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. This is also a good sign: “There is a lot of shade 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 of 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 a long convoy creaks in the dark 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:
- Get out, 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 - 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 velvet, 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 also being translated now...
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 brighter, 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, 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 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!
II
"Vigorous Antonovka - for a fun year." Village affairs are good if the Antonovka crop is cropped: that means the grain is cropped... I remember a fruitful year.
At early dawn, when the roosters were still crowing and the huts were smoking black, you would open the window into a cool garden filled with a lilac fog, through which the morning sun shines brightly here and there, and you couldn’t resist - you ordered to quickly saddle the horse, and you you will run to wash your face 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 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 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 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 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 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 years 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 Apollonich?
“Why, sir, father,” I clearly remember.
-- You see now. 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 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. Paneva is almost from the last century, the chestnuts are dead, 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 it was not yet fashionable to share in Vyselki. 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 brooms, 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 his bearded father-in-law, a dinner with hot lamb on wooden plates and with rushes, with honeycomb honey and mash - so much more impossible to wish!
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 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. 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 of the clear sky. There are falcons sitting 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 birches and willow trees. There are many outbuildings - low, but homely - and all of them seem to be made of dark oak logs under thatched roofs. The only thing that stands out in size, or better yet, in length, is the blackened human one, from which the last Mohicans of the courtyard class peep 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 bare. He used to work as a postilion for his aunt, and now he takes her to mass, in a cart in the winter, and in a strong, iron-bound cart, like the ones priests ride in in the summer. My aunt’s garden was famous for its neglect, nightingales, turtle doves and apples, and the house 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 facade 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 comfortable in this nest under the turquoise autumn sky!
You will enter the house and first of all you will smell the smell of apples, and then others: old mahogany furniture, dried linden blossoms that have been lying on the windows since June... In all the rooms - in the footman'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 a cough is heard: the 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, “bel-lady,” borovinka, “plodovitka,”—and then an amazing lunch: all pink boiled ham with peas, stuffed chicken, turkey, marinades and red kvass, strong and sweet... The windows to the garden are raised, and the cheerful autumn coolness blows from there.
III
In recent years, one thing has supported the fading spirit of the landowners - hunting.
Previously, such estates as 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 the sunlight sparkled dazzlingly between the foliage, between the branches, which moved like a living net and were agitated by the wind. The liquid blue sky shone coldly and brightly in the north above the heavy lead clouds, and from behind these clouds ridges of snowy mountain-clouds slowly floated out. You stand at the window and 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...
After such a scolding, 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 a 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 shorts 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 with smoke even more, 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 up” and rolled off into the distance.
- Take care! - someone screamed in a desperate voice throughout the forest.
"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 trees flash before my eyes and dirt from under the horse’s hooves smears in my face.
The great writer Ivan Alekseevich Bunin wrote his work “Antonov Apples” quickly, in just a few months. But he did not complete the work on the story, because he turned to his story again and again, changing the text. Each edition of this story had already changed and edited text. And this could easily be explained by the fact that the writer’s impressions were so vivid and deep that he wanted to show all this to his reader.
But a story like “Antonov Apples,” where there is no plot development, and the basis of the content is Bunin’s impressions and memories, is difficult to analyze. It is difficult to capture the emotions of a person who lives in the past. But Ivan Alekseevich manages to accurately convey sounds and colors, showing his unusual literary skill. Reading the story “Antonov Apples” you can understand what feelings and emotions the writer experienced. This is both pain and sadness that all this is left behind, as well as joy and tenderness for the ways of deep antiquity.
Bunin uses bright colors to describe colors, for example, black-lilac, gray-iron. Bunin’s descriptions are so deep that he even notices how the shadow of many objects falls. For example, from the flames in the garden in the evening he sees black silhouettes, which he compares with giants. By the way, there are a huge number of metaphors in the text. It is worth paying attention to the sundresses that girls wear at fairs: “sundresses that smell like paint.” Even the smell of Bunin's paint does not cause irritation, and this is another memory. And what words does he choose when he conveys his feelings from water! The writer’s character is not simply cold or transparent, but Ivan Alekseevich uses the following description of it: icy, heavy.
What is happening in the narrator’s soul, how strong and deep his experiences are, can be understood if we analyze those details in the work “Antonov Apples”, where he gives a detailed description of them. There is also a main character in the story - a barchuk, but his story is never revealed to the reader.
At the very beginning of his work, the writer uses one of the means of artistic expressiveness of speech. The gradation lies in the fact that the author very often repeats the word “remember,” which allows you to create a feeling of how carefully the writer treats his memories and is afraid of forgetting something.
