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M. M. Prishvin is one of those lucky writers whom you can discover at any age: in childhood, in youth, as a mature person, in old age. And this discovery, if it happens, will truly be a miracle. Of particular interest is the deeply personal, philosophical poem “Phacelia”, the first part of “Forest Drop”. There are many secrets in life. And the biggest secret, in my opinion, is your own soul. What depths are hidden in it! Where does the mysterious longing for the unattainable come from? How to satisfy it? Why is the possibility of happiness sometimes frightening, frightening, and suffering is almost voluntarily accepted? This writer helped me discover myself, my inner world and, of course, the world around me.
“Phacelia” is a lyrical and philosophical poem, a song about the “inner star” and about the “evening” star in the writer’s life. In each miniature, true poetic beauty shines, determined by the depth of thought. The composition allows us to trace the growth of general joy. A complex range of human experiences, from melancholy and loneliness to creativity and happiness. A person reveals his thoughts, feelings, thoughts only by being in close contact with nature, which appears independently as an active principle, life itself. The key ideas of the poem are expressed in the titles and epigraphs of its three chapters. “Desert”: “In the desert, thoughts can only be your own, that’s why they are afraid of the desert, because they are afraid to be left alone with themselves.” “Rosstan”: “There is a pillar, and from it there are three roads: one, another, the third to go - everywhere there is different trouble, but the same death. Fortunately, I am not going in the direction where the roads diverge, but from there back - for me, the disastrous roads from the pillar do not diverge, but converge. I am glad for the pillar and I am returning to my home along the right single path, remembering my misfortunes at Rosstana.” “Joy”: “Sorrow, accumulating more and more in one soul, can one day flare up like hay and burn everything with the fire of extraordinary joy.”
Before us are the stages of the fate of the writer himself and any creatively minded person who is capable of realizing himself, his life. And in the beginning there was desert... loneliness... The pain of loss is still very strong. But you can already feel the approach of unprecedented joy. Two colors, blue and gold, the color of heaven and sun, begin to shine to us from the first lines of the poem.
Prishvin’s connection between man and nature is not only physical, but also more subtle and spiritual. In nature, what is happening to himself is revealed to him, and he calms down. “At night, some kind of unclear thought was in my soul, I went out into the air... And then I recognized in the river my thought about myself, that I, like the river, am not guilty, if I cannot echo with the whole world, closed from him with the dark veils of my longing for the lost Phacelia.” The deep, philosophical content of the miniatures also determines their unique form. Many of them, full of metaphors and aphorisms that help to condense thoughts to the utmost, resemble a parable. The style is laconic, even strict, without any hint of sensitivity or embellishment. Each phrase is unusually capacious and meaningful. “Yesterday, in the open sky, this river echoed with the stars, with the whole world. Today the sky closed, and the river lay under the clouds, like under a blanket, and the pain did not resonate with the world - no! In just two sentences, two different pictures of a winter night are visibly presented, and in context, two different mental states of a person. The word carries a rich semantic load. Thus, through repetition, the impression is strengthened by association: “... still remained a river and shone in the darkness and ran”; “... the fish... splashed much stronger and louder than yesterday, when the stars were shining and it was very cold.” In the final two miniatures of the first chapter, the motif of the abyss appears - as a punishment for omissions in the past and as a test that must be overcome.
But the chapter ends with a life-affirming chord: “...and then it may happen that a person will conquer even death with the last passionate desire for life.” Yes, a person can overcome even death, and, of course, a person can and must overcome his personal grief. All components in the poem are subject to internal rhythm - the movement of the writer’s thoughts. And often the thought is honed into aphorisms: “Sometimes poetry is born from spiritual pain in a strong person, like resin from trees.”
The second chapter, “Rosstan,” is devoted to identifying this hidden creative force. There are especially many aphorisms here. “Creative happiness could become the religion of humanity”; “Uncreative happiness is the contentment of a person living behind three castles”; “Where there is love, there is the soul”; “The quieter you are, the more you notice the movement of life.” The connection with nature is becoming closer. The writer seeks and finds in it “the beautiful sides of the human soul.” Does Prishvin humanize nature? In literary criticism there is no consensus on this matter. Some researchers find anthropomorphism in the works of writers (the transfer of mental properties inherent in humans to natural phenomena, animals, objects). Others take the opposite point of view. In man, the best aspects of the life of nature continue, and he can rightfully become its king, but a very clear philosophical formula about the deep connection between man and nature and the special purpose of man:
“I stand and grow - I am a plant.
I stand and grow and walk - I am an animal.
I stand, and grow, and walk, and think - I am a man.
I stand and feel: the earth is under my feet, the whole earth. Leaning on the ground, I rise: and above me is the sky—the whole sky is mine. And Beethoven’s symphony begins, and its theme: the whole sky is mine.” In the writer’s artistic system, detailed comparisons and parallelisms play an important role. The miniature “Old Linden Tree,” which concludes the second chapter, reveals the main feature of this tree - selfless service to people. The third chapter is called “Joy.” And joy is really generously scattered already in the very names of the miniatures: “Victory”, “Smile of the Earth”, “Sun in the Forest”, “Birds”, “Aeolian Harp”, “First Flower”, “Evening of the Blessing of the Buds”, “Water and Love” ”, “Chamomile”, “Love”, A parable of consolation, a parable of joy opens this chapter: “My friend, neither in the north nor in the south is there a place for you if you yourself are defeated... But if there is victory, - and after all, every victory - this is over yourself - if even the wild swamps alone were witnesses of your victory, then they too will flourish with extraordinary beauty, and spring will remain with you forever, one spring, glory to the victory.”
The surrounding world appears not only in all the splendor of colors, but is also sound and fragrant. The range of sounds is unusually wide: from the gentle, barely perceptible ringing of icicles, an aeolian harp, to the powerful blows of a stream in a steep direction. And the writer can convey all the different smells of spring in one or two phrases: “You take one bud, rub it between your fingers, and then for a long time everything smells like the fragrant resin of birch, poplar or the special memorable smell of bird cherry...”.
