The story of I. A. Bunin, "Mitin’s Love," provoked controversial assessments of his contemporaries. The description of the experiences of a person who met his first love and lost it irretrievably, someone perceived as a revelation, and someone - as a chronicle of increasing and finding no way out of lust. The reader is free to evaluate the story "Mitin's Love" himself. A summary and analysis of this work will be presented in this article.
main characters
Almost completely from the description of the inner experiences of the protagonist and the pictures of nature that echoes them, the plot of the story “Mitina Love” is composed. A summary of the chapters in this case will be difficult to convey. Therefore, we start with a description of the main characters of the story. Mitya is a tall, thin young man with black, always slightly widened "Byzantine" eyes. He is at an age when childhood traits are still slipping, although the masculine beginning, albeit uncertainly, begins to declare itself. Mitya does everything with a boyish awkwardness. In his native village he is called "greyhound". His lover, Katya, is a lovely creature of small stature with a pretty pretty face and manners in which femininity also interferes with childish spontaneity. The girl attends a private theater studio and dreams of becoming an actress. Her feelings for Mitya are shallow, but sincere. However, the fake world of bohemia attracts Katya with force majeure.
The main themes of the work
The story of the death and life of a student covers the period from December (the time of acquaintance with Katya) to mid-summer. The reader can learn about Mitya’s past only from fragmentary memoirs of the hero. All-embracing love and death - these are the two main topics that are raised in the story. Bunin described the most painful and wonderful time in the life of a young man, ending with his unexpected suicide. The feelings of a young man are the main motive of the work. The writer sets out a detailed psychological analysis. Mitin's love is an independent "hero" of the story. She was born almost with him. The young man experienced his first vague feelings in infancy to the nanny who was caring for him. Then followed a series of fleeting passions of charming young ladies of different ages. Attraction to a cute schoolgirl living in the neighborhood lasted a little longer. Then there was a dizzying sensation at school balls. As a student, Mitya met Katya and in her face found the material embodiment of his vague dreams. For the main character, love is the meaning of existence. It is no coincidence that Mitya’s life turned out to be so short. She broke off along with the lost hope of mutual feelings.
Lovers in Moscow
March 9 is the last day Mitya felt happy in Moscow. Then Katya informed him that she loved him, despite the youthful awkwardness, but made it clear that art would never leave him. This offended the guy who has a persistent aversion to the artistic bohemia surrounding his lover. Mitya met Katya in December. And almost immediately she was subdued by her. January and February passed for him in a "dope of kisses" and a whirlwind of indescribable happiness. However, even then the forerunners of Mitya’s emotional disorder appeared. It began to seem to him that there were two Kati: one - that which he persistently desired, the other - "genuine and ordinary", not at all similar to the first. In early spring, the young man for the first time begins to feel the inner carelessness of his beloved. It was at this time that Mitya felt painful injections of jealousy. This feeling almost replaced him with love. She and Katya were in fairly close relations, but had not yet crossed the line of what was permissible. Everything that seemed to Mitya as the embodiment of charm and chastity turned for him into disgusting shamelessness when he represents another person in his place.
Exam day
This is a key point in the story "Mitin's love." Bunin here demonstrates his attitude towards decadent art. As in many other works of the writer, significant events in the lives of heroes occur during Lent. For the main character, this day was a confirmation of his painful suspicions. In a white dress, like a bride, which once again emphasizes the ambiguity of the situation, Katya recites the poem "The girl sang in the church choir." She does this, according to Mitya, false and tense (she does not speak, but constantly exclaims). The headmaster of the school, “a smug actor with impassive and sad eyes,” makes Katya remarks with a quiet but audible voice throughout the room for the sake of sight. He acts as if he has special rights to the girl. This man is known for annually seducing one of his students and taking her with him to the sea. The pangs of jealousy become unbearable for Mitya. On that day, he quarrels strongly with his beloved. To the girl’s rebuke that he loves her body and not her soul, the guy does not know what to answer. Mitya cannot determine what exactly brings him to a state of fainting in Kate, he only knows that this feeling absorbs him completely.
