniture in the hall was clumsy. But in the piers there were beautiful slides full of tea utensils and narrow, tall glasses in gold rims. And the floor was all covered with dry bees that clicked underfoot. The living room was also strewn with bees, completely empty. Having passed it and some other gloomy room with a couch, the young man stopped near a low door and took a large key from his trousers pocket. Turning it with difficulty in the rusty keyhole, he opened the door, muttered something, and Ivlev saw a closet with two windows; against one wall of it stood a bare iron bunk, against the other two bookcases made of Karelian birch. - Is this the library? Ivlev asked, approaching one of them. And the young man, hastening to answer in the affirmative, helped him open the cupboard, and greedily began to follow his hands. Strange books made up this library! Ivlev opened thick bindings, turned away a rough gray page and read: "The accursed tract" ... "Morning star and night demons" ... "Reflections on the mysteries of the universe" ... "A wonderful journey to a magical land" ... "The newest dream book "... But the hands still trembled slightly. So that's what that lonely soul fed on, that forever closed itself off from the world in this closet and left it so recently ... But, perhaps, this soul was really not completely insane? “There is being,” Ivlev recalled Baratynsky’s poems, “there is being, but what name should we call it? It is neither a dream nor a vigil, it is between them, and in a man it borders on madness with understanding ... ”It cleared in the west, gold looked from there from behind beautiful purple clouds and strangely illuminated this poor shelter of love, love incomprehensible, into what -some kind of ecstatic life that turned a whole human life, which, perhaps, should have been the most ordinary life, had it not been for some mysterious Lushka in her charm ... Taking a stool from under the bed, Ivlev sat down in front of the closet and took out cigarettes, imperceptibly looking around and memorizing the room. - Do you smoke? he asked the young man standing over him. He blushed again. “I smoke,” he muttered, and tried to smile. - That is, not that I smoke, rather I indulge ... But, by the way, allow me, I am very grateful to you ... And, awkwardly taking a cigarette, he lit a cigarette with trembling hands, went to the windowsill and sat down on it, blocking out the yellow light of dawn. - And what's that? Ivlev asked, leaning over to the middle shelf, on which lay only one very small book, resembling a prayer book, and there was a casket, the corners of which were trimmed in silver, darkened with time. "That's right... In this box is the necklace of the deceased mother," the young man stammered, but trying to speak casually. - Can I have a look? “Please… although it’s very simple… you can’t be interested…” And, opening the casket, Ivlev saw a frayed lace, a bunch of cheap blue balls that looked like stone ones. And such excitement seized him at the sight of these balls, which once lay on the neck of the one who was destined to be so loved and whose vague image could no longer but be beautiful, which rippled in the eyes from the heartbeat. Having seen enough, Ivlev carefully put the box back in its place; then took up the book. It was a tiny, charmingly published almost a hundred years ago, "The Grammar of Love, or the Art of Loving and Being Mutually Loved." “Unfortunately, I cannot sell this book,” the young man said with difficulty. - She is very expensive ... they even put her under their pillow ... "But maybe you'll let me see it at least?" Ivlev said. “Please,” the young man whispered. And, overcoming awkwardness, vaguely languishing with his gaze, Ivlev began to slowly leaf through the Grammar of Love. It was all divided into small chapters: “On beauty, on the heart, on the mind, on signs of love, on attack and defense, on disagreement and reconciliation, on Platonic love” ... Each chapter consisted of short, elegant, sometimes very subtle maxims , and some of them were delicately marked with pen, red ink. “Love is not a simple episode in our life,” Ivlev read. Our reason contradicts the heart and does not convince it. “Women are never as strong as when they arm themselves with weakness. We adore a woman because she rules over our ideal dream. Vanity chooses, true love does not choose. - A beautiful woman should occupy the second step; the first belongs to a lovely woman. This becomes the mistress of our heart: before we give an account of it to ourselves, our heart becomes a slave of love forever ... "Then there was an" explanation of the language of flowers ", and again something was noted:" Wild poppy - sadness. Heather-ice - your charm is imprinted in my heart. Graveyard - sweet memories. Sad geranium - melancholy. Wormwood is an eternal sorrow... And on a blank page at the very end there was a small, beaded quatrain written in the same red ink. The young man craned his neck, looking into the Grammar of Love, and said with a mock grin: They made it up themselves... Half an hour later, Ivlev said goodbye to him with relief. Of all the books, he bought only this little book for a high price. The cloudy golden dawn faded in the clouds beyond the fields, shone in the puddles, it was wet and green in the fields. The fellow was in no hurry, but Ivlev did not urge him. Maly told me that the woman who had been chasing turkeys through the burdocks the other day was the deacon's wife, and that young Khvoshchinsky lived with her. Ivlev did not listen. He kept thinking about Lushka, about her necklace, which left him with a complex feeling, similar to what he once experienced in an Italian town when looking at the relics of a saint. “She entered my life forever!” he thought. And, taking the Grammar of Love out of his pocket, he slowly reread in the light of dawn the verses written on its last page.

