The story “The Duel” by A. Kuprin is considered his best work, as it touches on important problem army troubles. The author himself was once a cadet, he was initially inspired by this idea - to join the army, but in the future he will remember these years with horror. Therefore, the theme of the army, its ugliness, is very well depicted by him in such works as “At the Turning Point” and “The Duel.”

The heroes are army officers, here the author did not skimp and created several portraits: Colonel Shulgovich, Captain Osadchiy, Officer Nazansky and others. All these characters are not shown in the best light: the army turned them into monsters who recognize only inhumanity and education with sticks.

The main character is Yuri Romashkov, a second lieutenant, whom the author himself literally called his double. In him we see completely different traits that distinguish him from the above-mentioned persons: sincerity, decency, the desire to make this world better than it is. Also, the hero is sometimes dreamy and very intelligent.

Every day Romashkov became convinced that the soldiers had no rights; he saw cruel treatment and indifference on the part of the officers. He tried to protest, but the gesture was sometimes difficult to notice. He had many plans in his head that he dreamed of implementing for the sake of justice. But the further he goes, the more his eyes begin to open. Thus, Khlebnikov’s suffering and his impulse to commit suicide amaze the hero so much that he finally understands that his fantasies and plans for justice are too stupid and naive.

Romashkov is a person with a bright soul, with a desire to help others. However, love destroyed the hero: he believed the married Shurochka, for whose sake he went to the duel. Romashkov's quarrel with her husband led to a duel, which ended sadly. It was a betrayal - the girl knew that this was how the duel would end, but she tricked the hero, who was in love with herself, into believing that it would be a draw. Moreover, she deliberately used his feelings for her just to help her husband.

Romashkov, who was looking for justice all this time, ultimately was unable to fight the merciless reality; he lost to it. But the author saw no other way out other than the death of the hero - otherwise another death, a moral one, would have awaited him.

Analysis of Kuprin's story The Duel

The duel is perhaps one of the most famous works of Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin.

In this work we found reflections of the author’s thoughts. He describes the Russian army of the early 20th century, how its life is structured, and how it actually lives. Using the example of the army, Kuprin shows the social disadvantage in which it finds itself. He not only describes and reflects, but also looks for possible solutions to the situation.

The appearance of the army is diverse: it consists of different people who differ from each other in certain character traits, appearance, and attitude to life. In the described garrison everything is the same as everywhere else: constant drills in the morning, debauchery and drinking in the evenings - and so on day after day.

The main character, Second Lieutenant Yuri Alekseevich Romashov, is generally believed to be based on the author himself, Alexander Ivanovich. Romashov has a dreamy personality, somewhat naive, but honest. He sincerely believes that the world can be changed. As a young man, he is prone to romanticism, he wants to achieve feats and show himself. But over time, he realizes that it is all empty. He fails to find like-minded people or interlocutors among other officers. The only one with whom he manages to find a common language is Nazansky. Perhaps it was the absence of a person with whom he could speak as himself that ultimately led to the tragic outcome.

Fate brings Romashov together with the officer’s wife, Alexandra Petrovna Nikolaeva, or otherwise Shurochka. This woman is beautiful, smart, incredibly pretty, but at the same time she is pragmatic and calculating. She is both beautiful and cunning. She is driven by one desire: to leave this city, get to the capital, live a “real” life, and she is ready to do a lot for this. At one time, she was in love with someone else, but he was not suitable for the role of someone who could fulfill her ambitious plans. And she chose marriage with someone who could help make her dreams come true. But the years go by, and the husband still fails to get a promotion with a transfer to the capital. He had already had two chances, and the third was the last one. Shurochka is languishing in her soul and it is not surprising that she gets along with Romashov. They understand each other like no one else. But unfortunately, Romashov cannot help Shurochka get out of this outback.

Everything becomes clear over time, and Alexandra Petrovna’s husband finds out about the affair. Officers of that time were allowed duels as the only way to protect their dignity.

This is the first and last duel in Romashov’s life. He will trust Shurochka’s words that her husband will shoot past, and let him shoot past: his honor is preserved and so is his life. As an honest person, it doesn’t even occur to Romashov that he could be deceived. So Romashov was killed as a result of the betrayal of the one he loved.

Using the example of Romashov, we can see how romantic world, when faced with reality. So Romashov, when he entered the duel, lost to harsh reality.

Story for 11th grade

Appearing during the Russo-Japanese War and in the context of the growth of the first Russian revolution, the work caused a huge public outcry, since it undermined one of the main pillars of the autocratic state - the inviolability of the military caste.
The problems of “The Duel” go beyond the scope of a traditional military story. Kuprin also touches on the issue of the causes of social inequality among people, on possible ways to liberate a person from spiritual oppression, and raises the problem of the relationship between the individual and society, the intelligentsia and the people.
The plot of the work is built on the vicissitudes of the fate of an honest Russian officer, whom the conditions of army barracks life make him think about the wrong relationships between people. The feeling of spiritual decline haunts not only Romashov, but also Shurochka.
The comparison of two heroes, who are characterized by two types of worldviews, is generally characteristic of Kuprin. Both heroes strive to find a way out of the impasse. At the same time, Romashov comes to the idea of ​​​​protesting against bourgeois prosperity and stagnation, and Shurochka adapts to it, despite the outward ostentatious rejection. The author’s attitude towards her is ambivalent; he is closer to Romashov’s “reckless nobility and noble lack of will.” Kuprin even noted that he considers Romashov to be his double, and the story itself is largely autobiographical.
Romashov is a “natural man,” he instinctively resists injustice, but his protest is weak, his dreams and plans are easily destroyed, since they are immature and ill-conceived, often naive. Romashov is close to Chekhov's heroes. But the emerging need for immediate action strengthens his will for active resistance. After meeting with the soldier Khlebnikov, “humiliated and insulted,” a turning point occurs in Romashov’s consciousness; he is shocked by the man’s readiness to commit suicide, in which he sees the only way out of a martyr’s life. The sincerity of Khlebnikov’s impulse especially clearly indicates to Romashov the stupidity and immaturity of his youthful fantasies, which only aimed to prove something to others. Romashov is shocked by the intensity of Khlebnikov’s suffering, and it is the desire to sympathize that makes the second lieutenant think for the first time about the fate of the common people. However, Romashov’s attitude towards Khlebnikov is contradictory: conversations about humanity and justice bear the imprint of abstract humanism, Romashov’s call for compassion is in many ways naive.
In “The Duel,” A. I. Kuprin continues the traditions of psychological analysis of L. N. Tolstoy: in the work, in addition to the protesting voice of the hero himself, who saw the injustice of a cruel and stupid life, one can hear the author’s accusatory voice (Nazansky’s monologues). Kuprin uses Tolstoy’s favorite technique - the technique of substituting a reasoner for the main character. In “The Duel,” Nazansky is the bearer of social ethics. The image of Nazansky is ambiguous: his radical mood (critical monologues, romantic premonition of a “radiant life”, anticipation of future social upheavals, hatred of the lifestyle of the military caste, the ability to appreciate high, pure love, feel the beauty of life) conflicts with his own way of life. The only salvation from moral death is for the individualist Nazansky and for Romashov to escape from all social ties and obligations.

Moral and social problems in A. Kuprin’s story “The Duel”

Kuprin's biography was full of various events that gave the writer rich food for his literary works. The story “The Duel” is rooted in that period of Kuprin’s life when he acquired the experience of a military man. The desire to serve in the army was passionate and romantic in my youth. Kuprin graduated from the cadet corps and the Moscow Alexander Military School. Over time, service and the ostentatious, elegant side of an officer’s life turned out to be its wrong side: tiresomely monotonous classes in “literature” and practicing gun techniques with soldiers dull from drill, drinking in a club and vulgar affairs with regimental libertines. However, it was these years that gave Kuprin the opportunity to comprehensively study provincial military life, as well as get acquainted with the impoverished life of the Belarusian outskirts, the Jewish town, and the morals of the “low-ranking” intelligentsia. The impressions of these years were, as it were, a reserve for many years to come (Kuprin gleaned material for a number of stories and, first of all, the story “The Duel” during his officer service). Work on the story “The Duel” in 1902-1905 was dictated by the desire to carry out a long-conceived plan - to “enough” of the tsarist army, this concentration of stupidity, ignorance and inhumanity.
All the events of the work take place against the backdrop of army life, without ever going beyond it. Perhaps this was done in order to emphasize the real need to at least think about the problems that are shown in the story. After all, the army is a stronghold of autocracy, and if there are shortcomings in it, then we must strive to eliminate them. Otherwise, all the importance and exemplary character of the existing system is a bluff, an empty phrase, and there is no great power.
The main character, Second Lieutenant Romashov, will have to realize the horror of army reality. The author’s choice is not accidental, because Romashov is in many ways very close to Kuprin: both of them graduated from military school and enlisted in the army. From the very beginning of the story, the author sharply immerses us in the atmosphere of army life, painting a picture of company exercises: practicing service at the post, the lack of understanding by some soldiers of what is required of them (Khlebnikov, carrying out the orders of the arrested; Mukhamedzhinov, a Tatar who poorly understands Russian and , as a result, incorrectly executing orders). It is not difficult to understand the reasons for this misunderstanding. Khlebnikov, a Russian soldier, simply does not have any education, and therefore for him everything said by Corporal Shapovalenko is nothing more than an empty phrase. In addition, the reason for such misunderstanding is a sharp change in the situation: just as the author abruptly immerses us in this kind of situation, many recruits had no idea about military affairs before, did not communicate with military people, everything is new for them: “ ...they still did not know how to separate jokes and examples from the real requirements of the service and fell first to one extreme and then to the other.” Mukha-medzhinov does not understand anything due to his nationality, and this is also a big problem for the Russian army - they are trying to “bring everyone under the same brush,” without taking into account the characteristics of each people, which are, so to speak, innate and cannot be eliminated no training, much less shouting or physical punishment.
In general, the problem of assault appears very clearly in this story. This is the apotheosis of social inequality. Of course, we must not forget that corporal punishment for soldiers was abolished only in 1905. But in this case, we are no longer talking about punishment, but about mockery: “The non-commissioned officers brutally beat their subordinates for an insignificant mistake in literature, for a lost leg during marching - they beat them bloody, knocked out teeth, broke their eardrums with blows to the ear, They threw their fists on the ground.” Would a person with a normal psyche behave this way? The moral world of everyone who ends up in the army changes radically and, as Romashov notes, is far from better side. Even Captain Stelkovsky, commander of the fifth company, the best company in the regiment, an officer who always “possessed patient, cool and confident persistence,” as it turned out, also beat soldiers (as an example, Romashov cites how Stelkovsky knocks out a soldier’s teeth along with his horn, incorrectly who gave the signal through this same horn). In other words, there is no point in envying the fate of people like Stelkovsky.
The fate of ordinary soldiers causes even less envy. After all, they do not even have the basic right to choose: “You cannot hit a person who cannot answer you, who does not have the right to raise his hand to his face to protect himself from a blow. He doesn’t even dare to tilt his head.” The soldiers must endure all this and cannot even complain, because they know perfectly well what will happen to them then.
In addition to the fact that the privates are subjected to systematic beatings, they are also deprived of their livelihood: the small salary they receive, they give almost all of it to their commander. And this same money is spent by the gentlemen officers on all sorts of gatherings in bars with drinking, dirty games (again with money), and in the company of depraved women.
Having officially left the serfdom system 40 years ago and having sacrificed a huge number of human lives for it, Russia at the beginning of the 20th century had a model of such a society in the army, where the officers were exploiting landowners, and ordinary soldiers were serf slaves. The army system is destroying itself from within. It does not sufficiently perform the function assigned to it.
Those who try to go against this system will face a very difficult fate. It is useless to fight such a “machine” alone; it “absorbs everyone and everything.” Even attempts to understand what is happening plunges people into shock: Nazansky, who is constantly ill and goes on a drinking binge (obviously, thereby trying to hide from reality), is finally the hero of the story, Romashov. For him, every day the glaring facts of social injustice, all the ugliness of the system, become more and more noticeable. With his characteristic self-criticism, he also finds in himself the reasons for this state of affairs: he became part of the “machine”, mixed with this common gray mass of people who do not understand anything and are lost. Romashov is trying to isolate himself from them: “He began to retire from the company of officers, dined most of the time at home, did not go to dance evenings at all in the meeting and stopped drinking.” He “has definitely matured, become older and more serious in recent days.” This “growing up” was not easy for him: he went through a social conflict, a struggle with himself, he even had close thoughts about suicide (he clearly imagined a picture depicting his dead body and a crowd of people gathered around).
Analyzing the position of the Khlebnikovs in the Russian army, the way of life of the officers and looking for ways out of such a situation, Romashov comes to the idea that an army without war is absurd, and, therefore, in order for this monstrous phenomenon to not exist, “the army”, and it is not it must be necessary for people to understand the uselessness of war: “... Let’s say, tomorrow, let’s say, this very second this thought came to everyone’s minds: Russians, Germans, British, Japanese... And now there’s no more war, no more officers and soldier, everyone went home.” I am also close to a similar idea: to solve such global problems in the army, in order to solve global problems in general, it is necessary that the need for change is understood by the majority of people, since small groups of people, and even more so a few, are unable to change the course of history.

