The sunstroke story is the story of creation. IV

« Sunstroke”, like most of Bunin's prose of the emigration period, has a love theme. In it, the author shows that shared feelings can give rise to a serious love drama.

L.V. Nikulin in his book "Chekhov, Bunin, Kuprin: Literary Portraits" indicates that the story "Sunstroke" was originally called the author "A Chance Acquaintance", then Bunin changes the name to "Xenia". However, both of these names were crossed out by the author, because. they did not create Bunin's mood, "sound" (the first simply reported the event, the second called the potential name of the heroine).

The writer settled on the third, most successful option - "Sunstroke", which figuratively conveys the state experienced by the main character of the story and helps to reveal the essential features of Bunin's vision of love: suddenness, brightness, short duration of a feeling that instantly captures a person and, as it were, burns him to ashes.

Little is known about the main characters in the story. The author does not indicate names or ages. With this technique, the writer, as it were, elevates his heroes above the environment, time and circumstances. There are two main characters in the story - the lieutenant and his companion. They had only known each other for a day and could not imagine that an unexpected acquaintance could turn into a feeling that none of them had experienced in their entire lives. But the lovers are forced to leave, because. in the understanding of the writer, everyday life is contraindicated in love, they can only destroy and kill it.

Here, a direct, polemic with one of the famous stories of A.P. Chekhov's "Lady with a Dog", where the same unexpected meeting of the characters and the love that visited them continues, develops in time, overcomes the test of everyday life. The author of "Sunstroke" could not make such a plot decision, because "ordinary life" does not arouse his interest and lies outside his love concept.

The writer does not immediately give his characters the opportunity to realize everything that happened to them. The whole story of the rapprochement of the heroes is a kind of exposition of action, preparation for the shock that will happen in the soul of the lieutenant later, and in which he will not immediately believe. This happens after the hero, having seen off his fellow traveler, returns to the room. At first, the lieutenant is struck by a strange feeling of emptiness in his room.

In the further development of the action, the contrast between the absence of the heroine in the real surrounding space and her presence in the soul and memory of the protagonist gradually intensifies. The inner world of the lieutenant is filled with a feeling of implausibility, unnaturalness of everything that happened and the unbearable pain of loss.

The writer conveys the painful love experiences of the hero through changes in his mood. At first, the lieutenant's heart shrinks with tenderness, he yearns, while trying to hide his confusion. Then there is a kind of dialogue between the lieutenant and himself.

Bunin pays special attention to the gestures of the hero, his facial expressions and views. Equally important are his impressions, which manifest themselves in the form of phrases spoken aloud, quite elementary, but percussive. Only occasionally is the reader given the opportunity to know the thoughts of the hero. In this way, Bunin builds his psychological author's analysis - both secret and explicit.

The hero tries to laugh, to drive away sad thoughts, but he does not succeed. Every now and then he sees objects that remind of a stranger: a crumpled bed, a hairpin, an unfinished cup of coffee; smells her perfume. This is how flour and longing are born, leaving no trace of the former lightness and carelessness. Showing the abyss that lay between the past and the present, the writer emphasizes the subjective-lyrical experience of time: the present momentary, spent together with the characters and the eternity into which time grows for the lieutenant without a beloved.

After parting with the heroine, the lieutenant realizes that his life has lost all meaning. It is even known that in one of the editions of "Sunstroke" it was written that the lieutenant stubbornly matured the thought of suicide. So, literally before the eyes of the reader, a kind of metamorphosis is taking place: in the place of a completely ordinary and unremarkable army lieutenant, a person has appeared who thinks in a new way, suffers and feels ten years older.

In the work of I. A. Bunin, perhaps, the theme of love occupies a leading place. Bunin's love is always a tragic feeling that has no hope for a happy ending, it is a difficult test for lovers. This is how it appears to readers in the story "Sunstroke".