Check out Mitya
After the exams, Katya completely changed. They were constantly late and cut back on dates. Her passion seemed feigned. The guy constantly tormented himself and the girl with various suspicions and finally decided to leave. Katya immediately became more attentive, and once even burst into tears. Mitya still began to stay up at her in Kislovka until two in the night. The girl became gentle and caring, even helped him choose travel belts, as if he was already his wife. The lovers agreed to meet in the summer in the Crimea, in Miskhor. Despite the imminent separation, Mitya felt almost happy. Before leaving, a friend of mine, a student of Protasov, looked at him. He called Mitya "Werther from Tambov" and stated that the light on Katya had not converged. The comrade wished the lover, in the heat of mental anguish, "not to wring his neck." Before leaving the house, Mitya hears the song "Azra", which tells of love and death. It is as if she foreshadows the events that will soon happen to him.
Parting
Mitya says goodbye to Katya on the platform in front of the train. She arrived before him and waited, shining with beauty and freshness among the ugly and huge crowd. In parting, the young man fell to his lover's glove. Her scent accompanied him all the way. This is a very important point in the story "Mitin's Love." Bunin here follows the laws of melodic composition and intertwines opposing leitmotifs with each other: the fragrance of love (gloves) is accompanied in the work by the smell of death (Mitya recalled the “terrible, vile, sweet” spirit that hovered in his native home after the death of his father).
Yearning of the flesh
In his native village, the young man seems to be freed from suspicions tormenting him. However, a new topic immediately appears in the story "Mitin's Love." This is the motive of love, devoid of a spiritual component. As Mitya moves away from Katya, he begins to embrace pure lust. He is fascinated by the window cleaner from the village, the maid Parasha, the girls of Sonya and Glasha, who work in the garden and flirt with him. According to Bunin, the theme of the village, proximity to land, soil, natural nature is associated with languor and sensuality. Therefore, all the inhabitants of the village, one way or another, take part in the seduction of the protagonist of the story "Mitin's Love." A brief summary and analysis of the work attests to this.
Longing for your beloved
The only way to combat the carnal temptation is a feeling for Katya. Mitya's mother - Olga Petrovna - is always busy with the household. Brother Kostya and little sister Anya have not arrived from the gymnasium. The student is absorbed in thoughts about his beloved. He writes fervent messages to her, looks at her photo. However, Katya, contrary to promises, writes very rarely. The beauty and charm of each new summer day seem to Mitya meaningless without a lover. He recalls their acquaintance, winter, a concert. Now, even about Katya’s tape hidden in the closet, he thinks with a shudder. Mitya goes to the post office daily to expedite the receipt of the letter. Once he decides to himself that if in a week he does not receive news from his beloved, he will shoot himself. In separation from Katya, Mitina’s love becomes stronger and more obsessed. The summary of the Bunin story in such an abridged version cannot convey all the power of despair that has taken possession of the young man.
Temptation
It was at that moment when the young man completely lost heart, the headman invited him to have some fun for a small fee. First Mitya refuses. Everywhere - in the surrounding beauty of nature, dreams, dreams - his beloved seems to him. It is not only in reality. When the headman voices his proposal again, the student suddenly agrees. The prospector offers Mitya Alenka. A man characterizes her as a poisonous woman, young and ... married. Her husband works in the mines, Alenka herself is also not averse to earning money. The young man looks closely at the girl and finds in her a lot in common with Katya. She is also small in stature, mobile, she also has "feminine, mixed with something childish." The guy sees the young woman when she passes him, "wagging backwards," on the way to the Temple. He understands that you cannot look at a woman in church. The young man is still able to stop the feeling of sin. But he still can not resist the rash step. The story "Mitin's Love", a brief summary, the analysis of which is presented in this article, shows us an example of replacing an imaginary object of desire with a real one. But what will end this desperate attempt at self-forgetfulness? This is a topic ahead.