Ivan Alexandrovich Bunin made a huge contribution to Russian literature, although after the revolution he was forced to live abroad. Bunin's favorite theme was the theme of love. The first story devoted to this topic was "Grammar of Love".

The name (from Greek) means "the ability to read and write." An oxymoron is hidden under this phrase - the incompatible is combined. But the question that Bunin himself asks is also hiding: is it possible to learn love?

The story is told in simple language. Ivleev somehow finds the estate, which was ruined. Khvoshchinsky - the owner of this estate - died. People think he's a weirdo. He had a good place, a reputation, but fell in love with Lushka, but could not marry her because of his social position. They are born, and Khovashchinsky's wife dies, as their neighbors and residents say. Khvoshchinsky rarely leaves the house, reads books in his wife's former room. Ivleev visits his son to find out the secret. He looks around the room, books, so he finds a book called "The Grammar of Love, or the Art of Loving and Being Mutually Loved."

Ivleev, when he found the book, he understands that the "Grammar of Love" is a prayer book. He buys a book for a high price. Khvoshchinsky's story has become an example, a part of Ivleev's life.

Bunin in his work shows that love is the most valuable thing in life. Such love is high, meaningful. As in other works by Bunin, love does not last, it is eternal, it is fleeting, but it is stored in the heart.

For Khvoshchinsky, love has become the meaning of life, he lets this bright feeling into his life. That is why his life became happier, holier, more joyful. In the book that Ivleev found, there were notes of the owner, his history and grammar of love. Thus, the author shows that Khvoshchinsky acquires the spiritual meaning of life

Option 2

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is an outstanding writer who was concerned about the theme of love. He devoted many works specifically to questions about: what does this sublime feeling mean? What is its duration? And the thoughts of the creator poured into a short story called "Grammar of Love."

This book tells about the hero Ivlev, who inadvertently finds himself in the ruined estate of one owner who left this world. The son of the owner of the house is selling all the things that once belonged to his father Khvoshchinsky and his beloved Lushka. The owner “had been obsessed with love for her all his life,” but, since he was a nobleman, he was not supposed to marry a serf. And the son turned out to be illegitimate.

After the birth of a wonderful baby, his mother drowned herself, and Khvoshchinsky, having closed himself off from the whole world, sat down in a room where he instilled a passion for literature. In order to forget from painful grief, to drown out the feeling of guilt before his beloved, the character bought wedding candles, until the end of his life he did not part with the wedding ring. So much love sunk into his heart that he realized how painful it is to lose someone close to you. Bunin shows that there is a place for love in life, it must be, otherwise people will live their lives in vain, simply useless.

The protagonist, when visiting an unusual place, notices on the shelf a small book called "Grammar of Love", which the landowner's son is ready to sell for a large amount of money, despite the fact that this creation was very expensive and valuable for lovers. They put the book under the pillow, constantly turned to it.

Thus, the writer says that “love is not a simple episode in our life”, because this wonderful feeling is fleeting, fleeting. Love has a sad end. She eventually has a tragic end, but this is not a reason not to fall in love, not to discover a warm feeling. Love is delightful, because the minutes spent with the person you love are priceless. The wonderful world that you, even for a moment, create around you, gives light, hope, pleasant memories. For all this, it is worth waking up every day. “We must live, we must love, we must believe,” as Leo Tolstoy said. Let the feeling not last forever, let it eventually bring pain, suffering, but the important thing is that you have to face it, experience it for yourself, try to taste life! Therefore, Bunin, despite the tragic end, believes that love is the meaning of life, thanks to which the world becomes more interesting and beautiful!

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