Along with the collection of love stories "Dark Alleys", created by Ivan Alekseevich in the mid-1920s, "Sunstroke" is one of the pearls of his work. The tragedy and complexity of the time during which I. Bunin lived and wrote were fully embodied by the writer in the images of the main characters of this work.

The work was published in Sovremennye Zapiski in 1926. Critics accepted the work with caution, skeptically noticing the emphasis on the physiological side of love. However, not all reviewers were so sanctimonious, among them were those who warmly welcomed Bunin's literary experiment. In the context of symbolist poetics, his image of the Stranger was perceived as a mystical mystery of feeling, dressed in flesh and blood. It is known that the author, when creating his story, was impressed by Chekhov's work, so he crossed out the introduction and began his story with a random sentence.

About what?

From the very beginning, the story is intriguing in that the narrative begins with an impersonal sentence: "After dinner, we went ... on deck ...". The lieutenant meets a beautiful stranger on the ship, whose name, like his name, remains unknown to the reader. They both seem to be hit by a sunstroke; passionate, ardent feelings flare up between them. The traveler and his companion leave the ship for the city, and the next day she leaves by boat to her family. The young officer is left all alone and after a while realizes that he can no longer live without that woman. The story ends with the fact that he, sitting under a canopy on the deck, feels ten years older.

Main characters and their characteristics

She. From the story, you can learn that this woman had a family - a husband and a three-year-old daughter, to whom she returned on a steamer from Anapa (probably from vacation or treatment). The meeting with the lieutenant became for her a "sunstroke" - a fleeting adventure, a "clouding of her mind." She does not tell him her name and asks him not to write to her in her city, as she understands that what happened between them is only a momentary weakness, and her real life is completely different. She is beautiful and charming, her charm lies in the mystery.
The lieutenant is an ardent and impressionable man. For him, a meeting with a stranger was fatal. He only managed to truly realize what had happened to him after the departure of his beloved. He wants to find her, return her, because he was seriously carried away by her, but it's too late. The misfortune that can happen to a person from an overabundance of the sun, for him was a sudden feeling, true love, which made him suffer from the realization of the loss of his beloved. This loss had a profound effect on him.

Issues

One of the main problems in the story "Sunstroke" of this story is the problem of the essence of love. In the understanding of I. Bunin, love brings a person not only joy, but also suffering, making him feel unhappy. The happiness of short moments later results in the bitterness of separation and painful parting.
From this follows another problem of the story - the problem of the short duration, the fluctuation of happiness. And for the mysterious stranger, and for the lieutenant, this euphoria was short-lived, but in the future they both "remembered this moment for many years." Short moments of delight are accompanied by long years of longing and loneliness, but I. Bunin is sure that it is thanks to them that life acquires meaning.

Topic

The theme of love in the story "Sunstroke" is a feeling full of tragedy, mental anguish, but at the same time it is filled with passion and ardor. This great, all-consuming feeling becomes both happiness and grief. Bunin's love is like a match that rapidly flares up and dies out, and at the same time it suddenly strikes, like a sunstroke, and can no longer leave its imprint on the human soul.

Meaning

The point of Sunstroke is to show readers all the facets of love. It arises suddenly, lasts a little, passes hard, like a disease. It is both beautiful and painful at the same time. This feeling can both elevate a person and completely destroy him, but it is precisely this feeling that can give him those bright moments of happiness that color his faceless everyday life and fill his life with meaning.

Ivan Alexandrovich Bunin in the story "Sunstroke" seeks to convey to readers his main idea about the fact that passionate and strong emotions do not always have a future: love fever is fleeting and like a powerful shock, but this is what makes it the most wonderful feeling in the world.