The second chapter contains not only a description of a wonderful autumn, which is usually mysterious and even fabulous in villages. But the work tells about old women who were living out their lives and preparing to accept death. To do this, they put on a shroud, which was wonderfully painted and starched so that it stood like a stone on the body of the old women. The writer also recalled that, having prepared for death, such old women dragged gravestones into the yard, which now stood awaiting the death of their mistress.
The writer’s memories take the reader in the second part to another estate, which belonged to Ivan Alekseevich’s cousin. Anna Gerasimovna lived on her own, so she was always happy to visit her old estate. The road to this estate still appears before the narrator’s eyes: a lush and spacious blue sky, the well-trodden and well-trodden road seems to the writer the most expensive and so dear. Bunin’s description of both the road and the estate itself evokes a great feeling of regret that all this is a thing of the distant past.
The description of the telegraph poles that the narrator encountered on the way to his aunt is sad and sad to read. They were like silver strings, and the birds sitting on them seemed to the writer like musical notes. But even here, on the aunt’s estate, the narrator again remembers the smell of Antonov apples.
The third part takes the reader into deep autumn, when after cold and prolonged rains, the sun finally begins to appear. And again the estate of another landowner - Arseny Semenovich, who was a great lover of hunting. And again one can see the author’s sadness and regret that the spirit of the landowner, who honored both his roots and the entire Russian culture, has now faded away. But now that former way of life has been lost, and it is now impossible to return the former noble way of life in Rus'.
In the fourth chapter of the story “Antonov Apples,” Bunin sums it up by saying that the smell of Antonov apples has disappeared no more than the smell of childhood, which was associated with the life and everyday life of the local nobility. And it is impossible to see either those old people, or the glorious landowners, or those glorious times. And the last lines of the story “I covered the road with white snow” lead the reader to the fact that it is no longer impossible to return the old Russia, its former life.
The story “Antonov Apples” is a kind of ode, enthusiastic, but sad and sad, imbued with love, which is dedicated to Russian nature, life in the villages and the patriarchal way of life that existed in Rus'. The story is small in volume, but quite a lot is conveyed in it. Bunin has pleasant memories of that time; they are filled with spirituality and poetry.
“Antonov Apples” is Bunin’s hymn to his homeland, which, although it remained in the past, far from him, still remained forever in the memory of Ivan Alekseevich, and was for him like the best and purest time, the time of his spiritual development.
Such works, created in the early period of Ivan Alekseevich’s work, include the story “Antonov Apples”, in which the sadness and grief of the writer himself is felt. The main theme of this Bunin masterpiece is that the writer points out the main problem of society of that time - the disappearance of the former estate life, and this is the tragedy of the Russian village.
History of the story
In the early autumn of 1891, Bunin visited the village with his brother Evgeniy Alekseevich. And at the same time, he writes a letter to his common-law wife Varvara Pashchenko, in which he shares his impressions of the morning smell of Antonov apples. He saw how the autumn morning began in the villages and he was struck by the cold and gray dawn. The old grandfather’s estate, which now stands abandoned, also evokes pleasant feelings, but once upon a time it hummed and lived.
He writes that with great pleasure he would return to the time when landowners were honored. He writes to Varvara about what he experienced then, going out onto the porch early in the morning: “I would like to live like the old landowner! Get up at dawn, leave for the “departing field”, don’t get out of the saddle all day, and in the evening with a healthy appetite, with a healthy fresh mood, return home through the darkened fields.”
And only nine years later, in 1899 or 1900, Bunin decides to write the story “Antonov Apples”, which was based on reflections and impressions from visiting his brother’s village estate. It is believed that the prototype of the hero of Arseny Semenych’s story was a distant relative of the writer himself.
Despite the fact that the work was published in the year it was written, Bunin continued to edit the text for another twenty years. The first publication of the work took place in 1900 in the tenth issue of the St. Petersburg magazine “Life”. This story also had a subtitle: “Pictures from the book “Epitaphs.” For the second time, this work, already revised by Bunin, was included in the collection “The Pass” without a subtitle. It is known that in this edition the writer removed several paragraphs from the beginning of the work.
But if you compare the text of the story with the 1915 edition, when the story “Antonov Apples” was published in the Complete Works of Bunin, or with the text of the work in 1921, which was published in the collection “Initial Love,” then you can see their significant difference.
Plot of the story
The story takes place in early autumn, when the rains were still warm. In the first chapter, the narrator shares his feelings that he experiences in a village estate. So, the morning is fresh and damp, and the gardens are golden and already noticeably thinned out. But most of all, the smell of Antonov apples is imprinted in the narrator’s memory. The bourgeois gardeners hired peasants to harvest the crops, so voices and the creaking of carts can be heard everywhere in the garden. At night, carts loaded with apples leave for the city. At this time, a man can eat plenty of apples.
