There are books that make you sad when reading them. One of them was created by the Russian writer Ivan Shmelev in the early twenties of the last century. In this article - her summary. “Sun of the Dead” is the work of a man of rare talent and an incredibly tragic fate.
History of creation
Critics called "Sun of the Dead" one of the most tragic literary works throughout the history of mankind. Under what conditions was the book created?
A year after he left his homeland, he began writing the epic Sun of the Dead. Then he did not know that he would never return to Russia. And he still hoped that his son was alive. Sergei Shmelev was shot without trial in 1921. He became one of the victims of the “Red Terror in Crimea.” One of those to whom the writer dedicated “Sun of the Dead” unconsciously. Because Ivan Shmelev learned about the fate of his son many years after writing this terrible book.
Morning
What are the first chapters of the book about? It's not easy to convey a summary. “Sun of the Dead” begins with a description of the morning nature of Crimea. Before the author's eyes is a picturesque mountain landscape. But the Crimean landscape only evokes melancholy.
The local vineyards are half destroyed. The houses located nearby were empty. Crimean land soaked in blood. The author sees his friend's dacha. The once luxurious house now stands as if orphaned, with broken windows and crumbling whitewash.
“They go out to kill”: summary
“Sun of the Dead” is a book about hunger and suffering. It depicts the torment experienced by both adults and children. But the most terrible pages of Shmelev’s book are those where the author describes the transformation of a person into a killer.
The portrait of one of the heroes of “Sun of the Dead” is amazing and terrible. This character's name is Shura, he loves to play the piano in the evenings, and calls himself a “falcon.” But he has nothing in common with this proud and strong bird. It’s not for nothing that the author compares him to a vulture. Shura sent many to the north or - even worse - to the next world. But every day he eats milk porridge, plays music, and rides a horse. While people around are dying of hunger.
Shura is one of those who were sent to kill. Do it mass destruction they were sent, oddly enough, for the sake of high goal: to achieve universal happiness. In their opinion, they should have started with carnage. And those who came to kill fulfilled their duty. Hundreds of people were sent to the basements of Crimea every day. During the day they were taken out to be shot. But, as it turned out, happiness, which required more than a hundred thousand victims, was an illusion. Working people, dreaming of taking lordly places, were dying of hunger.
About Baba Yaga
This is the title of one of the chapters of the novel. How to give a summary of it? “Sun of the Dead” is a work that represents the writer’s reasoning and observations. Scary stories expressed in impartial language. And that makes them even more terrible. You can briefly summarize individual stories told by Shmelev. But the author’s spiritual devastation is unlikely to be conveyed by the summary. Shmelev wrote “Sun of the Dead” when he no longer believed in either his future or the future of Russia.
Not far from the dilapidated house where the hero of the novel lives, there are dachas - deserted, cold, neglected. In one of them lived a retired treasurer - a kind, absent-minded old man. He lived in a house with his little granddaughter. He loved to sit by the shore and catch gobies. And in the mornings the old man went to the market to buy fresh tomatoes and cheese. One day he was stopped, taken to the basement and shot. The treasurer's fault was that he wore an old military overcoat. For this he was killed. The little granddaughter sat in an empty dacha and cried.
As already mentioned, one of the chapters is called “About Baba Yaga.” The above story about the treasurer is its summary. Shmelev dedicated “Sun of the Dead” to the fates of people who suffered from the invisible “iron broom”. In those days, there were many strange and frightening metaphors in use. “Place Crimea with an iron broom” is a phrase that the author recalls. And he imagines a huge witch destroying thousands of human lives with the help of her fairy-tale attribute.
What does Ivan Shmelev talk about in subsequent chapters? “The Sun of the Dead,” a summary of which is presented in the article, is like a cry from the soul of someone doomed to death. But the author hardly talks about himself. “Sun of the Dead” is a book about Russia. Short tragic stories- details of a big and terrible picture.
“Creators of new life... Where are they from?” - asks the writer. And he doesn’t find an answer. These people came and plundered what had been built over centuries. They desecrated the tombs of saints, tore apart the very memory of Rus'. But before you destroy, you must learn to create. The destroyers of Russian and Orthodox traditions did not know this, and therefore were doomed, like their victims, to certain death. Hence the name given to the book by Ivan Shmelev - “Sun of the Dead”.
The plot of the work can be conveyed in this way: one of the last Russian intellectuals, on the verge of death, observes the birth of a new state. He does not understand the methods of the new government. He will never fit into this system. But the hero of the book suffers not only from his personal pain, but also because he does not understand why destruction, blood and suffering of children are needed. As history has shown, the “Great Terror” meant everything Soviet society many negative consequences.
Boris Shishkin
In “The Sun of the Dead,” Shmelev talks about the fate of his brother, the young writer Boris Shishkin. Even during the years of terror, this man dreams of writing. There is no paper or ink to be found. He wants to dedicate his books to something bright and pure. The author knows that Shishkin is extremely talented. And also, what in this life young man there was so much grief that would be enough for a hundred lives.
Shishkin served in the infantry. During the First World War he found himself in German front. He was captured, where he was tortured and starved, but miraculously survived. He returned home to another country. Because Boris chose something he liked: he picked up orphans from the street. But the Bolsheviks soon arrested him. Having escaped death again, Shishkin ended up in Crimea. On the peninsula, he, sick and dying of hunger, still dreamed that someday he would write kind, bright stories for children.