After dinner they left the brightly and hotly lit dining room on deck and stopped at the rail. She closed her eyes, put her hand to her cheek with her palm outward, laughed with a simple, charming laugh—everything was lovely about that little woman—and said: - I seem to be drunk ... Where did you come from? Three hours ago, I didn't even know you existed. I don't even know where you sat. In Samara? But still... Is it my head spinning or are we turning somewhere? Ahead was darkness and lights. Out of the darkness a strong, soft wind beat in the face, and the lights rushed somewhere to the side: the steamer, with Volga panache, abruptly described a wide arc, running up to a small pier. The lieutenant took her hand and raised it to his lips. The hand, small and strong, smelled of sunburn. And my heart sank blissfully and terribly at the thought of how strong and swarthy she must have been all under this light canvas dress after a whole month of lying under the southern sun, on the hot sea sand (she said that she was coming from Anapa). The lieutenant muttered:- Let's go... - Where? she asked in surprise. - At this pier.- Why? He said nothing. She again put the back of her hand to her hot cheek. - Madness... "Let's go," he repeated stupidly. - I beg you... "Oh, do as you please," she said, turning away. The steamer ran with a soft thud into the dimly lit pier, and they almost fell on top of each other. The end of the rope flew over their heads, then it rushed back, and the water boiled with noise, the gangway rattled ... The lieutenant rushed for things. A minute later they passed the sleepy desk, stepped out onto the deep, hub-deep sand, and silently sat down in a dusty cab. The gentle ascent uphill, among the rare crooked lanterns, along the road soft from dust, seemed endless. But then they got up, drove out and crackled along the pavement, here was some kind of square, government offices, a tower, warmth and smells of a summer district town at night ... The cabman stopped near the illuminated entrance, behind the open doors of which an old wooden staircase rose steeply, old, unshaven a footman in a pink blouse and frock coat took the things with displeasure and walked forward on his trampled feet. They entered a large, but terribly stuffy room, hotly heated during the day by the sun, with white curtains drawn down on the windows and two unburned candles on the under-mirror, and as soon as they entered and the footman closed the door, the lieutenant rushed to her so impetuously and both suffocated so frantically in a kiss that for many years they later remembered this moment: neither one nor the other had ever experienced anything like this in their entire lives. At ten o'clock in the morning, sunny, hot, happy, with the ringing of churches, with a bazaar on the square in front of the hotel, with the smell of hay, tar, and again all that complex and odorous smell that a Russian county town smells like, she, this little nameless woman, and without saying her name, jokingly calling herself a beautiful stranger, she left. They slept little, but in the morning, coming out from behind the screen near the bed, having washed and dressed in five minutes, she was as fresh as at seventeen. Was she embarrassed? No, very little. As before, she was simple, cheerful and - already reasonable. “No, no, dear,” she said in response to his request to go on together, “no, you must stay until the next boat. If we go together, everything will be ruined. It will be very unpleasant for me. I give you my word of honor that I am not at all what you might think of me. There has never been anything even similar to what happened to me, and there will never be again. It's like an eclipse hit me... Or rather, we both got something like a sunstroke... And the lieutenant somehow easily agreed with her. In a light and happy spirit, he drove her to the pier - just in time for the departure of the pink "Airplane", - kissed her on deck in front of everyone and barely had time to jump onto the gangway, which had already moved back. Just as easily, carefree, he returned to the hotel. However, something has changed. The room without her seemed somehow completely different than it was with her. He was still full of her - and empty. It was strange! There was still the smell of her good English cologne, her half-finished cup was still on the tray, but she was gone... And the lieutenant's heart suddenly contracted with such tenderness that the lieutenant hurried to light a cigarette and walked up and down the room several times. — A strange adventure! he said aloud, laughing and feeling tears welling up in his eyes. - “I give you my word of honor that I am not at all what you might think ...” And she already left ... The screen was drawn back, the bed had not yet been made. And he felt that he simply did not have the strength to look at this bed now. He closed it with a screen, closed the windows so as not to hear the bazaar talk and the creak of wheels, lowered the white bubbling curtains, sat on the sofa ... Yes, that's the end of this "road adventure"! She left - and now she’s already far away, probably sitting in a glassy white salon