There are works whose digest is extremely difficult to formulate. Very little will tell the person who is not familiar with the work of the Nobel laureate and the great Russian writer, the summary of the author's book “Sunstroke”. Ivan Bunin wrote this short story in exile, in 1925, obviously, impressed by his own memories of the pre-revolutionary life, which seemed to him sunny and carefree, not boiling passions other than love.
Bunin
The writer left Russia in 1920, boarding a steamboat that headed for Constantinople. Then, having visited Sofia and Belgrade, he ended up in Paris, which soon replaced the south of France. Life in a Europe alien to him did not contribute to inspiration, it seemed that the best was left in the homeland. But it was not only distance that shared. The atmosphere of Moscow and St. Petersburg, irrevocably gone, the worlds of Tolstoy and Goncharov seemed to have sunk into oblivion, and the reality of a foreign land could not prompt the writer to take up his pen again. Only in 1924 did the first half-tales-half-tales begin to appear: “Mitin’s Love”, “The Case of Cornet Elagin” and another work in which the new Bunin appeared - “Sunstroke”. Their summary reveals nostalgic moods. The characters are officers, nobles, and other citizens of the Russian Empire who lived among the familiar concepts of honor and justice. Perhaps the plots somewhat idealized the people of the destroyed state and their way of life, but in these works there was truth, sometimes incomprehensible to Europeans, but so close to every Russian heart.
In 1933, Bunin became a Nobel laureate, but the boisterous success associated with this event annoyed him. Money - a considerable amount - was soon spent. Years passed, the writer survived the German occupation of France, waited for recognition in the USSR, but never returned home. Many wonderful novels and novels full of metaphysics and sensuality came from his pen. I.A. Bunin died in Paris in the fall of 1953.
Summary. "Sunstroke"
Bunin I.A. in his story set out a story almost devoid of plot. A young officer, a lieutenant, on a ship going along the Volga meets a woman. The reader does not know how beautiful she is: he sees the heroine through the eyes of a man in love, and such a perception is always subjective. Further, everything happens rapidly. If the writer wanted to write a story about an ordinary adultery, which took place under the influence of a sudden outbreak of passion, then a straightforward and rather rascally joke about a lady and an officer would have come out of the same plot. A couple leaves the boat to the pier of a small county town, retires to a hotel, and ... Then the reader can give free rein to his imagination. But Bunin did not write about this, "Sunstroke." The summary, even in the most curtailed form, cannot do without a description of the suffering of the young lieutenant who remained alone in the morning.
Madness
The young man did not even suspect how much a momentary novel would impress him. He suddenly realizes that without this woman he would not like the whole white light. In anticipation of the next ship, he does not know what to do with himself, but this is not so bad. He does not know how to live on, and is ready to perform the most insane act in order to return the stolen happiness. It is in the second part of the story that Ivan Bunin manifests himself as a true artist. “Sunstroke”, a brief summary and title of which fully characterizes the painful state of the mind, called frustration in psychiatry, allows us to see that the desire to live somehow differently, in a new way, is in conflict with reality - tough and merciless.
Female cruelty
The lieutenant is not offended by anyone. Moreover, he got exactly what he was seeking, but in a strange way it was this “victory” that turned against the most unlucky Casanova. The officer was so stunned by the impressions that, as if half asleep, he agrees to part with his lady, not yet knowing how deep the feeling of this loss will become for him. He still lacks life experience to foresee what will happen to him in the coming hours. Obviously, many men experienced similar feelings in their youth, including I. A. Bunin. "Sunstroke", the brief content of which we are discussing today, is silent about the emotions of an unknown lady who caused a confusion. Most likely, she suffered this separation much more indifferently, although she remembered him for life.
Mikhalkovsky "Sunstroke"
N. S. Mikhalkov for a long time, by his own admission, looked after this work as an object for film adaptation. In 2014, he finally realized this creative idea, although with many conceptual additions. Even a brief summary of Bunin's story “Sunstroke” gives an idea that a feature film based on such a laconic plot is difficult to put on. But the story is so good that it could well become a connecting “framework” for several stories, combine them into something integral and allow you to look at the tragic events of the Civil War from a different angle. The sharp contrasts with Bunin’s “Cursed Days” gave special expressiveness to the story of the fleeting passion of the lieutenant. The feeling of love didn’t call the true author the story’s author himself; the heroes did not recognize each other .