The end of all
This is the title of the final chapter of the book. “When will these deaths end?” - the author asks questions. The neighbor's professor died. His house was immediately looted. On the way, the hero met a woman with a dying child. She complained about fate. He could not listen to her story and ran away from the mother of the dying baby into his grape ravine.
The hero of the book is not afraid of death. Rather, he is waiting for her, believing that only she alone can save him from torment. Proof of this is the phrase said by the author in the last chapter: “When will he cover it with a stone?” Nevertheless, the writer understands that, despite the fact that the deadline has come, the cup has not yet been drained.
What do modern readers think about the book that Ivan Shmelev wrote in 1923?
“Sun of the Dead”: reviews
This work does not belong to literature popular among modern readers. There are few reviews about it. The book is filled with pessimism, the reason for which can be understood knowing the circumstances of the writer’s life. In addition, about the scary pages in national history he knew firsthand. Those who have read “Sun of the Dead” agree that this book is difficult to read, but necessary.
Is it worth reading?
It is almost impossible to retell the plot of the work. We can only answer the question of what topic Ivan Shmelev devoted to “Sun of the Dead”. Summary (“Brifley” or other Internet sites containing retellings) works of art) does not give a complete picture of the features of the work, which became the pinnacle of the writer’s creativity. In order to answer the question of whether this heavy book is worth reading, we can recall the words of Thomas Mann. A German writer said the following about it: “Read it if you have the courage.”
Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev
Sun of the dead
Behind the clay wall, in an anxious dream, I hear heavy tread and the crackling of prickly dry wood...
It’s Tamarka again pushing against my fence, a beautiful Simmental, white, with red spots, the support of the family that lives above me, on the hill. Every day three bottles of milk - foamy, warm, smelling like a live cow! When the milk boils, golden sparkles of fat begin to play on it and a foam appears...
There is no need to think about such trifles - why do they bother you!
So, a new morning...
Yes, I had a dream... a strange dream, something that doesn’t happen in life.
All these months I have been having lush dreams. Why? My reality is so wretched... Palaces, gardens... Thousands of rooms - not rooms, but a luxurious hall from Scheherazade's fairy tales - with chandeliers in blue lights - lights from here, with silver tables on which there are piles of flowers - not from here. I walk and walk through the halls - looking for...
I don’t know who I’m looking for with great torment. In anguish, in anxiety, I look out the huge windows: behind them are gardens, with lawns, with green valleys, like in old paintings. The sun seems to be shining, but this is not our sun... - some kind of underwater light, pale tin. And everywhere - trees are blooming, not from here: tall, tall lilacs, pale bells on them, faded roses... Strange people I see. They walk with lifeless faces, they walk through the halls in pale clothes - as if from icons, they look into the windows with me. Something tells me - I feel it with aching pain - that they went through something terrible, something was done to them, and they are beyond life. Already - not from here... And unbearable sorrow walks with me in these terribly luxurious halls...
I'm glad to wake up.
Of course, she is Tamarka. When the milk boils... Don't think about the milk. Daily bread? We have enough flour for several days... It is well hidden in the cracks - now it is dangerous to keep it open: they will come at night... In the garden the tomatoes are still green, but they will soon turn red... there is a dozen corn, a pumpkin is starting... Enough, no need to think!..
I don't want to get up! My whole body aches, but I have to go to balls, cut down these “kutyuks”, oak rhizomes. All the same again!..
What is it, Tamarka is at the fence!.. Snorting, sipping branches... gnawing almonds! And now he will approach the gate and begin to push the gate open. It seems he put a stake... Last week she stuck it out on a stake, took it off its hinges when everyone was sleeping, and devoured half of the garden. Of course, hunger... There is no hay on Verba's hill, the grass has long been burned - only gnawed hornbeam and stones. Until late at night you need to wander Tamarka, looking through deep ravines and impassable thickets. And she wanders, wanders...
But still we need to get up. What day is it today? Month - August. And the day... Days are now of no use, and there is no need for a calendar. For an indefinite term, everything is the same! Yesterday there was a blast in the town... I picked up the green Calville - and remembered: Transfiguration! I stood with an apple in the beam... brought it and laid it quietly on the veranda. Transfiguration... The Calville is lying on the veranda. Now you can count days, weeks from it...
We need to start the day by dodging thoughts. You have to get so wrapped up in the trifles of the day that you thinklessly say to yourself: another day is lost!
Like an indefinite convict, I wearily put on rags - my dear past, torn in the thicket. Every day you have to walk along the beams, scrape along the steep slopes with an ax: prepare fuel for the winter. Why - I don’t know. To kill time. I once dreamed of becoming Robinson - I did. Worse than Robinson. He had a future, hope: what if - a dot on the horizon! We will not have any point, there will be no time. And yet you still have to go get fuel. We will sit in the winter long night at the stove, looking into the fire. There are visions in the fire... The past flares up and goes out... The mountain of brushwood has grown over these weeks and is drying up. We need more, more. It will be nice to cut in winter! So they will bounce! For whole days of work. We need to take advantage of the weather. Now it’s good, it’s warm - you can do it barefoot or on pieces of wood, but when it blows from Chatyrdag, let the rains come... Then it’s bad to walk on the beams.
I put on rags... The rag man will laugh at him and stuff him into a bag. What ragpickers understand! They will even hook a living soul in order to exchange it for pennies. They will make glue from human bones - for the future, from blood they will concoct “cubes” for broth... Now there is freedom for the ragpickers, the renewers of life! They carry it along with iron hooks.
