Bunin ivan alekseevich antonovskie apples. Antonov apples - Bunin I.A.

Bunin Ivan Alekseevich
Antonov apples
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
Antonov apples
I
... I am reminded of an early mild autumn. August was with warm rains, as if on purpose for sowing, with rains at the very time, in the middle of the month, around the feast of St. Lawrence. And "autumn and winter live well, if the water is still and rain on Lawrence." Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs sat on the fields. It is too good sign: "There is a lot of shade in Indian summer - vigorous autumn" ... I remember early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried and thinned garden, I remember maple alleys, the delicate scent of fallen leaves and - the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness... The air is so clear, as if it is not at all, voices and the creak of carts are heard throughout the garden. These are the Tarkhans, the bourgeois gardeners, hired peasants and poured apples in order to send them to the city at night - certainly at night when it is so glorious to lie on a wagon, look at the starry sky, smell tar in fresh air and listen to the long train carriage creaking cautiously in the dark along the main road. A man pouring apples eats them with a juicy bang one by one, but such is the institution - a bourgeois will never cut him off, but he will also say:
- Wali, eat your fill - there is nothing to do! At the drain, everyone drinks honey.
And the cool silence of the morning is broken only by the well-fed cackling of thrushes on coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the echoing thud of apples poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden, the road to a large hut, strewn with straw, and the hut itself, near which the bourgeoisie acquired an entire household over the summer, is far visible. Everywhere it smells strongly of apples, here - especially. There are beds in the hut, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, and dishes in the corner. Beside the hut there are matting, boxes, all sorts of frayed belongings, an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with bacon is cooked on it, a samovar is heated in the evening, and a long strip of bluish smoke spreads across the garden, between the trees. On holidays, the kolo hut is a whole fair, and red hats flicker through the trees every minute. A crowd of lively girls-one-yard workers in sarafans, smelling strongly of paint, come "lordly" in their beautiful and rough, savage costumes, a young head woman, pregnant, with a broad sleepy face and important, like a Kholmogory cow. On her head there are "horns" - the braids are laid on the sides of the crown and covered with several kerchiefs, so that the head seems huge; legs, in ankle boots with horseshoes, stand bluntly and firmly; the sleeveless jacket is velvet, the curtain is long, and the poneva is black-purple with stripes of brick color and lined with wide gold "prose" on the hem ...
- Household butterfly! - says the tradesman about her, shaking his head. - Now these are being translated ...
And the boys in white manly shirts and short pantyhose, with white open heads, all fit. They walk in twos, threes, shallowly touching their bare feet, and look sideways at a shaggy shepherd dog tied to an apple tree. Of course, one buys, because the purchases are only for a penny or for an egg, but there are many buyers, trade is brisk, and a consumptive tradesman in a long frock coat and red boots is cheerful. Together with his brother, a burly, nimble half-idiot who lives with him "out of mercy", he trades with jokes, jokes and even sometimes "touches" the Tula harmonica. And until evening, people crowd in the garden, you can hear laughter and talk near the hut, and sometimes the stomp of a dance ...
By nightfall, the weather becomes very cold and dewy. Breathing in the rye aroma of new straw and chaff on the threshing floor, you cheerfully walk home for supper past the garden rampart. Voices in the village or the creak of the gates can be heard in the cold dawn with extraordinary clarity. It gets dark. And here's another smell: there is a fire in the garden, and the cherry twigs are tugging with fragrant smoke. In the dark, 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, move around the fire, while giant shadows from them walk over the apple trees ... Either a black hand of several arshins will lie all over the tree, then two legs will be clearly drawn - two black pillars. And suddenly all this will slip from the apple tree - and a shadow will fall along the entire alley, from the hut to the very gate ...
Late at night, when the lights go out in the village, when the diamond constellation Stozhar is already shining high in the sky, you will once again run into the garden.
Rustling on dry foliage, like a blind man, you will get to the hut. There, in the clearing, it is a little brighter, and the Milky Way is whitening overhead.
- Is that you, barchuk? - someone quietly calls out from the darkness.
- Me. Are you still awake, Nikolai?
- We can't sleep. It must be too late? Look, it seems passenger train goes ...
We listen for a long time and discern a tremor in the ground, the tremor turns into noise, grows, and now, as if already behind the garden, the noisy beat of the wheel is quickly knocked out: the train rushes thundering and clattering ... closer, closer, louder and angrier ... And suddenly it starts to subside, go deaf, as if going into the ground ...
- And where is your gun, Nikolai?
- And here near the box, sir.
Throw up a single-barrel, heavy as a crowbar, and shoot with a fell swoop. A crimson flame with a deafening crack will flash to the sky, blind for a moment and extinguish the stars, and a vigorous echo will burst out in a ring and roll over the horizon, dying far, far away in the clear and sensitive air.
- Wow, great! - the tradesman will say. - Spend, spend, barchuk, otherwise it's just a disaster! Again all the muzzle on the shaft was shaken off ...
And the black sky is drawn with fiery stripes of shooting stars. You gaze for a long time into its dark blue depth, overflowing with constellations, until the ground floats under your feet. Then you will start up and, hiding your hands in your sleeves, you will 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 Merry Year". Village affairs are good, if Antonovka is ugly: it means "the bread has been ugly too ... I remember a fruitful year.
At early dawn, when the roosters are still crowing and the huts are smoking in a black way, 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 cannot bear it - you tell the horse to sit down as soon as you will run to wash. to the pond. Almost all of the small foliage has flown from the coastal vines, and the twigs are visible in the turquoise sky. The water under the vines became clear, icy and as if heavy. She instantly drives away the laziness of the night, and after washing and having breakfast in the room with the workers with hot potatoes and black bread with coarse raw salt, you enjoy the slippery skin of the saddle under you, driving along Vyselki to hunt. Autumn is the time for patronal holidays, and the people at this time are tidied up, happy, the view of the village is not at all the same as at another time. If the year is fruitful and a whole golden city rises on the threshing floor, and geese cackle loudly and harshly in the morning on the river, then it’s not bad at all in the village. In addition, our Vyselki from time immemorial, even from the time of grandfather, were famous for their "wealth". Old men and women lived in Vyselki for a very long time - the first sign of a rich village - and they were all tall, large and white, like a harrier. You only hear, it happened: "Yes, - here Agafya waved eighty-three years old!" - or conversations like this:
- And when will you die, Pankrat? Perhaps you will be a hundred years old?
- How would you like to say, father?
- How old are you, I ask!
“I don’t know, sir.
- Do you remember Platon Apollonitch?
- Well, sir, I clearly remember.
-- You see now. You, then, 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, to do, - to blame, healed. And he probably would have healed even more if he had not overeat on Petrovka onions.
I remember his old woman too. Everybody 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, I suppose," - said the women, because she had a lot of "good" in her chests. And she doesn't seem to hear; blindly looks somewhere into the distance from under sadly raised eyebrows, shakes his head and as if tries to remember something. She was a big old woman, all kind of dark. Paneva is almost of the last century, the chunks are dead, the neck is yellow and withered, the shirt with rosin joints is always white and white - "just put it in the coffin." And near the porch, a large stone lay: she had bought herself for her grave, just like a shroud - an excellent shroud, with angels, with crosses and with a prayer printed on the edges.