The fall
“Mitin’s love” is a story about how desperate a young immature soul can bring. The next evening, the elder brings Mitya to visit Alenka's father-in-law, whom she lives with. While the men are talking, the young man meets a woman in the forest and agrees with her about a date in a hut. At night, Mitya dreams that he hangs over a huge, dimly lit abyss. The next day the guy is haunted by signs of death: he imagines that his house is "terribly empty", then Antares (shone from the constellation Scorpio) is clearly seen in the darkening sky, etc. In the evening he comes to the hut. After a while, Alenka appears. The guy sticks her a rumpled five ruble. He is seized by a terrible bodily desire, not burdened with any mental anguish. However, what happened struck Mitya with its routine and earthliness. No miracle happened. The author’s opinion that bodily languor, not inspired by love, leads a person to moral collapse, is demonstrated in the novel “Mitin's Love”. A summary of the Bunin story is nearing its logical conclusion.
Tragic ending
On the same week, Saturday, it rains all day. Mitya wanders in tears in the garden and re-reads the letter received from Katya the day before. In it, the girl reports that she is leaving for the Crimea with the director. In the evening, a strong thunder drives Mitya into the house. He climbs into his room through a window, locks himself tightly from the inside, and half asleep sees a young nanny in a long corridor carrying a child with a white and big face. So the memories of distant childhood return to the young man. The nanny suddenly turns out to be Katya. Girl hides the kid in a chest of drawers. A shaved man in a tuxedo enters the room. This is the director with whom Mitya changed her beloved. The guy imagines that he sees how the girl surrenders to this hated man. The young man suddenly comes to his senses. A sensation of unbearable pain pierces his whole being. Mitya understands that there will never be a return to what was “like paradise”. He takes a revolver out of a drawer and, "breathing joyfully," kills himself with pleasure. Such is the sad ending of the story "Mitin's Love." A brief summary of this work will help to draw up only a distant idea of its true artistic value.
Estimates of the story
R. M. Rilke described the main reason for the tragedy set forth in the novel "Mitin's Love." The content of the work is the story of a young man who has lost the ability to wait for the future development of events due to unbearable circumstances in which he fell. He simply did not believe that something else, brighter and more positive, could follow the suffering that fell on his head. Perhaps this is the most insightful assessment of the work "Mitin's Love." A brief description of the events and heroes of the tragedy cannot convey all the psychological accuracy with which Bunin describes the approach of an inevitable end.
As mentioned above, the story was awarded a variety of ratings. Z. Gippius put this work on a par with The Suffering of Young Werther, but saw in the protagonist’s experiences only “grimacing Lust with white eyes”. M.V. Karamzina (poetess) described the "mystery of love" in Budin's work as a "blessed miracle." In his article, Notes on Tolstoy. Bunin and Tolstoy, R. M. Bicilli offers his own analysis. "Mitin's love" in the interpretation of the critic echoes the unfinished story "The Devil" by L. N. Tolstoy.
Prototype protagonist
Bunin claimed that he took advantage of the story of the "fall" of his own nephew. Calls the name of the prototype - V.N. Muromtseva-Bunina. She testifies that the story is about the unfortunate novel of Nikolai Alekseevich Pusheshnikov, a close relative of the writer. V. Yanovsky in his memoirs "Fields of Champs Elysees" says that the main character of the story is copied from a real person. V. Nabokov in a letter to Shakhovskaya indicates that Bunin wrote a story inspired by the image of Misha Shakhovsky. However, in reality, the young man was able to restrain himself from a fatal step. He tonsured monks and later became an outstanding priest.
Conclusion
Here is such a difficult, exciting and tragic story is "Mitin's love." A chapter summary provides a more complete picture of this story. The dynamics of Mitya's experiences, his longing and pain in contrasting combination with the magnificence of the surrounding nature, amazes the reader’s imagination. We strongly recommend that you read this work in the original.