Integral structural elements in Prishvin’s landscape sketches are artistic time and space. For example, in the miniature “Evening of the Blessing of the Buds” the onset of darkness and the change of pictures of the evening summer are conveyed very clearly, visibly, with the help of words - color designations: “it began to get dark... the buds began to disappear, but the drops on them glowed...”. The perspective is clearly outlined, space is felt: “The drops glowed... only the drops and the sky: the drops took their light from the sky and shone for us in the dark forest.” A person, if he has not violated his agreement with the surrounding world, is inseparable from it. The same tension of all vital forces, as in a blossoming forest, is in his soul. The metaphorical use of the image of a blossoming bud makes it possible to feel this in its entirety: “It seemed to me as if I had all gathered into one resinous bud and wanted to open up to meet my only unknown friend, so beautiful that just by waiting for him, all the obstacles to my movement crumble into insignificant dust.”
From a philosophical point of view, the miniature “Forest Stream” is very important. In the natural world, Mikhail Mikhailovich was especially interested in the life of water; in it he saw analogues with human life, with the life of the heart. “Nothing lurks like water, and only a person’s heart sometimes hides in the depths and from there it suddenly illuminates, like the dawn on large, quiet water. A person’s heart is hidden, and that is why there is light,” we read the entry in the diary. Or here’s another: “Do you remember, my friend, the rain? Each drop fell separately, and there were innumerable millions of these drops. While these drops were carried in a cloud and then fell, this was our human life in drops. And then all the drops merge, the water gathers in streams and rivers into the ocean, and again, evaporating, the ocean water gives birth to drops, and the drops fall again, merging (... the ocean itself, perhaps, is the reflected image of our humanity).” Recorded on October 21, 1943 in Moscow.
“Forest Stream” is truly a symphony of a running stream, it is also a reflection on human life and eternity. The stream is the “soul of the forest”, where “grasses are born to the music”, where “resinous buds open to the sounds of the stream”, “and the tense shadows of the streams run along the trunks”. And the person thinks: sooner or later, he, too, like a stream, will fall into big water and will also be the first there. Water gives life-giving power to everyone. Here, as in “The Pantry of the Sun,” there is a motif of two different paths. The water divided and, having run around a large circle, joyfully came together again. There are no different roads for people who have a warm and honest heart. These roads are to love. The writer’s soul embraces everything alive and healthy that is on earth, and is filled with the highest joy: “... my desired moment came and stopped, and as the last person from the earth, I was the first to enter the blooming world. My stream has come to the ocean."
And the evening star lights up in the sky. A woman comes to the artist, and he talks to her, and not to his dream, about love. Mikhail Mikhailovich attached special importance to love for a woman. “Only through love can you find yourself as a person, and only as a person can you enter the world of human love.”
We are now very alienated from nature, especially city dwellers. Many people have a purely consumer interest in it. And if all people had the same attitude towards nature as M. M. Prishvin, then life would be more meaningful and richer. And nature would be preserved. The poem “Phacelia” shows a person the way out of a dead end in life, out of a state of despair. And it can help not just get on solid ground, but find joy. This is a work for every person, although Mikhail Mikhailovich said that he writes not for everyone, but for his reader. You just need to learn to read and understand Prishvin.
In the desert, thoughts can only be your own, which is why they are afraid of the desert, because they are afraid to be left alone with themselves.
It was a long time ago, but it has not yet grown into its former self, and I will not let it grow as long as I live. In that distant “Chekhovian” time, we, two agronomists, almost strangers to each other, were traveling in a cart to the old Volokolamsk district on grass sowing business. Along the way we saw a whole field of blooming blue honey-bearing phacelia grass. On a sunny day, among our gentle nature near Moscow, this bright field of flowers seemed like a wonderful phenomenon. It was as if the blue birds had flown in from a distant country, spent the night here and left behind this blue field. How many insects are there, I thought, in this honey-bearing blue grass now buzzing? But nothing could be heard over the rattling of the cart on the dry road. Fascinated by this power of the earth, I forgot about the business of sowing grass and, just to listen to the hum of life in the flowers, I asked my friend to stop the horse.
I can’t say how long we stood, how long I was there with the blue birds. Having flown with my soul along with the bees, I turned to the agronomist to touch the horse, and then I only noticed that this corpulent man with a round, weathered, common face was watching me and looking at me with surprise.
Why did we stop? - he asked.
“Well,” I answered, “I wanted to listen to the bees.”
The agronomist touched the horse. Now I, in turn, peered at him from the side and noticed something. I looked at him again and realized that this extremely practical man was also thinking about something, understanding, perhaps through me, the luxurious power of the flowers of this phacelia.
His silence became awkward for me. I asked him about something insignificant, just so as not to remain silent, but he did not pay the slightest attention to my question. It seemed that some kind of non-business attitude towards nature, perhaps even just my youth, almost youth, evoked in him his own time, when almost everyone is a poet.
In order to finally return this corpulent red man with a wide head to real life, I asked him a very serious practical question for that time.
In my opinion,” I said, “without the support of cooperation, our propaganda of grass sowing is empty chatter.
“Have you,” he asked, “ever had your own Phacelia?”
How so? - I was amazed.
Well, yes,” he repeated, “was she?”
I understood and answered, as a man should, that, of course, it was, how could it be otherwise...
And did you come? - he continued his interrogation.
Yes, I came...
Where did it go?
It hurt me. I didn’t say anything, but just slightly spread my hands, in the sense: she’s gone, she’s disappeared. Then, after thinking, he said about phacelia:
It was as if bluebirds had spent the night and left behind their blue feathers.
He paused, looked deeply at me and concluded in his own way:
Well, that means she won't come again.