My rags... Recent years life, last days- the last caress of a glance on them... They will not go to ragpickers. They fade under the sun, decay in the rains and winds, on thorny bushes, along beams, over bird nests...
We need to open the shutters. Come on, what morning?..
What kind of morning could it be in Crimea, by the sea, in early August?! Sunny, of course. It’s so dazzlingly sunny and luxurious that it hurts to look at the sea: it stings and hits your eyes.
As soon as you open the door, the night-time freshness of mountain forests and mountain valleys, filled with a special Crimean bitterness, infused in the forest crevices, plucked from the meadows, from Yayla, pours into your narrowed eyes, into your crushed, fading face in the sun. This - last waves night wind: soon it will blow from the sea.
Dear morning, hello!
In the sloping ravine - a trough, where the vineyard is, it is still shady, fresh and gray; but the clayey slope opposite is already pink-red, like fresh copper, and the tops of the pear pullets, at the bottom of the vineyard, are filled with a scarlet gloss. And the pullets are good! They cleaned up, gilded themselves, and hung heavy beaded “Marie Louise” beads on themselves.
I anxiously search with my eyes... Safe! We hung out safely for another night. This is not greed: it is our bread that is ripening, our daily bread.
Hello you too, mountains!
To the sea is the little Mount Castel, a fortress above the vineyards thundering in the distance with glory. There is a golden “Sauternes” - the light blood of the mountain, and a thick “Bordeaux”, smelling of morocco and prunes, and the Crimean sun! - blood is dark. Castel protects his vineyards from the cold and warms him with heat at night. She is now wearing a pink hat, dark underneath, all forest-like.
To the right, further - a fortress wall-plumb, bare Kush-Kaya, a mountain poster. In the morning - pink, at night - blue. He absorbs everything, sees everything. An unknown hand is drawing on it... How many miles away is it, but it’s close. Stretch out your hand and touch: just jump over the valley below and the hills, everything is in gardens, vineyards, forests, gullies. An invisible road flashes along them with dust: a car is rolling towards Yalta.
Further to the right is the furry hat of the forest Babugan. In the morning it turns golden; usually - densely black. The bristles of pine forests are visible on it when the sun melts and trembles behind them. That's where the rain comes from. The sun goes there.
For some reason, it seems to me that night is creeping away from the dense black Babugan...
There is no need to think about the night, about deceptive dreams, where everything is otherworldly. They will return at night. Morning disrupts dreams: here it is, the naked truth, under your feet. Meet him with prayer! It opens up...
There is no need to look at the distance: distances are deceptive, just like dreams. They beckon and don't give. They have a lot of blue, green, and gold. No need for fairy tales. Here it is, really, under your feet.
I know that there will be no grapes in the vineyards near Castel, that the white houses are empty, and scattered across the wooded hills human lives... I know that the earth is saturated with blood, and the wine will come out tart and will not give joyful oblivion. The terrible thing was embodied in the gray wall of Kush-Kai, visible nearby. The time will come - read...
I no longer look at the distance.
I look through my beam. There are my young almonds, a vacant lot behind them.
A rocky piece of land that was recently going to live is now dead. Black horns of the vineyard: the cows beat him. Winter showers dig roads and create wrinkles on it. The tumbleweed sticks out, already withered: if it jumps, it will only blow into the North. An old Tatar pear, hollow and crooked, blooms and dries for years, throws honey-yellow “buzdurkhan” around for years, everything is waiting for its change. The shift doesn't come. And she, stubborn, waits and waits, pours, blooms and dries. Hawks are hiding on it. Crows love to swing in a storm.
But here is an eyesore, a cripple. Once upon a time - Yasnaya Gorka, the dacha of a teacher from Ekaterinoslav. Standing there, he grimaces. Thieves robbed her long ago, broke her windows, and she became blind. The plaster is crumbling, showing the ribs. And the rags that were once hung to dry are still hanging in the wind - hanging on the nails near the kitchen. Is there a caring housewife somewhere now? Somewhere. Stinking vinegar trees grew near the blind veranda.
The dacha is vacant and ownerless, and a peacock has taken it over.
Peacock... A tramp peacock, now of no use to anyone. He spends the night on the railing of the balcony: so the dogs cannot reach him.
Mine once upon a time. Now it’s a nobody’s, just like this dacha. There are no one's dogs, and there are no one's people. So the peacock is nobody's.
Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev
Sun of the dead
"We're in Berlin! No one knows why. He was running away from his grief. In vain... Olya and I are heartbroken and wander around aimlessly... And even seeing foreign countries for the first time doesn’t touch us... Dead soul no need for freedom...
So, maybe I'll end up in Paris. Then I will see Ghent, Ostend, Bruges, then Italy for one or two months. And - Moscow! Death is in Moscow. Maybe in Crimea. I'll go there to die. There, yes. We have a small dacha there. There we parted with our priceless, our joy, our life... - Seryozha. “I loved him so much, I loved him so much, and I lost him so terribly.” Oh, if only for a miracle! Miracle, I want a miracle! It's a nightmare that I'm in Berlin. For what? It’s night, it’s raining outside, the lights are crying... Why are we here and alone, completely alone, Yulia! Alone. Understand this! Pointless, unnecessary. And this is not a dream, not an art, it’s like life. Oh, it’s hard!..”
This is what Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev, having escaped from Red Russia abroad, wrote to his beloved niece and executor Yu.A. Kutyrina in January 1922.