Story by A.I. Kuprin's "Duel" as a protest against depersonalization and spiritual emptiness

In Kuprin’s “Duel” we are talking about a very conservative and stagnant social environment - the environment of career Russian officers of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. The writer depicted the life of the officers of the regiment in the provincial outback. Here he used his own experience military service army second lieutenant in an infantry regiment in the Podolsk province. After the publication of “The Duel,” answering a question from a correspondent of one of the newspapers about how he knew army life so well, Kuprin readily explained: “How could I not know... I myself went through this “school”, was an army officer, a battalion adjutant ... If it weren’t for the censorship conditions, I wouldn’t have had enough.” But even adjusted for censorship, the picture of morals in the fictional garrison of the M regiment in the city turned out to be extremely gloomy. The main activities of officers are drunkenness, drill, intrigue, flirting with the wives of colleagues. Officers are not interested in anything that does not relate to military service. Company commander Captain Sliva, for example, in his entire life “has not read a single book or a single newspaper, except for the official part of the military ministry organ, the newspaper Russian Invalid.” The boredom of provincial life not only stupefies, but also embitters. Gentlemen, the officers take out their anger on the lower ranks, rewarding them with punches for any reason or no reason, and on civilians (“shpaki”), whom they mock in every possible way. For one of the characters in the story, Lieutenant Vetkin, even the great poet Pushkin is just “some kind of shpak.” The overwhelming majority of the regiment's officers had become accustomed to their life, "monotonous as a fence and gray as a soldier's cloth." Their spiritual and cultural needs have long since atrophied.
Second Lieutenant Romashov, the main character of the story, is only in his second year of service. And he is still trying to rise above the routine of everyday life in the army, to maintain at least some interests that go beyond the scope of his military career. “Oh, what are we doing! - Romashov exclaims, - today we’ll get drunk and drunk, tomorrow we’ll go to the company - one, two, left, right - in the evening we’ll drink again, and the day after tomorrow we’ll go back to the company. Is this really what life is all about? Kuprin endowed Romashov with autobiographical features. The writer himself endured the army burden for only four years, leaving the service after failing to enter the General Staff Academy. And he doomed his hero to quick death during a ridiculous duel. Honest and conscientious people like Romashov had little chance of surviving among army officers
“The Duel” was published in 1905, during the days of heavy defeats suffered by the Russian army in the war with Japan. Many contemporaries saw in Kuprin's story a truthful depiction of those vices of army life that led to the tragedy of Tsushima and Port Arthur. The official and conservative press accused the writer of slandering the army. However, the later failures of the Russian troops in the First World War were the revolutionary disaster of 1917. confirmed that Kuprin did not exaggerate at all. The deep gap between the officers and the mass of soldiers, the lack of education and spiritual callousness of the officers predetermined the subsequent collapse of the Russian army, which could not withstand the difficult trials of the World War.
However, it was not only the exposure of army disorders that worried the writer when he created “The Duel.” Kuprin also posed a more global problem of the origins of spiritual unfreedom. He forces Romashov to stand up for the soldier, Tatar Sharafutdinov, for which the second lieutenant is even put under arrest. Romashov gradually begins to worry about the fate of the mass of soldiers, thousands of “downtrodden Khlebnikovs.” He, however, does not have time to understand why in the army even an educated person can easily turn into a stupid executor of any, even the most absurd, orders of his superiors. Kuprin himself denounced militarism from the position of a “natural man” who refuses to kill his own kind. The fact that Sliva, and Romashov, and Vetkin, and Nikolaev, and hundreds and thousands of their subordinates are ultimately intended by their profession to kill people, according to the writer, leaves an indelible imprint on their inner world, ^makes them spiritually defective . It is no coincidence that one of the few positive heroes of “The Duel,” Romashov, dies in a duel from the bullet of the careerist Nikolaev, largely because he is morally unable to shoot a person. The intrigue of Nikolaev’s wife Shurochka, for the sake of her husband’s admission to the academy, in order to get the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of metropolitan life, ready to destroy even the second lieutenant who sympathized with her, could only succeed because of Romashov’s inherent properties of a “natural person”. Kuprin considered the main values ​​of the human personality to be the ability to breathe, feel, and think. Another character in “The Duel” that the writer liked, Nazansky, who among most officers has a reputation as an inveterate person and is about to leave the service due to illness, convinces
Romashova: “...Who is dearer and closer to you? Nobody! You are the king of the world... You are the god of all living things. Everything you see, hear, feel belongs to you. Do what you want. Take whatever you like...” Nazansky, like Kuprin himself, dreamed of a “huge, new, radiant life.” Of course, the army collective and army discipline greatly limit the individual in the manifestations of his individuality. However, in The Duel, Kuprin fell into anarchism to some extent. He did not think then about the question to what extent the freedom to do whatever he wants and take whatever he likes for one person will practically limit the same freedom for other members of society. But in this case, the rights of different people will inevitably come into conflict with each other, which will inevitably lead to a conflict of interests and the creation of various kinds of social institutions to resolve them, again limiting the freedom of individuals. Nevertheless, this clearly erroneous position of Kuprin’s philosophy does not at all detract from the significance of the criticism contained in “The Duel” of army orders that suppress human nature and deform the personalities of those who are forced to carry out military service for many years.

The author and his characters in A. I. Kuprin’s story “The Duel”

Critical portrayal of army society in A. I. Kuprin’s story “The Duel”

The story takes place in the mid-90s of the 19th century. Contemporaries saw in it a condemnation of the army order and an exposure of the officers. And this opinion will be confirmed by history itself a few years later, when the Russian army suffers a crushing defeat in the battles of Mukden, Liaoliang, and Port Arthur. Why did this happen? It seems to me that “The Duel” clearly and clearly answers the question posed. Can an army be combat-ready where an anti-human, corrupting and stultifying atmosphere reigns, where officers are at a loss when it comes to showing resourcefulness, intelligence and initiative, where soldiers are driven to stupefaction by senseless drills, beatings and bullying?
“With the exception of a few ambitious and careerists, all officers served as forced, unpleasant, disgusting corvée, languishing in it and not loving it. Junior officers, just like schoolboys, were late for classes and slowly ran away from them if they knew that they wouldn’t get punished for it... At the same time, everyone drank heavily, both in the meeting and when visiting each other... On The company officers went to service with the same disgust as the subaltern officers...” we read. Indeed, the regimental life that Kuprin depicts is absurd, vulgar and desolate. There are only two ways to break out of it: go into the reserves (and find yourself without a specialty and means of subsistence) or try to enter the academy and, after graduating, climb to a higher level on the military ladder, “make a career.” However, only a few are capable of this. The fate of the bulk of the officers is to pull an endless and tedious burden with the prospect of retiring with a small pension.
The daily life of officers consisted of leading drill exercises, monitoring the study of “literature” (i.e., military regulations) by soldiers, and attending an officers’ meeting. Drunkenness alone and in company, cards, affairs with other people's wives, traditional picnics and “balki”, trips to the local brothel - these are all the entertainments available to officers. “The Duel” reveals the dehumanization mental devastation, to which people are subjected in the conditions of army life, the crushing and vulgarization of these people. But sometimes they see the light for a while, and these moments are terrible and tragic: ““Occasionally, from time to time, days of some kind of general, general, ugly revelry would come in the regiment. Perhaps this happened in those strange moments when people, accidentally connected with each other, but all together condemned to boring inactivity and senseless cruelty, suddenly saw in each other’s eyes, there, far away, in a confused and oppressed consciousness, some mysterious spark of horror, melancholy and madness, and then calm , well-fed like breeding bulls, life seemed to be thrown out of its channel.” Some kind of collective madness began, people seemed to lose their human appearance. “On the way to the meeting, the officers stopped a passing Jew, called him and, tearing off his hat, They drove the cabman forward; then they threw this hat somewhere over the fence, and Bobetinsky beat the cabman.
Army life, cruel and senseless, also gives rise to its own kind of “monsters.” These are degraded and stupefied people, ossified in prejudices - campaigners, vulgar philistines and moral monsters. One of them is Captain Plum. This is a stupid campaigner, a narrow-minded and rude person. “Everything that went beyond the boundaries of the system, regulations and company and which he contemptuously called nonsense and mandrake, certainly did not exist for him. Wearing the harsh burden of service all his life, he did not read a single book or a single newspaper...” Although Sliva is attentive to the needs of soldiers, this quality is negated by his cruelty: “This lethargic, degraded-looking man was terribly stern with the soldiers and not only allowed the non-commissioned officers to fight, but he himself beat him brutally, until there was blood, so much so that the offender fell off his feet under his blows.” Even more terrifying is Captain Osadchy, who inspires “inhuman awe” in his subordinates. Even in his appearance there is something bestial, predatory. He is so cruel to the soldiers that every year someone in his company committed suicide.
What is the reason for such spiritual devastation and moral ugliness? Kuprin answers this question through the mouth of Nazansky, one of the few positive characters in the story: “... and so all of them, even the best, the most tender of them, wonderful fathers and attentive husbands - all of them in the service become base, cowardly, evil , stupid animals. You will ask why? Yes, precisely because none of them believes in service and does not see the reasonable purpose of this service”; “...for them, service is a complete disgust, a burden, a hated yoke.”
Fleeing from the deadening boredom of army life, officers try to come up with some kind of side activity for themselves. For most, this, of course, is drunkenness and cards. Some are engaged in collecting and handicrafts. Lieutenant Colonel Rafalsky indulges his soul in his home menagerie, Captain Stelkovsky has turned the corruption of young peasant women into a hobby.
What makes people rush into this pool and devote themselves to military service? Kuprin believes that the ideas about the military that have developed in society are partly to blame for this. Thus, the main character of the story, Second Lieutenant Romashov, trying to comprehend the phenomena of life, comes to the conclusion that “the world was divided into two unequal parts: one - the smaller one - the officers, which is surrounded by honor, strength, power, the magical dignity of the uniform and together with the uniform for some reason and patented courage, and physical strength, and arrogant pride; the other - huge and impersonal - civilians, otherwise shpak, shtafirka and hazel grouse; they were despised...” And the writer pronounces a verdict on military service, which, with its illusory valor, was created by “a cruel, shameful, universal misunderstanding.”

