Direction "Reason and Feelings"

Sample essay abstracts

Mind and feelings. These words will become the main motive one of the topics on a graduation essay in 2017.

You can select two directions, which should be discussed on this topic.

1. The struggle of reason and feelings in a person, requiring mandatory choice: act in accordance with surging emotions, or still not lose your head, weigh your actions, be aware of their consequences both for yourself and for others.

2. Reason and feelings can be allies , blend harmoniously in a person, making him strong, self-confident, able to react emotionally to everything that happens around him.

Reflections on the topic: “Reason and Feelings”

o It is human nature to choose: to act wisely, thinking through each step, weighing your words, planning actions, or to obey your feelings. These feelings can be very different: from love to hatred, from anger to kindness, from rejection to recognition. Feelings are very strong in a person. They can easily take possession of his soul and consciousness.

o What choice to make in a given situation: to submit to feelings, which are often selfish, or to listen to the voice of reason? How to avoid internal conflict between these two “elements”? Everyone must answer these questions for themselves. And a person also makes a choice independently, a choice on which sometimes not only the future, but also life itself can depend.

o Yes, reason and feelings often oppose each other. Whether a person can bring them into harmony, make sure that the mind is supported by feelings and vice versa - this depends on the will of the person, on the degree of responsibility, on the moral guidelines that he follows.

o Nature has rewarded people with the greatest wealth - intelligence, and given them the opportunity to experience feelings. Now they themselves must learn to live, aware of all their actions, but at the same time remaining sensitive, able to feel joy, love, kindness, attention, and not succumb to anger, hostility, envy and other negative feelings.

o One more thing is important: a person who lives only by feelings is essentially unfree. He subordinated himself entirely to them, to these emotions and feelings, whatever they may be: love, envy, anger, greed, fear and others. He is weak and even easily controlled by others, by those who want to take advantage of this human dependence on feelings for their own selfish and selfish purposes. Therefore, feelings and reason must exist in harmony, so that feelings help a person to see the whole gamut of shades in everything, and the mind helps to react correctly, adequately to this, and not drown in the abyss of feelings.

o Learning to live in harmony between your feelings and your mind is very important. A strong personality who lives according to the laws of morality and morality is capable of this. And you don’t need to listen to the opinion of some people that the world of the mind is boring, monotonous, uninteresting, and the world of feelings is comprehensive, beautiful, bright. Harmony of mind and feelings will give a person immeasurably more in understanding the world, in self-awareness, in the perception of life in general.

arguments for an essay on the topic: “Reason and Feelings”

1. “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”

2. A.S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”

3. L.N. Tolstoy “War and Peace”

4. I.S. Turgenev “Asya”

5. A.N. Ostrovsky “Dowry”

6. A.I. Kuprin “Olesya”

7. A.P. Chekhov “Lady with a Dog”

8. I.A.Bunin “Dark Alleys”

9. V. Rasputin “Live and Remember”

10. M.A. Bulgakov “The Master and Margarita”

Works	Arguments
"The Tale of Igor's Campaign"
The main character of “The Word…” is Prince Igor Novgorod-Seversky. He is a brave, courageous warrior, a patriot of his country. Brothers and squad! Better to be killed by swords. What am I full of from the hands of the filthy! His cousin Svyatoslav, who ruled in Kyiv, in 1184 won a victory over the Polovtsy - the enemies of Rus', the nomads. Igor was unable to participate in the campaign. He decided to take a new campaign - in 1185. There was no need for it; the Polovtsians did not attack Rus' after the victory of Svyatoslav. However, the desire for glory and selfishness led to Igor opposing the Polovtsians. Nature seemed to warn the hero about the failures that would haunt the prince - a solar eclipse occurred. But Igor was adamant. And he said, full of military thoughts, Disregarding the sign of heaven: “I want to break the copy In an unfamiliar Polovtsian field... Reason receded into the background. Feelings, moreover of an egoistic nature, took possession of the prince. After the defeat and escape from captivity, Igor realized the mistake and realized it. That is why the author sings glory to the prince at the end of the work. This is an example of the fact that a person endowed with power must always weigh everything; it is reason, and not feelings, even if they are positive, that should determine the behavior of a person on whom the lives of many people depend.

