Analysis of the work of Olesya Kuprin. Analysis of individual works by A. I. Kuprin What is the meaning of Olesya's life

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin is a wonderful master of words. He managed to reflect in his work the most powerful, sublime and subtle human experiences. Love is a wonderful feeling that tests a person like litmus paper. Not many people have the ability to love deeply and sincerely. This is the lot of strong natures. It is these people who attract the attention of the writer. Harmonious people, living in harmony with themselves and nature, are the ideal of the writer, he brings out such a heroine in the story “Olesya”.

A simple Polissya girl lives surrounded by nature. She listens to sounds and rustles, “understands” the voices of animals, is quite happy with her life and freedom. She is self-sufficient. She has enough of the social circle that she has. Olesya knows and understands the surrounding forest, she reads nature as mysterious and interesting book. “With both hands, she carefully supported a striped apron, from which peeped out three tiny bird heads with red necks and black shiny eyes. “Look, grandmother, the finches have followed me again,” she exclaimed, laughing loudly, “look how funny ... completely hungry.” And I, as if on purpose, had no bread with me.”

But the collision with the world of people brings Olesya, it seems, some hardships and experiences. Local peasants consider Olesya and her grandmother Manuilikha to be sorceresses. They are ready to blame these poor women for all the troubles. Once, human anger has already driven them from their homes, and now Olesya has the only desire to be left alone:

As if they would leave me and my grandmother alone, it would be better, otherwise ...

But the cruel world of people knows no mercy. Olesya is smart and perspicacious in her own way. She knows perfectly well what a meeting with a city dweller, "panych Ivan" brings to her. Love - a beautiful and sublime feeling - turns into death for this "daughter of nature." She doesn't fit in the world malice and envy, self-interest and hypocrisy.

The unusualness of the heroine, her beauty and independence inspire people around her with hatred, fear, anger. The peasants are ready to take out all their misfortunes and troubles on Oles and Manuilikha. Their unconscious fear of the "witches", which they consider to be poor women, is fueled by impunity for the massacre of them. Olesya's coming to church is not a challenge to the village, but a desire to reconcile with the surrounding world of people, to understand those among whom her beloved lives. The hatred of the crowd gave birth to a response. Olesya threatens the villagers who beat and insulted her: - Well! .. You still remember this from me! You are still crying your fill!

Now there can be no reconciliation. Righteousness was on the side of the strong. Olesya is a fragile and beautiful flower that is destined to perish in this cruel world.

In the story "Olesya" Kuprin showed the inevitability of the collision and death of the natural and fragile world of harmony when it comes into contact with cruel reality.

Olesya - "solid, original , a free nature, her mind, both clear and shrouded in unshakable mediocre superstition, childishly innocent, but not without sly coquetry beautiful woman”, and Ivan Timofeevich -“ although a kind man, but only weak. They belong to different social strata: Ivan Timofeevich is an educated person, a writer who came to Polesie to “observe morals”, and Olesya is a “witcher”, an uneducated girl who grew up in the forest. But, despite these differences, they fell in love with each other. However, their love was different: Ivan Timofeevich was attracted by the beauty, tenderness, femininity, naivety of Olesya, and she, on the contrary, was aware of all his shortcomings and knew that their love was doomed, but, despite this, she loved him with all her ardent soul as only a woman can love. Her love makes me admire, because Olesya for the sake of her beloved was ready for anything, for any sacrifice. After all, for the sake of Ivan Timofeevich, she went to church, although she knew that this would end tragically for her.

But I don’t consider Poroshin’s love as pure and generous. He knew that misfortune might happen if Olesya went to church, but did nothing to stop her: “Suddenly, a horror of foreboding seized me. I had an irresistible desire to run after Olesya, catch up with her and beg, beg, even demand, if necessary, that she not go to church. But I restrained my unexpected impulse ... ”Ivan Timofeevich, although he loved Olesya, was at the same time afraid of this love. It was this fear that prevented him from marrying her: “Only one circumstance frightened and stopped me: I did not even dare to imagine what Olesya would be like, dressed in a human dress, talking in the living room with the wives of my colleagues, torn out of this charming frame of the old forest” .