And, looking around the blue field of phacelia, he said:
From the blue bird these are only blue feathers.
It seemed to me as if he was trying and trying and finally rolled over the slab over my grave; I was still waiting until now, but it was as if forever had ended, and she would never come. He himself suddenly burst into tears. Then for me his wide back of the head, his roguish eyes filled with fat, his fleshy chin disappeared, and I began to feel sorry for the man, the whole man in his outbursts of vitality. I wanted to tell him something good, I took the reins in my hands, drove up to the water, wet the handkerchief, and refreshed it. He soon recovered, wiped his eyes, took the reins in his hands again, and we drove off as before.
After some time, I decided to again express, as it seemed to me then, a completely independent idea about grass sowing, that without the support of cooperation we would never convince the peasants to introduce clover into their crop rotation.
Were there nights? - he asked, not paying any attention to my business words.
Of course they were,” I answered like a real man.
He thought again and - such a tormentor! - asked again:
Well, it was just one night?
I was tired, I got a little angry, controlled myself and when asked, one or two, I answered with the words of Pushkin:
- “All life is one or two nights.”
Everything was fine on this draft, but the woodcock did not arrive. I plunged into my memories: now the woodcock did not arrive, and in the distant past, she did not come. She loved me, but it seemed to her that this was not enough to fully respond to my strong feelings. And she didn't come. And so I left this “craving” of mine and never met her again.
It’s such a wonderful evening, the birds are singing, everything is there, but the woodcock hasn’t arrived. Two streams collided in the stream, a splash was heard and nothing: the water was still gently rolling across the spring meadow. And then it turned out, I thought: from this, that she did not come, the happiness of my life arose. It turned out that her image gradually disappeared over the years, but the feeling remained and lived in an eternal search for an image and did not find it, turning with kindred attention to the phenomena of life throughout our land, throughout the world. So in place of one face everything became like a face, and all my life I admired the features of this immense face, every spring I added something to my observations. I was happy, and the only thing I still needed was for everyone to be happy like me.
So this is what explains why my literature remains alive: because it is my own life. And everyone, it seems to me, could do like me: try to forget your failures in love and transfer your feelings into words, and you will certainly have readers.
And I think now that happiness does not depend at all on whether it came or did not come, happiness depends only on love, whether it was there or not, love itself is happiness, and this love cannot be separated from “talent.”
So I thought until it got dark, and I suddenly realized that no more woodcock would come. Then a sharp pain pierced me, and I whispered to myself: “Hunter, hunter, why didn’t you hold her then!”
Arishin's question
When this woman left me, Arisha asked:
Who is her husband?
“I don’t know,” I said, “I didn’t ask.” And do we really care who her husband is?
How is it that “it doesn’t matter,” said Arisha, “how many times you sat with her, talked, and you don’t know who her husband is, I would ask.
The next time she came to me, I remembered Arisha’s question, but again I did not ask who her husband was. The reason I didn’t ask was because I liked her for something, and I guess it was precisely because her eyes reminded me of the wonderful Phacelia, the beloved of my youth. One way or another, but she attracted me exactly the same way that Phacelia once did: she did not arouse in me thoughts of getting closer; on the contrary, this interest of mine in her repelled all everyday attention. Now I had nothing to do with her husband, family, home. When she was getting ready to leave, I decided, after hard work, to get some air, and perhaps walk her home. We went out, it was freezing. The Black River was chilly, and streams of steam ran everywhere, and a rustling sound was heard from the ice banks. The water was so terrible, such an abyss that it seemed that the most unfortunate person who would dare to drown, looking into this black abyss, returned to his home joyful and whispered, starting the samovar:
“What nonsense - drowning! It's even worse than ours. At least then I’ll have some tea.”
Do you have a sense of nature? - I asked my new Phacelia.
What is this? - she asked in turn.
She was an educated woman and had read and heard hundreds of times about the sense of nature. But her question was so simple and sincere. There was no doubt left: she really did not know what the feeling of nature was.
“And how could she know,” I thought, “if she, perhaps this Phacelia of mine, is “nature” itself.”
This thought struck me.
Once again, with this new understanding, I wanted to look into those sweet eyes and through them into that very “nature” of mine, desired, and eternally virgin, and eternally giving birth.
But it was completely dark, and the flight of my great feeling fell into the darkness and came back. Some kind of second nature of mine again raised this question to Arisha.
At this time we were crossing a large cast-iron bridge, and as soon as I opened my mouth to ask my wonderful Phacelia Arishin a question, I heard cast-iron steps behind me. I didn’t want to turn around and see what a giant was walking across the cast-iron bridge. I knew who he was: he was a commander, a punishing force for the futility of the dream of my youth, a poetic dream, again replacing genuine human love for me.
And when I caught up with him, he just touched me, and I flew through the barrier into the black abyss.
I woke up in bed and thought: “This everyday question from Arishin is not as stupid as I thought: if I had not replaced my love with a dream in my youth, I would not have lost my Phacelia and now, many years later, I would not have dreamed black abyss."
Rosstan
There is a pillar, and three roads go from it; to go down one, down another, down a third - everywhere there is a different misfortune, but the same destruction. Fortunately, I am not going in the direction where the roads diverge, but from there back - for me, the disastrous roads at the pillar do not diverge, but converge. I am glad for the pillar and am returning to my home along the right single path, remembering my misfortunes at the Rostan.
Drop and stone
The ice under the window is strong, but the sun is warming up, icicles are hanging from the roofs - it has started to drip. "I! I! I!" - every drop rings as it dies; her life is a split second. "I!" - pain about powerlessness.
But now there is a hole in the ice, a gap, it is melting, it is no longer there, and light drops are still ringing from the roof.
A drop falling on a stone clearly pronounces: “I!” A stone, large and strong, may lie here for another thousand years, but a drop lives for one moment, and this moment is the pain of powerlessness. And yet: “a drop hollows a stone,” many “I”s merge into a “we,” so powerful that it not only hollows out a stone, but sometimes carries it away in a stormy stream.