A.S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin"

The heroine Tatyana Larina has strong, deep feelings for Eugene Onegin. She fell in love with him as soon as she saw him on her estate. My whole life has been a guarantee of a faithful meeting with you; I know you were sent to me by God, You are my keeper until the grave... About Onegin: He no longer fell in love with beauties, but was dragged around somehow; If they refused, I was instantly consoled; They will change - I was glad to relax. However, Evgeny realized how beautiful Tatyana was, that she was worthy of love, and he fell in love with her much later. A lot has happened over the years, and most importantly, Tatyana was already married. And happiness was so possible, So close!.. But my fate is already decided. (Tatiana’s words to Onegin) The meeting after a long separation at the ball showed how strong Tatyana’s feelings are. However, this is a highly moral woman. She respects her husband and understands that she must be faithful to him. I love you (why lie?), But I am given to someone else; I will be faithful to him forever.. In the struggle between feelings and reason, defeat reason. The heroine did not tarnish her honor, did not inflict mental wounds on her husband, although she deeply loved Onegin. She renounced love, realizing that, having tied the knot of marriage with a man, she simply had to be faithful to him.

L.N. Tolstoy “War and Peace”

How beautiful is the image of Natasha Rostova in the novel! How the heroine is spontaneous, open, how she longs for true love. (" Seize moments of happiness, force yourself to love, fall in love yourself! Only this one thing is real in the world - the rest is all nonsense” - the author’s words) She sincerely fell in love with Andrei Bolkonsky, and is waiting for the year to pass, after which their wedding should take place. However, fate has prepared a serious test for Natasha - a meeting with the handsome Anatoly Kuragin. He simply charmed her, feelings washed over the heroine, and she forgot about everything. She is ready to run into the unknown, just to be close to Anatole. How Natasha blamed Sonya for telling her family about the upcoming escape! The feelings turned out to be stronger than Natasha. The mind just went silent. Yes, the heroine will repent later, we feel sorry for her, we understand her desire to love .(I am tormented only by the evil that I did to him. Just tell him that I ask him to forgive, forgive, forgive me for everything...) However, how cruelly Natasha punished herself: Andrei freed her from all obligations .(And of all the people, I loved and hated no one more than her.) Reading these pages of the novel, you think about a lot. It's easy to say what's good and what's bad. Sometimes feelings are so strong that a person simply does not notice how he is falling into the abyss, succumbing to them. But it is still very important to learn to subordinate feelings to reason, but not to subordinate them, but simply to coordinate them, to live in such a way that they are in harmony. Then many mistakes in life can be avoided.

I.S. Turgenev “Asya”

25-year-old N.N. he travels carelessly, albeit without a goal or plan, meets new people, and almost never visits sights. This is how I. Turgenev’s story “Asya” begins. The hero will have to endure a difficult test - the test of love. He had this feeling for his girlfriend Asya. She combined cheerfulness and eccentricity, openness and isolation. But the main thing is being different from others. Perhaps this is connected with her former life: she lost her parents early, the 13-year-old girl was left in the arms of her older brother, Gagin. Asya realized that she truly fell in love with N.N., that’s why she led acting unusually: either withdrawing, trying to retire, or wanting to attract attention. It’s as if reason and feeling are fighting in her, the impossibility of drowning out her love for N.N. Unfortunately, the hero turned out to be not as decisive as Asya, who confessed her love to him in a note. N.N. also had strong feelings for Asya: “I felt some kind of sweetness - exactly sweetness in my heart: as if honey had been poured into me.” But he thought for too long about the future with the heroine, postponing the decision until tomorrow. And there is no tomorrow for love. Asya and Gagin left, but the hero was never able to find a woman in his life with whom he would throw in his lot. The memories of Asa were too strong, and only the note reminded her. So reason became the reason for the separation, and feelings turned out to be incapable of leading the hero to decisive actions. “Happiness has no tomorrow, it does not have yesterday, it does not remember the past, does not think about the future. He only has the present. - And that’s not a day. Just a moment. »

A.N. Ostrovsky “Dowry”

The heroine of the play is Larisa Ogudalova. She is dowryless, that is, upon marriage, her mother is not able to prepare a dowry, which was customary for the bride to have. Larisa's family is of average income, so she doesn't have to hope for a good match. So she agreed to marry Karandyshev - the only one who proposed marriage to her. She does not feel any love for her future husband. But a young girl really wants to love! And this feeling had already arisen in her heart - love for Paratov, who once charmed her and then simply left. Larisa will have to experience a strong internal struggle - between feeling and reason, duty to the person she is marrying. Paratov seems to have bewitched her, she is delighted with him, succumbs to the feeling of love, the desire to be with her beloved. She is naive, believes his words, thinks that Paratov loves her just as much. But what a bitter disappointment she had to experience. In Paratov’s hands it is just a “thing.” Reason still wins, insight comes. True, later. " The thing... yes, the thing! They are right, I am a thing, not a person... Finally, a word has been found for me, you have found it... Every thing must have an owner, I will go to the owner. And I don’t want to live anymore, to live in a world of lies and deception, to live without being truly loved (how shameful that they choose her - heads or tails). Death for the heroine is a relief. How tragic her words sound: “ I was looking for love and didn't find it. They looked at me and look at me as if I was funny.”