The tragedy of love between Olesya and Ivan Timofeevich is the tragedy of people who "broke out" from their social environment. The fate of Olesya herself is tragic, because she differed sharply from the Perebrod peasants, primarily in her pure, open soul, the wealth of her inner world. This is what gave rise to the hatred of callous, limited people for Olesya. And, as you know, people always strive to destroy the one they do not understand, the one who is different from them. Therefore, Olesya is forced to part with her beloved and flee from her native forest.

It is also impossible not to say about the literary skill of A. I. Kuprin. Before us are pictures of nature, portraits, the inner world of heroes, characters, moods - all this deeply struck me. The story "Olesya" is a hymn to the wonderful primordial feeling of love and the personification of the most beautiful and dearest thing that can be in the life of any of us.

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin often painted in his works perfect image a “natural” person, one who is not subject to the corrupting influence of light, whose soul is pure, free, who is close to nature, lives in it, lives with it in one impulse. A striking example of the disclosure of the theme of "natural" man is the story "Olesya".

The story described in the story did not appear by chance. Once A.I. Kuprin stayed in Polissya with the landowner Ivan Timofeevich Poroshin, who told the writer the mysterious story of his relationship with a certain sorceress. It was this story, enriched with fiction, that formed the basis of Kuprin's work.

The first publication of the story took place in the magazine "Kievlyanin" in 1898, the work was subtitled "From the memories of Volyn", which emphasized the real basis of the events taking place in the story.

Genre and direction

Alexander Ivanovich worked at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, when the controversy between two trends gradually began to flare up: realism and modernism, which was just beginning to assert itself. Kuprin belongs to the realistic tradition in Russian literature, so the story "Olesya" can be safely attributed to realistic works.

According to the genre, the work is a story, since it is dominated by a chronicle plot that reproduces the natural course of life. The reader lives through all the events, day after day, following the main character Ivan Timofeevich.

essence

The action takes place in the small village of Perebrod, Volyn province, on the outskirts of Polissya. The young master-writer is bored, but one day fate takes him to the swamp to the house of the local witch Manuilikha, where he meets the beautiful Olesya. A feeling of love flares up between Ivan and Olesya, but the young sorceress sees that her death awaits if she connects her fate with an unexpected guest.

But love is stronger than prejudice and fear, Olesya wants to deceive fate. For the sake of Ivan Timofeevich, a young witch goes to church, although she is forbidden to enter there due to her occupation and origin. She makes it clear to the hero that she will commit this bold act, which can lead to irreparable consequences, but Ivan does not understand this and does not have time to save Olesya from the angry mob. The heroine is severely beaten. In retaliation, she sends a curse on the village, and on the same night there is a terrible thunderstorm. Knowing the power of human anger, Manuilikha and her pupil hurriedly leave the house in the swamp. When a young man comes to this dwelling in the morning, he finds only red beads, as a symbol of their short but true love with Olesya.

Main characters and their characteristics

The main characters of the story are the master writer Ivan Timofeevich and the forest sorceress Olesya. Completely different, they got together, but could not be happy together.

Characteristics of Ivan Timofeevich. He is a kind, sensitive person. He was able to discern a living, natural beginning in Oles, because he himself was not yet completely killed secular society. The mere fact that he left the noisy cities for the village speaks volumes. The heroine is not just for him beautiful girl She is a mystery to him. This strange sorceress believes in conspiracies, guesses, communicates with spirits - she is a sorceress. And it all attracts the hero. He wants to see, to learn something new, real, not covered up by falsehood and far-fetched etiquette. But at the same time, Ivan himself is still in the power of the world, he thinks about marrying Olesya, but he is embarrassed by how she, a savage, will appear in the halls of the capital.
Olesya is the ideal of a “natural” person. She was born and lived in the forest, nature was her tutor. Olesya's world is a world of harmony with the outside world. Moreover, she is in agreement with her inner world. It is possible to note such qualities main character: she is wayward, straightforward, sincere, she does not know how to play smart, pretend. The young sorceress is smart, kind, one has only to remember the first meeting of the reader with her, because she gently carried the chicks in her hem. One of the main features of Olesya can be called insubordination, which she inherited from Manuilikha. Both of them seem to be against the whole world: they live aloof in their swamp, do not profess an official religion. Even knowing that you can’t escape fate, the young sorceress still tries, flatters herself with the hope that everything will work out with Ivan. She is original and unshakable, despite the fact that love is still alive, she leaves, leaves everything, without looking back. The image and characterization of Olesya are available.