There were also yards in Vyselki to match the old people: brick, built by their grandfathers. And the rich peasants - Savely, Ignat, Dron - had huts in two or three connections, because sharing in Vyselki was not yet fashionable. In such families, they drove bees, were proud of the gray iron-colored bityug stallion, and kept the estates in order. On the threshing floors thick and fat hemp-stands were dark, barns and barns stood, well-covered; in punka and barns were iron doors, behind which were kept canvases, spinning wheels, new sheepskin coats, typesetting harness, measures bound with copper hoops. Crosses were burned on the gates and on the sledges. And I remember that at times it seemed to me extremely tempting to be a man. When, it happened, you drive around the village on a sunny morning, you keep thinking about how well it is to mow, thresh, sleep on the threshing floor in omets, and on a holiday, get up with the sun, under a thick and musical message from the village, wash near the barrel and put on a clean shirt, the same trousers and indestructible boots with horseshoes. If, I thought, 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, lunch with hot lamb on wooden plates and with rushes, with honeycomb honey and mash, then more and it is impossible to wish!
The warehouse of an average noble life, even in my memory, very recently, had much in common with the warehouse of a rich peasant life in terms of its homeliness and rural old-world prosperity. Such, for example, was the estate of Anna Gerasimovna's aunt, who lived twelve versts from Vyselki. Until, it happened, you get to this estate, it is already completely impoverished. With dogs in packs you have to walk at a pace, and you don't want to rush, - it's so much fun in 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 shines from the side, and the road, rolled by carts after the rains, is oily and glistens like rails. Fresh, lush green winter crops are scattered around in wide shoals. A hawk will rise from somewhere in the clear air and freeze in one place, fluttering its sharp wings. And clearly visible telegraph poles run away into the clear distance, and their wires, like silver strings, slide along the slope of the clear sky. On them sit kobchiks - completely black badges on music paper.
I did not know and did not see serfdom, but I remember that I felt it at my aunt Anna Gerasimovna's. You enter the courtyard and immediately feel that here it is still quite alive. The estate is small, but all old, solid, surrounded by century-old birches and willows. Outbuildings - low, but homely - are many, and they all seem to be molded from dark oak logs under thatched roofs. It stands out for the size, or, better to say, the length of only the blackened human, from which the last Mohicans of the courtyard class peep out - some decrepit old men and women, a decrepit retired cook, like Don Quixote. All of them, when you enter the courtyard, pull themselves up and bow low and low. The gray-haired coachman, heading from the carriage shed to take the horse, takes off his hat at the shed and walks around the yard with his head bare. He drove with his aunt as a postman, 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 on which priests ride. 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 lindens embraced him, - he was small and squat, but it seemed that he would not even last, - he looked so thoroughly from under his unusually tall and thick thatched roof blackened and hardened with age. To me, its front façade always seemed alive: as if an old face looked out from under a huge cap with hollows of eyes, - windows with mother-of-pearl glass from rain and sun. And on the sides of those eyes were porches - two old large porches with columns. Well-fed pigeons always sat on their pediment, while thousands of sparrows rained down from roof to roof ... And the guest felt comfortable in this nest under the turquoise autumn sky!
You enter the house and first of all you will hear the smell of apples, and then others: old furniture mahogany, dried linden blossom, which has been on the windows since June ... In all the rooms - in the servants' 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 chairs, inlaid tables and mirrors in narrow and twisted gold frames never budged. And then a clearing of the throat is heard: the aunt comes out. It is small, but also, like everything around, strong. A large Persian shawl is draped over her shoulders. She will come out importantly, but friendly, and right now, amid endless conversations about antiquity, about inheritances, treats begin to appear: first, "blew" apples, - Antonovs, "underbelly", boletus, "prolific" - and then an amazing lunch: all through and through pink boiled ham with peas, stuffed chicken, turkey, pickles and red kvass, - strong and sweet, sweet ... The windows to the garden are raised, and from there it blows cheerful autumn coolness.
III
In recent years, one thing has kept the dying spirit of the landowners alive - hunting.
Previously, such estates as the estate of Anna Gerasimovna were not uncommon. There were also decaying, but still living on a grand scale with a huge estate, with a garden of twenty dessiatines. True, some of these estates have survived to this day, but they no longer have life ... There are no triplets, no riding "Kirghiz", no hounds and greyhounds, no courtyard and no owner of all this - the landowner-hunter , like my late brother-in-law Arseny Semyonitch.
From the end of September our gardens and threshing floor were emptied, the weather, as usual, changed abruptly. The wind tore and ruffled the trees all day long, rains poured them from morning to night. Sometimes in the evening between gloomy low clouds the trembling golden light of the low sun made its way in the west; the air became clean and clear, and sunlight it sparkled dazzlingly between the foliage, between the branches, which moved like a living net and were agitated by the wind. Coldly and brightly in the north, above the heavy leaden clouds, the liquid blue sky shone, and from behind these clouds the ridges of snowy mountains-clouds slowly floated out. You stand at the window and think: "Perhaps, God willing, it will clear up." But the wind did not abate. He agitated the garden, tore a stream of human smoke continuously running from the chimney and again caught up with the ominous hair of ash clouds. They ran low and fast - and soon, like smoke, clouded the sun. Its brilliance faded away, the window closed into the blue sky, and the garden became deserted and dull, and again began to sow rain ... at first quietly, carefully, then ever thicker and, finally, turned into a downpour with storm and darkness. A long, anxious night fell ...
The garden emerged from such a bashing almost completely naked, covered with wet leaves and somehow subdued, resigned. But how beautiful he was when the clear weather set in again, the transparent and cold days of early October, the farewell festival of autumn! The preserved foliage will now hang on the trees even before the first winter. The black garden will shine through on the cold turquoise sky and humbly wait for winter, warming up in the sun's shine. And the fields are already sharply turning black with arable land and bright green with sprouted winter crops ... It's time to hunt!
And now I see myself in the estate of Arseny Semyonitch, in big house, in the room, full of sun and smoke from pipes and cigarettes. There are many people - all people are tanned, with weathered faces, in jackets and long boots. They had just had a very satisfying dinner, flushed and excited by noisy conversations about the upcoming hunt, but they do not forget to finish their vodka after dinner. And in the yard the horn blows and the dogs howl at different voices. A black greyhound, Arseny Semyonitch's favorite, climbs onto the table and begins to devour the remains of a hare with sauce from the dish. But suddenly he lets out a terrible squeal and, knocking over the plates and glasses, rushes off the table: Arseny Semyonich, who has left the office with an arapnik and a revolver, suddenly deafens the audience with a shot. The hall fills even more with smoke, and Arseny Semyonitch stands and laughs.
- It's a pity that he missed! - he says, playing with his eyes.
He is tall, thin, but broad-shouldered and slender, and his face is a handsome gypsy. His eyes sparkle wildly, he is very dexterous, in a crimson silk shirt, velvet trousers and long boots. Having frightened both the dog and the guests with a shot, he humorously and importantly recites in a baritone:
It's time, it's time to saddle the nimble bottom
And throw a sonorous horn over your shoulders! -
and says loudly:
- Well, however, there is nothing to waste golden time!
I still feel how greedily and deeply the young breast breathed in the cold of a clear and damp day in the evening, when, it happened, you go with a noisy gang of Arseny Semyonitch, excited by the musical din of dogs thrown in the black forest, in some Red Bugor or Gremyachy Island, by its name alone, an exciting hunter. You ride an evil, strong and squat "Kirghiz", tightly restraining it with the reins, and you feel almost merged with it. He snorts, asks for a trot, rustles his hooves noisily on the deep and light carpets of black crumbling leaves, and each sound echoes in the empty, damp and fresh forest. A dog barked somewhere in the distance, another, a third, answered passionately and pitifully - and suddenly the whole forest thundered, as if it were all glass, from violent barking and shouting. A shot rang out in the midst of this din - and everything was "brewed" and rolled somewhere into the distance.
- Take care! - someone screamed in a desperate voice to the whole forest.
"Oh, take care!" - an intoxicating thought flashes in my head. You whine on a horse and, as if you have fallen off the chain, you will rush through the forest, without taking apart anything along the way. Only trees flicker in front of my eyes and molds in the face with mud from under the horse's hooves.