He still did not know that he would never return to his homeland; he still harbored the hope that his only son Sergei, who was shot during great terror late 1920 - early 1921 in Crimea, alive, not yet recovered from what he experienced in small, frozen and hungry Alushta. And the idea of the requiem called “epic” - “Sun of the Dead” - has not yet been born.
The epic was created in March-September 1923 in Paris and with the Bunins, in Grasse. The kaleidoscope of terrible impressions should have been covered by the mournful shadow of a personal tragedy. In "Sun of the Dead" deceased son- not a word, but it was precisely the deep human pain that Shmelev could not appease even with a hard-won word that gives the whole story a huge scale. Many famous writers, including Thomas Mann, Gerhard Hauptmann, Selma Lagerlöf, considered “The Sun of the Dead” the most powerful of Shmelev’s works. Emigrant criticism
Nikolai Kulman, Pyotr Pilsky, Yuliy Aikhenvald, Vladimir Ladyzhensky, Alexander Amfiteatrov - greeted Shmelev's epic with enthusiastic responses. But, perhaps, the wonderful prose writer Ivan Lukash wrote most insightfully about “The Sun of the Dead”:
“This wonderful book was published and poured out like a revelation throughout Europe, feverishly being translated into “major” languages...
I read it after midnight, out of breath.
What is the book by I. S. Shmelev about?
About the death of the Russian man and the Russian land.
About the death of Russian grasses and animals, Russian gardens and the Russian sky.
About the death of the Russian sun.
About the death of the entire universe - when Russia died - about the dead sun of the dead…»
Despite the horror of his experience, Shmelev did not become embittered against the Russian people, although he cursed the “new” life. But even there, under a foreign sky, he wanted to rest in Russia, in his beloved Moscow. On July 3, 1959, Yulia Aleksandrovna Kutyrina wrote to the author of these lines:
“An important question for me is how to help me, the executor (according to the will of Ivan Sergeevich, my unforgettable uncle Vanya), fulfill his will: transport his ashes and his wife to Moscow, to rest next to the grave of his father in the Donskoy Monastery...”
Shmelev's work and his memory are illuminated by the sun - the ever-living sun of Russian suffering and Russian asceticism.
Oleg Mikhailov
Behind the clay wall, in an anxious dream, I hear heavy tread and the crackling of prickly dry wood...
It’s Tamarka again pushing against my fence, a beautiful Simmental, white, with red spots, the support of the family that lives above me, on the hill. Every day three bottles of milk - foamy, warm, smelling like a live cow! When the milk boils, golden sparkles of fat begin to play on it and a foam appears...
There is no need to think about such trifles - why do they bother you!
So, a new morning...
Yes, I had a dream... a strange dream, something that doesn’t happen in life.
All these months I have been having lush dreams. Why? My reality is so wretched... Palaces, gardens... Thousands of rooms - not rooms, but a luxurious hall from Scheherazade's fairy tales - with chandeliers in blue lights - lights from here, with silver tables on which there are piles of flowers - not from here. I walk and walk through the halls - looking for...
I don’t know who I’m looking for with great torment. In anguish, in anxiety, I look out the huge windows: behind them are gardens, with lawns, with green valleys, like in old paintings. The sun seems to be shining, but it is not our sun... - some kind of underwater light, pale tin. And everywhere there are trees blooming, not from here: tall, tall lilacs, pale bells on them, faded roses... I see strange people. They walk with lifeless faces, they walk through the halls in pale clothes - as if from icons, they look into the windows with me. Something tells me - I feel it with aching pain - that they went through something terrible, something was done to them, and they are beyond life. Already - not from here... And unbearable sorrow walks with me in these terribly luxurious halls...
“The Sun of the Dead” (Ivan Shmelev) was called by critics the most tragic work in the entire history of world literature. What is so terrible and amazing about it? The answer to this and many other questions can be found in this article.
History of creation and genre features
The second - emigration - stage of Ivan Shmelev’s work was marked by the work “Sun of the Dead”. The genre chosen by the writers for their creation is epic. Let us remember that this type of work describes outstanding national historical events. What is Shmelev talking about?
The writer chooses a truly memorable event, but there is nothing to be proud of. It depicts the Crimean famine of 1921-1922. "Sun of the Dead" is a requiem for those who died in those terrible years - and not only from lack of food, but also from the actions of the revolutionaries. It is also important that Shmelev’s son, who remained in Russia, was shot in 1921, and the book was published in 1923.
“Sun of the Dead”: summary
The action takes place in August on the coast Crimean Sea. All night the hero was tormented by strange dreams, and he woke up from a squabble between his neighbors. He doesn’t want to get up, but he remembers that the Feast of the Transfiguration is beginning.
In an abandoned house along the road, he sees a peacock, which is already for a long time lives there. Once he belonged to the hero, but now the bird is a nobody's, like himself. Sometimes the peacock returns to him and picks grapes. And the narrator chases him - there is little food, the sun has scorched everything.
On the farm, the hero also has a turkey and poults. He keeps them as a memory of the past.
Food could be bought, but because of the Red Guards, ships no longer enter the port. And they also don’t allow people near the provisions in the warehouses. There is a dead silence around the churchyard.
Everyone around is suffering from hunger. And those who recently marched with slogans and supported the Reds in anticipation of a good life, no longer hope for anything. And above all this the cheerful hot sun shines...
Baba Yaga
The Crimean dachas were empty, all the professors were shot, and the janitors stole their property. And the order was given over the radio: “Place Crimea with an iron broom.” And Baba Yaga got down to business, sweeping.