Themes

The main theme of the story- Olesya's love, her readiness for self-sacrifice - is the center of the work. Ivan Timofeevich was lucky to meet with a real feeling.
Another important semantic branch is the theme of confrontation between the ordinary world and the world of natural people. The inhabitants of the village, the capitals, Ivan Timofeevich himself are representatives of everyday thinking, riddled with prejudices, conventions, clichés. The worldview of Olesya and Manuilikha is freedom, open feelings. In connection with these two heroes, the theme of nature appears. The environment is the cradle that brought up the main character, an indispensable assistant, thanks to which Manuilikha and Olesya live far from people and civilization without need, nature gives them everything they need for life. This topic is most fully disclosed in this.
The role of the landscape in the story is huge. It is a reflection of the feelings of the characters, their relationship. So, at the beginning of the novel, we see a sunny spring, and at the end, a break in relations is accompanied by a strong thunderstorm. We wrote more about this in this.

Problems

The subject matter of the story is varied. First, the writer sharply outlines the conflict between society and those who do not fit into it. So, once Manuilikha was cruelly expelled from the village, Olesya herself was beaten, although both sorceresses did not show any aggression towards the villagers. Society is not ready to accept those who differ from them in at least something, who do not try to pretend, because they want to live according to their own rules, and not according to the template of the majority.

The problem of attitude towards Olesya manifests itself most clearly in the scene of her going to church. For the Russian Orthodox people of the village, it was a real insult that the one who serves evil spirits, in their opinion, appeared in the temple of Christ. At the church, where people ask for God's mercy, they themselves administered a cruel and merciless judgment. Perhaps the writer wanted to show on the basis of this antithesis that the idea of righteousness, kindness, and fairness has been distorted in society.

Meaning

The idea of the story is that people who grew up far from civilization turn out to be much nobler, more delicate, more polite and kinder than the “civilized” society itself. The author hints at the fact that the herd life stupefies the personality and erases its individuality. The crowd is submissive and promiscuous, and often the worst of its members, not the best, take over. Primitive instincts or acquired stereotypes, such as misinterpreted morality, lead the collective to degradation. So, the inhabitants of the village show themselves to be more savages than two witches living in a swamp.

Kuprin's main idea is that people must turn to nature again, must learn to live in harmony with the world and with themselves, so that their cold hearts will melt. Olesya tried to open the world of real feelings to Ivan Timofeevich. He failed to understand it in time, but the mysterious sorceress and her red beads will remain in his heart forever.

Conclusion

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin in his story "Olesya" tried to create the ideal of man, to show the problems of the artificial world, to open people's eyes to the driven and immoral society that surrounds them.

The life of the wayward, unshakable Olesya was to some extent destroyed by the touch of the secular world in the person of Ivan Timofeevich. The writer wanted to show that we ourselves destroy the beauty that fate gives us, simply because we are blind, blind in soul.

Criticism

The story "Olesya" is one of famous works A.I. Kuprin. The strength and talent of the story were appreciated by the writer's contemporaries.

K. Barkhin called the work a "forest symphony", noting the smoothness and beauty of the work's language.

Maxim Gorky noted the youthfulness and immediacy of the story.

Thus, the story "Olesya" occupies an important place, both in the work of A.I. Kuprin, and in the history of Russian classical literature.