... I am reminded of an early mild autumn. August was with warm rains, as if on purpose for sowing - with rains at the very time, in the middle of the month, around the feast of St. Lawrence. And "autumn and winter live well, if the water is still and rain on Lawrence." Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs sat on the fields. This is also a good sign: "There are many shades in Indian summer - vigorous autumn" ... I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning ... I remember a large, all golden, dried and thinned garden, I remember maple alleys, the delicate aroma of fallen leaves and - the smell of Antonov apples, the smell honey and autumn freshness. The air is so clear, as if it is not at all, voices and the creak of carts are heard throughout the garden. These are tarkhans, bourgeois gardeners, hired peasants and poured apples in order to send them to the city at night - certainly at night when it is so glorious to lie on a wagon, look at the starry sky, smell the tar in the fresh air and listen to how carefully it creaks in the dark, a long train along the high road. A man pouring apples eats them with a juicy crackling one by one, but such is the institution - never a bourgeoisie will cut him off, but he will also say:

- Wali, eat your fill - there is nothing to do! At the drain, everyone drinks honey.

And the cool silence of the morning is broken only by the well-fed cackling of thrushes on coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the echoing thud of apples poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden, the road to a large hut, strewn with straw, and the hut itself, near which the bourgeoisie acquired an entire household over the summer, is far visible. Everywhere it smells strongly of apples, here - especially. There are beds in the hut, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, and dishes in the corner. Beside the hut there are matting, boxes, all sorts of frayed belongings, an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with bacon is cooked on it, a samovar is heated in the evening, and a long strip of bluish smoke spreads across the garden, between the trees. On holidays, there is a whole fair near the hut, and red hats flicker through the trees every minute. A crowd of lively one-yard girls in sundresses smelling strongly of paint, the "gentlemen" come in their beautiful and rough, savage costumes, a young head woman, pregnant, with a broad sleepy face and important, like a Kholmogory cow. There are “horns” on her head - the braids are laid on the sides of the crown and covered with several kerchiefs, so that the head looks huge; legs, in ankle boots with horseshoes, stand bluntly and firmly; the sleeveless jacket is pleated, the curtain is long, and the paneva is black and purple with stripes of brick color and lined at the hem with wide gold "prose" ...