Gramophone
The loss of my friend was so painful that outsiders began to notice my inner suffering. My owner's wife noticed this and quietly asked me why I was so upset. I met the first person who showed active interest, and I told her everything about Phacelia.
“Well, I’ll cure you now,” said the hostess and ordered me to take her gramophone to the garden. There were a lot of blooming lilacs there. Phacelia was also sown there, and the bright blue flowering meadow was buzzing with bees. A kind woman brought a record, started it, and the then famous singer Sobinov sang Lensky’s aria into the gramophone. The hostess looked at me admiringly, ready to help me in any way she could. Every word of the singer flourished with love, was saturated with phacelia honey, and wafted with the aroma of lilac.
Many years have passed since then. And when I happen to hear Lensky’s aria somewhere, everything certainly comes back: bees, blue phacelia, lilacs and my good mistress. I didn’t understand then, but now I know that she really cured me of hopeless melancholy, and when everyone around me begins to talk with contempt about the philistinism of the gramophone, I remain silent.
Mouse
During the flood, the mouse swam for a long time through the water in search of land. Exhausted, she finally saw a bush sticking out from under the water and climbed to its top. Until now, this mouse lived like all mice, looked at them, did everything like them, and lived. Now think about how to live. And at the evening dawn, a red ray of sunshine so strangely illuminated the mouse’s forehead, like a human’s forehead, and these ordinary mouse-beady black eyes flashed with red fire, and the meaning of the abandoned mouse, that special one who came into the world for the only time, flared up in them, and if If he doesn’t find a means of salvation, he will leave forever; and countless generations of new mice will never produce exactly the same mouse again.
In my youth it was like with this little mouse: not water, but love, also an element, overwhelmed me. I lost my Phacelia then, but in my misfortune I understood something and, when the element of love subsided, I came to people, as if to a saving shore, with my word about love.
Singing doors
Looking at the hives with bees flying back and forth in the sunlight: here light, here burdened with flower pollen, you can easily imagine a world of people and things coordinated, things lived in to the point that they, like the doors in “Old World Landowners,” sing .
At the apiary, I always remember the old-world landowners as they were for Gogol: in the funny old men with their singing doors, Gogol sensed the possibility of harmonious and perfect love among people on earth.
Girculus vitiosus
I once marveled at how shameful it is to live bald, where they get their desire and what they count on when they straighten the last long hair all over their bald head, even smearing it with something quite firmly. Bald, pot-bellied people in tailcoats, old maids with yellow cheeks, in diamonds and velvet. Aren’t they all ashamed to appear in the world and dress up in rich clothes? Two, three decades passed, and I had to comb my hair in front, and someone opened it one day and said: why are you covering it, you have such a regular forehead, an excellent bald spot. And so, little by little, I completely came to terms with being bald. I have come to terms with everyone’s shortcomings... I have even come to terms with the loss of my youthful Phacelia. Bald, pot-bellied, yellow, sick people do not bother my imagination, and I just can’t step over the untalented ones. But I think that talent is also like a bald head: maybe the talent goes away, you don’t want to write, and you’ll put up with that too. After all, it wasn’t you who created your talent, it grew on you like thick hair, and it, too, if you leave it like that, will come out like hair: the writer will “write himself out.” It's not about talent, it's about who controls the talent. This cannot be lost, this loss is irreplaceable: it’s not a bald head, not a belly, it’s me. And as long as “I myself” exists, there is no point in crying about what was lost: after all, they say: “When you take off your head, you don’t cry for your hair,” which means you can say this: “If only you had a head, your hair would grow.”
Phacelia's daughter
I completely lost sight of her, and many years have passed since then. I had lost her features to such an extent that I could not have recognized her by her face. And only the eyes, similar to two northern stars, I would, of course, recognize.
And it happened one day, I went to a thrift store to buy myself one thing. I managed to find this thing and buy it. With the check in hand, I stood in line. Nearby there was a second line, from those who only had big money: there was no change in the cash register. One young woman from that line asked me to change five rubles: she only needed two rubles. I only had two small rubles, and I willingly offered to take these two rubles from me...
She probably didn’t understand that I just wanted to give it to her, give her money. Or maybe she was so sweet that she overcame the feeling of false shame and wanted to rise above conventional trifles. Unfortunately, while holding out the money, I looked at her and suddenly recognized those same eyes, those same two northern stars, like Phacelia’s. In one instant, I managed to look through her eyes into her soul, and it flashed to me that maybe this was “her” daughter...
But it turned out to be impossible to take money from me after such a peek. Or maybe she only managed to realize that I wanted to give money to her, a stranger.
Just think, what money, only two rubles! I held out my hand with the money.
No! - she said. - I can’t take it from you.
And at that moment, recognizing those eyes, I was ready to give her everything I had, I was ready to run somewhere at one word from her and bring her more and more...
With a pleading look, like the beggar of the beggars, I looked and asked:
Take it...
No! - she repeated.
And when I began to look like a completely unhappy, abandoned person, exhausted by homelessness, she suddenly understood something, smiled at Phacelia with that same old smile and said:
We will do this: you take five rubles from me and give me two. Want to?
With delight, I took five rubles from her and saw that she well understood and appreciated my delight.
Grief, accumulating more and more in one soul, can one day flare up like hay, and everything will burn with the fire of extraordinary joy.
Victory
My friend, there is no place for you either in the north or in the south if you yourself are defeated: all nature for a defeated person is a field where the battle was lost. But if victory, if even the wild swamps alone witnessed your victory, then they too will flourish with extraordinary beauty, and spring will remain with you forever, one spring, glory to victory.
Last spring
Perhaps this spring is my last. Yes, of course, everyone young and old, meeting spring, must think that maybe this is the last spring and he will never return to it again. From this thought, the joy of spring intensifies a hundred thousand times, and every little thing, some finch, even a word that has flown from somewhere, appears with its own faces, with its own special claim to the right of existence and participation for them, too, in the last spring .