Main themes of creativity (“Moloch”, “Olesya”, “Duel”)

A. I. Kuprin, in his best works, reflected the existence of various classes of Russian society at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Continuing the humanistic traditions of Russian literature, especially L. N. Tolstoy and A. P. Chekhov, Kuprin was sensitive to modernity, to its current problems. Kuprin's literary activity began during his stay in the cadet corps. He writes poetry, where notes of despondency and melancholy are heard, or heroic motifs (“Dreams”) are heard. In 1889, a student of the cadet school Kuprin published a short story called “The First Debut” in the magazine “Russian Satirical Leaflet”. For publishing the story without permission from his superiors, Kuprin was arrested in the guardhouse.
Having retired and settled in Kyiv, the writer collaborates in Kyiv newspapers. An interesting literary phenomenon was the series of essays “Kyiv Types”. The images he created reflected the essential features of the motley urban philistine and people of the “bottom”, characteristic of all of Russia. Here you can find images of a “white-lined” student, a landlady, a pious pilgrim, a fireman, a failed singer, a modernist artist, and slum dwellers.
Already in the 90s, based on the material of army life in the stories “Inquiry” and “Overnight”, the writer puts sharp points moral issues. In the story “Inquiry”, the outrageous fact of punishing the Tatar soldier Mukhamet Bayguzin with rods, who could not even understand why he was being punished, makes Second Lieutenant Kozlovsky feel in a new way the deadening, soulless atmosphere of the royal barracks and his role in the system of oppression. The officer's conscience awakens, a feeling of spiritual connection with the hunted soldier is born, dissatisfaction with his position is born, and as a result - an explosion of spontaneous discontent. In these stories one can feel the influence of L. Tolstoy in questions about the moral responsibility of the intelligentsia for the suffering and tragic fate of the people.
In the mid-90s, a new theme, prompted by time, powerfully entered into Kuprin’s work. In the spring, he travels as a newspaper correspondent to the Donetsk basin, where he gets acquainted with the working and living conditions of workers. In 1896 he wrote a long story “Moloch”. The story gives a picture of the life of a large capitalist plant, shows the wretched life of workers' settlements, and spontaneous protests of workers. The writer showed all this through the perception of an intellectual. Engineer Bobrov reacts painfully and acutely to other people's pain and to injustice. The hero compares capitalist progress, which creates factories and factories, with the monstrous idol Moloch, demanding human sacrifices. The specific embodiment of Moloch in the story is the businessman Kvashnin, who does not disdain any means in order to make millions. At the same time, he is not averse to acting as a politician and leader (“the future belongs to us,” “we are the salt of the earth”). Bobrov watches the scene of groveling before Kvashnin with disgust. The subject of the deal with this businessman is Bobrov's fiancee Nina Zinenko. The hero of the story is characterized by duality and hesitation. At the moment of a spontaneous outbreak of protest, the hero seeks to blow up the factory boilers and thereby avenge his own and others’ suffering. But then his determination fades, and he refuses to take revenge on the hated Moloch. The story ends with a story about a workers' revolt, the arson of the plant, Kvashnin's escape and the calling of punitive forces to deal with the rebels.
In 1897, Kuprin served as estate manager in Rivne district. Here he becomes close friends with the peasants, which is reflected in his stories “Wilderness”, “Horse Thieves”, “Silver Wolf”. Writes a wonderful story “Olesya”. Before us is a poetic image of the girl Olesya, who grew up in the hut of an old “witch”, outside the usual norms of a peasant family. Olesya’s love for the intellectual Ivan Timofeevich, who accidentally visited a remote forest village, is a free, simple and strong feeling, without looking back or obligations, among tall pines, painted with the crimson glow of the dying dawn. The girl’s story gets a tragic end; here Olesya’s free life is invaded by the selfish calculations of village officials and the superstitions of dark peasants. Beaten and ridiculed, Olesya is forced to flee her forest nest.
In search of a strong man, Kuprin sometimes waxes poetic about people at the bottom of the social spectrum. Horse thief Buzyga (“Horse Thieves”) is depicted as a powerful character, the author gives him traits of generosity - Buzyga takes care of his boy Vasil. The stories about animals are amazing (“Emerald”, “White Poodle”, “Barbos and Kulka”, “Yu-Yu” and others.) Often strong and beautiful animals become victims of money-grubbing and base human passions.
In 1899, Kuprin met Gorky in Gorky’s magazine “Knowledge” and in 1905 Kuprin’s story “The Duel” was published. The timeliness and social value of the work lay in the fact that it truthfully and vividly showed the internal decay of the Russian army. The hero of the story “The Duel,” the young lieutenant Romashov, unlike Bobrov (“Moloch”), is shown in the process of spiritual growth, gradual insight, liberation from the power of traditional concepts and ideas of his circle. At the beginning of the story, despite his kindness, the hero naively divides everyone into “people of black and white bones,” thinking that he belongs to a special, higher caste. As false illusions dissipate, Romashov begins to reflect on the depravity of army orders, on the injustice of his whole life. He develops a feeling of loneliness, a passionate denial of an inhumanly dirty, wild life. The cruel Osadchy, the violent Bek-Agamalov, the sad Leshchenko, the dapper Bobeinsky, the army servant and the drunkard Sliva - all these officers are shown as alien to the truth-seeker Romashov. In conditions of arbitrariness and lawlessness, they lose not only their true idea of ​​honor, but also their human appearance. This is especially reflected in their attitude towards soldiers.
The story goes through a whole series of episodes of soldier drill, “literature” lessons, preparation for a review, when officers beat soldiers especially brutally, tear eardrums, knock them to the ground with their fists, and force people exhausted from the heat and nervous to “have fun.” The story truthfully depicts the mass of soldiers, shows individual characters, people of different nationalities with their inherent traditions. Among the soldiers are Russian Khlebnikov, Ukrainians Shevchuk, Boriychuk, Lithuanian Soltys, Cheremis Gainan, Tatars Mukhamettinov, Karafutdinov and many others. All of them - awkward peasants, workers, artisans - have a hard time being separated from their homes and their usual work, the author especially highlights the images of the orderly Gainan and the soldier Khlebnikov.
Khlebnikov, recently torn from the ground, does not organically perceive the army “sciences,” and therefore he has to bear the brunt of the position of a frightened soldier, defenseless against the rudeness of his superiors. The fate of the soldiers worries Romashov. He is not alone in this internal protest. A unique philosopher and theorist, Lieutenant Colonel Kazansky sharply criticizes the order in the army, hates vulgarity and ignorance, dreams of freeing the human “I” from the shackles of a rotten society, he is against despotism and violence. Romashov knows that the soldiers are oppressed by their own ignorance, and by general slavery, and by arbitrariness, and by violence on the part of officers. Paustovsky rightly refers to the scene of Romashov’s meeting with the tortured Khlebnikov, who was trying to throw himself under a train, and their frank conversation as “one of the best scenes in Russian literature.” The officer recognizes the soldier as a friend, forgetting about caste barriers between them. Having sharply posed the question of Khlebnikov's fate, Romashov dies without finding an answer as to which path to liberation should be taken. His fatal duel with officer Nikolaev is, as it were, a consequence of the growing conflict between the hero and the military officer caste. The reason for the duel is connected with the hero’s love for Alexandra Petrovna Nikolaeva - Shurochka. To ensure her husband’s career, Shurochka suppresses the best human feelings in herself and asks Romashov not to shy away from the duel, because this will harm her husband, who wants to enter the academy. “The Duel” became extremely popular in Russia and was soon translated into European languages.
Kuprin’s excellent story “Tambrinus” breathes the atmosphere of revolutionary days. The theme of all-conquering art is intertwined here with the idea of ​​democracy, bold protest “ little man” against the black forces of arbitrariness and reaction. Meek and cheerful Sashka, with his extraordinary talent as a violinist and sincerity, attracts a diverse crowd of longshoremen, fishermen, and smugglers to the Odessa tavern. They greet with delight the melodies that reflect the scene of social moods and events - from the Russian-Japanese War to the Revolution, when Sashka’s violin sounds with the cheerful rhythms of “La Marseillaise”. In the days of the onset of terror, Sashka challenges the disguised detectives and the Black Hundred “scoundrels in a fur hat,” refusing to play the monarchical anthem at their request, openly denouncing them of murders and pogroms. Crippled by the tsarist secret police, he returns to his port friends to play for them on the outskirts of the deafeningly cheerful “Shepherd”. Free creativity and the power of the people's spirit, according to Kuprin, are invincible.
In emigration, in the works of A. I. Kuprin, one begins to encounter a sentimental embellishment of the past of Russia, the very past to which he had previously pronounced judgment. Such, for example, is the autobiographical novel “Junker”. Kuprin could no longer live without his homeland. He returns to Russia in 1937, but writes nothing more and soon dies.