or on deck and looking at the huge river shining under the sun, at the oncoming rafts, at the yellow shallows, at the radiant distance of water and sky, at all this immense expanse of the Volga. .. And I'm sorry, and already forever, forever... Because where can they meet now? “I can’t,” he thought, “I can’t, for no reason at all, come to this city, where her husband is, where her three-year-old girl is, in general her whole family and her whole ordinary life!” - And this city seemed to him some kind of special, reserved city, and the thought that she would continue to live her lonely life in it, often, perhaps, remembering him, remembering their chance, such a fleeting meeting, and he already would never see her, the thought astounded and astounded him. No, it can't be! It would be too wild, unnatural, implausible! And he felt such pain and such uselessness of all his later life without her, that he was seized with horror, despair. "What the hell! he thought, getting up, again beginning to pace the room and trying not to look at the bed behind the screen. - What is it with me? And what is special about it and what actually happened? In fact, just some kind of sunstroke! And most importantly, how can I now, without her, spend the whole day in this outback? He still remembered her all, with all her slightest features, he remembered the smell of her tan and canvas dress, her strong body, the lively, simple and cheerful sound of her voice ... The feeling of the just experienced pleasures of all her feminine charms was still unusually alive in him. , but now the main thing was still this second, completely new feeling - that strange, incomprehensible feeling, which had not existed at all while they were together, which he could not even imagine in himself, starting yesterday, as he thought, only amusing an acquaintance, and about which it was no longer possible to tell her now! “And most importantly,” he thought, “you can never tell! And what to do, how to live this endless day, with these memories, with this insoluble torment, in this godforsaken town above that very shining Volga, along which this pink steamer carried her away! It was necessary to escape, to do something, to distract yourself, to go somewhere. He resolutely put on his cap, took a stack, quickly walked, clinking his spurs, along an empty corridor, ran down a steep staircase to the entrance ... Yes, but where to go? At the entrance stood a cab driver, young, in a dexterous coat, calmly smoking a cigarette. The lieutenant looked at him in confusion and amazement: how is it possible to sit on the box so calmly, smoke, and in general be simple, careless, indifferent? “Probably I am the only one so terribly unhappy in this whole city,” he thought, heading towards the bazaar. The market has already left. For some reason, he walked through the fresh manure among the carts, among the carts with cucumbers, among the new bowls and pots, and the women sitting on the ground vied with each other to call him, take the pots in their hands and knock, ringing their fingers in them, showing their quality factor, peasants deafened him, shouted to him: “Here are the first grade cucumbers, your honor!” It was all so stupid, absurd that he fled from the market. He went to the cathedral, where they were already singing loudly, cheerfully and resolutely, with a sense of accomplishment, then he walked for a long time, circled around the small, hot and neglected garden on the cliff of the mountain, above the boundless light-steel expanse of the river ... Shoulder straps and buttons of his tunic so hot that they could not be touched. The band of the cap was wet with sweat inside, his face was on fire ... Returning to the hotel, he entered with pleasure into the large and empty cool dining room on the ground floor, took off his cap with pleasure and sat down at a table near the open window, which smelled of heat, but that was all. - still breathed in the air, ordered botvinya with ice ... Everything was fine, there was immense happiness in everything, great joy; even in this heat and in all the smells of the marketplace, in all this unfamiliar town and in this old county inn, there was this joy, and at the same time, the heart was simply torn to pieces. He drank several glasses of vodka, eating lightly salted cucumbers with dill and feeling that he would die tomorrow without hesitation if it were possible by some miracle to bring her back, to spend one more day with her, this day - to spend only then, only then, in order to tell her and prove something, to convince her how painfully and enthusiastically he loves her ... Why prove it? Why convince? He didn't know why, but it was more necessary than life. - The nerves are completely gone! he said, pouring out his fifth glass of vodka. He pushed the botvinia away from him, asked for black coffee and began to smoke and think hard: what should he do now, how to get rid of this sudden, unexpected love? But to get rid of - he felt it too vividly - was impossible. And he suddenly got up again quickly, took a cap and a stack, and, asking where the post office was, hurriedly went there with the telegram phrase already