Close separation
In the fall, of course, everything around you whispers about an imminent separation; on a joyful sunny day this whisper is joined by a fervent one: at least one, yes, mine! And I think that, perhaps, our whole life passes like a day, and all the wisdom of life comes down to the same thing: only one life, only one, like the only sunny day in autumn, one day, and mine!
old starling
The starlings hatched and flew away, and their place in the birdhouse has long been taken by sparrows. But to this day the old starling flies to the same apple tree on a nice dewy morning and sings.
It’s strange, it would seem that everything is already over, the female hatched long ago, the cubs grew up and flew away... Why does the old starling fly every morning to the apple tree where he spent his spring and sing?
I’m surprised by the starling, and to the tune of his tongue-tied and funny song, in some vague hope, sometimes I’ll also compose something for no reason.
Birdie
The smallest bird sat on the top finger of the tallest spruce, and, apparently, it was not for nothing that he sat there and also praised the dawn; its small beak opened, but the song did not reach the ground, and from the whole appearance of the bird one could understand: its job was to glorify, and not for the song to reach the ground and glorify the bird.
At the old stump
The forest is never empty, and if it seems empty, it’s your own fault.
Old dead trees, their huge old stumps are surrounded in the forest with complete peace, hot rays fall on their darkness through the branches, from the warm stump everything around warms up, everything grows, moves, the stump sprouts all sorts of greenery, is covered with all sorts of flowers. On just one bright sunny spot in a hot spot there were ten grasshoppers, two lizards, six large flies, two ground beetles... Tall ferns gathered around, like guests; From the stump, one fern will lean towards another, whisper something, and that fern will whisper to the third, and all the guests will exchange thoughts.
To an unknown friend
This morning is sunny and dewy, like an undiscovered land, an unknown layer of heaven, this is the only morning, no one has gotten up yet, no one has seen anything, and you yourself see for the first time.
Nightingales are finishing their spring songs, dandelions are still preserved in quiet places, and perhaps somewhere in the damp black shadow a lily of the valley is whitening. Lively summer birds - wrens - began to help the nightingales, and the oriole's flute was especially good. The restless chatter of blackbirds is everywhere, and the woodpecker is very tired of looking for live food for his little ones, so he sat down on a branch far from them just to rest.
Get up, my friend! Gather the rays of your happiness into a bundle, be brave, start the fight, help the sun! Listen, and the cuckoo has begun to help you. Look, a harrier is swimming above the water: it’s not just a harrier, this morning he is the first and only one, and now the magpies, sparkling with dew, came out onto the path - tomorrow they won’t sparkle like that anymore, and it won’t be the same day, - and these magpies will come out somewhere else. This is the only morning, not a single person has ever seen it on the entire globe: only you and your unknown friend see it.
And people lived on earth for tens of thousands of years, accumulating joy, passing it on to each other, so that you would come, pick it up, gather its arrows into bundles and rejoice. Be brave, be brave!
And again my soul will expand: fir trees, birch trees, and I can’t take my eyes off the green candles on the pine trees and the young red cones on the fir trees. Fir trees, birch trees, how good!
Rivers of flowers
Where spring streams then rushed, now there are streams of flowers everywhere.
And it felt so good to walk through this meadow; I thought: “So it was not for nothing that muddy streams rushed in the spring.”
Live nights
Three or four days ago there was a huge and final ledge in the movement of spring. Warmth and rains have turned our nature into a greenhouse; the air is filled with the aroma of young resinous leaves of poplars, birches and flowering willows. The real warm live nights began. It is good to look back from the heights of the achievements of such a day and introduce stormy days as necessary for the creation of these wonderful living nights.
A sip of milk
A cup of milk stood near Lada’s nose, she turned away. They called me. “Lada,” I said, “we need to eat.” She raised her head and beat with the rod. I stroked her, and life began to sparkle in her eyes from the caress. “Eat, Lada,” I repeated and moved the saucer closer.
She stretched out her nose to the milk and began to cry. This means that through my affection her life has increased. And perhaps it was these few sips of milk that decided the fight in favor of life. With such a sip of milk the matter of love is decided in the world.
Mistress
What an excellent housewife and mother this Anna Danilovna is: two rooms are in perfect order, despite the fact that there are four little ones and she herself also serves as a cleaner at the railway ticket office. You remember the old village, immersed in manure, unkempt children, drunkards settling down on women's labor... as if you had ascended to heaven! But when I told Anna Danilovna about this, she became very sad and told me that she was very homesick for her homeland, she would leave everything and go there now.
“And you, Vasily Zakharovich,” I asked her husband, “are you also drawn to the village, to your homeland?”
No,” he answered, “I’m not drawn to anything.”
It turned out that he was from the Samara region and the only one in his family who escaped hunger in 1920. As a boy, he entered the village as a farm laborer for an old man alone and left the old man penniless. Only now he took Anna Danilovna for himself in the village and entered the shipyard as a worker.
Why aren’t you drawn to your homeland? - I asked him.
He smiled, winked slightly at his wife and said shyly:
This is my homeland.
Chamomile
What a joy! In a meadow in the forest I met a chamomile, the most common “loves it or doesn’t love it.” At this joyful meeting, I returned to the idea that the forest opens up only to those who know how to feel kindred attention to its creatures. This first daisy, seeing him walking, asks: “does he love you or doesn’t he love you?” “I didn’t notice, I pass by without seeing: I don’t love, I love only myself. Or noticed... Oh, what a joy: he loves! But if he loves, then everything is fine: if he loves, he might even rip it off.”
Love
There were no traces of what people call love in the life of this old artist. All his love, everything that people live for themselves, he gave to art. Fanned by his visions, shrouded in the veil of poetry, he remained a child, satisfied with explosions of mortal melancholy and intoxicated with the joy of the life of nature. Perhaps a little time would have passed, and he would have died, confident that this was all life on earth...