Debunking the romance of military service (based on the story “The Duel”)

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin is an honest and selfless artist, a patriot of Russia. In his critical works, the writer tried to show the “ulcers” of modern society in order to quickly cure them. The story “The Duel,” published in 1905, at the height of the Russo-Japanese War, explained the reasons for Russia’s defeat in this war.
The writer, with pain and bitterness, shows the senseless drill and cruelty that reigned in the tsarist army, and, as a result, an army that was incapable of combat, a decayed officer corps, and downtrodden soldiers.
Through the eyes of the hero of the story, Yuri Alekseevich Romashov, a picture of training on the parade ground is given, when “... they go too far, they pull at a soldier, they torture him, they bully him, and at the inspection he will stand like a stump...”
But even the officers do not see the point in daily grueling exercises on the parade ground, accompanied by shouting and punching of the officers. Such activities give rise to only one desire - to finish them as quickly as possible and lose yourself in a drunken stupor.
Romashov’s dreams of education and an academy are just fantasies that are not destined to turn into reality. “Nonsense! My whole life is in front of me! - thought Romashov, and, carried away by his thoughts, he walked more cheerfully and breathed deeper. - Well, to spite them all, tomorrow morning I’ll sit down with books, prepare and enter the academy... Work! Oh, with hard work you can do whatever you want. Just pull yourself together.” It’s just that something that is possible in dreams becomes unattainable in reality. Yuri Alekseevich is a fruitless dreamer, an idealist who will not lift his hand to achieve those wonderful plans that he builds endlessly in his imagination.
Love for Shurochka Nikolaeva - Alexandra Petrovna - is the only bright feeling of his gray and hopeless life in the garrison. Romashov understands that he is acting basely, caring for the wife of a colleague, but this is stronger than him. Yuri Alekseevich, as usual, builds castles in the air on the theme of “love”. But the more magnificent and unbridled his imagination, the more insignificant the hero. Both he himself and the readers understand that the hero goes into the world of illusions out of helplessness and fear of life. He is not able to change his life, but only “goes with the flow,” tearing his soul with fruitless dreams. The hero is not devoid of nobility, compassion for weak and humiliated soldiers. But this is the compassion of a “friend in misfortune” for someone like himself.
Drunk Kazansky explains to Romashov what he himself always secretly knew and felt: “Why do I serve? ...Because I was told since childhood and now everyone around me says that the most important thing in life is to serve and to be well-fed and well dressed. And so I do things for which I have absolutely no soul, I carry out orders for the sake of animal fear of life, which sometimes seem cruel to me, and sometimes senseless...” Nazansky calls the time of binge drinking “a time of freedom.”
Loving Shurochka, Romashov understands that this love is out of hopelessness. This woman is capable of any meanness. For the sake of her ambitious goals, she stepped over Kazansky, over Romashov... Who's next?
So gradually the story, written, it would seem, on an army theme, outgrows its narrow framework, touching upon universal human problems.
The democratic public and criticism, welcoming the “Duel,” sought first of all to reveal its revolutionary meaning. “The military class is only part of the huge bureaucratic class that has filled the Russian land...” When reading the story, “you begin to intensely feel the oppression of the life around you and look for a way out of it,” wrote “Bulletin and Library of Self-Education” for 1905. But the phenomenon of the story is that it has not lost its meaning even today, no matter how sad it may be to admit.

Russia in the works of A. I. Kuprin (based on the story “The Duel”)

The time when humanity enters new Age, raises the question of the fate of Russia especially acutely. At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. this issue was hotly discussed in all levels of society. This could not but be reflected in the literature of that time, and therefore many writers paid attention to this topic. Kuprin’s story “The Duel” poses similar burning questions to the reader.
The army is always associated with the concept of the Motherland, so Kuprin in the story depicted the life of an ordinary regiment through the eyes of the main character, Second Lieutenant Romashov. “The Duel” was released in May 1905, as the war with Japan was approaching its ignominious end. Soldiers died in the thousands due to the mediocrity and stupidity of the generals when the Pacific Fleet was completely destroyed at Tsushima. And the work, in which Kuprin exposed the whole essence of army life, all its vices, caused a massive wave of anger.
The story makes a painful impression on the reader. Almost all the officers in “The Duel” are nonentities, stupid people, drunkards, cowardly careerists and ignoramuses. The author shows the disgusting drinking bouts of the officers, their entire lives mired in vulgarity. The army school of humiliation is especially vividly depicted, where officers ultimately took out all their failures and anger on the soldiers. The entire method of training in the regiment was based on punishment. This method was most clearly demonstrated at the regiment review. Describing this scene, Kuprin questions the combat effectiveness of the Russian army. In contrast to this, Kuprin brings up the fifth company of Captain Stelkovsky, showing how this vicious circle can be broken.
The character of Nazansky, a drunken officer with extraordinary intelligence and spiritual qualities, stands apart in the story. Nazansky opens our eyes to everything that is happening. The army destroys everything good in a person, making him a complete nonentity. Nazansky says about this: “Everything that is talented and capable is drunk.”
In “The Duel,” Kuprin expressed his opinion about why Russia lost the war, but the author expresses hope that it is possible to eradicate these torques. This is evidenced by the scene of general drunkenness, in which a moment of universal insight occurs - normal human feelings awaken in the officers, although, unfortunately, not for long. The interesting thing is that the story remains relevant

The strength and weakness of the nature of Second Lieutenant Romashov (based on the story “The Duel” by A. I. Kuprin)

Second Lieutenant Romashov is the main character in the story “The Duel.” In the work of A. I. Kuprin “Duel”
245 is the most significant work of the beginning of the century. In the story, the writer synthesized his observations of army life. He had repeatedly addressed this topic before, but in smaller works. Since Kuprin himself served in the regiment, the atmosphere recreated in the book reflects reality.
Kuprin said about his story: “The main character is me.” Indeed, the biographies of the author and the hero have a lot in common. It can be assumed that Kuprin put some of his thoughts into Romashov’s mouth. However, the hero is an independent person.
Romashov's character is shown in constant development, in dynamics. This distinguishes him from all the other heroes who “entered” the story with already fully developed characters, views, and concepts.
The story about the fate of the main character begins after he served in the regiment for a year and a half, since cardinal, significant changes began to occur to Romashov not from the very beginning of his service. When he first arrived at the garrison, he was overwhelmed by dreams of glory. Then for him, officer and human honor were synonymous. In his fantasies, the newly-minted officer saw how he pacifies a riot, inspires soldiers to fight by his example, receives awards, but all this is just a figment of the imagination. In fact, he takes part in daily drinking bouts, plays cards, enters into a long relationship and does not tell anyone the necessary connection with an insignificant woman. All this is done out of boredom, since this is the only entertainment in the garrison, and the service is monotonous and causes nothing but boredom.
Daydreaming and lack of will are traits of Romashov’s nature that immediately catch the eye. Take, for example, his habit of mentally speaking about himself in the third person with some cliched phrases, like the hero of a novel. Then the author introduces us closer to the hero, and the reader learns that Romashov is characterized by warmth, gentleness, and compassion. However, all these wonderful qualities cannot always manifest themselves because of the same weak will.
In Romashov’s soul there is a constant struggle between a man and an officer. It is changing before our eyes. Gradually he banishes caste prejudices from himself. He sees that all the officers are stupid, embittered, but at the same time they boast of “the honor of their uniform.” They allow themselves to beat soldiers, and this happens every day. As a result, the rank and file turn into faceless, obedient slaves. Whether they are smart or stupid, whether they are workers or peasants, the army makes them indistinguishable from each other.
Romashov never had to raise his hand against soldiers, taking advantage of his position and superiority. As a deeply impressionable nature, he cannot remain indifferent to what is happening around him. He learns to see a friend, a brother in a soldier. It is he who saves Private Khlebnikov from suicide.
His colleague Nazansky, a drunken officer-philosopher, has a significant influence on Romashov. Kuprin put his own ideas into his mouth: about freedom of spirit, about peaceful existence, about the need to fight against tsarism (the stronghold of which is the army). At the same time, Nazansky slides into the ideas of Nietzscheanism, into the glorification of individualism and the denial of the collective. Thus, although this drunken officer conveys many of the author’s ideas and moods, at the same time he serves as an example of the detrimental influence of an officer’s life on an intelligent and promising person. It should be noted that intellectually Nazansky is much higher than Romashov, and he considers him his teacher.
Romashov, like a sponge, absorbs Kazansky's ideas about a free person. He thinks about it a lot. The turning point in Romashov’s spiritual development was his internal monologue in defense of the Personality. It is then that he realizes not only his own, but also the individuality of each person individually. Seeing that army life suppresses the Personality, the second lieutenant tries to look for those to blame, but does not find them and even begins to grumble at God.
The fact that Romashov does not succumb to the influence of a destructive atmosphere is his strength. He has his own opinion, he protests internally.
The seeds sown by Nazansky sprout in Romashov’s soul. All the time thinking about the order existing in the garrison, he comes to the idea of ​​​​the complete abolition of the army. As for the danger of war, Romashov believes that all people on earth can simply agree on peace and the issue will disappear by itself. This only speaks of the second lieutenant’s complete isolation from earthly realities. He lives his fantasies.
In the end, the hero comes to the only correct conclusion, in his opinion. He wants to leave the service and devote himself either to science, or art, or physical labor. Who knows what would have happened to Second Lieutenant Romashov if not for the duel that interrupted all his dreams. He was sacrificed for the career of another officer. Romashov was never able to do anything; his life was tragically cut short at the beginning of his journey.
Kuprin presented the image of the main character of “The Duel” very vividly and psychologically believable. He did not idealize Romashov at all, despite his obvious sympathy and sympathy, he did not ignore either his merits or his shortcomings. Romashov is a weak man in himself, but strong theme that he was able to resist the influence of the environment, not to subordinate his mind, thoughts, ideas to it. It wasn't his fault that it came to nothing.
The image of Second Lieutenant Romashov is an undoubted achievement of the writer, this is one of his most memorable heroes, thanks to which “The Duel” not only after its first edition, but even to this day enjoys the love of readers.

The story by A.I. Kuprin was published in May 1905. The author continued in it with a description of army life. From sketches of the life of a provincial garrison grows a social generalization of the decomposition of not only the army, but also the country as a whole, state system.

This is a story about a crisis that has engulfed various spheres of Russian life. The universal hatred corroding the army is a reflection of the enmity that gripped Tsarist Russia.

In “The Duel,” as in none of his other works, Kuprin depicted with great artistic force the moral decay of the officers, showing stupid commanders devoid of any glimpses of civil service. He showed muzzled, intimidated soldiers, dull from senseless drill, such as the puny left-flank soldier Khlebnikov. Even if they met humane officers, they were subjected to ridicule, died senselessly, like Second Lieutenant Romashov, or became drunkards, like Nazansky.

Kuprin made his hero a humane, but weak and quiet man who does not fight evil, but suffers from it. Even the hero's surname - Romashov - emphasized the gentleness and gentleness of this person.

Kuprin draws Georgy Romashov with compassion and sympathy, but also with the author’s irony. The story of Romashov, externally connected with the army, is not just the story of a young officer. This is the story of a young man who is going through what Kuprin calls “the period of maturation of the soul.” Romashov grows morally throughout the story, finds answers to questions that are very important to him. He suddenly comes to the conclusion that the army is unnecessary, but he understands this very naively. It seems to him that all of humanity should say “I don’t want to!” - and war will become unthinkable and the army will die out.

Second Lieutenant Romashov decides to break with those around him and understands that every soldier has his own “I”. He outlined completely new connections with the world. The title of the story has the same generalizing solution as its main conflict. Throughout the story there is a duel between the young man, reborn for the new, and the various forces of the old. Kuprin writes not about a duel of honor, but about murder in a duel.

The final treacherous blow was dealt to Romashov in love. Disdain for the weak, hatred of the feeling of pity, which sounded in Nazansky’s speeches, is carried out in practice by Shurochka. despising environment and her morality, Shurochka Nikolaeva turns out to be an integral part of her. The plot of the story ends symbolically: the old world throws all its might against the man who has begun to spread his wings.