- Household butterfly! - says the tradesman about her, shaking his head. - Now such are translated ...

And the boys in white manly shirts and short pantyhose, with white open heads, all fit. They walk in twos, threes, shallowly touching their bare feet, and look sideways at a shaggy shepherd dog tied to an apple tree. Of course, one buys, because the purchases are only for a penny or for an egg, but there are many buyers, trade is brisk, and a consumptive tradesman in a long frock coat and red boots is cheerful. Together with his brother, a burly, nimble half-idiot who lives with him "out of mercy", he trades with jokes, jokes and sometimes even "touches" the Tula harmonica. And until evening, people crowd in the garden, laughter and talk is heard near the hut, and sometimes the clatter of dance ...

By nightfall, the weather becomes very cold and dewy. Breathing in the rye aroma of new straw and chaff on the threshing floor, you cheerfully walk home for supper past the garden rampart. Voices in the village or the creak of the gates can be heard in the cold dawn with extraordinary clarity. It gets dark. And here's another smell: there is a fire in the garden, and the cherry twigs are tugging with fragrant smoke. 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, move around the fire, while gigantic shadows from them walk across apple trees. Either a black hand of several arshins will lie all over the tree, then two legs will be clearly drawn - two black pillars. And suddenly all this will slip from the apple tree - and a shadow will fall along the entire alley, from the hut to the very gate ...

Late at night, when the lights go out in the village, when the diamond seven-star Stozhar is already shining high in the sky, you will once again run into the garden. Rustling on dry foliage, like a blind man, you will get to the hut. There, in the clearing, it is a little brighter, and the Milky Way is whitening overhead.

- Is that you, barchuk? - someone quietly calls out from the darkness.

- Me. Are you still awake, Nikolai?

- We can't sleep. It must be too late? Look, there seems to be a passenger train going ...

We listen for a long time and distinguish tremors in the ground. The tremor turns into noise, it grows, and now, as if already behind the garden itself, the noisy beat of the wheels is quickly knocked out: rumbling and knocking, the train rushes ... closer, closer, louder and angrier ... And suddenly it begins to subside, go deaf, as if going into the ground ...

- And where is your gun, Nikolai?

- And here near the box, sir.

Throw up a single-barrel, heavy as a crowbar, and shoot with a fell swoop. A crimson flame with a deafening crack will flash to the sky, blind for a moment and extinguish the stars, and a vigorous echo will burst out in a ring and roll over the horizon, dying far, far away in the clear and sensitive air.

- Wow, great! - the tradesman will say. - Spend, spend, barchuk, otherwise it's just a disaster! Again all the muzzle on the shaft was shaken off ...

And the black sky is drawn with fiery stripes of shooting stars. You gaze for a long time into its dark blue depth, overflowing with constellations, until the ground floats under your feet. Then you will start up and, hiding your hands in your sleeves, you will quickly run along the alley to the house ... How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world!

"Vigorous Antonovka - for a merry year." Village affairs are good if Antonovka is ugly: it means that bread has been ugly too ... I remember a good year.

At early dawn, when the roosters are still crowing and the huts are smoking in a black way, 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 cannot bear it - you tell the horse to sit down as soon as possible, and you yourself will run wash in the pond. Almost all of the small foliage has flown from the coastal vines, and the twigs are visible in the turquoise sky. The water under the vines became clear, icy and as if heavy. She instantly drives away the laziness of the night, and after washing and having breakfast in the room with the workers with hot potatoes and black bread with coarse raw salt, you enjoy the slippery skin of the saddle under you, driving along Vyselki to hunt. Autumn is the time for patronal holidays, and the people at this time are tidied up, happy, the view of the village is not at all the same as at another time. If the year is fruitful and a whole golden city rises on the threshing floor, and geese cackle loudly and harshly in the morning on the river, then it’s not bad at all in the village. In addition, our Vyselki from time immemorial, even from the time of grandfather, were famous for their "wealth". Old men and women lived in Vyselki for a very long time - the first sign of a rich village - and they were all tall, large and white, like a harrier. You just hear it: "Yes, - here Agafya waved eighty-three years old!" - or conversations like that.

I

- Wali, eat your fill - there is nothing to do! At the drain, everyone drinks honey.

- Household butterfly! - says the tradesman about her, shaking his head. - Now such are translated ...

- Is that you, barchuk? - someone quietly calls out from the darkness.

- Me. Are you still awake, Nikolai?

- We can't sleep. It must be too late? Look, there seems to be a passenger train going ...

- And where is your gun, Nikolai?

- And here near the box, sir.

- Wow, great! - the tradesman will say. - Spend, spend, barchuk, otherwise it's just a disaster! Again all the muzzle on the shaft was shaken off ...

II

"Vigorous Antonovka - for a merry year." Village affairs are good if Antonovka is ugly: it means that bread has been ugly too ... I remember a good year.

- And when will you die, Pankrat? Perhaps you will be a hundred years old?

- How would you like to say, father?

- How old are you, I ask!

“I don’t know, sir.

- Do you remember Platon Apollonitch?

- Well, sir, I clearly remember.

- You see now. You, then, 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, to do, - to blame, healed. And he probably would have healed even more if he had not overeat on Petrovka onions.

I remember his old woman too. Everybody 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, I suppose,” the women said, because she had a lot of “good” in her chests. And she doesn't seem to hear; blindly looks somewhere into the distance from under sadly raised eyebrows, shakes his head and as if tries to remember something. She was a big old woman, all kind of dark. Paneva is almost of the last century, the chunks are dead, the neck is yellow and withered, the shirt with rosin joints is always white and white, “just put it in the coffin.” And near the porch, a large stone lay: she had bought herself for her grave, just like a shroud - an excellent shroud, with angels, with crosses and with a prayer printed on the edges.