But one day a woman came to him, and he babbled his love to her, and not to his dream.
That’s what everyone says, and Phacelia, expecting a special and unusual expression of feeling from the artist, asked:
What does “I love” mean?
This means,” he said, “that if I have the last piece of bread left, I will not eat it and will give it to you; if you are sick, I will not leave your side; if I have to work for you, I will harness myself like a donkey...
And he told her a lot of things that people endure because of love.
Phacelia waited in vain for the unprecedented.
Giving away the last piece of bread, caring for the sick, working like a donkey,” she repeated, “but that’s what everyone does, that’s what everyone does...
“And that’s what I want,” the artist answered, “so that I can have it now, like everyone else.” This is exactly what I’m talking about, that I finally feel the great happiness of not considering myself a special, lonely person and being like all good people.
Mikhail Prishvin
Poem
In the desert, thoughts can only be your own, which is why they are afraid of the desert, because they are afraid to be left alone with themselves.
It was a long time ago, but it has not yet grown into its former self, and I will not let it grow as long as I live. In that distant “Chekhovian” time, we, two agronomists, almost strangers to each other, were traveling in a cart to the old Volokolamsk district on grass sowing business. Along the way we saw a whole field of blooming blue honey-bearing phacelia grass. On a sunny day, among our gentle nature near Moscow, this bright field of flowers seemed like a wonderful phenomenon. It was as if the blue birds had flown in from a distant country, spent the night here and left behind this blue field. How many insects are there, I thought, in this honey-bearing blue grass now buzzing? But nothing could be heard over the rattling of the cart on the dry road. Fascinated by this power of the earth, I forgot about the business of sowing grass and, just to listen to the hum of life in the flowers, I asked my friend to stop the horse.
I can’t say how long we stood, how long I was there with the blue birds. Having flown with my soul along with the bees, I turned to the agronomist to touch the horse, and then I only noticed that this corpulent man with a round, weathered, common face was watching me and looking at me with surprise.
Why did we stop? - he asked.
“Well,” I answered, “I wanted to listen to the bees.”
The agronomist touched the horse. Now I, in turn, peered at him from the side and noticed something. I looked at him again and realized that this extremely practical man was also thinking about something, understanding, perhaps through me, the luxurious power of the flowers of this phacelia.
His silence became awkward for me. I asked him about something insignificant, just so as not to remain silent, but he did not pay the slightest attention to my question. It seemed that some kind of non-business attitude towards nature, perhaps even just my youth, almost youth, evoked in him his own time, when almost everyone is a poet.
In order to finally return this corpulent red man with a wide head to real life, I asked him a very serious practical question for that time.
In my opinion,” I said, “without the support of cooperation, our propaganda of grass sowing is empty chatter.
“Have you,” he asked, “ever had your own Phacelia?”
How so? - I was amazed.
Well, yes,” he repeated, “was she?”
I understood and answered, as a man should, that, of course, it was, how could it be otherwise...
And did you come? - he continued his interrogation.
Yes, I came...
Where did it go?
It hurt me. I didn’t say anything, but just slightly spread my hands, in the sense: she’s gone, she’s disappeared. Then, after thinking, he said about phacelia:
It was as if bluebirds had spent the night and left behind their blue feathers.
He paused, looked deeply at me and concluded in his own way:
Well, that means she won't come again.
And, looking around the blue field of phacelia, he said:
From the blue bird these are only blue feathers.
It seemed to me as if he was trying and trying and finally rolled over the slab over my grave; I was still waiting until now, but it was as if forever had ended, and she would never come. He himself suddenly burst into tears. Then for me his wide back of the head, his roguish eyes filled with fat, his fleshy chin disappeared, and I began to feel sorry for the man, the whole man in his outbursts of vitality. I wanted to tell him something good, I took the reins in my hands, drove up to the water, wet the handkerchief, and refreshed it. He soon recovered, wiped his eyes, took the reins in his hands again, and we drove off as before.
After some time, I decided to again express, as it seemed to me then, a completely independent idea about grass sowing, that without the support of cooperation we would never convince the peasants to introduce clover into their crop rotation.
Were there nights? - he asked, not paying any attention to my business words.
Of course they were,” I answered like a real man.
He thought again and - such a tormentor! - asked again:
Well, it was just one night?
I was tired, I got a little angry, controlled myself and when asked, one or two, I answered with the words of Pushkin:
- “All life is one or two nights.”
Everything was fine on this draft, but the woodcock did not arrive. I plunged into my memories: now the woodcock did not arrive, and in the distant past, she did not come. She loved me, but it seemed to her that this was not enough to fully respond to my strong feelings. And she didn't come. And so I left this “craving” of mine and never met her again.
Mikhail Prishvin
Poem
In the desert, thoughts can only be your own, which is why they are afraid of the desert, because they are afraid to be left alone with themselves.
It was a long time ago, but it has not yet grown into its former self, and I will not let it grow as long as I live. In that distant “Chekhovian” time, we, two agronomists, almost strangers to each other, were traveling in a cart to the old Volokolamsk district on grass sowing business. Along the way we saw a whole field of blooming blue honey-bearing phacelia grass. On a sunny day, among our gentle nature near Moscow, this bright field of flowers seemed like a wonderful phenomenon. It was as if the blue birds had flown in from a distant country, spent the night here and left behind this blue field. How many insects are there, I thought, in this honey-bearing blue grass now buzzing? But nothing could be heard over the rattling of the cart on the dry road. Fascinated by this power of the earth, I forgot about the business of sowing grass and, just to listen to the hum of life in the flowers, I asked my friend to stop the horse.
I can’t say how long we stood, how long I was there with the blue birds. Having flown with my soul along with the bees, I turned to the agronomist to touch the horse, and then I only noticed that this corpulent man with a round, weathered, common face was watching me and looking at me with surprise.