Usually a large hut is placed in the middle of the garden, which becomes settled over the summer. An earthen stove appears next to it, all sorts of belongings are lying around, and in the hut itself there are single beds. At lunchtime, this is where food is prepared, and in the evening they put out a samovar and the smoke from it pleasantly spreads throughout the area. And on holidays, fairs are held near such a hut. Serf girls dress up in bright sundresses. An “old woman” also arrives, which somewhat resembles a Kholmogory cow. But not so much people buy something, but come here more for fun. They dance and sing. Closer to dawn it begins to get fresh, and the people disperse.
The narrator also hurries home and in the depths of the garden observes an incredibly 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.”
And he also sees a picture: “Then a black hand several arshins in size will fall across the entire tree, then two legs will clearly appear - two black pillars.”
Having reached the hut, the narrator will playfully fire a rifle shot a couple of times. He will spend a long time admiring the constellations in the sky and exchange a few phrases with Nikolai. And only when his eyes begin to close and a cool night shiver runs through his entire body, he decides to go home. And at this moment the narrator begins to understand how good life is in the world.
In the second chapter, the narrator will remember a good and fruitful year. But, as people say, if Antonovka is a success, then the rest of the harvest will be good. Autumn is also a wonderful time for hunting. People already dress differently in the fall, since the harvest is harvested and difficult work is left behind. It was interesting for the storyteller-barchuk to communicate at such a time with old men and women, and to observe them. In Rus' it was believed that the longer old people live, the richer the village. The houses of such old people were different from others; they were built by their grandfathers.
The men lived well, and the narrator even at one time wanted to try to live like a man in order to experience all the joys of such a life. On the narrator’s estate, serfdom was not felt, but it became noticeable on the estate of Anna Gerasimovna’s aunt, who lived only twelve miles from Vyselki. The signs of serfdom for the author were:
☛ Low outbuildings.
☛ All the servants leave the servants’ room and bow low and low.
☛ A small old and solid manor.
☛ Huge garden
The narrator remembers his aunt very well when she, coughing, entered the room where he was waiting for her. She was small, but also somehow solid, like her house. But most of all the writer remembers the amazing dinners with her.
In the third chapter, the narrator regrets that the old estates and the order established in them have gone somewhere. The only thing left from all this is hunting. But of all these landowners, only the writer’s brother-in-law, Arseny Semenovich, remained. Usually towards the end of September the weather deteriorated and it rained continuously. At this time the garden became deserted and boring. But October brought a new time to the estate, when the landowners gathered at their brother-in-law's and rushed to hunt. What a wonderful time it was! The hunt lasted for weeks. The rest of the time it was a pleasure to read old books from the library and listen to the silence.
In the fourth chapter, the writer hears the bitterness and regret that the smell of Antonov apples no longer reigns in the villages. The inhabitants of the noble estates also disappeared: Anna Gerasimovna died, and the hunter’s brother-in-law shot himself.
Artistic Features
It is worthwhile to dwell in more detail on the composition of the story. So, the story consists of four chapters. But it is worth noting that some researchers do not agree with the definition of the genre and argue that “Antonov Apples” is a story.
The following artistic features can be highlighted in Bunin’s story “Antonov Apples”:
✔ The plot, which is a monologue, is a memory.
✔ There is no traditional plot.
✔ The plot is very close to the poetic text.
The narrator gradually changes chronological pictures, trying to guide the reader from the past to what is happening in reality. For Bunin, the ruined houses of the nobles are a historical drama that is comparable to the saddest and saddest times of the year:
Generous and bright summer is the past rich and beautiful home of landowners and their family estates.
Autumn is a period of withering, the collapse of foundations that have been formed over centuries.
Researchers of Bunin's creativity also pay attention to the pictorial descriptions that the writer uses in his work. It’s as if he’s trying to paint a picture, but only a verbal one.
Ivan Alekseevich uses a lot of pictorial details. Bunin, like A.P. Chekhov, resorts to symbols in his depiction: ★ The image of a garden is a symbol of harmony.
★ The image of apples is both a continuation of life, kindred, and love for life.
Story Analysis
Bunin’s work “Antonov Apples” is a reflection by writers on the fate of the local nobility, which gradually faded away and disappeared. The writer’s heart aches with sadness when he sees vacant lots in the place where only yesterday there were busy noble estates. An unsightly picture opens before his eyes: only ashes remain from the landowners' estates and now they are overgrown with burdocks and nettles.