There were also yards in Vyselki to match the old people: brick, built by their grandfathers. And the rich peasants - Savely, Ignat, Dron - had huts in two or three connections, because sharing in Vyselki was not yet fashionable. In such families, they drove bees, were proud of the gray-iron-colored Bityug stallion, and kept the estates in order. On the threshing floors thick and fat hemp-stands were dark, barns and barns stood, well-covered; in punka and barns there were iron doors, behind which were kept canvases, spinning wheels, new sheepskin coats, typesetting harness, measures, bound with copper hoops. Crosses were burned on the gates and on the sledges. And I remember that at times it seemed to me extremely tempting to be a man. When, it happened, you drive around the village on a sunny morning, you keep thinking about how well it is to mow, thresh, sleep on the threshing floor in omets, and on a holiday, get up with the sun, under a thick and musical message from the village, wash near the barrel and put on a clean shirt, the same trousers and indestructible boots with horseshoes. If, I thought, to add to this a healthy and beautiful wife in festive attire and a trip to mass, and then lunch with a bearded father-in-law, lunch with hot lamb on wooden plates and with rushes, with honeycomb honey and mash, it’s impossible to wish for more. !

The warehouse of the average noble life, even in my memory, very recently, had much in common with the warehouse of a rich peasant life in terms of its homeliness and rural old-world prosperity. Such, for example, was the estate of Anna Gerasimovna's aunt, who lived twelve versts from Vyselki. While, it used to be, you get to this estate, it is already completely wrapped up. With dogs, in packs you have to ride 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 shines from the side, and the road, rolled by carts after the rains, is oily and glistens like rails. Fresh, lush green winter crops are scattered around in wide shoals. A hawk will rise from somewhere in the clear air and freeze in one place, fluttering its sharp wings. And clearly visible telegraph poles run away into the clear distance, and their wires, like silver strings, slide along the slope of the clear sky. On them sit kobchiks - completely black badges on music paper.

I did not know and did not see serfdom, but I remember that I felt it at my aunt Anna Gerasimovna's. You enter the courtyard and immediately feel that here it is still quite alive. The estate is small, but all old, solid, surrounded by century-old birches and willows. Outbuildings - low, but homely - are many, and they all seem to be merged from dark, oak logs under thatched roofs. It stands out for the size, or, better to say, the length of only the blackened human, from which the last Mohicans of the courtyard class peep out - some decrepit old men and women, a decrepit retired cook, similar to Don Quixote. All of them, when you enter the courtyard, pull themselves up and bow low and low. The gray-haired coachman, heading from the carriage shed to take the horse, takes off his hat at the shed and walks around the yard with his head bare. He drove with his aunt as a postman, and now he takes her to mass - in a carriage in winter, and in a strong, iron-bound cart, like those on which priests ride. 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 linden branches embraced him, - was small and squat, but it seemed that he would not even last, - he looked so thoroughly from under his unusually high and thick thatched roof, which was blackened and hardened from time to time. To me, its front façade was always alive: as if an old face looked out from under a huge cap with hollows of eyes - windows with mother-of-pearl glass from rain and sun. And on the sides of those eyes were porches - two old large porches with columns. Well-fed pigeons always sat on their pediment, while thousands of sparrows rained down 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 hear the smell of apples, and then others: old mahogany furniture, dried linden blossom, which has been on the windows since June ... In all the rooms - in the servants' room, in the hall, in the living room - it is cool and gloomy: this is why that 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 chairs, inlaid tables and mirrors in narrow and twisted gold frames never budged. And then a clearing of the throat is heard: the aunt comes out. It is small, but also, like everything around, strong. A large Persian shawl is draped over her shoulders. She will come out importantly, but friendly, and right now, amid endless conversations about antiquity, about inheritances, treats begin to appear: first, “blew”, apples, - Antonovskie, “underbelly”, boletus, “prolific” - and then an amazing dinner : all through and through pink boiled ham with peas, stuffed chicken, turkey, marinades and red kvass, - strong and sweet, sweet ... The windows to the garden are raised, and from there it blows cheerful autumn coolness ...

III

In recent years, one thing has kept the dying spirit of the landowners alive - hunting.

Previously, such estates as the estate of Anna Gerasimovna were not uncommon. There were also decaying, but still living on a grand scale with a huge estate, with a garden of twenty dessiatines. True, some of these estates have survived to this day, but they no longer have life ... There are no triplets, no riding "Kirghiz", no hounds and greyhounds, no courtiers and no owner of all this - a landowner-hunter, like mine the late brother-in-law Arseny Semyonitch.

From the end of September our gardens and threshing floor were emptied, the weather, as usual, changed abruptly. The wind tore and ruffled the trees all day long, rains poured them from morning to night. Sometimes in the evening between gloomy low clouds the trembling 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. Coldly and brightly in the north, above the heavy leaden clouds, the liquid blue sky shone, and from behind these clouds the ridges of snowy mountains-clouds slowly floated out. You stand at the window and think: "Perhaps, God willing, it will clear up." But the wind did not abate. He agitated the garden, tore a stream of human smoke continuously running from the chimney and again caught up with the ominous hair of ash clouds. They ran low and fast - and soon, like smoke, clouded the sun. Its shine was extinguished, the window closed into the blue sky, and the garden became deserted and dull, and again began to sow rain ... at first quietly, carefully, then ever thicker and, finally, turned into a downpour with storm and darkness. A long, anxious night was falling ...

The garden emerged from such a bashing almost completely naked, covered with wet leaves and somehow subdued, resigned. But how beautiful he was when the clear weather set in again, the transparent and cold days of early October, the farewell festival of autumn! The preserved foliage will now hang on the trees even before the first winter. The black garden will shine through on the cold turquoise sky and humbly wait for winter, warming up in the sun's shine. And the fields are already sharply turning black with arable land and bright green with sprouted winter crops ... It's time to hunt!