A.I. Kuprin “Olesya”

"Love knows no boundaries." How often do we hear these words, and repeat them ourselves. However, in life, unfortunately, not everyone is able to overcome these boundaries. How beautiful is the love of the village girl Olesya, living in the lap of nature, far from civilization, and the intellectual, city dweller Ivan Timofeevich! The strong, sincere feeling of the heroes is put to the test: the hero must decide to marry a village girl, and even a sorceress, as she is called around, to connect his life with a person who lives according to different laws, as if in another world. And the hero could not make a choice in time. His mind had been weighing on him for too long. Even Olesya noticed the insincerity in the character of the hero: “Your kindness is not good, not heartfelt. You are not master of your word. You love to have the upper hand over people, but although you don’t want to, you obey them.” And in the end - loneliness, because the beloved is forced to leave these places, to flee with Manuilikha from the superstitious peasants. Her beloved did not become her support and salvation. The eternal struggle between reason and feelings in man. How often does it lead to tragedy. Preserving love without losing your head, understanding responsibility for your loved one - this is not given to everyone. Ivan Timofeevich could not withstand the test of love.

A.P.Chekhov “Lady with a Dog”

A holiday romance - this is how you could call the plot of A. Chekhov’s story “The Lady with the Dog.” Behind the external simplicity of the plot lies deep content. The author shows the tragedy of people who sincerely fell in love with each other. However, family ties connected both him, Dmitry Dmitrievich Gurov, and her, Anna Sergeevna. The opinion of society, the condemnation of others, the fear of making one’s feelings public - all this made the life of loving people simply unbearable. Living in hiding, meeting in secret - it was simply unbearable. But they had the main thing - love. Both heroes are unhappy and happy at the same time. Love inspired them, tired without love. They surrendered to affection and tenderness, forgetting about their marital status. The hero was transformed, began to look at the world differently, ceased to be an ordinary burner .(... how, in essence, if you think about it, everything is beautiful in this world, everything except what we ourselves think and think when we forget about the highest goals of existence, about our human dignity). Anna Sergeevna doesn’t feel like a fallen woman either - she loves, and that’s the main thing. How long will their secret meetings continue? Where their love will lead - each reader can only guess about this. But the main thing that you understand when you read this work is that love is capable of anything, that it transforms, changes people, fills their lives with meaning. This feeling has enormous power over a person, and the mind sometimes becomes silent in front of it - Love.

I.A.Bunin “Dark Alleys”

How difficult relationships between people can sometimes be. Especially if it concerns such a strong feeling as love. What to give preference to: the strength of feelings that gripped a person, or listen to the voice of reason, which suggests that the chosen one is from another circle, that she is not a couple, which means there can be no love. Likewise, the hero of I. Bunin’s short story “Dark Alleys” Nikolai in his youth experienced a great feeling of love for Nadezhda, who was from a completely different environment, a simple peasant woman. The hero was unable to connect his life with his beloved: the laws of the society to which he belonged weighed too heavily on him. And how many more of these Hopes will there be in life!( ... it always seems that somewhere there will be something especially happy, some kind of meeting...) The result is life with an unloved woman. Gray everyday life. And only many years later, seeing Nadezhda again, Nikolai realized that such love was given to him by fate, and he passed her by, by his happiness. And Nadezhda was able to carry this great feeling throughout her life - love. .(Youth passes for everyone, but love is another matter.) So sometimes fate, a person’s whole life, depends on the choice between reason and feeling.

V.Rasputin “Live and Remember”

A person must always remember that he is responsible for the people close to him and his loved ones. But the hero of V. Rasputin’s story “Live and Remember,” Andrei, forgot about this. He became a deserter during the war, essentially running away from the front, because he really wanted to see home and his relatives on vacation, which he received for a few days, but did not have time to get home. A brave soldier, he suddenly became rejected by society. Feeling overcame reason, the desire to be at home turned out to be so strong that he, a soldier, broke his military oath. And by doing this, the hero made the life of his loved ones miserable: his wife and parents became the family of the enemy of the people. His wife, Nastya, also has strong feelings for her husband. Realizing that she is committing a crime, she helps Andrei, who was hiding from the authorities, and does not extradite him. (That’s why she’s a woman, to soften and smooth out life together, that’s why she was given this amazing power, which is all the more amazing, gentle and rich the more often it is used.) As a result, both she and her unborn child die: Nastena threw herself into the river when she realized that she was being chased and she was betraying her beloved .(When everything is good, it’s easy to be together: it’s like a dream, just breathe, and that’s all. You have to be together when it’s bad - that’s why people come together,” Nastena’s words) A tragedy, a real drama, unfolded because Andrei Guskov succumbed to the power of feelings. We always need to remember about the people living with us and not commit rash actions, because otherwise the worst thing can happen - the death of our loved ones.