In the summer and autumn of 1905, Kuprin's story stirred up readers in the Russian army and throughout the country, and very soon its translations appeared in the main European languages. The writer receives not only the broadest all-Russian fame, but also all-European fame.

The story “The Duel” was published in 1905. This is a story about the conflict between the humanistic worldview and the violence that flourished in the army of that time. The story reflects Kuprin’s own vision of army order. Many of the heroes of the work are characters from the writer’s real life, whom he encountered during his service.

Yuri Romashov, a young second lieutenant, is deeply affected by the general moral decay that reigns in army circles. He often visits Vladimir Nikolaev, with whose wife Alexandra (Shurochka) he is secretly in love. Romashov also maintains a vicious relationship with Raisa Peterson, the wife of his colleague. This romance stopped giving him any joy, and one day he decided to break off the relationship. Raisa set out to take revenge. Soon after their breakup, someone began to bombard Nikolaev with anonymous letters with hints of a special connection between his wife and Romashov. Because of these notes, Shurochka asks Yuri not to visit their house anymore.

However, the young second lieutenant had plenty of other troubles. He did not allow non-commissioned officers to start fights, and constantly argued with officers who supported moral and physical violence against their charges, which displeased the command. Romashov's financial situation also left much to be desired. He is lonely, service loses its meaning for him, his soul is bitter and sad.

During the ceremonial march, the second lieutenant had to endure the worst shame of his life. Yuri was simply daydreaming and made a fatal mistake, breaking the order.

After this incident, Romashov, tormenting himself with memories of ridicule and general censure, did not notice how he found himself not far from railway. There he met soldier Khlebnikov, who wanted to commit suicide. Khlebnikov, through tears, talked about how he was bullied in the company, about the beatings and ridicule that had no end. Then Romashov began to realize even more clearly that each faceless gray company consists of separate destinies, and each fate matters. His grief paled against the background of the grief of Khlebnikov and others like him.

A little later, a soldier hanged himself in one of the mouths. This incident led to a wave of drunkenness. During a drinking session, a conflict broke out between Romashov and Nikolaev, which led to a duel.

Before the duel, Shurochka came to Romashov’s house. She began to call out to tender feelings second lieutenant, say that they must shoot, because refusal to duel may be misinterpreted, but none of the duelists should be wounded. Shurochka assured Romashov that her husband agreed to these conditions and their agreement would remain secret. Yuri agreed.

As a result, despite Shurochka’s assurances, Nikolaev mortally wounded the second lieutenant.

The main characters of the story

Yuri Romashov

The central character of the work. A kind, shy and romantic young man who does not like the harsh morals of the army. He dreamed of a literary career, often walked, immersed in thoughts and dreams of another life.

Alexandra Nikolaeva (Shurochka)

The object of Romashov's affection. At first glance, she is a talented, charming, energetic and intelligent woman; gossip and intrigue in which local ladies participate are alien to her. However, in reality it turns out that she is much more insidious than all of them. Shurochka dreamed of a luxurious metropolitan life; everything else did not matter to her.

Vladimir Nikolaev

Shurochka's unlucky husband. He does not shine with intelligence and fails the entrance exams to the academy. Even his wife, helping him prepare for admission, mastered almost the entire program, but Vladimir could not manage it.

Shulgovich

A demanding and stern colonel, often dissatisfied with Romashov’s behavior.

Nazansky

A philosophical officer who likes to talk about the structure of the army, about good and evil in general, is prone to alcoholism.

Raisa Peterson

Romashov's mistress, wife of Captain Peterson. She is a gossip and an intriguer, not burdened by any principles. She is busy playing at secularism, talking about luxury, but inside her there is spiritual and moral poverty.

In “The Duel,” A. Kuprin demonstrates to the reader all the inferiority of the army. Main character, Lieutenant Romashov, is becoming more and more disillusioned with the service, finding it pointless. He sees the cruelty with which officers treat their subordinates, witnesses assault that is not stopped by management.

Most of the officers resigned themselves to the existing order. Some find in it an opportunity to take out their own grievances on others through moral and physical violence, to show the cruelty inherent in their character. Others simply accept reality and, not wanting to fight, look for an outlet. Often this outlet becomes drunkenness. Even Nazansky, an intelligent and talented person, drowns in a bottle thoughts about the hopelessness and injustice of the system.

A conversation with soldier Khlebnikov, who constantly endures bullying, confirms Romashova in the opinion that this entire system is rotten through and through and has no right to exist. In his reflections, the second lieutenant comes to the conclusion that there are only three occupations worthy of an honest person: science, art and free physical labor. The army is a whole class, which in peacetime enjoys the benefits earned by other people, and in wartime it goes to kill warriors like themselves. This makes no sense. Romashov thinks about what would happen if all people unanimously said “no” to war, and the need for the army disappeared by itself.

The duel between Romashov and Nikolaev is a confrontation between honesty and deceit. Romashov was killed by betrayal. Both then and now, the life of our society is a duel between cynicism and compassion, loyalty to principles and immorality, humanity and cruelty.

You can also read, one of the most prominent and popular writers in Russia in the first half of the twentieth century.

Surely you will be interested summary in the opinion of Alexander Kuprin, his most successful, imbued with a fabulous, or even mystical atmosphere.

The main idea of ​​the story

The problems raised by Kuprin in “The Duel” go far beyond the army. The author points out the shortcomings of society as a whole: social inequality, the gap between the intelligentsia and common people, spiritual decline, the problem of relationships between society and the individual.

The story “The Duel” received positive feedback from Maxim Gorky. He argued that this work should deeply touch “every honest and thinking officer.”

K. Paustovsky was deeply touched by the meeting between Romashov and soldier Khlebnikov. Paustovsky ranked this scene among the best in Russian literature.

However, “The Duel” received not only positive reviews. Lieutenant General P. Geisman accused the writer of slander and attempted undermining political system.

• Kuprin dedicated the first edition of the story to M. Gorky. According to the author himself, he owes all the boldest thoughts expressed on the pages of “The Duel” to the influence of Gorky.
• The story “The Duel” has been filmed five times, the last time in 2014. “The Duel” was the last episode of a four-part film consisting of film adaptations of Kuprin’s works.

The story “The Duel” was written and published by A.I. Kuprin in 1905. Many considered and still consider this work to be the best of all that the writer created during his long creative life. The “duel” was indeed given by A.I. Kuprin has a real name in Russian literature, putting him on a par with his great contemporaries: Gorky, Chekhov, Bunin. Meanwhile, the story was received ambiguously by Russian educated society, as well as in the military environment of the 1910s. After the events of 1917 and the bloodshed that followed Civil War The attitude of the author himself to the content of his work, already well known to readers, also radically changed.

The history of the story

A.I. Kuprin’s story “The Duel” is largely autobiographical. It is based on the personal impressions of the author, a graduate of the Alexander School, who served for four years as a young officer in the provincial town of Proskurov, Podolsk province. Perhaps A.I. Kuprin, due to his character, personality and temperament, was not created for military service at all, especially in peacetime. But the future writer did not choose the military profession for himself: that’s how life turned out. His mother, a widow, not having the means to give her son a decent education, sent the boy to a military gymnasium, which was later transformed into a cadet corps. Resentment for the lack of freedom of one’s own choice affected Kuprin’s entire subsequent military career, as well as in his literary work. As if in a distorting mirror, it was reflected on the pages of many of the writer’s “military” works and, to the greatest extent, in the story “The Duel.”

Despite the presence of a number of memoirs and other evidence, the history of the creation of the story “The Duel” is extremely contradictory. Some of its nuances still raise questions among literary scholars, biographers, and researchers of A.I. Kuprin’s work.

Well-known sources indicate that the idea of ​​a large work (novel) about the life of Russian officers in a remote province was born to the writer in the early 1890s.

In 1893, in an undated letter to N.K. Mikhailovsky, Kuprin mentions his work on a great novel:

“I’m writing a long novel, The Grieving and the Embittered, but I can’t get past chapter 5.”

Neither Kuprin's biographers, nor in his subsequent correspondence, make any further mention of this novel. There is also no information that this work was dedicated to army life. However, most researchers consider “The Mourning and the Embittered” to be the first version of “The Duel,” which the author did not like and abandoned it.

In the 1890s, a number of Kuprin’s stories appeared in print, dedicated to the life and customs of Russian officers, but Kuprin turned to a new major work from the life of the military only in 1902-1903.

While Kuprin was thinking about the plot and collecting materials, the German writer Fritz von Kürburg, writing under the pseudonym Fritz-Oswald Bilse, released his novel “Aus einer kleinen Garrison” (“In a small garrison”). This book, which aimed to expose the crude soldiery, caste isolation, vulgar arrogance and stupidity of the German military, was a huge success. A lawsuit was initiated against the author, which caused a wide public outcry not only in Kaiser Germany, but also in other European countries. Bilse-Kürburg, by order of Emperor Wilhelm II, was excluded from military service. Already in 1903-1904, critical articles devoted to the “Little Garrison” appeared in the Russian magazines “Russian Wealth” and “Education”. In 1904, several translations of this work by Bilse were published into Russian and other European languages.

“My misfortune,” Kuprin said in an interview in 1910, “is that when I think of something and while I’m getting ready to write what I’ve planned, someone will definitely write it in the meantime. This was the case with “Yama”, “Olga Eruzalem” appeared, and this was also the case with “Duel” in 1902, when Bilse’s notes “In a small garrison” appeared. Even my "Duel" was translated into French like this: “La petite garrison russe.”

The topic was intercepted from Kuprin. “The Duel” was conceived by the author as an autobiographical, confessional work. But for publishers and readers at the beginning of the new, 20th century, the personal experiences of an army officer in the late 1880s were of little interest. The story must have contained an accusatory subtext that was fashionable at that time. Without him it was impossible to count on success.

During this period, A.I. Kuprin, by his own later admission, was entirely under the influence of A.M. Gorky and writers close to him, who consider it their calling and duty to scourge social ills. In those years, Gorky was indeed perceived by Russian society as the most prominent exponent of advanced political thought in fiction. His connection with the Social Democrats, revolutionary actions and government repressions against him were before everyone's eyes; almost every new work of his was not so much a literary as a political event. For Kuprin, Gorky was also not just a literary authority or a more successful writer. The voice of the “petrel of the revolution” sounded like the voice of a new creator of history, a prophet and arbiter of future changes.

After the publication of Bilse’s book, it was Gorky who convinced the author of “The Duel” that work on the work he had started should be continued. Back then, Kuprin believed that he was writing a great “novel” about what he saw and personally experienced, that he would be able to combine all his impressions with the requirements of the pre-revolutionary time and thereby “fit into the era.” It turned out to be not so simple. The progress of work on the book did not satisfy him. In search of inspiration, Kuprin rushed from city to city: he went to Balaklava, then lived a little in Odessa, at the end of 1904 he returned to St. Petersburg, where he again actively communicated with A.M. Gorky. However, the socially acute, topical “novel” about army life did not work out.