And now I see myself in the estate of Arseny Semyonitch, in a large house, in a hall full of sun and smoke from pipes and cigarettes. There are many people - all people are tanned, with weathered faces, in jackets and long boots. They had just had a very satisfying dinner, flushed and excited by noisy conversations about the upcoming hunt, but they do not forget to finish their vodka after dinner. And in the yard the horn blows and the dogs howl at different voices. A black greyhound, Arseny Semyonitch's favorite, climbs onto the table and begins to devour the remains of a hare with sauce from the dish. But suddenly he lets out a terrible squeal and, knocking over the plates and glasses, rushes off the table: Arseny Semyonich, who has left the office with an arapnik and a revolver, suddenly deafens the audience with a shot. The hall fills even more with smoke, and Arseny Semyonitch stands and laughs.

- It's a pity that he missed! - he says, playing with his eyes.

He is tall, thin, but broad-shouldered and slender, and his face is a handsome gypsy. His eyes sparkle wildly, he is very dexterous, in a crimson silk shirt, velvet trousers and long boots. Having frightened both the dog and the guests with a shot, he humorously and importantly recites in a baritone:

It's time, it's time to saddle the nimble bottom
And throw a sonorous horn over your shoulders! -

and says loudly:

- Well, however, there is nothing to waste golden time!

I still feel how greedily and deeply the young breast breathed in the cold of a clear and damp day in the evening, when, it happened, you go with a noisy gang of Arseny Semyonitch, excited by the musical din of dogs thrown in the black forest, in some Red Bugor or Gremyachy Island, by its name alone, an exciting hunter. You ride an evil, strong and squat "Kirghiz", tightly restraining it with the reins, and you feel almost merged with it. He snorts, asks for a trot, rustles his hooves noisily on the deep and light carpets of black crumbling leaves, and each sound echoes in the empty, damp and fresh forest. A dog barked somewhere in the distance, another, a third, answered passionately and pitifully - and suddenly the whole forest thundered, as if it were all glass, from violent barking and shouting. A shot rang out in the midst of this din — and everything was “brewed up” and rolled off into the distance.

"Oh, take care!" - an intoxicating thought flashes in my head. You whine on a horse and, as if you have fallen off the chain, you will rush through the forest, without taking apart anything along the way. Only trees flicker in front of my eyes and molds in the face with mud from under the horse's hooves. You jump out of the forest, see a motley flock of dogs stretching out on the ground on the greens, and push the "Kirghiz" even harder across the beast, over the greens, swings and stubble, until, finally, you roll over to another island and disappear from the eyes of the flock together with your frenzied barking and moaning. Then, all wet and trembling with exertion, you sit down a foaming, wheezing horse and greedily swallow the icy dampness of the forest valley. In the distance, the cries of hunters and the barking of dogs freeze, and around you there is a dead silence. The half-open timber stands motionless, and it seems that you are in some kind of reserved palaces. It smells strong from the ravines of mushroom dampness, decayed leaves and wet tree bark... And the dampness from the ravines is becoming more and more noticeable, it gets colder and darker in the forest ... It's time to spend the night. But collecting the dogs after the hunt is difficult. For a long time and hopelessly dreary horns ring in the forest, for a long time screaming, cursing and screeching of dogs are heard ... Finally, already completely in the dark, a band of hunters rushes into the estate of some almost unknown bachelor-landowner and fills the entire courtyard of the estate with noise, which is illuminated by lanterns, candles and lamps brought out to greet the guests from home ...

It happened that such a hospitable neighbor had a hunt for several days. In the early morning dawn, in the icy wind and the first wet winter, they left for the forests and the fields, and by dusk they returned again, all covered in mud, with flushed faces, smelling of horse sweat, the fur of a hunted animal, and the drinking began. It is very warm in a bright and crowded house after a whole day in the cold in the field. Everyone walks from room to room in unbuttoned jackets, randomly drinking and eating, noisily transmitting to each other their impressions of the killed hardened wolf, which, showing its teeth, rolling its eyes, lies with its fluffy tail thrown aside 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 a bliss of youthful sleep, that you can hear a talk like through water. A weathered face is on fire, and if you close your eyes, the whole earth will float under your feet. And when you go to bed, in a soft feather bed, somewhere in an old corner room with an icon and a lamp, ghosts of fiery-variegated dogs flash before your eyes, the sensation of a jump will start throughout your body, and you will not notice how you will drown along with all these images and sensations in sweet and healthy sleep forgetting even that this room was once a 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 it 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 house. You can hear how the gardener walks carefully through the rooms, lighting the stoves, and how the firewood crackles and shoots. Ahead - a whole day of rest in the already silent winter estate. You slowly get dressed, wander around the garden, find in the wet foliage an accidentally forgotten cold and wet apple, and for some reason it will seem unusually tasty, not at all like the others. Then you will start working on books - grandfather's books in thick leather bindings, with gold stars on morocco spines. These books, similar to church missal books, smell gloriously of their yellowed, thick, rough paper! Some kind of pleasant sour mold, old perfume... Also good are the notes in the margins, large and with round soft strokes. goose feather... You unfold the book and read: "A thought worthy of ancient and new philosophers, the color of reason and feelings of the heart" ... And involuntarily you will be carried away by the book itself. This is "The Noble Philosopher", an allegory published a hundred years ago by the sponsorship of some "holder of many orders" and printed in the printing house of the order of public charity, - a story about how a "nobleman philosopher, having the time and ability to reason, what a man's mind can ascend, once received the desire to compose a plan of light in the vast place of his village "... Then you come across" the satirical and philosophical works of Monsieur Voltaire "and for a long time revel in the sweet and mannered syllable of translation:" My sovereigns! Erasmus composed in the sixth century a praise for tomfoolery (mannered pause - semicolon); You order me to exalt 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 mockingly, sadly cuckoes over you in an empty house. And little by little a sweet and strange longing 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 gloomy wings over the surface of our hemisphere; he shakes off poppies and dreams from them ... Dreams ... How often only the suffering of the evil one continues! .. "And favorite ancient words flash before my eyes: rocks and oak groves, a pale moon and loneliness, ghosts and ghosts," erots ", roses and lilies, "Leprosy and playfulness of young rascals", lily hand, Lyudmila and Alina ... But 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 poetry from Eugene Onegin. And the old dreamy life will rise before you ... Nice girls and women once lived in noble estates! Their portraits look at me from the wall, aristocratic-beautiful heads in old hairstyles meekly and femininely lower their long eyelashes to sad and tender eyes ...