M.A. Bulgakov “The Master and Margarita”

Love. It's an amazing feeling. It makes a person happy, life takes on new shades. For the sake of love, real, all-encompassing, a person sacrifices everything. So the heroine of M. Bulgakov’s novel Margarita left her apparently prosperous life for the sake of love. Everything seemed to be fine with her: a husband holding a prestigious position, a large apartment, at a time when many people were living in communal apartments. (Margarita Nikolaevna did not need money. Margarita Nikolaevna could buy whatever she liked. Among her husband’s acquaintances there were interesting people. Margarita Nikolaevna never touched a primus stove. Margarita Nikolaevna did not know the horrors of living in a shared apartment. In a word... was she happy? Not one minute!) But there was no main thing - love... there was only loneliness (And I was struck not so much by her beauty as by the extraordinary, unprecedented loneliness in her eyes! - the words of the Master). (With yellow flowers in her hands, she came out that day so that I would finally find her; if this had not happened, she would have been poisoned because her life is empty.) And when love came, Margarita went to her beloved .(She looked at me in surprise, and I suddenly, and completely unexpectedly, realized that I had loved this woman all my life! - the master will say) What played the main role here? Feelings? Of course yes. Intelligence? Probably he too, because Margarita deliberately abandoned an outwardly prosperous life. And it doesn’t matter to her anymore that she lives in a small apartment. The main thing is that he is her Master nearby. She helps him finish his novel. She is even ready to become the queen at Woland’s ball - all this for the sake of love. So both reason and feelings were in harmony in Margarita’s soul. (Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in the world? Let them cut out the liar’s vile tongue!) Do we judge the heroine? Here everyone will answer in their own way. But still, living with an unloved person is also wrong. So the heroine made a choice, choosing the path of love - the strongest feeling a person can experience.

"Honor and dishonor."

This is exactly how the second direction of the topics for the final essay on literature in 2017 is designated.

Human morality is based on many concepts. Honor is one of them. In explanatory dictionaries you can find a variety of definitions of this word:

o Moral qualities worthy of respect and pride

o Honor is a combination of qualities such as justice, fidelity, truthfulness, dignity and nobility.

o This is the willingness to defend one’s interests, the interests of loved ones, the people, and the state.

o This is the ability to neglect one’s own good for the sake of others, even the willingness to give one’s life for the sake of justice.

o Remaining true to ideals and principles

Official comment:
The direction involves thinking about reason and feeling as two of the most important components of a person’s inner world, which influence his aspirations and actions. Reason and feeling can be considered both in harmonious unity and in complex confrontation that constitutes the internal conflict of the individual.
The topic of reason and feeling is interesting for writers of different cultures and eras: heroes of literary works often find themselves faced with a choice between the dictates of feeling and the prompting of reason.

Aphorisms and sayings of famous people:
There are feelings that replenish and darken the mind, and there is a mind that cools the movement of the feelings.
M.M. Prishvin
If the feelings are not true, then our whole mind will turn out to be false.
Lucretius
A feeling held captive by crude practical needs has only a limited meaning.
Karl Marx
No imagination can come up with such a multitude of contradictory feelings that usually coexist in one human heart.
F. La Rochefoucauld
Seeing and feeling is being, thinking is living.
W. Shakespeare