ready in his head: “From now on, my whole life forever, to the grave, yours, in your power.” But, having reached the old thick-walled house, where there was a post office and a telegraph office, he stopped in horror: he knew the city where she lives, knew that she had a husband and a three-year-old daughter, but did not know either her last name or her first name! He asked her about it several times yesterday at dinner and at the hotel, and each time she laughed and said: “Why do you need to know who I am, what is my name?” On the corner, near the post office, there was a photographic display case. He looked for a long time at a large portrait of some military man in thick epaulettes, with bulging eyes, with a low forehead, with amazingly magnificent sideburns and the broadest chest, completely decorated with orders ... How wild, terrible everything is everyday, ordinary, when the heart is struck - yes, astonished, he understood it now—that terrible "sunstroke," too much love, too much happiness! He glanced at the newlywed couple—a young man in a long frock coat and white tie, with crew cut, stretched out to the front arm in arm with a girl in wedding gauze—transferred his eyes to the portrait of some pretty and playful young lady in a student cap on one side... Then, languishing with tormenting envy of all these unknown to him, not suffering people, he began to stare intently along the street. - Where to go? What to do? The street was completely empty. The houses were all the same, white, two-storied, merchants', with large gardens, and it seemed that there was not a soul in them; thick white dust lay on the pavement; and all this was blinding, everything was flooded with hot, fiery and joyful, but here, as if by an aimless sun. In the distance the street rose, stooped and rested against a cloudless, grayish, gleaming sky. There was something southern in it, reminiscent of Sevastopol, Kerch ... Anapa. It was especially unbearable. And the lieutenant, with lowered head, squinting from the light, intently looking at his feet, staggering, stumbling, clinging to spur with spur, walked back. He returned to the hotel so overwhelmed with fatigue, as if he had made a huge transition somewhere in Turkestan, in the Sahara. Gathering the last of his strength, he entered his large and empty room. The room was already tidied up, devoid of the last traces of her - only one hairpin, forgotten by her, lay on the night table! He took off his tunic and looked at himself in the mirror: his face—the usual officer’s face, gray from sunburn, with a whitish sun-bleached mustache and bluish whiteness of eyes that seemed even whiter from sunburn—had now an excited, crazy expression, and in There was something youthful and profoundly unhappy about a thin white shirt with a stand-up starched collar. He lay on his back on the bed, put his dusty boots on the dump. The windows were open, the curtains were lowered, and a light breeze from time to time blew them in, blew into the room the heat of the heated iron roofs and all this luminous and now completely empty, silent Volga world. He lay with his hands behind the back of his head, staring intently ahead of him. Then he clenched his teeth, closed his eyelids, feeling the tears roll down his cheeks from under them, and finally fell asleep, and when he opened his eyes again, the evening sun was already reddish yellow behind the curtains. The wind died down, it was stuffy and dry in the room, like in an oven ... Both yesterday and this morning were remembered as if they were ten years ago. He slowly got up, slowly washed himself, raised the curtains, rang the bell and asked for the samovar and the bill, and drank tea with lemon for a long time. Then he ordered a cab to be brought in, things to be carried out, and, getting into the cab, on its red, burnt-out seat, he gave the lackey a whole five rubles. “But it seems, your honor, that it was I who brought you at night!” said the driver cheerfully, taking hold of the reins. When they went down to the pier, it was already blue over the Volga summer night, and already many multi-colored lights were scattered along the river, and the lights hung on the masts of the approaching steamer. - Delivered exactly! said the driver ingratiatingly. The lieutenant gave him five rubles too, took a ticket, went to the pier... Just like yesterday, there was a soft knock on its pier and a slight dizziness from unsteadiness underfoot, then a flying end, the noise of water boiling and running forward under the wheels a little back of the steamer that was moving forward ... And it seemed unusually friendly, good from the crowd of this steamer, already lit everywhere and smelling of kitchen. A minute later they ran on, up, to the same place where they had taken her this morning. The dark summer dawn was fading away far ahead, reflecting gloomily, sleepily and multi-colored in the river, which still shone here and there in trembling ripples far below it, under this dawn, and the lights scattered in the darkness all around floated and floated back. The lieutenant sat under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older. Maritime Alps, 1925.