Only the image of Lieutenant Romashov, which he finally found, helped Kuprin to connect the incompatible. A vulnerable, trusting person, essentially deeply alien to both the military profession and the harsh realities of garrison life, with mental suffering perceives the reality around him: the lack of rights of soldiers, the emptiness and lack of spirituality of many officers, class prejudices, established army traditions and customs. The story masterfully conveys the “horror and boredom” of garrison life, but at the same time a heartfelt hymn to true love is created, through the lips of the hero a firm belief in the victory of the human spirit is expressed.

According to the recollections of Kuprin’s relatives, in the winter of 1904-1905, work on “The Duel” froze again. Kuprin was not confident of success, he found any excuse not to work on the story: he drank, led a disorderly lifestyle, and was surrounded by unfulfilled obligations, debts, and creditors. They even wrote this poem about him: “If truth is in wine, how many truths are there in Kuprin?”

Initially, “The Duel” was intended for the magazine “God’s World,” the publisher of which was A.I. Kuprin’s mother-in-law, Alexandra Arkadyevna Davydova, but when, during 1904-1905, Kuprin became especially close to Gorky, he decided to place his novel in the next volume of Gorky’s collection "Knowledge". (Reported this in a letter dated August 25, 1904 from Odessa).

Subsequently, Alexander Ivanovich himself admitted that he completed the story “The Duel” only thanks to the sincere friendly participation of M. Gorky:

"A. M. Gorky was a touching comrade in literature, he knew how to support and encourage in time. I remember that I abandoned “The Duel” many times, it seemed to me that it was not done brightly enough, but Gorky, after reading the written chapters, was delighted and even shed tears. If he had not inspired me with confidence to work, I probably would not have finished my novel.”

Elsewhere, Kuprin characterizes Gorky’s role in the creation of the novel with even greater certainty: “The Duel would not have appeared in print if not for the influence of Alexei Maksimovich. During the period of my lack of faith in my creative powers, he helped me a lot.”

But there is other evidence. A.I. Kuprin has always been a man of passions, and the decisive role in the work on the story, most likely, was played not by Gorky’s friendly participation, but by the persistence of the writer’s adored wife, Maria Karlovna Davydova. She was tired of observing attacks of creative doubts, which were expressed in Kuprin, as a rule, in drunken revelry and causeless idleness. Maria Karlovna simply kicked her husband out of the house, declaring that he should not appear on the doorstep without the next chapter of “The Duel.” This method turned out to be more than effective. Kuprin rented a room and, having written the next chapter, hurried to his family apartment, climbed the stairs, pushed the manuscript through the door that was ajar with a chain. Then he sat down on the steps and waited patiently for Maria Karlovna to read and let him in. One day, to see his wife, Alexander Ivanovich brought a chapter he had already read earlier, and the door slammed loudly. “Executed! Indeed he was executed!” - he repeated in confusion, unable to get up and leave...

Thus, through the joint efforts of the spouses, the story was completed and published in the next collection of the publishing company “Knowledge” in May 1905.

Reaction of contemporaries

May 1905. The whole country was deeply impressed by the military failures of the Russian army and navy in the Far East. The “small victorious war” turned into huge casualties. In those days, it was rare that a family did not mourn the officers, soldiers and sailors who perished on the hills of distant Manchuria and died in the battles of Tsushima and Port Arthur. After the January execution, general dissatisfaction with the government grew stronger and more powerful, soon developing into a revolutionary movement. And suddenly, A.I. Kuprin’s story “The Duel” appears.

Despite the fact that the story dealt with events more than ten years ago (duels in the army were allowed in the peaceful year of 1894), the so-called “progressive public” perceived the story as a more than modern and topical work. Even the least attentive and far-sighted reader was easily able to discern in “The Duel” an explanation of the reasons for Russia’s military failures solely through the depravity of its long-rotten state system.

Is it any wonder that under these conditions, newspaper and magazine criticism received Kuprin’s story with a bang. Already a week after the release of “The Duel,” the newspaper “Slovo” published an article by M. Chunosov (I.I. Yasinsky) “The Monster of Militarism,” in which the author called Kuprin’s work a bold indictment against bureaucracy, militarism and monarchical militarism. He was actively echoed by other critics of the democratic camp: V. Lvov (Rogachevsky), Izmailov, Lunacharsky, etc. The future Soviet People's Commissar of Education in his article “On Honor” wrote:

However, a significant part of Russian society, in contrast to the positive assessment of criticism and the press, perceived “The Duel” as a scandalous libel, almost a spit in the face of all those who sacrificed their lives in the interests of the Fatherland in the Far Eastern theater of military operations.

A critic of the very popular conservative newspaper “Moskovskie Vedomosti” A. Basargin (A.I. Vvedensky) described “The Duel” as “an unscrupulous pamphlet full of sloppy insinuations,” “obscene babble from someone else’s voice in the tone of the general trend of the “Knowledge” collections.”

The military could not agree with Kuprin either. Some of them, like Lieutenant General P.A. Geisman, who published a rather harsh article about the “Duel” in the military official “Russian Invalid”, really “went too far.” Recognizing Kuprin’s literary talent as a “writer of everyday life,” the general sincerely did not advise the author to touch on what he, in his opinion, does not know:

“Women, flirting, adultery, etc. - this is his genre,” reasoned General Geisman, declaring in conclusion: “That’s where we advise him to direct his attention and his abilities. And about the war, military science, the art of war, military affairs and the military world in general, it is better for him not to talk about it. For him, these “grapes are green.” He can write pictures without explanations, but nothing more!”

But what offended most representatives of the military environment in “The Duel” was not the author’s ignorance or his general resentment towards the army as such. To please the general oppositional mood prevailing in the editorial office of Znanie, with his preaching of anti-militarism, Kuprin, first of all, shamed all defenders of the Fatherland with their profession. Even the most benevolent reviewers noted: “The Duel” is harmed precisely by the journalistic, in its own way beautiful and even spectacular anger...” (P. M. Pilsky).

Kuprin dealt a cruel blow to those who considered military service to be their real calling, and not an accident, a heavy duty or an absurd mistake. Behind the ardent desire to “expose and castigate,” the author was unable to discern in each of his unsympathetic characters the future defenders of Port Arthur, the true heroes of the First World War, those who stood up to defend their homeland in a completely hopeless situation at the beginning of 1918, created the Volunteer Army and died in her first Kuban campaigns.

Neither before nor after “The Duel” did Kuprin give in his works such a broad picture of the life of a certain environment (in this case, the officers), he never raised such acute social problems that required their solution, and finally, the writer’s skill in depicting the inner world man, his complex, often contradictory psychology did not achieve such expressiveness as in “The Duel.” For Kuprin's contemporaries, the denunciation of the vices of military life was an expression of the general incurable illness of the entire monarchical system, which, it was believed, rested solely on army bayonets.

Many critics called “The Duel” by A.I. Kuprin “a duel with the entire army”, as an instrument of violence against the human person. And if we take it more broadly, then a duel with the entire state system of the modern writer of Russia.

It was precisely this radical formulation of the question that determined the severity of the struggle around the “Duel” between representatives of two public camps - progressive and protective-reactionary.

Only the subsequent tragic events of the beginning of the 20th century clearly showed Kuprin himself and all his contemporaries the complete illegality and untimeliness of such “fights.” Violence always remains violence, no matter how beautiful ideas it is covered up by people in uniform or without them. It was necessary to fight not against orders, not against mechanisms or tools, but against the nature of man himself. Unfortunately, Kuprin and the “progressive public” of that time realized this too late. In “The Duel,” Kuprin also tries to prove that it is not people themselves who are bad, but the conditions in which they are placed, i.e. that environment that gradually kills everything that is best in them, everything that is human.

But 1917 came. What Kuprin’s Romashov once dreamed of happened: the soldiers, incited by the “fighters for the people’s happiness,” said the same thing to the war: “I don’t want to!” But the war did not stop because of this. On the contrary, it took on an even uglier, inhumane, fratricidal form.

“The holiest of titles,” the title of “man,” is disgraced as never before. The Russian people are also disgraced - and what would it be, where would we turn our eyes, if there were no “ice campaigns”! - Ivan Bunin wrote, remembering those very “cursed days.”

Yes, no one, except for a handful of yesterday’s tsarist officers, once exposed in the “Duel” as moral monsters - victims of an inhumane, vicious system - even tried to save Russia from the horrors of Bolshevism. No one except them, the defamed, betrayed, humiliated yesterday's front-line heroes and cadet boys, stood up for the country disgraced by the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. No one but them tried to fight to regain the title of human...

After the Civil War, when in Soviet Russia criticism extolled Kuprin’s “Duel” as a “truly revolutionary work” that denounced the tsarist army and the completely rotten, completely decomposed officers, the author himself adhered to a completely different position.

It is characteristic that back in 1907, having carefully read the text of “The Duel” by L.N. Tolstoy, he remarked: “Kuprin has no idea, he is just an officer.” And it was true. In a time of trial, Kuprin - an officer not by position, but in essence - could not renounce his Motherland, remain indifferent to the feat of the Russian officers, who completed their way of the cross in a foreign land.

In our opinion, the novel “Junker”, written by A.I. Kuprin in exile, became a kind of “apology” for “The Duel”. In it, the writer Kuprin, like many emigrant intellectuals who once desperately scolded the tsarist order, with pain in his soul, was nostalgic for his lost youth, for his lost homeland, for the Russia that was and which they all lost.

Analysis of the work

Compositional features of the “Duel”

Kuprin himself and his first critics often called The Duel a “novel.” Indeed, the abundance of characters, several thematic lines, which, intertwined, create a holistic picture of the life of the army environment, allow us to consider this work a novel. But the only one story line, simple and concise, as well as conciseness, limited events in time and space, a relatively small amount of text - all this is more typical of a story or story.

Compositionally, “The Duel” was built by Kuprin according to the principles of his first story “Moloch”. The author's attention is focused primarily on the main character, his emotional experiences, the characteristics of his attitude towards people, on his assessments of the surrounding reality - exactly the same as in “Moloch”, where the engineer Bobrov stood in the center. The factory and workers were the background of "Moloch", the regiment, officers and soldiers represent the background of "Duel".

However, in “The Duel,” Kuprin has already deviated from the principle of a “total” image of the background: instead of the faceless mass of “Moloch” workers, “The Duel” contains a more detailed, more differentiated description of the mass of soldiers and a very expressive gallery of officer portraits. The regiment, officers, soldiers are written in close-up in organic interaction with the main character of the story, Romashov. The reader sees in front of him interspersed realistic paintings, creating a large canvas in which “minor” characters can be as important to the artistic whole as the main images.

Loser Hero

At the center of “The Duel,” as in the center of the story “Moloch,” is the figure of a man who has become, to use Gorky’s words, “sideways” to his social environment.

The reader is immediately struck by the “foreignness” of Romashov, his worthlessness and uselessness to the mechanism of which he is forced to consider himself a part, his incompatibility with the surrounding reality, with the realities of army garrison life. At the same time, Kuprin clearly makes it clear that Romashov is not by chance a student or high school student who ended up in the army, who was just excommunicated from his parents, torn from his family or from some other, more prosperous environment. Romashov initially had a desire to make a military career: he studied at a military school, mastered special knowledge, and even dreamed of entering the academy. And suddenly, faced with what he had been trained for for so many years - namely, real army service - all the plans of the young officer turn out to be untenable. An internal protest against boredom, violence, inhumanity, etc. appears. etc. The entire action of the story, including the complete rebirth of the hero, takes only a few months (from April to June). The development of the image is unnaturally fast, even lightning fast: yesterday everything was fine, but today there is a complete collapse and awareness of one’s own tragic mistake.