Methodical recommendations:
The dialectical unity of reason and feeling is the central problem of many works of art in world and Russian literature. Writers, depicting the world of human intentions, passions, actions, judgments, one way or another touch on these two categories. Human nature is structured in such a way that the struggle between reason and feeling inevitably gives rise to an internal conflict of personality, and therefore provides fertile ground for the work of writers - artists of human souls.
The history of Russian literature, represented by the replacement of one literary direction by another, has shown a different relationship between the concepts of “reason” and “feeling”.
In the Age of Enlightenment, reason becomes a key concept that determines the worldview of a person of that time. This naturally affected writers’ ideas about literary creativity, about what the heroes of their works should be and the individual’s value system. Feelings and personal interests were relegated to the background, giving primacy to duty, honor, and service to the state and society. This did not mean that the heroes are devoid of passions and emotions - they are often very ardent young men capable of sincerely loving. For classicism, something else is more important - how capable the heroes are of overcoming their personal interests and, with a cold mind, fulfilling their sense of duty to the Fatherland.
Excellent examples would be the comedies of D.I. Fonvizin “Nedorosl” and A.S. Griboyedov "Woe from Wit". Conversations between Starodum and Pravdin, Starodum and Milon about the duty, honor of a person, about his most important spiritual and moral qualities that dictate his actions, ultimately come down to the exaltation of reason over feelings. Or Alexander Andreevich Chatsky’s devotion to his ideals and beliefs associated with the awareness of the need to eradicate the old order of Famusov’s Moscow, with a change in society and the consciousness of the younger generation - evidence of his rational approach to himself and the surrounding reality.
Thus, in the era of the dominance of classicism in literature, unconditional primacy is given to the mind, actions are dictated by balanced decisions, life experience, problems of social sound come to the fore.
Classicism is replaced by sentimentalism, and later by romanticism with a radical turn to the category of “feeling”.

In the story by N.M. Karamzin's "Poor Liza" the heroine is guided by the feelings of sincere pure love for her chosen one Erast, which, unfortunately, ultimately leads to an irreparable tragedy. Deception leads to the collapse of hopes and loss of meaning in life for Lisa.
The hero’s feelings, his passions and experiences become key aspects of artistic research by romantic writers. V.A. Zhukovsky, A.S. Pushkin in his early works, M.Yu. Lermontov and many other Russian classics portrayed strong characters who were guided by the desire for the ideal, the absolute, who were aware of the vulgarity of the surrounding reality and the impossibility of finding that very ideal in this world. This gave rise to an inevitable conflict between them and the world, leading to exile, loneliness, wandering, and often even death.
Feelings of love and longing for a loved one push Svetlana from the ballad of the same name by V.A. Zhukovsky to look into the other world in order to know his destiny and meet his chosen one. And the heroine experiences a boundless sense of fear when she finds herself in that terrible reality filled with demonic forces.
It is not the mind, but the dictates of the heart that pushes Mtsyri from the poem of the same name by M.Yu. Lermontov to escape from the monastery and return to his homeland in order to find a home, friends, or at least “the graves of relatives.” And having known himself, the nature of his inner freedom, the hero understands with his mind that he will never be able to become part of the monastic world, the world of “imprisonment” and prison, and therefore makes a choice towards death as eternal freedom.
During the period of the fading of romanticism and the advent of realism to replace it, many writers acutely felt the need to reflect this process in works of art. One of the methods for realizing this is the clash in the work of images of heroes symbolizing different types of personalities - romantics and realists. A classic example is the novel by A.S. Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin", in which two opposites inevitably collide - "wave and stone, poetry and prose, ice and fire" - Vladimir Lensky and Eugene Onegin. The time of romantics with their dreams and ideals, as Pushkin shows, is gradually passing away, giving way to rationally thinking, pragmatic individuals (in this case, it is appropriate to recall the epigraph to the sixth chapter of the novel, in which a duel between the heroes takes place - “Where the days are cloudy and short , // A tribe will be born that doesn’t hurt to die”).

The second half of the 19th century, with the dominance of realism in Russian literature, greatly complicated the dichotomy of the concepts of “reason” and “feeling”. The choice of heroes between them becomes much more difficult; thanks to the technique of psychologism, this problem becomes more complicated, often determining the fate of the literary image.
An excellent example of Russian classics is the novel by I.S. Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons", in which the author deliberately collides feelings and reason, leading the reader to the idea that any theory has the right to exist if it does not contradict life itself. Evgeny Bazarov, putting forward rationalization ideas for changing society and the old way of life, gave preference to exact sciences that could benefit the state, society, and humanity, while denying all the spiritual components of human life - art, love, beauty and the aesthetics of nature. Similar denial and unrequited love for Anna
Sergeevne leads the hero to the collapse of his own theory, disappointment and moral devastation.
The struggle between reason and feelings is shown in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment". Raskolnikov’s clearly thought-out theory does not cause the hero to doubt his competence, which leads him to commit murder. But the pangs of conscience that haunt Rodion after committing a crime do not allow him to live in peace (a special role in this aspect is given to the hero’s dreams). Of course, one should not lose sight of the fact that this problem is complicated in the novel by bringing the religious context to the fore.