IV

The smell of Antonov's apples disappears from the landowners' estates. These days were so recent, and yet it seems to me that almost a century has passed since then. The old people died in Vyselki, Anna Gerasimovna died, Arseny Semyonich shot himself ... The kingdom of the small-class people, impoverished to begging, is coming. But this beggarly small-scale life is also good!

So I see myself again in the village, in late autumn. The days are bluish and cloudy. In the morning I sit down in the saddle and with one dog, a gun and a horn, I leave for the field. The wind calls and hums in the muzzle of the gun, the wind blows hard towards, sometimes with dry snow. All day I wander across the empty plains ... Hungry and vegetated, I return to the manor at dusk, and my soul becomes so warm and joyful when the Vyselok lights flash and pulls from the manor with the smell of smoke, housing. I remember that at this time in our house they liked to "twilight", not to light a fire and conduct conversations in the semi-darkness. Upon entering the house, I find the winter frames already inserted, and this sets me up even more for a peaceful winter mood. In the servants' room, the worker stokes the stove, and, as in my childhood, I squat down beside a heap of straw, which smells sharply already of winter freshness, and I look now into the burning stove, now at the windows, behind which, in blue, the dusk is dying sadly. Then I go to the human. It's light and crowded there: the girls are chopping cabbage, chipping flashes, I listen to their fractional, friendly knocking and friendly, sad, cheerful village songs ... Sometimes a small-scale neighbor will come and take me away for a long time ... Small-scale life is also good!

The small one gets up early. Stretching tight, he gets out of bed and twirls a thick cigarette made of cheap, black tobacco, or just makhorka. The pale light of an early November morning illuminates a simple, bare-walled study, yellow and hardened fox skins over the bed and a stocky figure in wide trousers and a loose-fitting blouse, while a sleepy Tatar-like face is reflected in the mirror. In a semi-dark, warm house, dead silence. Outside the door in the corridor, snoring is the old cook, who lived in the manor house as a girl. This, however, does not prevent the master from shouting hoarsely to the whole house:

- Lukerya! Samovar!

Then, putting on his boots, throwing a jacket over his shoulders and not buttoning the collar of his shirt, he goes out onto the porch. It smells like a dog in the locked entryway; Stretching lazily, yawning yawning and smiling, the hounds surround him.

- Burp! He says slowly, in an indulgent bass, and goes through the garden to the threshing floor. His chest breathes widely with the harsh air of dawn and the smell of a naked garden that has chilled over the night. Leaves curled up and blackened by frost rustle under boots in a birch alley, already half cut. Looming in the low gloomy sky, the cuddly jackdaws are sleeping on the ridge of the barn ... It will be a glorious day for hunting! And, stopping in the middle of the alley, the master gazes for a long time into the autumn field, at the deserted green winter crops along which the calves roam. Two hound bitches squeal at his feet, and Fill is already behind the garden: jumping over the prickly stubble, he seems to be calling and asking in the field. But what are you going to do with the hounds now? The animal is now in the field, on the fly, on the black trail, and in the forest he is afraid, because in the forest the wind rustles the leaves ... Oh, if only the greyhounds!

Threshing begins in the riga. The threshing drum hums slowly as it disperses. Lazily pulling the strings, 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, a driver sits and monotonously shouts at them, always whipping only one brown gelding with a whip, who is the laziest of all and is completely asleep on the move, since his eyes are blindfolded.

- Well, well, girls, girls! - the sedate clerk sternly shouts, putting on a wide linen shirt.

The girls hastily scatter the current, run around with stretchers and brooms.

- With God blessing! - says the handler, and the first bunch of starnovka, launched for testing, flies into the drum with a buzz and squeal and rises upward from under it in a disheveled fan. And the drum hums more and more persistently, the work begins to boil, and soon all the sounds merge into the general pleasant noise of threshing. The master stands at the gates of the barn and watches as red and yellow shawls, hands, rakes, straw flicker in its darkness, and all this moves and fusses with regularity to the sound of a drum and the monotonous cry and whistle of the driver. Proboscis flies like clouds to the gate. The master stands, all gray from him. Often he glances in the field ... Soon, soon the fields will turn white, soon the winter will cover them ...

Zazimok, first snow! There are no greyhounds, there is nothing to hunt with in November; but winter comes, "work" with the hounds begins. And here again, as in the old days, the small people come to each other, drink with their last money, and disappear for whole days in the snow fields. And in the evening on some remote farm they shine far away in the dark winter night outbuilding windows. There, in this little wing, clouds of smoke are floating, tallow candles are dimly burning, the guitar is being tuned ...

At dusk the wind took a spree,
Opened my gates wide, -

someone starts in a chest tenor. And others awkwardly, pretending to be joking, pick up with sad, hopeless prowess:

Opened my gates wide
The road was covered with white snow ...

The school curriculum includes the study of Ivan Bunin's creativity and his work Antonov apples, and to make it easier to get acquainted with the writer Bunin and his Antonov apples, we suggest reading the work Antonov apples in summary, which is presented below. Just after getting acquainted with the story, you will be able to outline the work of Bunin Antonov apples in your reader's diary.