Alexander Kuprin wrote the story "Olesya" under the impression of a trip to Polesye, stories, legends and traditions heard there. The story uses the features of an ethnographic essay: a description of local customs, folklore elements, dialect vocabulary. Let's spend brief analysis story "Olesya", and look at some of the features of the work. On our website you can also read a summary of "Olesya" Kuprin.

The plot of the story "Olesya"

The story "Olesya", which we are analyzing, is dedicated to the love story of Ivan Timofeevich and the Polissya "sorceress". The relationship of the characters reveal the characters of each of them. The narration is conducted in the past tense, the narrator Ivan Timofeevich recalls the events that happened to him during a trip to one of the Polissya villages. There he hunted, treated the peasants, studied manners. He was interested in the story of the witch Manuilikha, who lived in these places.

Once, while hunting, Ivan Timofeevich wandered into her hut. There the narrator met Olesya, Manuilikha's granddaughter. The girl was so unusual that Ivan Timofeevich fell in love with her, " beautiful fairy tale love" is depicted surrounded by a mysterious forest. They thought about getting married. For the sake of love, Olesya decided to go to church on Trinity, but the village women kicked her out and beat her, as they considered her a witch. Olesya shouted in her hearts that they would regret it. The next day there was a thunderstorm with hail. Olesya and her grandmother had to flee, otherwise they would face reprisals from local residents. As a memory of herself, she left a string of coral beads for Ivan Timofeevich. Although this description is not named summary, without him, after all, it is difficult to imagine an analysis of the story "Olesya".

Features of romanticism in the story "Olesya" by Kuprin

The work has a number of features that make it possible to call it romantic. First of all, this is the opposition of the ordinary world and the ideal world. The dull reality appears in the depiction of the life of the protagonist in a distant village, the customs of the peasants. Kuprin shows their ignorance, rudeness and cruelty of actions. Ivan Timofeevich himself is an indecisive and weak-willed person. The ideal and poetic dream is embodied in the image of Olesya and her peaceful life in the bosom of nature.

The romantic ideal is the fleeting happiness of lovers surrounded by “blazing evening dawns”, the smells of lily of the valley and honey, “the sonorous bird noise”. Nature reflects the sublime and beautiful feelings of the characters.

At the heart of romanticism is an exceptional personality. Such is the main character of the story - Olesya. Continuing the analysis of the story "Olesya", we turn directly to the image of the main character.

The image of the main character

The first appearance of Olesya in the story is unusual. At first, Ivan Timofeevich, sitting in Manuilikha's hut, hears a song that Olesya sings, only then a girl appears. "Fresh, strong and sonorous voice" shows the youth and beauty of Olesya, who grew up in the forest. Kuprin draws the image of Olesya with the help of a psychological portrait: original beauty, “an elusive shade of slyness, dominance and naivety”, shiny, dark eyes, a masterful curve of the lips. All this shows the decisive, strong character of Olesya, at the same time her childishness and kindness. It is no coincidence that Olesya appears for the first time, carrying in her hands the chicks that "tagged" behind her. This idea is very important when we analyze the story "Olesya".

The girl considers herself a real witch. She knows how to tell fortunes on cards, understands the language of birds, speaks and stops the blood, shows many more "tricks" (as Ivan Timofeevich calls them).

Olesya's love is as beautiful as evening and morning dawns, it is no coincidence that many years later, for the narrator, the image of her beloved remains inextricably linked with the June freshness of nature. He notes the subtle delicacy and sensitivity of the girl. She is ready to do anything for love.

One of the tests was for the "witch" going to church. She knew how this could turn out for her, because the locals hated witches. But even after Olesya paid for this act, she never reproached Ivan Timofeevich. An analysis of the story "Olesya" by Kuprin shows that the girl turns out to be bolder and taller than a man who cannot decide what to do. He loves Olesya, but cannot imagine that she will turn out to be his wife, the hostess of secular evenings. The hero's hesitation leads to the fact that Olesya and her grandmother leave, and he remembers his beloved and lost happiness all his life.