In the epic novel L.N. Tolstoy's "War and Peace" categories of "reason" and "feeling" are brought to the fore. For a writer, it is important how dominant one side or another is in the characters, what guides them in their actions. In the opinion of the author, those who do not take into account the feelings of other people, who are calculating and selfish (the Kuragin family, Boris Drubetskoy) deserve inevitable punishment. Those who surrender to feelings, the dictates of the soul and heart, even if they thereby make mistakes, are able to ultimately realize them (remember, for example, Natasha Rostova’s attempt to escape with Anatoly Kuragin), are capable of forgiveness and sympathy. Of course, Tolstoy, as a true philosophical writer, called for a harmonious unity of the rational and the sensual in man.

These two categories are interestingly embodied in the works of A.P. Chekhov. For example, in “The Lady with the Dog,” which proclaims the all-consuming power of love, it is shown how strongly this feeling can affect a person’s life, literally regenerating people to a new life. Indicative in this regard are the final lines of the story, in which it is stated that with their minds the heroes understood how many obstacles and difficulties lay ahead of them, but they were not afraid: “And it seemed that a little more - and a solution would be found, and then a new, wonderful life; and it was clear to both that the end was still far, far away and that the most difficult and difficult thing was just beginning.” Or the opposite example is the story “Ionych”, in which the hero replaces spiritual values ​​- namely the desire to love, have a family and be happy - with material, cold calculation, which inevitably leads to the moral and spiritual degradation of Startsev. The harmonious unity of reason and feeling is demonstrated in the story “Student”, in which Ivan Velikopolsky comes to the realization of his destiny, thereby gaining inner harmony and happiness.

The literature of the twentieth century also presented many works in which the categories of “reason” and “feeling” occupy one of the primary places. In the play “At the Lower Depths” by M. Gorky, there is a symbolic embodiment of concepts through a rational, realistic understanding of the environment in which a person lives (Satin’s reasoning), and illusory ideas about a bright future, instilling hope in the souls of the heroes by the wanderer Luke. In the story “The Fate of a Man” by M.A. Sholokhov - the bitter disappointment of Andrei Sokolov, who went through the war and lost everything dear to him in his life, and the role of Vanechka in the fate of the main character, who gave him a new life. In the epic novel “Quiet Don” M.A. Sholokhov - the moral torment of Grigory Melekhov regarding his feelings for Aksinya and his duty to Natalya, dialogism in the choice of power. In the poem “Vasily Terkin” by A.T. Tvardovsky - the Russian soldier’s awareness of the need to defeat an external enemy, merged with a feeling of boundless love for his homeland. In the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by A.I. Solzhenitsyn - the merciless conditions of detention of prisoners, accompanied by a bitter awareness of the objectivity of reality, and Shukhov's internal intentions, which lead to the problem of preserving the human in oneself in such conditions.

Many famous and outstanding writers, in their stories and novels, novels and trilogies, raised the topic of feelings and reason, which is close and understandable to the reader. The master of words, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, dwelled thoroughly on this topic. He emphasized that feelings can never be simple, they are complex and multifaceted. And if feelings are dominant, then reason no longer rules over a person, it becomes something secondary. Ivan Bunin's stories show stories that are mostly subordinated to passion, which does not make his heroes worse or more incomprehensible.

Does reason or feelings rule the world?

The answer to this complex question of Russian literature interested many writers who tried to find the answer in their works. Both reason and feeling are two sides of life that must be united for the correct perception of this world. In society, a person cannot adhere to only one opinion, as this inevitably leads to death. A clear confirmation of this is Ivan Bunin’s story “The Gentleman from San Francisco,” where the author decides not to give a name to the main character of the story. After reading this work, it becomes clear why the author uses this technique. Bunin shows that there are many people like his hero in any society.

The whole life of the character from Bunin’s story boils down to the fact that he was able to earn a lot of money, which in the end of the story does not bring him any happiness. Little is known about the hero himself: he has a family where there is no love, he is calculating, ugly, and does not think about anything but money. Talking about his hero, about his journey, the author does not say a single word about what feelings his character experiences. The reader simply does not see the soul of the rich gentleman, does not see any of his emotions. In the foreground of a rich millionaire there is only calculation and common sense, that is, reason.

But is the hero happy? Rich and wealthy, the main character of Bunin's story, even when dying, does not experience the most important thing in his life. The gentleman from San Francisco could not be happy, he does not know the joy of the feelings that overwhelm his chest and does not know at all what happiness is. He is not even free, since he becomes a slave to enrichment and is always under the power of money. He has no real meaning in life; accordingly, he does not live, but exists. But are there people in this story who live in an emotional world and for whom feelings are the meaning of life? Yes, these are mountaineers who see nature and enjoy communicating with it. They are free, and this state causes them numerous emotions. Independent and free, they can simply be themselves, and this is the real meaning of life for these people.