The doctor comes to visit the narrator. Everything was taken away from him, he didn’t even have a watch left. He sighs and says that now it is better underground than on earth. When the revolution broke out, the doctor and his wife were in Europe, romanticizing about the future. And he now compares the revolution with Sechenov’s experiments. Only instead of frogs, people’s hearts were cut out, stars were placed on their shoulders, and the backs of their heads were crushed with revolvers.
The hero looks after him and thinks that now nothing is scary. After all, Baba Yaga is now in the mountains.
A neighbor's cow was slaughtered in the evening, and the owner strangled the killer. The hero came to the noise, and at that time someone slaughtered his chicken.
A neighbor's girl comes and asks for cereal - their mother is dying. The narrator gives everything he had. A neighbor appears and tells how she exchanged a gold chain for food.
Playing with death
The action of the epic “Sun of the Dead” (Ivan Shmelev) continues to develop. The narrator sets out early in the morning to cut down a tree. Here he falls asleep and is woken up by Boris Shishkin, a young writer. He is not washed, ragged, with a swollen face, with uncut nails.
His past was not easy: he fought in the First World War, he was captured, and was almost shot as a spy. But in the end they were simply sent to work in the mines. At Soviet power Shishkin was able to return to his homeland, but immediately ended up with the Cossacks, who barely let him go.
News arrives that six prisoners of the Soviet regime have escaped nearby. Now everyone faces raids and searches.
End of September. The narrator looks at the sea and mountains - everything is quiet around. He remembers how he recently met three children on the road - a girl and two boys. Their father was arrested on charges of killing a cow. Then the children went in search of food. In the mountains older girl The Tatar guys liked it, and they fed the children and even gave them some food to take with them.
However, the narrator no longer walks the road and does not want to communicate with people. It's better to look into the eyes of the animals, but there are only a few of them left.
Disappearance of the Peacock
“The Sun of the Dead” tells about the fate of those who rejoiced and welcomed the new government. The summary, although not in the original volume, conveys the evil irony of their lives. Previously, they went to rallies, shouted, demanded, but now they died of hunger and their bodies have been lying there for the 5th day and cannot even wait for the burial pit.
At the end of October, the peacock disappears, and the hunger becomes more severe. The narrator remembers how a hungry bird came for food a few days ago. Then he tried to strangle her, but could not - his hand did not rise. And now the peacock has disappeared. A neighbor boy brought some bird feathers and said that the doctor must have eaten it. The narrator takes the feathers gently, like a fragile flower, and places them on the veranda.
HE thinks that everything around is the circles of hell, which are gradually shrinking. Even a family of fishermen perishes from hunger. The son died, the daughter gathered for the pass, Nikolai, the head of the family, also died. There is only one mistress left.
Denouement
The epic “Sun of the Dead” is coming to an end (summary). November has arrived. The old Tatar returns the debt at night - he brought flour, pears, tobacco. News arrives that the doctor has burned down in his almond orchards, and his house has already begun to be robbed.
Winter has come, the rains have come. The famine continues. The sea completely stops feeding the fishermen. They come to ask representatives of the new government for bread, but in response they are only called to hold on and come to rallies.
At the pass, two people were killed who were exchanging wine for wheat. The grain was brought to the city, washed and eaten. The narrator reflects on the fact that you can’t wash everything away.
The hero is trying to remember what month it is... December, it seems. He goes to the seashore and looks at the cemetery. The setting sun illuminates the chapel. It's like the sun smiles on the dead. In the evening, the father of the writer Shishkin comes to him and tells him that his son was shot “for robbery.”
Spring is coming.
"Sun of the Dead": analysis
This work is called Shmelev's most powerful work. Against the backdrop of the impassive and beautiful Crimean nature, it unfolds real tragedy- hunger takes away all living things: people, animals, birds. The writer raises in the work the question of the value of life in times of great social changes.
It is impossible to stand back and not think about what is more important when reading Sun of the Dead. The theme of the work in a global sense is the struggle between life and death, between humanity and the animal principle. The author writes about how need destroys human souls, and this frightens him more than hunger. Shmelev also raises such philosophical questions as a search for truth, the meaning of life, human values etc.
Heroes
More than once the author describes the transformation of a man into a beast, into a murderer and a traitor in the pages of the epic “Sun of the Dead”. The main characters are also not immune to this. For example, the doctor - the narrator's friend - gradually loses all his moral principles. And if at the beginning of the work he talks about writing a book, then in the middle of the story he kills and eats a peacock, and at the end he begins to use opium and dies in a fire. There are also those who became informers for bread. But these, according to the author, are even worse. They have rotted from the inside, and their eyes are empty and lifeless.
There is no one in the work who would not suffer from hunger. But everyone experiences it differently. And in this test it becomes clear what a person is truly worth.
"Sun of the Dead" (1923). This is such a truth that you can’t even call it art. In Russian literature there is the first real evidence of Bolshevism. Who else conveyed the despair and general death of the first Soviet years, war communism? Not Pilnyak! for that one it is almost easily perceived. But here it’s such a mentally difficult thing to overcome; you read a few pages and it’s no longer possible. This means that he correctly conveyed that burden. Causes acute sympathy for these convulsing and dying. Is there anything more terrible than this book in Russian literature? Here the whole dying world is included, and along with the suffering of animals and birds. You fully feel the scale of the Revolution, how it was reflected both in deeds and in souls. Like the peak image - you can hear an “underground groan”, “The unfinished are groaning, asking for graves”? (and this is the howling of beluga seals).