Sincerely, the author of the story “Antonov Apples” worries about any character in his work, living with him all the trials and anxieties. The writer has created a unique work, where one of his impressions, creating a bright and rich picture, is smoothly replaced by another, no less thick and dense.
Criticism of the story "Antonov Apples"
Bunin's contemporaries highly appreciated his work, since the writer especially loves and knows nature and village life. He himself belongs to the last generation of writers who come from noble estates.
But critics' reviews were mixed. Yuliy Isaevich Aikhenvald, who was in great authority at the beginning of the 20th century, gives the following review of Bunin’s work: “Bunin’s stories, dedicated to this antiquity, sing its departure.”
Maxim Gorky, in a letter to Bunin, which was written in November 1900, gave his assessment: “Here Ivan Bunin, like a young god, sang. Beautiful, juicy, soulful. No, it’s good when nature creates a person as a nobleman, it’s good!”
But Gorky will re-read Bunin’s work itself many more times. And already in 1901, in a letter to his best friend Pyatnitsky, he wrote his new impressions:
“Antonov apples smell good - yes! - but - they do not smell democratic at all... Ah, Bunin!
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 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:
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 brighter, 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 already just outside the garden, the noisy beat of the wheels is rapidly beating out: 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 - for 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 mahogany furniture, dried linden blossoms, which have 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 windows are 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... The windows to the garden are raised, and from there the cheerful autumn coolness blows...
III
In recent years, one thing has 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 fluttering golden light of the low sun made its way in the west, the air became clean and clear, and the sunlight sparkled dazzlingly between the leaves, between the branches, which moved like a living net and were agitated by the wind. The liquid blue sky shone coldly and brightly in the north above the heavy lead clouds, and from behind these clouds ridges of snowy mountain-clouds slowly floated out. 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 a 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 with smoke even more, 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 up” 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 trees flash before my eyes and dirt from under the horse’s hooves smears in 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 by 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... Good 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. Those 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 knock 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 dimly lit, warm house. Behind the door in the corridor, the old cook, who lived in the manor's 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; the hounds surround him, lazily stretching, yawning and smiling.
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 author-narrator recalls the recent past. He remembers the early fine autumn, the whole golden, dried up and thinning garden, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and the smell of Antonov apples: gardeners are pouring apples onto carts to send them to the city. Late at night, having run out into the garden and talked with the guards guarding the garden, he looks into the dark blue depths of the sky, crowded with constellations, looks for a long, long time until the earth floats under his feet, feeling how good it is to live in the world!
The narrator recalls his Vyselki, which since the time of his grandfather had been known in the area as a rich village. Old men and women lived there for a long time - the first sign of prosperity. The houses in Vyselki were brick and strong. The average noble life had much in common with the rich peasant life. He remembers his aunt Anna Gerasimovna, her estate - small, but strong, old, surrounded by hundred-year-old trees. My aunt’s garden was famous for its apple trees, nightingales and turtle doves, and the house for its roof: its thatched roof was unusually thick and high, blackened and hardened by time. In the house, first of all, the smell of apples was felt, and then other smells: old mahogany furniture, dried linden blossom.
The narrator remembers his late brother-in-law Arseny Semenych, a landowner-hunter, in whose large house many people gathered, everyone had a hearty dinner, and then went hunting. A horn blows in the yard, dogs howl in different voices, the owner’s favorite, a black greyhound, climbs onto the table and devours the remains of a hare with sauce from the dish. The author remembers himself riding an angry, strong and squat “Kyrgyz”: trees flash before his eyes, the screams of hunters and the barking of dogs are heard in the distance. From the ravines there is a smell of mushroom dampness and wet tree bark. It gets dark, the whole gang of hunters pours into the estate of some almost unknown bachelor hunter and, it happens, lives with him for several days. After a whole day spent hunting, the warmth of a crowded house is especially pleasant. When I happened to oversleep the hunt the next morning, I could spend the whole day in the master's library, leafing through old magazines and books, looking at the notes in their margins. Family portraits look from the walls, an old dreamy life appears before your eyes, your grandmother is sadly remembered...
But the old people in Vyselki died, Anna Gerasimovna died, Arseny Semenych shot himself. The kingdom of small landed nobles, impoverished to the point of beggary, is coming. But this small-scale life is also good! The narrator happened to visit a neighbor. He gets up early, orders the samovar to be put on, and, putting on his boots, goes out onto the porch, where he is surrounded by hounds. It will be a nice day for hunting! Only they don’t hunt along the black trail with hounds, oh, if only they were greyhounds! But he doesn’t have greyhounds... However, with the onset of winter, again, as in the old days, small estates come 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: candles are burning there, clouds of smoke are floating, they are playing the guitar, singing...