According to the narrator, only the person who does not depend on material wealth, is not a hypocrite, and for whom feelings come first can be happy. The famous writer E. Remarque argued that reason is given to a person to understand that:

“You cannot live by reason alone. People live by feelings."

So what rules our world? A person needs to live in such a way that, guided by reason, he can experience the full range of feelings. And only then will a person, having achieved harmony, be happy, and his life will have deep meaning.

Difficult choice between head and heart

The most difficult choice can be considered a person’s choice between reason and feelings. Life often creates situations for us when we need to make a certain choice and it can only be made independently. This decision for each specific person at that moment will be the most correct. For this, it is enough to recall Ivan Bunin’s story “The Caucasus”. In it, the author shows that, sometimes, the feelings of one person can greatly affect the life of another person and even destroy them. The main character runs away with the man she loves. But her happiness leads to the death of her husband. The young woman does not even think that her husband also has feelings that he loves her. She, obeying her passion, destroys their life together, which leads to the death of a man who simply cannot live without her.

The fleeting infatuation of his wife, the betrayal of his beloved, knocks a man out of the ordinary course of life. Bunin gives a detailed description of his thoughts, which lead to the fact that he decides to kill himself. A detailed description of the last hours of the hero’s life in the reader’s soul evokes a storm of emotions. Having made a terrible decision, he swam in the sea, shaved, changed into clean underwear, a jacket, had breakfast, and he did not deny himself pleasures: a bottle of champagne and coffee, a cigar. And only then did he return to his room, where on the sofa he shot himself in the head with two revolvers, without giving himself the slightest chance.

The author shows that the main character had no other way, since it is difficult to survive the betrayal of a loved one, and it is impossible to live a life in which now there is no meaning, it has simply become empty and lonely. Having received his happiness and lost it, according to the author, he no longer has anything to live for. The pain for Bunin's hero is so strong that only death can relieve him of it. But, according to the narrator, only someone with a strong will and persistent determination can commit suicide. The reader feels compassion for the death of an officer due to his wife’s infidelity. But in a complex and difficult choice between reason and heartfelt feelings, the main character chooses feelings. There is no point in life without them for this person.

The world of feelings in the works of Bunin

The main character of the story “Dark Alleys” is a landowner who one day seduces Nadezhda, a young peasant woman. But since the woman was no equal to him, he forgets about her with a light heart. And when many years have already passed, this landowner, who became a military man, comes to these places. He recognizes Nadya as the owner of one of the huts. Ivan Bunin shows all the subtleties of the characters’ inner experiences. Even their conversation does not contain information so much as feelings are invested in their experiences. Each of them remembers those moments of youth when they were happy.

It turned out that Nadya lived alone all her life, remembering the love she had for the landowner. But she also cannot forgive him. And now this feeling of resentment prevents her from being happy. But the main character of the story is also unhappy, since his wife, whom Nikolai Alekseevich madly loved, cheated on him and left him. And this story of two lonely hearts does not end with a happy marriage. The author deprives his characters of happiness, since there is no longer passion. The theme of love in this work is the main one. The narrator showed that experiences, that is, feelings, are stronger than the mind.

Another example is Bunin’s story “Sunstroke”. In it, the author shows how strong love is in the life of any person. A touching and fleeting romance between a married woman and a lieutenant who met by chance on a ship. The passion and love they experienced was like sunstroke. One night spent together, and the rest of their lives, where they will never meet again - this is the basis of the plot. For some time the hero worries that his life, which was blinded by true love, has again lost its meaning. But he tries to come to terms with this loss and continue to live, remembering the miracle that happened to him. But he doesn’t have to experience such emotions, such intensity of feelings again.

Reason in the works of Bunin

A person does not live only in the emotional and sensory world, he has the right to choose between the heartfelt senses and the mind. And such a choice faces a person all his life. So what should you choose: reason or feelings? Everyone makes their own choice and then bears responsibility for it. And the consequences can be very different.

In Bunin's work "Clean Monday" the main character does not have a name. In the text, the author always uses the pronoun “she” when talking about the character. And he gives the same interesting description to his heroine without a name:

Strange.
Silent.
Unusual.
Alien to the entire surrounding world.
Not seeing and not perceiving this world around him, but looking, as it were, through it.
I was thinking about something all the time.
She looked as if she was trying to understand something in her thoughts.
She was often thoughtful.
She loved to visit old cemeteries, monasteries, and loved to go to church.
Her favorite pastimes were going to the theater and restaurants, and she also loved reading books.
She loves secular society.