Ivan Shmelev. Sun of the dead. Chapters 1-9. Audiobook
In the face of the flow of these events, it is difficult to switch to artistic-critical considerations. (And the worst thing is that today’s people almost entirely do not know about our past.)
“The Sun of the Dead” - summer, hot, Crimean - over dying people and animals. “This sun deceives with its brilliance... it sings that there will be many more wonderful days, the velvet season is approaching.” Although the author explains towards the end that the “sun of the dead” is said about the pale, half-winter Crimean. (He also sees the “tin sun of the dead” in the indifferent eyes of distant Europeans. By 1923, he had already felt it there, abroad.)
Ivan Shmelev. Sun of the dead. Chapters 10-16. Audiobook
This must be re-read in order to refresh the sense of what happened, in order to realize its dimensions.
Especially at first – it’s unbearably condensed. All the time they alternate in a merciless rhythm: signs of a deadening way of life, a deadened landscape, a mood of devastated despair - and the memory of red atrocities. Primordial truth.
Ivan Shmelev. Sun of the dead. Chapters 17-23. Audiobook
Then he is interrupted by the doctor’s stories: “Memento Mori” (albeit a remarkable plot, a symbol of a universally connected world revolution, “febris revolutionis”, and the author seems to be sending a curse to the delusions of his youth) and “Almond Orchards” (at first it seems: he inserted in vain, reduces the general intensity of today; then it gradually reveals that - no, there must be a broad understanding of everything that has been done, to the eternal breath). And there will be no cross-cutting plot in the story: this is how, in the last attempts of people to survive, a gallery of faces should unfold - mostly suffering, but also deceivers, and villains, and those who became villains on the verge of universal death. And in keeping with the harsh tone of the times, they are all carved as if from stone. And you don’t need anything else, you can’t ask the author anything else: this is what it is.
Ivan Shmelev. Sun of the dead. Chapters 24-34. Audiobook
However, some parts of the conversations, especially the doctor’s monologues - with downright frank, irresistible borrowing from Dostoevsky - are in vain, it’s a pity. And there are a lot of them.
In the second half, the severity of the terrible narrative, alas, is confused and reduced by declamation, although true in its revelation. Dilution with rhetoric is not beneficial for the thing. (Although it is so natural that the author became embittered at the indifferent, well-fed, prosperous Western allies. “The sighs of those who once saved you, the transparent Eiffel Tower.” And with what bitterness about the intelligentsia!) Towards the end the number of sublime digressions also increases; this does not decorate, but softens the stoneness of the overall sculpture.
The narrator himself is an amazing idealist: he keeps a turkey with chickens without any benefit, only to his own detriment (the chickens are interlocutors); often shares the latter with the hungry. “I don’t walk on the roads anymore, I don’t talk to anyone. Life has burned out... I look into the eyes of animals”; "silent cow tears" – And there is a clear awakening of faith in him.
He gives all this unobtrusively and greatly wins over you. And the spell is confident: “The time will come, it will be read.”
But it’s strange: throughout the entire story, the author lives and acts alone, alone. And several times the treasured words break through: “we”, “our home”. So he is with his wife? Or is this how the memory of his son is kept, shot by the Reds, never mentioned by him (also a mystery!), but seemingly kept close to him mentally?..
The alarming tone is also supported by unusual dreams, from the very first page.
Begun in a tone of renunciation of life and everything dear, the story and everything rolls out in piercing hopelessness: “There is no need for a calendar, for an indefinite term - everything is one. Worse than Robinson: there won’t be a point on the horizon, and you can’t wait...”
– You can’t think about anything, you don’t have to think! Stare greedily at the sun until your eyes become a tin spoon.
– The sun laughs even in dead eyes.
“Now it’s better in the land than on the ground.”
“I want to cut off the last thing that connects me with life—human words.”
“Now everything bears the stamp of care.” And it’s not scary.
- How can you believe that there is something there after such a dump?
- What a huge graveyard! and how much sun!
“But now there is no soul, and nothing is sacred.” Ripped off human souls covers. Neck crosses are torn off and soaked. The last words of affection are trampled by boots into the night mud.
- They are afraid to speak. And they will soon be afraid to think.
- Only the wild ones will remain - they will be able to snatch the last.
“The horror is that they don’t feel any horror.”
– Was it Christmas? There can be no Christmas. Who can be born now?!
– There’s nothing to talk about, we know everything.
- Let there be stony silence! Here it goes.
Signs of that time:
The general anger of hunger, life is reduced to primitiveness. "Roars of Animal Life" "A handful of wheat was worth more expensive than a person“, “they can kill, now everything is possible.” “Human bones will be used to make glue, and blood will be used to make broth cubes.” Lonely passers-by are killed on the road. The entire area is deserted, there is no obvious movement. People are hiding, living - not breathing. All the former abundance of Crimea has been “eaten, drunk, knocked out, dried up.” Fear that thieves will come and take away the last thing, or from the Special Department; “The flour is stuffed into the cracks,” they will come to rob at night. Tatar courtyard, dug up 17 times during night raids. Cats are caught in traps, and the animals suffer horror. Children gnaw the hooves of a long-dead horse. They dismantle houses abandoned by their owners, and sew pants from the canvas of country chairs. Some go out at night to rob: their faces are smeared with soot. Shoes are made of rope matted with wire, and the soles are made of roofing iron. They rent a coffin: ride it to the cemetery, then pull it out. In Bakhchisaray, a Tatar salted his wife and ate her. The kamsa is wrapped in leaves of the Gospel. What are the letters now and where are they from?.. To the hospital? with their food and their medicine. Bitter, sour grape pomace, touched with fermentation fungus, is sold at the market in the form of bread. “They get tame from hunger, now everyone knows that.”