The conclusion involuntarily suggests itself that such a hero, in any chosen field, could come to the same disappointment, rejection of the surrounding reality and simply die. What does the army have to do with it?

Kuprin repeatedly emphasizes the internal growth of his hero, which ultimately results in the desire to free himself from military service, as an instrument of violence against his personality. But what is the former “Fendrik” Romashov going to do? Write novels? Rock the already wretched edifice of Russian statehood? Bringing closer the “bright future” that Kuprin’s contemporaries then saw in revolution and the destruction of the old world? This hero does not have any more or less clear program of action.

Soviet critics who analyzed Kuprin’s “Duel” interpreted the image of Romashov in an extremely contradictory manner. Some saw in him a future revolutionary, a fighter for the freedom of the human person. Thus, a critic of the magazine “ New world“L. Mikhailova, in her review of the three-volume collected works of Kuprin, published by Goslitizdat in the early 1950s, wrote: “If Romashov had worn not the shoulder straps of an infantry second lieutenant, but a green student’s jacket, we would most likely have seen him at a student gathering, in circle of revolutionary youth."

Others, on the contrary, pointed out the worthlessness and uselessness of such a loser hero, who has no place in a bright tomorrow. The author of one of the dissertations dedicated to A.I. Kuprin, K. Pavlovskaya, noted in her abstract: “... the characterization of Romashov emphasizes the non-viability of such people, the failure of their struggle for personal freedom. Kuprin realized that the Romashovs were no longer needed in life.”

Most likely, Kuprin himself did not know (he could not even imagine) what would happen to his hero when he gained the much-desired freedom. Lieutenant Romashov is like a randomly grown flower in a no man's land between two warring armies. According to all laws, he should not have grown up on the scorched ground plowed up by shells, but he grew up, and the soldier running to attack crushed him with his boot. Will this flower wither or rise again to die in a crater from another explosion? Kuprin didn’t know. The image of Romashov fell so far out of the general picture of future socialist realism, which A.M. already began to preach in literature. Gorky and K, that the author decided to simply send him into oblivion.

The death of a hero on the eve of rebirth is quite successful literary device. It occurs precisely at the moment when Romashov made an attempt to rise, breaking out of an environment alien to him, and therefore symbolizes the active hostility of this environment to anyone who in one way or another comes into conflict with it.

Character system of the story

Researchers of Kuprin’s work often denied the author a realistic portrayal of the images of many of the characters in “The Duel,” arguing that he deliberately deprived all the officers - heroes of the story of even glimpses of humanity, exposing each of them as a cardboard embodiment of any of the army’s vices: rudeness, cruelty, martinetry, drunkenness, money-grubbing, careerism.

P.N. Berkov, in his book about Kuprin, noted that “despite such a large number of images of officers in The Duel, they are all more or less similar,” in the novel there are many “officers little different from each other.”

At first glance, such a statement may seem not without foundation. In "The Duel" there is only one hero - Romashov. All other characters are built around him, creating a kind of faceless vicious circle, breaking out of which becomes the main task of the main character.

However, if we turn to Kuprin’s work itself, it becomes clear that in reality everything is far from so simple. This is the strength of Kuprin as a realist artist, that, drawing many officers of the same provincial garrison, similar, like “cogs” of a huge mechanism, he tried to depict people endowed with their own, unique, individual traits.

The author does not at all deprive his heroes of humanity. On the contrary, he finds something good in each of them: Colonel Shulgovich, having reprimanded the officer who had wasted public funds, immediately gives him his money. Vetkin - a kind person and a good friend. Bek-Agamalov is, in fact, a good comrade. Even Sliva, a stupid campaigner who beats soldiers and gets drunk alone, is impeccably honest about the soldiers’ money passing through his hands. The point, therefore, is not that only degenerates and monsters pass before us, although among the characters in “The Duel” there are such, but that even officers endowed with some positive inclinations, in conditions of terrible arbitrariness and lawlessness that prevailed in tsarist army, lose their human appearance. “The environment is stuck” - this is a simple and understandable explanation for all the surrounding evil. And at that moment this explanation suited the absolute majority of Russian society.

Three years before the appearance of “The Duel” A.P. Chekhov, in one of his letters to Kuprin, criticized his story “On Repose,” dedicated to depicting the joyless life in an almshouse of several elderly actors: “Five definitely depicted appearances tire attention and eventually lose their value. Shaved actors look alike, like priests, and remain alike, no matter how carefully you portray them.”

“The Duel” is evidence of how organically Kuprin accepted Chekhov’s criticism. Not five, but more than thirty representatives of the same social environment are depicted in the story, and each of them has its own character, its own special features. It is impossible to confuse the old army servant, the degraded drunkard Captain Sliva, with the dandy lieutenant Bobetinsky, who aspires to aristocracy and imitates the guards’ “golden youth”. You cannot mix up the other two officers - the good-natured, lazy Vetkin and the cruel and predatory Osadchy.

It is characteristic that at the moment of meeting the hero, the writer, as a rule, does not give a detailed description of his appearance. Kuprin’s portrait characteristics are extremely compressed and serve to reveal the main character traits of the person depicted. So, speaking about Shurochka’s husband, Lieutenant Nikolaev, Kuprin notes: “His warlike and kind face with a fluffy mustache turned red, and his large dark ox eyes flashed angrily.” This combination of kindness with belligerence, the ox-like expression of the eyes with an angry gleam, reveals the lack of a strong character, dullness and vindictiveness inherent in Nikolaev.

Some of the portraits in “The Duel” are interesting because they contain the prospect of further development of the image. Drawing the appearance of Osadchy, Kuprin notes: “Romashov always felt in his beautiful gloomy face, the strange pallor of which was even more strongly set off by his black, almost blue hair, something tense, restrained and cruel, something inherent not in a person, but in a huge, strong to the beast. Often, imperceptibly watching him from somewhere from afar, Romashov imagined what this man must be like in anger, and, thinking about this, he turned pale with horror and clenched his cold fingers.” And later, in the picnic scene, the writer shows Osadchy “in anger,” confirming and deepening the impression that this officer evoked in Romashov.

Kuprin’s portraiture is no less convincing when he portrays simple and even primitive people, clear at first glance: the sad captain Leshchenko, the widowed lieutenant Zegrzht with many children, etc.

Even the episodic characters in “The Duel” are wonderfully done. Among them, Lieutenant Mikhin deserves special mention. He, like Romashov and Nazansky, is drawn by the author with sympathy. Kuprin emphasizes and highlights “Romashov’s” traits in Mikhin: ordinary appearance, shyness - and along with this moral purity, intolerance and aversion to cynicism, as well as the unexpected physical strength in this nondescript-looking young man (when he defeats the taller Olizar at a picnic) .

It is significant that when Romashov, after a clash with Nikolaev, is summoned to the court of a society of officers, the only one who openly expresses his sympathy for him is Mikhin: “Only one second lieutenant Mikhin shook his hand long and firmly, with wet eyes, but said nothing, blushed, dressed hastily and awkwardly and left.”

Nazansky

Nazansky occupies a special place among the heroes of “The Duel”. This is the least vital character in the story: he does not participate in the events in any way, he cannot be called the hero of the work at all. The image of a drunken, half-crazed officer was introduced by Kuprin solely to express his cherished thoughts and views. It would seem, why can’t they be put into the mouth of such a wonderful person as Romashov? No! Kuprin follows the established literary tradition of realism: in Russia, either drunks, or holy fools, or “ former people" As the saying goes, “what a sober man has in his head, a drunk man has on his tongue.” It is no coincidence that in the works of the same A.M. Gorky, it is tramps, drunkards, “former people” who carry out Nietzschean sermons (for example, Satin in the play “At the Depths”). In this regard, Nazansky successfully complements the image of the sober romantic Romashov. Nazansky exists, as it were, outside of time and space, outside of any social environment that has long ago crushed him and spat him out like unnecessary trash.

It was into the mouth of such a person that Kuprin put his merciless criticism of the army and officers. “No, think about us, the unfortunate Armeuts, about the army infantry, about this main core of the glorious and brave Russian army. After all, it’s all rubbish, rubbish, garbage,” says Nazansky.

Meanwhile, Nazansky’s views are complex and contradictory, just as Kuprin’s own position was contradictory. The pathos of Nazansky's monologues is, first of all, the glorification of a personality free from shackles, the ability to distinguish true life values. But there is something else in his words. According to Nazansky, the possession of high human qualities is “the lot of the chosen ones,” and this part of the hero’s philosophy is close to Nietzscheanism, which Gorky had not yet suffered from at that time: “... who is dearer and closer to you? Nobody. You are the king of the world, its pride and adornment. You are the god of all living things. Everything you see, hear, feel belongs only to you. Do what you want. Take whatever you like. Do not be afraid of anyone in the entire universe, because there is no one above you and no one is equal to you.”

Today, all the protracted philosophical monologues of this character look rather like a parody, an artificial author’s insertion-remark into the body of a living work. But at that moment, Kuprin himself was fascinated by Nietzscheanism, was influenced by Gorky and believed that they were absolutely necessary in the story.

Society persistently demanded change. Nazansky’s acutely topical monologues were enthusiastically perceived by opposition-minded youth. For example, in the words of Nazansky about the “cheerful two-headed monster” that stands on the street: “Whoever passes by him, it will now hit him in the face, now in the face,” - the most radically minded readers saw a direct call to fight this monster, under which, naturally, meant autocracy.

In the revolutionary days of 1905, Kuprin successfully performed reading excerpts from “The Duel” in a variety of audiences. It is known, for example, that when on October 14, 1905, the writer read Nazansky’s monologue at a student evening in Sevastopol, Lieutenant Schmidt approached him and expressed his admiration. Soon after this, the delighted lieutenant went to Ochakov, where he killed hundreds of people with his adventurous actions.

Defending the right to freedom of an individual person worthy of it, Nazansky speaks with complete disdain about other people: “Who can prove to me with clear conviction how I am connected with this - damn him! - my neighbor, with a vile slave, with an infected person, with an idiot?.. And then, what interest will make me break my head for the happiness of the people of the thirty-second century?

Schmidt and similar “figures” thought exactly the same. As you know, the rebellious lieutenant was not going to die heroically for the happiness of the “vile slaves”: he successfully escaped from the burning cruiser, and was caught only by pure chance. For a long time, this was perceived by society as a high moral feat. An excellent illustration for the sermon of the most “advanced” character in “The Duel”!

However, it cannot be said that Nazansky, this hero-reasoner, hero-mouthpiece, designed to convey a certain idea to the reader, fully expresses the opinion of the author of the story on all the topical issues he raised.