Writing

The title of a poetic work is always important, because it always points them to the main character of its characters, in which the thought of the work is embodied, or directly to this thought.
V. G. Belinsky

The theme of "Sunstroke" (1925) is an image of love that suddenly seizes a person and remains in his soul the brightest memory for life. The idea of the story is in that peculiar understanding of love, which is connected with the writer's philosophical views on a person and his life. Love, from the point of view of Bunin, is the moment when all the emotional abilities of a person become aggravated and he breaks away from the gray, unsettled, unhappy reality and comprehends a “wonderful moment”. This moment quickly passes, leaving in the soul of the hero regret about the irretrievability of happiness and gratitude that it still happened. That is why the short-term, piercing and delightful feeling of two young people who accidentally met on a steamer and parted forever in a day is compared in the story with a sunstroke. This is what the heroine says: "We both got something like a sunstroke ...".

It is interesting that this figurative expression is confirmed by the real suffocating heat of the described day. The author gradually builds up the impression of heat: the steamer smells hot of the kitchen; the “beautiful stranger” is going home from Anapa, where she sunbathed under the southern sun on the hot sand; the night when the heroes got off the ship was very warm; the footman in the hotel is dressed in a pink kosovorotka; in a hotel room heated during the day, it is terribly stuffy, etc. The day following the night was also sunny and so hot that it was painful to touch the metal buttons on the lieutenant's tunic. The town irritatingly smells of various bazaar food.

All the experiences of the lieutenant after a fleeting adventure really resemble a painful condition after a sunstroke, when (according to medical indications) a person, as a result of dehydration of the body, feels a headache, dizziness, irritability. However, this excited state of the hero is not the result of overheating of the body, but a consequence of the realization of the significance and value of the empty adventure that he has just experienced. It was the brightest event in the life of the lieutenant and the “beautiful stranger”: “both of them remembered this moment for many years: neither one nor the other had ever experienced anything like this in their entire lives.” So for Bunin, a moment of happiness and a whole life become values of the same order. The writer is attracted by the "mystery of being" - a combination of joy and sadness, miracle and horror.

The story "Sunstroke" is short, and five of the six pages are occupied by a description of the lieutenant's experiences after parting with the "beautiful stranger". In other words, it is not interesting for Bunin to draw the various ups and downs of love (they have already been drawn thousands of times in Russian and world literature) - the writer comprehends the meaning of love in human life without exchanging for enticing trifles-trinkets. Therefore, it is interesting to compare the image of love in Bunin's story "Sunstroke" and in Chekhov's story "The Lady with the Dog", especially since literary critics note the similarity of the plots of these works.

Both Chekhov and Bunin show a gray, ordinary life that stifles human feelings, but they show it in different ways. Chekhov shows the nightmare of the surrounding life, drawing its vulgarity; Bunin - depicting a moment of true passion, that is real life, according to the writer, which is so unlike the gray routine. Chekhovsky Gurov, returning to Moscow, cannot tell anyone about his acquaintance with Anna Sergeevna. Once, however, he admits to his card partner that he met a charming woman in the Crimea, but in response he hears: “And just now you were right: sturgeon is with a smell!” (III). The above phrase made Gurov horrified by his usual life, because he realized that even "in an educated society" few people care about high feelings. And Bunin's heroes are seized by the same fear and despair as Gurov. At the moment of happiness, they deliberately fence themselves off from everyday life, and Bunin, as it were, says to readers: “Now think for yourself what your usual existence is worth compared to wonderful moments of love.”