Why did we stop? - he asked.
“Well,” I answered, “I wanted to listen to the bees.”
The agronomist touched the horse. Now I, in turn, peered at him from the side and noticed something. I looked at him again and realized that this extremely practical man was also thinking about something, understanding, perhaps through me, the luxurious power of the flowers of this phacelia.
His silence became awkward for me. I asked him about something insignificant, just so as not to remain silent, but he did not pay the slightest attention to my question. It seemed that some kind of non-business attitude towards nature, perhaps even just my youth, almost youth, evoked in him his own time, when almost everyone is a poet.
In order to finally return this corpulent red man with a wide head to real life, I asked him a very serious practical question for that time.
In my opinion,” I said, “without the support of cooperation, our propaganda of grass sowing is empty chatter.
“Have you,” he asked, “ever had your own Phacelia?”
How so? - I was amazed.
Well, yes,” he repeated, “was she?”
I understood and answered, as a man should, that, of course, it was, how could it be otherwise...
And did you come? - he continued his interrogation.
Yes, I came...
Where did it go?
It hurt me. I didn’t say anything, but just slightly spread my hands, in the sense: she’s gone, she’s disappeared. Then, after thinking, he said about phacelia:
It was as if bluebirds had spent the night and left behind their blue feathers.
He paused, looked deeply at me and concluded in his own way:
Well, that means she won't come again.
And, looking around the blue field of phacelia, he said:
From the blue bird these are only blue feathers.
It seemed to me as if he was trying and trying and finally rolled over the slab over my grave; I was still waiting until now, but it was as if forever had ended, and she would never come. He himself suddenly burst into tears. Then for me his wide back of the head, his roguish eyes filled with fat, his fleshy chin disappeared, and I began to feel sorry for the man, the whole man in his outbursts of vitality. I wanted to tell him something good, I took the reins in my hands, drove up to the water, wet the handkerchief, and refreshed it. He soon recovered, wiped his eyes, took the reins in his hands again, and we drove off as before.
After some time, I decided to again express, as it seemed to me then, a completely independent idea about grass sowing, that without the support of cooperation we would never convince the peasants to introduce clover into their crop rotation.
Were there nights? - he asked, not paying any attention to my business words.
Of course they were,” I answered like a real man.
He thought again and - such a tormentor! - asked again:
Well, it was just one night?
I was tired, I got a little angry, controlled myself and when asked, one or two, I answered with the words of Pushkin:
- “All life is one or two nights.”
Everything was fine on this draft, but the woodcock did not arrive. I plunged into my memories: now the woodcock did not arrive, and in the distant past, she did not come. She loved me, but it seemed to her that this was not enough to fully respond to my strong feelings. And she didn't come. And so I left this “craving” of mine and never met her again.
It’s such a wonderful evening, the birds are singing, everything is there, but the woodcock hasn’t arrived. Two streams collided in the stream, a splash was heard and nothing: the water was still gently rolling across the spring meadow. And then it turned out, I thought: from this, that she did not come, the happiness of my life arose. It turned out that her image gradually disappeared over the years, but the feeling remained and lived in an eternal search for an image and did not find it, turning with kindred attention to the phenomena of life throughout our land, throughout the world. So in place of one face everything became like a face, and all my life I admired the features of this immense face, every spring I added something to my observations. I was happy, and the only thing I still needed was for everyone to be happy like me.
So this is what explains why my literature remains alive: because it is my own life. And everyone, it seems to me, could do like me: try to forget your failures in love and transfer your feelings into words, and you will certainly have readers.
And I think now that happiness does not depend at all on whether it came or did not come, happiness depends only on love, whether it was there or not, love itself is happiness, and this love cannot be separated from “talent.”
So I thought until it got dark, and I suddenly realized that no more woodcock would come. Then a sharp pain pierced me, and I whispered to myself: “Hunter, hunter, why didn’t you hold her then!”
Arishin's question
When this woman left me, Arisha asked:
Who is her husband?
“I don’t know,” I said, “I didn’t ask.” And do we really care who her husband is?
How is it that “it doesn’t matter,” said Arisha, “how many times you sat with her, talked, and you don’t know who her husband is, I would ask.
Mikhail Prishvin
Poem
In the desert, thoughts can only be your own, which is why they are afraid of the desert, because they are afraid to be left alone with themselves.
It was a long time ago, but it has not yet grown into its former self, and I will not let it grow as long as I live. In that distant “Chekhovian” time, we, two agronomists, almost strangers to each other, were traveling in a cart to the old Volokolamsk district on grass sowing business. Along the way we saw a whole field of blooming blue honey-bearing phacelia grass. On a sunny day, among our gentle nature near Moscow, this bright field of flowers seemed like a wonderful phenomenon. It was as if the blue birds had flown in from a distant country, spent the night here and left behind this blue field. How many insects are there, I thought, in this honey-bearing blue grass now buzzing? But nothing could be heard over the rattling of the cart on the dry road. Fascinated by this power of the earth, I forgot about the business of sowing grass and, just to listen to the hum of life in the flowers, I asked my friend to stop the horse.
I can’t say how long we stood, how long I was there with the blue birds. Having flown with my soul along with the bees, I turned to the agronomist to touch the horse, and then I only noticed that this corpulent man with a round, weathered, common face was watching me and looking at me with surprise.
Why did we stop? - he asked.
“Well,” I answered, “I wanted to listen to the bees.”
The agronomist touched the horse. Now I, in turn, peered at him from the side and noticed something. I looked at him again and realized that this extremely practical man was also thinking about something, understanding, perhaps through me, the luxurious power of the flowers of this phacelia.
His silence became awkward for me. I asked him about something insignificant, just so as not to remain silent, but he did not pay the slightest attention to my question. It seemed that some kind of non-business attitude towards nature, perhaps even just my youth, almost youth, evoked in him his own time, when almost everyone is a poet.