“And in the town, the shop windows are broken and boarded up. On them, slinky shreds of orders crackle in the wind: execution... execution... without trial, on the spot, under pain of a tribunal!..”
The church house with a basement was used as a special department.
How the horses of volunteers who went overseas in November 1920 died.
One after another, as if at a dying show, they float by individuals, often not even correlating with each other, not intersecting, everyone became isolated.
An old lady selling the last things of the past for the sake of her young grandchildren. And - a nanny with her, who at first believed that “everything will be distributed to the working people” and everyone will live like masters. “We’ll all sit on the fifth floor and smell the roses.”
The old doctor: how everyone robs him, even his removable jaw was stolen during a search, there was a gold plate on it. Someone he treated had his pool water poisoned. Burned out in a makeshift hut.
General Sinyavin, famous Crimean gardener. The sailors, out of mockery, cut down his favorite tree, and then shot him himself. And Chinese geese were fried on bayonets.
A wonderful image of the “cultured postman” Drozd, left with nothing to do and without the meaning of life. Deceived faith in civilization and "Loyd-George".
And the most amazing Ivan Mikhailovich, historian ( gold medal Academy of Sciences for his work on Lomonosov), who ended up with Drozd in the first Bolshevik arrests, there he showed his “Vologda”: he almost strangled the guard - a Vologda resident; and he, to rejoice, released his fellow countryman. Now Ivan Mikhailovich, as a scientist, receives rations: a pound of bread per month. He begs at the market, his eyes fester. He went to the Soviet kitchen with a bowl to beg - and the cooks killed him with scoops. Lies in a combed uniform frock coat with general's shoulder straps; They'll rip off your coat before going into the pit...
Uncle Andrei got involved in the revolution and came from near Sevastopol on horseback. And then a sailor stole his cow. And he himself slyly steals the neighbor’s goat, dooms her little ones to death, and denies: not him. She curses him - and the curse comes true: the communists, for another theft, beat off all his insides.
And types from the common people:
Fyodor Lyagun serves both red and white; In front of the Reds, he took the professor’s cow away, and in front of the Whites, he returned it. “I can put anyone at gunpoint... I can say this at a rally... everyone is trembling with horror.”
The nameless old Cossack kept wearing his military overcoat, and he was shot for it.
The Koryak-dragal kept hoping for future palaces. He beats his neighbor to death, suspecting that he slaughtered his cow.
Soldier German war, heavy captivity and escapes. Almost shot by the whites. He remained under the Reds and was shot, along with other young people.
The old tinsmith Kulesh, he didn’t know a better tinsmith South Shore. Previously, he worked in Livadia and for Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich. For a long time I honestly exchanged stoves for wheat and potatoes. Was dragged out of last bit of strength, staggering. “Complain about them, about the humanists! Complain to the wolf, there is no one else now. Just a word - basement! "In the face with Lebanon." But he believed them, the simpleton... And so he died of hunger.
Another simpleton - deceived new government fisherman Pashka. “You don’t have the most important experience – you haven’t shed your own blood. A fishing team will come from the sea and take nine-tenths of the catch. It's called a commune. You have to feed the whole city." The author told him: “They lured you into robbery, but you betrayed your brothers.”
The resourceful little Russian Maxim, without pity for the dying, will not be lost.
And - doomed children with heightened attention. And the child is mortal.
And - Tanya the ascetic: for the sake of children - she risks walking through the pass, where she will be raped or robbed: to exchange wine for food in the steppe.
AND another story about an abandoned and then dead peacock - the same bright, colored spot on everything as its plumage.
And the righteous: “They did not bow to temptation, did not touch someone else’s thread - they are fighting in a noose.”
You have to see all this through the eyes of the unprepared pre-revolutionary generation. For the Soviets, in the subsequent eradications, nothing was new.
Finally - and red.
Shura-Falcon is a small-toothed vulture on a horse, “he smells of blood.”
The freckled sailor Grishka Ragulin is a chicken thief, a verbiage. He entered the worker’s house at night, didn’t give in, stabbed her in the heart with a bayonet, the children found her in the morning with a bayonet. The women sang a dirge for her - he answered the women with a machine gun. “The wobbling Grishka left the court - he will continue to serve as commissioner.”
Former student Kreps, who robbed the doctor.
A half-drunk Red Army soldier, on horseback, “without a homeland, without a pier, with a crumpled red star - “tyrtsanalny”.”
They go and take away the “surplus” - foot wraps, eggs, saucepans, towels. They burned fences, trashed gardens, and tore them down.
“For whom is the grave, the day is bright for them.”
“Even the eyes of a child will not frighten those who want to kill.”
ABOUT mass shootings after Wrangel left. They killed at night. During the day they slept, while others waited in the basements. Entire armies waited in basements. Recently they fought openly, defended the Motherland, the Motherland and Europe, on the Prussian and Austrian fields, in the Russian steppes. Now, tortured, we ended up in the basements. “Sweep Crimea with an iron broom.”