Bunin Antonov apples

Chapter 1

So, Bunin shares his memories in the book Antonovskiye Apples. He recalls early autumn, when the weather was fine outside. The author recalls a garden that has already thinned out, fallen leaves around and this indescribable aroma of Antonov apples. Voices are everywhere, wheels creak - the bourgeoisie hired peasants to harvest the harvest in order to then take the apples to the city for sale. Moreover, it is best to take apples away at night. So you can lie down in the cart and watch the stars, while you can enjoy the taste of aromatic and sweet apples. And there in the distance one can see the huts, where the bourgeois have made beds, next to the samovar. On any holiday, a fair is always organized near the hut. The bourgeoisie sell apples, trade is in full swing, and only in the evening everything calms down. Only the guards do not sleep, always on the alert so that no one sneaks into the garden and steals the apples.

Chapter 2

The narrator remembers the village of Vyselki together with its inhabitants. People live here for a long time. Sometimes you ask how old, but they don't know, but exactly under a hundred. Here, the author is glad that he did not find serfdom and at the same time remembered his aunt Anna Gerasimovna, whose estate, although not large, is cozy, but when you go into the house, you immediately feel the aroma of Antonovka apples and only then you hear other smells. The aunt immediately offers treats and the first, these are apples, and only then follows a delicious lunch.

Chapter 3

Continuing the narration of Bunin Antonov apples in a summary of the chapters, the author recalls the favorite pastime of landowners - hunting. And then he remembered his late brother-in-law Arseny Semyonitch. The author recalled how everyone gathered in his house in anticipation of the upcoming hunt, and now Arseny comes out, broad-shouldered, thin and tells everyone that it is time to go, there is nothing to waste time. And now the author is on horseback. He merged with him and rushes after the dogs, which have already advanced far ahead. Hunters in search of their prey until the evening and only in the evening all returned to the estate to some landowner, where they could spend the night there for several days, leaving in the morning again to hunt. The author remembers how he slept through the hunt. How nice it was to wander around the house in silence, and go to the library to read interesting books, of which there were a lot.

Chapter 4

And now the scent of apples disappears from the manor houses. The author tells how the old people died in the village of Vyselki, Arseny shot himself, and Anna Gerasimovna also died. Now the small estate reigns, but it is also good with its beggarly life. The author recalls how he is back in the village. And again on horseback, gallops across the open spaces and returns only in the evening. And the house is warm and the fire is bursting in the stove.

The life of a small local always begins early. He gets up, orders the samovar to be put on and goes out into the street, where everything wakes up and work begins to boil. And the day should be good for hunting, if only greyhounds instead of hounds, but my acquaintance has no such. And with the onset of winter, everyone again begins to gather with friends, spend their last money on drink and spend whole days in the fields. And in the evening in the distance you can see the outbuilding, where the windows are burning, and songs are sung with a guitar inside.

"Antonov apples" - one of the poetic works of I. Bunin

I.A. Bunin is a writer who created beautiful images of Russian nature in his poems and prose. “To know and love nature as well as I.A. Bunin, very few people know how "- this is how Alexander Blok wrote about Bunin. The pictures of nature created by Bunin delighted readers and critics so much that in 1903 he was awarded the Pushkin Prize for the collection of poems "Leaf Fall".

The poet was especially fond of the nature of the Russian countryside. In general, Bunin can be called the singer of the Russian countryside. Throughout his entire career, he returned to the descriptions of the Russian village, created pictures of rural patriarchal life, which is going back into the past. This was largely due to the childhood memories of the author. Bunin's childhood passed among the beauties of Russian nature, in the Oryol estate. The beauty of forests, fields, meadows ... He forever remembered the smell of mown grass, meadow flowers. Memory of beauty native land helped him in the creation of works.

In the story "Antonov apples" he again turns to the theme of the life of the Russian countryside, touches on the problem of impoverished noble families, the events that he himself observed in childhood. This story is the most lyrical and beautiful of all the poet's stories about nature. In it, Bunin managed to convey not only the beauties of nature, described the life of the village, but also managed to convey the spirit of that life, we can hear the sounds and smells of these places.

The language of the story is so light, poetic that the story is often called a prose poem. From the very first lines, the reader is immersed in the atmosphere of sunny days of early autumn, inhales the smells of apples ripening in the gardens, hears the conversation of people, the creak of carts. “I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning ... I remember a large, all golden, dried and thinned garden, I remember maple alleys, the delicate aroma of fallen leaves and the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness. The air is so clean, as if it is not there at all, voices and the creak of carts are heard throughout the garden. "
Bunin's Antonov Apples is the poet's hymn to his Motherland, to that life that has already passed into the past, but remained in the writer's memory as the best, purest, spiritual time. During all his career, he did not change Russia and more than once again turned to the theme of the Russian countryside and the patriarchal foundations of the Russian estate.

Biography of I.A. Bunin
Russian writer: prose writer, poet, publicist. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born on October 22 (according to the old style - October 10), 1870 in Voronezh, in the family of an impoverished nobleman who belonged to an old noble family.
Literary fame to Ivan Bunin came in 1900 after the publication of the story "Antonov apples". In 1901, the Scorpion publishing house of the Symbolists published a collection of poems "Falling Leaves". For this collection and for the translation of the poem by the American romantic poet G. Longfellow "The Song of Hiawatha" (1898, some sources indicate 1896), Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was awarded the Pushkin Prize by the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1902, the publishing house "Knowledge" published the first volume of the works of I.A. Bunin. In 1905, Bunin, who lived in the National Hotel, witnessed the December armed uprising.

Last years the writer passed in poverty. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin died in Paris. On the night of November 7-8, 1953, two hours after midnight, he was gone: he died quietly and calmly, in his sleep. On his bed was a novel by L.N. Tolstoy's "Resurrection". Buried Ivan Alekseevich Bunin in the Russian cemetery Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois, near Paris.
In 1927-1942, a friend of the Bunin family was Galina Nikolaevna Kuznetsova, who became a deep late affection of Ivan Alekseevich and wrote a number of memoirs ("The Grass Diary", article "In Memory of Bunin"). In the USSR, the first collected works of I.A. Bunin was published only after his death - in 1956 (five volumes in the Ogonyok Library).