It is especially significant that Romashov, who listens attentively to Nazansky, seems to find in his words answers to important questions for himself, agrees with him, but in fact does not at all follow the advice of his half-crazed friend. And Romashov’s attitude towards the unfortunate, downtrodden soldier Khlebnikov, and even more so his rejection of his own interests in the name of the happiness of his beloved woman, Shurochka Nikolaeva, indicate that the preaching of militant individualism, developed by Nazansky, only excites the consciousness of the hero of the story, without affecting his heart. It is in this, in our opinion, that the contradictions that tormented the author of “The Duel” between the ideas declared by reason and those qualities that were originally inherent in every person by nature were manifested even then. This is Kuprin’s main merit as a humanist writer: only a person who has called upon all his best human qualities for help, who has abandoned selfish egoism and self-deception, is able to change something, make this world a better place and love it. There is no other way.

Shurochka

The principles preached by Nazansky are fully implemented in the story by Shurochka Nikolaeva, who condemns Romashov, who is in love with her, to certain death in the name of her selfish, selfish goals.

All critics unanimously recognized Shurochka’s image as one of the most successful in “The Duel.” Kuprin, perhaps for the first time in Russian literature, managed to create a generally negative female image, without showing either the author's condemnation or pitiful condescension towards his heroine. Unlike many of his predecessors (L.N. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov), Kuprin does not “explain” anything about this character; he perceives Shurochka as she is, and at the same time endows her with a number of attractive traits. Shurochka is beautiful, smart, charming, in all respects she stands head and shoulders above the other officer ladies of the regiment, but she is calculating, selfish and, unlike Romashov, has a clear, definite goal. True, in her ideas about a better life, the young woman has not yet gone beyond dreams of the capital, of success in high society, etc. But a person who is able to have a dream and act with the most radical methods in the name of its implementation, as a rule, achieves a lot in life.

The portrait of Shurochka is also given in a unique way. Kuprin deliberately evades the author's description of her appearance, leaving it to Romashov himself to draw her as he sees her. From his internal monologue we see not just a detailed portrait, but also the hero’s expressed attitude towards his beloved:

At first, as if with random touches, and then more and more clearly, Kuprin highlights in the character of this woman such traits as spiritual coldness, callousness, and pragmatism that were initially completely unnoticed by Romashov. For the first time, he catches something alien and hostile to himself in Shurochka’s laughter at the picnic: “There was something instinctively unpleasant in this laughter, which sent a chill into Romashov’s soul.” At the end of the story, in the scene of the last date, the hero experiences a similar, but significantly intensified sensation when Shurochka dictates her terms of the duel: “Romashov felt something secret, smooth, slimy crawling invisibly between them, which sent a cold smell to his soul " This scene is complemented by the description of Shurochka’s last kiss: “her lips were cold and motionless.”

For Shurochka, Romashov’s love is just an annoying misunderstanding. As a means to achieving her cherished goal, this person is completely unpromising. Of course, for the sake of his love, Romashov could pass the exams to the academy, but this would only be a meaningless sacrifice. He would never have fit into the life that so attracted his chosen one, he would never have achieved what was so necessary for her. Nikolaev, on the contrary, from Kuprin’s point of view, had all the qualities necessary for this. He is flexible, diligent, hardworking, and natural stupidity has never prevented anyone from achieving high ranks and gaining a position in society. The reader does not even have any doubt that with a woman like Shurochka, the bumpkin Nikolaev will definitely become a general in twenty years. Only he won’t have to count on a general’s pension after October 1917...

Images of soldiers

The images of soldiers do not occupy such a significant place in the story as the images of officers. They were introduced by Kuprin solely for the purpose of clearly demonstrating the social inequality and class prejudices that reigned in the army.

Only the private of the platoon commanded by Romashov, the sick, downtrodden soldier Khlebnikov, is highlighted in close-up in the story. He appears directly before the reader only in the middle of the story, but already on the first page of “The Duel” Khlebnikov’s surname, accompanied by swear words, is pronounced by his closest superior, Corporal Shapovalenko. This is how the reader’s first, still absentee, acquaintance with the unfortunate soldier takes place.

One of the most exciting scenes of the story is a night meeting near the railway track of two losers, potential suicides - Romashov and Khlebnikov. Here, both the plight of the unfortunate, driven and downtrodden Khlebnikov, and the humanism of Romashov, who sees in the soldier, first of all, a suffering person, just like himself, are revealed with the utmost completeness. Romashov, in a fit of philanthropy, calls Khlebnikov “my brother!”, but for Khlebnikov, the officer who condescended to him is a stranger, a master (“I can’t do it anymore, master”). And the humanism of this master, as Kuprin sharply emphasizes, is extremely limited. Romashov’s advice – “you have to endure” – was given by him, rather, to himself than to this desperate man. The author clearly proves that Romashov is unable to change anything in Khlebnikov’s fate, because between him, even the most worthless and low-paid infantry officer and a simple soldier, there is a bottomless abyss. It is absolutely impossible to overcome this gap under these conditions, and at the end of the story Khlebnikov still commits suicide. Romashov does not know what needs to be done so that hundreds of “these gray Khlebnikovs, each of whom is sick with their own grief,” really feel free and breathe a sigh of relief. Nazansky doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know this either. And those who believed that they knew what needed to be done began by killing the gentlemen officers themselves with the hands of these same Khlebnikovs. But did this make the Klebnikovs happy and free? Unfortunately no.

Heroes and prototypes

Readers of “The Duel” often ask the question: did the heroes of the famous story have real prototypes among the officers of the regiment in which Kuprin served in the first half of the 90s? Based on the data at their disposal, researchers answer this question in the affirmative.

The next year after the writer left the army, the “Address-Calendar of Podolsk Province” was published in Kamenets-Podolsk, which contains a complete list of officers of the 46th Dnieper Infantry Regiment. In the year that had passed since Kuprin left the army, the officer corps of the regiment, which was very stable in those years, could change only slightly.

Kuprin's fidelity to the facts of the biography of individual officers of the Dnieper Regiment, who served as his prototypes, in some cases is simply amazing. For example, here is what is said in the story about the regimental treasurer Doroshenko:

“The treasurer was Staff Captain Doroshenko - a gloomy and stern man, especially towards the Fendriks. During the Turkish War he was wounded, but in the most inconvenient and dishonorable place - in the heel. Eternal teasing and witticisms about his wound (which, however, he received not in flight, but at the time when, turning to his platoon, he commanded the attack) made it so that, having gone to war as a cheerful ensign, he returned from it bilious and an irritable hypochondriac."

From the service record of Staff Captain Doroshevich, stored in the Russian State Military Historical Archive (RGVIA), it follows that in his youth he participated in the Russian-Turkish War and was wounded during the battle near the village of Mechke in the right leg by two rifle bullets. Having served for many years in the Dnieper Regiment, Doroshevich was the regimental treasurer from 1888 to 1893, and from March 1894, a member of the regimental court. Doroshevich served in the Dnieper Regiment until 1906 and retired as a colonel.

The prototype for the image of the battalion adjutant Olizar was another colleague of Kuprin, adjutant Olifer.

Olizar, along with Archakovsky, Dietz, Osadchiy and Peterson, belongs to the most negative characters in “The Duel.” And his appearance - “long, thin, sleek, pomaded - a young old man, with a naked but wrinkled, whippy face,” and his whole behavior speaks of Kuprin’s sharply hostile attitude towards him. Particularly indicative are the pages of “The Duel,” which depict the adventures of officers in a brothel. Olizar’s actions here are distinguished by extremely frank cynicism. It is characteristic that, describing the return of the officers from the brothel and pointing out that they “acted a lot of outrages,” Kuprin in the first printed edition attributed the most outrageous act to Olizar. Subsequently, while editing the story, the writer removed this episode, obviously afraid of shocking the reader, but the general negative assessment of it remained. That is why, in the picnic scene, Kuprin takes special pleasure in showing how “small, awkward,” but deeply sympathetic to the reader, Mikhin wins a victory over Olizar in a fight.

According to the service record, Olizar’s prototype Nikolai Konstantinovich Olifer, “from the hereditary nobles of the Voronezh province,” served in the Dnieper Regiment from 1889 to 1897, and from the beginning of his service until 1894 he was a battalion adjutant. After the Dnieper Regiment, he served in the border guard and was dismissed in 1901 due to “illness.” From the medical examination report kept in Olifer’s personal file, it is clear that he was sick with syphilis. The illness led him to mental illness in the form of paralytic dementia.

In all likelihood, Kuprin did not know this gloomy end. But even if he did find out, he would hardly be very surprised. “Seventy-five percent of our officer corps are sick with syphilis,” Kuprin reports through the mouth of Nazansky. It is unlikely that venereologists would share such statistics with the writer, but Olifer’s story indirectly illustrates these words.

Kuprin's autobiography, dating back to 1913, tells of his clash with the regiment commander, Alexander Prokofievich Baikovsky. The old colonel is characterized in such a way that one involuntarily recalls Shulgovich, the commander of the regiment in which Romashov serves: .

In the seventh chapter of “The Duel,” after the dressing down caused by Shulgovich, Romashov, like Kuprin, has lunch with his regimental commander, and he establishes that they are fellow countrymen.

Interesting information about Baikovsky was reported by T. Goigova, the daughter of Kuprin’s colleague S. Bek-Buzarov, some of whose features Kuprin used when creating the image of Bek-Agamalov:

The boss and fellow countryman of Second Lieutenant Kuprin, Baikovsky, also turned under the pen of the writer Kuprin into one of the most striking figures in his work.

Despite the fact that the story “The Duel” is entirely a product of its own era, already quite far removed from us, it has not lost its relevance today. With this book, Kuprin, wittingly or unwittingly, predetermined the nature of the depiction of the tsarist army in all subsequent Russian-language literature. Such significant works of the 1900s dedicated to the army as “Retreat” by G. Erastov, “Babaev” by S. Sergeev-Tsensky and a number of others arose under the direct influence of “The Duel.”

In the wake of general social upheavals at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, it again became fashionable to expose the vices of the Russian state system to the public, and at the same time to criticize Russian army. It was then that it became clear that it was possible to write honestly about everyday life in the army only in the spirit of “The Duel.” The authors of military themes are Y. Polyakov (“One Hundred Days Before the Order”), V. Chekunov (“Kirza”), V. Primost (“730 Days in Boots”), screenwriter and director of the film “Anchor, more anchor!” P. Todorovsky and many others today raise the same “eternal” problems that were first voiced in the once sensational story by A.I. Kuprin. And again, some critics and readers enthusiastically applaud the bold, accurate characterizations, sharing the kind and not-so-kind humor of the creators of these works; others reproach the authors for being excessively “dirty,” slanderous, and unpatriotic.

However, the majority of today's youth, who can only read the label on a bag of chips, learn about the problems of the modern army not so much from fiction, but from their own bitter experience. What to do about it, and who is to blame - these are eternal Russian questions, the solution of which depends on ourselves.

Elena Shirokova

Materials used:

Afanasyev V.N.. A.I. Kuprin. Critical-biographical essay. - M.: Fiction, 1960.

Berkov P.N. Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin. – Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, M-L., 1956

Druzhnikov Yu. Kuprin in tar and molasses // New Russian word. – New York, 1989. – February 24.