We hope that this article, which presented a brief analysis of the story "Olesya", will help you better understand the meaning of the work and Kuprin's intention. Visit our literary blog - there are hundreds of articles on similar topics. You may also be interested

1) The problem of tolerance / cruelty.

Local peasants consider Olesya and her grandmother Manuilikha to be witches, so the villagers are ready to blame them for all their troubles. One day, human hatred made them leave their homes, and now Olesya has the only desire to be left alone.

2) The problem of loneliness.

Olesya and her grandmother Manuilikha are not accepted into their ranks by the locals, considering them to be sorceresses. Because of this, poor women are forced to live in a hut, which is located in the forest, away from the village and its inhabitants.

3) Problem tragic love.

Ivan Timofeevich, indecisive and cautious, cannot go against the rules of his environment. He doesn't know how to take care of others. One day he confronts Olesya with a choice between himself and her grandmother. This leads to the need for the girl and her relative to leave the village, because they are in danger from the locals.

4) The problem of the influence of the beauty of nature on man.

Olesya grew up in harmony with nature. Thanks to this, various talents are developed in her, for example, healing. She has not only physical, but also spiritual beauty. Living in solitude with nature endowed the girl with curiosity. The city and civilization are the embodiment of human vices for Olesya.

5) The problem of education.

The woodsman Yarmola is good at housekeeping, but he is not literate. According to him, there are no literate people in the village. Yarmola asks Ivan Timofeevich to teach him how to write, so that he can sign for the whole village if necessary.

Updated: 2018-03-30

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The tragedy of two hearts at the edge of the forest

"Olesya" is one of the first major works of the author and, in his own words, one of his most beloved. It is logical to start the analysis of the story with the prehistory. In 1897, Alexander Kuprin served as an estate manager in the Rivne district of the Volyn province. Young man I was impressed by the beauty of Polissya and the complex fate of the inhabitants of this region. On the basis of what he saw, a cycle of "Polesye stories" was written, the decoration of which was the story "Olesya".

Despite the fact that the work was created by a young author, it attracts literary critics with complex problems, the depth of the characters of the main characters, and amazing landscape sketches. According to the composition, the story "Olesya" is a retrospective. The narration comes from the perspective of the narrator, who recalls the events of the past days.

The intellectual Ivan Timofeevich comes from big city stay in the remote village of Perebrod, in Volhynia. This reserved land seems very strange to him. On the threshold of the 20th century, technical and natural sciences are rapidly developing, and enormous social transformations are taking place in the world. And here it seems that time has stopped. And people in this region believe not only in God, but also in goblin, devils, water and other otherworldly characters. Christian traditions closely intertwined in Polissya with pagan. This is the first conflict in the story: civilization and wildlife live by completely different laws.

Another conflict follows from their confrontation: people brought up in such different conditions cannot be together. Therefore, Ivan Timofeevich, who personifies the world of civilization, and the sorceress Olesya, who lives according to the laws of the wild, are doomed to parting.

The closeness of Ivan and Olesya is the culmination of the story. Despite the mutual sincerity of feelings, the characters' understanding of love and duty differ significantly. Olesya behaves much more responsibly in a difficult situation. She is not afraid of further events, only one thing is important that she is loved. Ivan Timofeevich, on the contrary, is weak and indecisive. In principle, he is ready to marry Olesya and take her to the city with him, but he really does not understand how this is possible. Ivan in love is not capable of an act, because he is used to going with the flow in life.

But one in the field is not a warrior. Therefore, even the sacrifice of a young sorceress, when she decides to go to church for the sake of her chosen one, does not save the situation. A beautiful but short tale of mutual love ends tragically. Olesya and her mother are forced to flee their home, fleeing the wrath of superstitious peasants. Only a string of red corals remains in memory of her.

The story of the tragic love of an intellectual and a sorceress inspired the film adaptation of the work of the Soviet director Boris Ivchenko. The main roles in his film "Olesya" (1971) were played by Gennady Voropaev and Lyudmila Chursina. And fifteen years earlier, the French director Andre Michel, based on the story of Kuprin, made the film "The Sorceress" with Marina Vladi.