Summing up, it should be recognized that in Bunin's story, sunstroke became an allegory of high love, which a person can only dream of. Sunstroke demonstrates both the artistic principles and the philosophical views of the writer.

Bunin's philosophy of life is such that for him the moment when a person immediately knows the happiness of love (as in "Sunstroke") or the meaning of being is revealed to him (as in "Silence"), a moment of happiness strikes Bunin's heroes, as sunstroke, and the rest of life is held only by deliciously sad memories of him.

However, it seems that such a philosophy devalues the rest of a person's life, which becomes just a vegetation between rare moments of happiness. Gurov in "The Lady with the Dog" knows no worse than Bunin's "beautiful stranger" that after several happy days everything will end in love (II), the prose of life will return, but he is beaten by Anna Sergeevna and therefore does not leave her. Chekhov's heroes do not run away from love, and thanks to this, Gurov was able to feel that "now that his head has turned gray, he fell in love properly, truly - for the first time in his life" (IV). In other words, "The Lady with the Dog" only begins where "Sunstroke" ends. Bunin's heroes have enough passionate feelings for one brightly emotional scene in a hotel, while Chekhov's heroes try to overcome the vulgarity of life, and this desire changes them, makes them nobler. The second life position seems to be more correct, although rarely does anyone succeed.

Bunin's artistic principles, which are reflected in the story, include, firstly, an uncomplicated plot, interesting not with exciting twists and turns, but with inner depth, and secondly, a special subject depiction, which gives the story credibility and persuasiveness. Thirdly, Bunin's critical attitude to the surrounding reality is expressed indirectly: he draws an extraordinary love adventure in the ordinary life of the heroes, which shows their entire habitual existence in an unsightly form.

The theme of love is the main one in the work of Ivan Aleksandrovich Bunin. "Sunstroke" is one of his most famous short stories. The analysis of this work helps to reveal the author's views on love and its role in the fate of a person.

What is typical for Bunin, he focuses not on platonic feelings, but on romance, passion, desire. For the beginning of the 20th century, this can be considered a bold innovative decision: no one before Bunin openly sang and spiritualized bodily feelings. For married woman a fleeting relationship was an unforgivable, grievous sin.

The author argued: "All love is a great happiness, even if it is not divided." This saying applies to this story as well. In it, love comes like an inspiration, like a bright flash, like a sunstroke. It is an elemental and often tragic feeling, which, nevertheless, is a great gift.

In the story "Sunstroke" Bunin talks about the fleeting romance of a lieutenant and a married lady who sailed on the same ship and suddenly ignited passion for each other. The author sees the eternal secret of love in the fact that the characters are not free in their passion: after the night they part forever, not even knowing each other's name.

The motif of the sun in the story gradually changes its color. If at the beginning the luminary is associated with joyful light, life and love, then at the end the hero sees in front of him "Aimless Sun" and understands what he experienced "terrible sunstroke". The cloudless sky became grayish for him, and the street, resting against it, humped. The lieutenant yearns and feels 10 years older: he does not know how to find the lady and tell her that he can no longer live without her. What happened to the heroine remains a mystery, but we guess that falling in love will also leave an imprint on her.

Bunin's manner of narration is very "dense". He is a master of the short genre, and in a small volume he manages to fully reveal the images and convey his idea. The story contains a lot of short but capacious descriptive sentences. They are filled with epithets and details.

Interestingly, love is a scar that remains in the memory, but does not burden the soul. Waking up alone, the hero realizes that he is again able to see smiling people. He himself will soon be able to rejoice: a spiritual wound can heal and almost not hurt.

Bunin never wrote about happy love. According to him, the reunion of souls is a completely different feeling, which has nothing to do with sublime passion. True love, as already mentioned, comes and goes suddenly, like a sunstroke.