In order to finally return this corpulent red man with a wide head to real life, I asked him a very serious practical question for that time.
In my opinion,” I said, “without the support of cooperation, our propaganda of grass sowing is empty chatter.
“Have you,” he asked, “ever had your own Phacelia?”
How so? - I was amazed.
Well, yes,” he repeated, “was she?”
I understood and answered, as a man should, that, of course, it was, how could it be otherwise...
And did you come? - he continued his interrogation.
Yes, I came...
Where did it go?
It hurt me. I didn’t say anything, but just slightly spread my hands, in the sense: she’s gone, she’s disappeared. Then, after thinking, he said about phacelia:
It was as if bluebirds had spent the night and left behind their blue feathers.
He paused, looked deeply at me and concluded in his own way:
Well, that means she won't come again.
And, looking around the blue field of phacelia, he said:
From the blue bird these are only blue feathers.
It seemed to me as if he was trying and trying and finally rolled over the slab over my grave; I was still waiting until now, but it was as if forever had ended, and she would never come. He himself suddenly burst into tears. Then for me his wide back of the head, his roguish eyes filled with fat, his fleshy chin disappeared, and I began to feel sorry for the man, the whole man in his outbursts of vitality. I wanted to tell him something good, I took the reins in my hands, drove up to the water, wet the handkerchief, and refreshed it. He soon recovered, wiped his eyes, took the reins in his hands again, and we drove off as before.
After some time, I decided to again express, as it seemed to me then, a completely independent idea about grass sowing, that without the support of cooperation we would never convince the peasants to introduce clover into their crop rotation.
Were there nights? - he asked, not paying any attention to my business words.
Of course they were,” I answered like a real man.
He thought again and - such a tormentor! - asked again:
Well, it was just one night?
I was tired, I got a little angry, controlled myself and when asked, one or two, I answered with the words of Pushkin:
- “All life is one or two nights.”
Everything was fine on this draft, but the woodcock did not arrive. I plunged into my memories: now the woodcock did not arrive, and in the distant past, she did not come. She loved me, but it seemed to her that this was not enough to fully respond to my strong feelings. And she didn't come. And so I left this “craving” of mine and never met her again.
It’s such a wonderful evening, the birds are singing, everything is there, but the woodcock hasn’t arrived. Two streams collided in the stream, a splash was heard and nothing: the water was still gently rolling across the spring meadow. And then it turned out, I thought: from this, that she did not come, the happiness of my life arose. It turned out that her image gradually disappeared over the years, but the feeling remained and lived in an eternal search for an image and did not find it, turning with kindred attention to the phenomena of life throughout our land, throughout the world. So in place of one face everything became like a face, and all my life I admired the features of this immense face, every spring I added something to my observations. I was happy, and the only thing I still needed was for everyone to be happy like me.
So this is what explains why my literature remains alive: because it is my own life. And everyone, it seems to me, could do like me: try to forget your failures in love and transfer your feelings into words, and you will certainly have readers.
And I think now that happiness does not depend at all on whether it came or did not come, happiness depends only on love, whether it was there or not, love itself is happiness, and this love cannot be separated from “talent.”
So I thought until it got dark, and I suddenly realized that no more woodcock would come. Then a sharp pain pierced me, and I whispered to myself: “Hunter, hunter, why didn’t you hold her then!”
Arishin's question
When this woman left me, Arisha asked:
Who is her husband?
“I don’t know,” I said, “I didn’t ask.” And do we really care who her husband is?
How is it that “it doesn’t matter,” said Arisha, “how many times you sat with her, talked, and you don’t know who her husband is, I would ask.
The next time she came to me, I remembered Arisha’s question, but again I did not ask who her husband was. The reason I didn’t ask was because I liked her for something, and I guess it was precisely because her eyes reminded me of the wonderful Phacelia, the beloved of my youth. One way or another, but she attracted me exactly the same way that Phacelia once did: she did not arouse in me thoughts of getting closer; on the contrary, this interest of mine in her repelled all everyday attention. Now I had nothing to do with her husband, family, home. When she was getting ready to leave, I decided, after hard work, to get some air, and perhaps walk her home. We went out, it was freezing. The Black River was chilly, and streams of steam ran everywhere, and a rustling sound was heard from the ice banks. The water was so terrible, such an abyss that it seemed that the most unfortunate person who would dare to drown, looking into this black abyss, returned to his home joyful and whispered, starting the samovar:
“What nonsense - drowning! It's even worse than ours. At least then I’ll have some tea.”
Do you have a sense of nature? - I asked my new Phacelia.
What is this? - she asked in turn.
She was an educated woman and had read and heard hundreds of times about the sense of nature. But her question was so simple and sincere. There was no doubt left: she really did not know what the feeling of nature was.
“And how could she know,” I thought, “if she, perhaps this Phacelia of mine, is “nature” itself.”
This thought struck me.
Once again, with this new understanding, I wanted to look into those sweet eyes and through them into that very “nature” of mine, desired, and eternally virgin, and eternally giving birth.
But it was completely dark, and the flight of my great feeling fell into the darkness and came back. Some kind of second nature of mine again raised this question to Arisha.
At this time we were crossing a large cast-iron bridge, and as soon as I opened my mouth to ask my wonderful Phacelia Arishin a question, I heard cast-iron steps behind me. I didn’t want to turn around and see what a giant was walking across the cast-iron bridge. I knew who he was: he was a commander, a punishing force for the futility of the dream of my youth, a poetic dream, again replacing genuine human love for me.
And when I caught up with him, he just touched me, and I flew through the barrier into the black abyss.
I woke up in bed and thought: “This everyday question from Arishin is not as stupid as I thought: if I had not replaced my love with a dream in my youth, I would not have lost my Phacelia and now, many years later, I would not have dreamed black abyss."