Such a contradictory characterization was given by the author in the story. She often thinks about how much her closeness to the spiritual world will help her find peace of mind. The main character of Bunin's story could not find harmony in her soul, which was somehow disturbed. This affected her mind, which felt like it was torn apart. Trying to find something whole that can help her find harmony, she turns to God, hoping that serving him will help her.

The world around seems unreal and untenable to the young woman. Even love for a young man cannot keep her in this life. For the main character, love is not the meaning of life, but only some kind of addition to it. On Clean Monday, a girl without a name goes to a monastery. She knew that this world was not suitable for her life, and being the wife or bride of an earthly person was also not destined for her by fate. Therefore, she chooses to become the “eternal” bride of God. And she has her own path, where reason dominates over the world of feelings.

So, anyone living is faced with a choice. And you need to make this difficult choice yourself.

Composition

Bunin considered the collection of stories “Dark Alleys”, created during the Second World War in exile, to be the best thing he wrote in his life. He was a pure source of spiritual inspiration for the writer during this difficult time. The theme of love unites all the short stories in the cycle. Often this feeling is tragic. It brings neither “happiness” nor “unhappiness”. But catastrophism is in the very nature of love, according to I. A. Bunin. What is unrequited love? Is it possible to delay, extend, return it?

The story “Dark Alleys,” which gave the collection its title, was written, as Bunin himself admitted, “very easily, unexpectedly.”

The writer recalls: “I re-read Ogarev’s poems and settled on the famous poem:

It was a wonderful time
They sat on the shore
She was in her prime,
His mustache was barely black...
The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around,
There was an alley of dark linden trees..."

This is how the image of a “dark alley” arises, its original meaning. Subsequently, the thought comes about the “dark alleys” of the human soul, its incomprehensibility.

The story of the relationship between Nadezhda and Nikolai Alekseevich, the heroes of the story “Dark Alleys,” is simple, like life itself. Thirty years later, people met who once loved each other very much. She is the owner of a “private room” at the post station, he is a “slender old military man” who stopped in the autumn bad weather to rest and have lunch. The owner of the warm and tidy room turned out to be Nadezhda, “a beautiful woman beyond her age,” dark-haired, “with dark fluff on her upper lip.” She recognized her former lover immediately and said that she did not get married because she had loved him all her life, despite the fact that he “heartlessly” abandoned her. I was never able to forgive. Nikolai Alekseevich married, as it seemed to him, for love, but he was not happy: his wife left him, cheating on the one who “loved her madly,” his son grew up to be a “scoundrel” and a “spendthrift.”

This, it seems, is the whole story, in which nothing can be corrected. And is it necessary to change anything? Does this make sense? Bunin does not give answers to such questions. We don’t know what happened in the former lives of our heroes. However, it seems that at that time Nikolai Alekseevich’s relationship with the beautiful serf Nadezhda seemed like an easy flirtation. Even now he is perplexed: “What nonsense! This same Nadezhda is not the innkeeper, but my wife, the mistress of my St. Petersburg house, the mother of my children?”

Nadezhda has nothing left in her life except memories of her first love, although she lives strong and “gives money in interest.” She is respected for her fairness, her straightforwardness, her intelligence. The former serf remained morally intact and forced herself to be respected.

Nikolai Alekseevich left, unable to cope with the surging feelings, remembering the magical poems that he once read to his beloved: “The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around, there were dark linden alleys...”

This means that the mark on the soul remained quite deep, the memories did not recede. And who isn’t flattered to be the only one in life? The splinter in my heart has stuck firmly, now forever. How could it be otherwise? After all, it turned out that more love never happened. The chance is given only once. They needed to take advantage of it, perhaps by going through a break with family, misunderstanding and condemnation from friends, and perhaps even giving up their career. All this is within the capabilities of a real Man, capable of loving and protecting his Woman. For such a person there are no class differences; he does not accept the law of society as mandatory, but challenges it.

But our hero can neither understand nor appreciate his actions, so repentance does not occur. But love lives in the heart of Nadezhda, who does not stoop to reproaches, complaints, or threats. She is full of human dignity and grateful to fate, which gave her, at the end of her days, a meeting with the one whom she once called “Nikolenka,” to whom she gave “her beauty, her fever.”

True love demands nothing in return, asks for nothing. “Love is beautiful,” because only love can be answered with love...

Other works on this work

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