Their backs are wide, like a slab, their necks are the thickness of a bull; eyes heavy as lead, covered in a film of blood and oil, well-fed. ...But there are also other things: the backs are narrow, fish-like, the necks are a cord of cartilage, the eyes are sharp and gimlet-shaped, the hands are grippy, with whipping veins, they crush with pincers.
And somewhere there, close to Bela Kun and Zemlyachka, is the chief security officer Mikhelson, “red-haired, skinny, green eyes, evil, like a snake.”
Seven “greens” came down from the mountains, believing the “amnesty”. Captured and to be shot.
“The Inquisition, after all, judged. But here, no one knows why.” In Yalta, an ancient old woman was killed for keeping a portrait of her late husband, a general, on her table. Or: why did you come to the sea after October? are you thinking of running? Bullet.
“In Crimea alone, eight thousand carriages of human flesh were shot without trial in three months.”
After the execution, they share the officer's clothes and riding breeches.
They cut out their breasts, put stars on their shoulders, crushed the backs of their heads from guns, and smeared brains on the walls of the basements.
And the difference between the Bolshevik waves. The first Bolsheviks, 1918: rabid sailor hordes rushing to take power. They hit Tatar villages with cannon, conquered the submissive Crimea... They roasted sheep on fires, tearing out their intestines with their hands. They danced with a boom around the lights, hung with machine-gun belts and grenades, slept with girls in the bushes... They smashed, killed at the furious hand, but were not able to strangle them according to plan and indifferently. They would not have had enough “nervous strength” and “class morality” for this. “This required the nerves and principles of people of non-Vologda blood.”
About the next wave of red aliens, Kulesh: “you won’t understand what his origin is... he doesn’t accept our order, he’s robbing the church.”
Let’s go look at the cows: “Cows are the people’s treasure!” "Nice fishermen! You maintained the discipline of the proletariat with honor. Impact task! Help our heroes of Donbass!”
And also about the intelligentsia:
“The artists danced and sang for them. Women submitted themselves.”
According to the summons, “Attendance is obligatory, under pain of being brought to trial by a revolutionary tribunal,” and everyone showed up (to the meeting). “They didn’t show up when they were called to fight, but then they showed up neatly for the flogging. Although there is disturbing fornication and, as it were, servility in the eyes, there is also a proud consciousness - service to free art.” Comrade Deryabin in a beaver hat: “I demand it!!! Open your brains and show the proletariat!” And - with a revolver. “He put me right in the coffin. Silence..."
Crimea. And in all this hopelessness is inscribed, rhythmically intruding, accurately and sharply conveyed Crimean landscape, more sunny Crimea - in this horror of death and hunger, then the terrible winter Crimea. Who had such consistent pictures of Crimea? First - in the shining summer:
– Special Crimean bitterness, infused in forest crevices;
– The Genoese Tower, like a black cannon, stared askance into the sky;
– The bowl of the sea was blazing with blue fire.
And - mountains:
- Little Mount Kostel, a fortress above the vineyards, protects its vineyards from the cold, warms with heat at night... A thick belly [gorge], smelling of morocco and prunes - and the Crimean sun.
“I know that there will be no grapes near the Church: the earth is saturated with blood, and the wine will come out tart and will not give joyful oblivion.”
– The fortress wall is a plumb line, bare Kush-Kaya, a mountain poster, pink in the morning, blue at night. It absorbs everything, sees everything, and draws on it by an unknown hand. The gray wall of Kush-Kai inscribed the terrible. When the time comes, I’ll read it.
- The sun is setting. Sudak chains turn golden with the evening splash. The demerzhi has turned pink, slowed down, melted, and extinguished. And now it has already begun to turn blue. The sun sets behind Babugan, the stubble of the pine forests burns. Babugan, the nocturnal one, frowned and moved closer.
- September is leaving. And everything is ringing - dry, ringing. Wind-blown tumbleweeds flutter loudly through the bushes. Cicadas itch day and night... It sips from the mountains with strong fragrant bitterness, autumn mountain wine - wormwood stone.
“And the sea became much darker.” Dolphin splashes flash on it more often, and jagged black wheels turn.
And here comes winter:
– Winter rains from the dense black Babugan.
“All night the devils were rattling the roof, knocking on the walls, breaking into my mud hut, whistling, howling. Chatyr-Dag struck!.. The last gilding flew off from the mountains - they turned black with winter death.
– For the third day, an icy wind blows from Chatyr-Dag, whistling madly in the cypress trees. Anxiety in the wind, anxiety all around.
– There is snow on Kush-Kai and Babugan. Winter is rolling out its canvases. And here, under the mountains, it’s sunny, through the through gardens, through the empty vineyards, brown-green across the hills. During the day, tits, sad birds of autumn, ring.
- Snow falls and melts. It falls thicker - and melts, and howls, and hits... Gray, smoky steel mountains, barely visible in the whitish sky. And in this sky there are black dots: eagles are flying... Thousands of years ago - here there was the same desert, and night, and snow, and the sea. And man lived in the desert and did not know fire. He strangled the animal with his hands and hid in caves. The light is nowhere to be seen – there wasn’t even then.
Primitiveness repeated...
And in comparison - the former ebullient multinational Crimean population: then and - “the cows trumpeted the blessed food.”
And here's the new one:
– Yalta, which changed its amber, grape name to... what! mockery of a drunken executioner - “Krasnoarmeysk” from now on!
But “I look forward to the Resurrection of the Dead!” Let there be Great Sunday!” – alas, it sounds like too uncertain a spell.
From his words and expressions:
– stýdno (adverb);
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