Mikhail Prishvin and Valeria Liorco: a lifelong expectation of love. Lessons of love: Mikhail Prishvin When a person loves he is prishvin




Elena SANDETSKAYA

Mikhail Prishvin: "... I affirm that people have great love on earth"

The mother is seeking permission for her son to leave for Germany, where Mikhail continued his education at the University of Leipzig. And shortly before receiving his diploma, he goes to his friends in Paris, where his “fatal” meeting with the Russian student of the Sorbonne Varvara Izmalkova took place. Love falls on him. The relationship began swiftly, passionately and ... just as quickly ended.

The flame of unfulfilled love ignited him as a writer, and he carried him to old age, until the hour when, at the age of 67, he met a woman about whom he could say: “This is She! The one I've been waiting for ”. They lived together for 14 years. These were the years of real happiness in complete unanimity and like-mindedness. Valeria Dmitrievna and Mikhail Mikhailovich talked about this in their book "We are with you".

All his life PRISHVIN kept a diary, which absorbed everything that the writer experienced. Here are some of his thoughts on love:

“… There is such a special fear of closeness to a person, based on the general experience that everyone harbors some kind of personal sin and tries with all his might to hide it from the prying eye with a beautiful veil. When we meet a stranger, we also show ourselves from the good side, and so little by little, a society of harboring personal sins from prying eyes is created.

There are naive people who believe in the reality of this convention between people; there are pretenders, cynics, satyrs, who know how to use convention as a sauce for a delicious dish. And there are very few who, not being satisfied with the illusion that conceals sin, are looking for ways to sinless rapprochement, believing in the recesses of the soul that there is such a He or She who can unite sinlessly and forever and live on earth as the forefathers before the Fall.

In truth, the history of paradise repeats itself and is still countless: almost every love begins with paradise. "

“… If a woman interferes with creativity, then you need to be with her, like Stepan Razin, and if you don’t want to, like Stepan, then you will find your own Taras Bulba, and let him shoot you.

But if a woman helps to create life, keeps a house, gives birth to children or participates in creativity with her husband, then she should be honored as a queen. It is given to us by a harsh struggle. And maybe that's why I hate weak men. "

“… When people live in love, they do not notice the onset of old age, and even if they notice a wrinkle, they don’t attach any importance to it: that’s not the point. So, if people loved each other, they would not do cosmetics at all. "

“... So, all love is a connection, but not every connection is love. True love is moral creativity. "

“... Do you know that love when you yourself have nothing and will not come from it, but you still love everything around you through it, and walk across the field and meadow, and pick up colorfully, one to one, blue cornflowers smelling of honey , and blue forget-me-nots. "

“... I affirm that people have great love on earth, united and boundless. And in this world of love, intended for a person to nourish the soul to the same extent as air for blood, I find the only one that corresponds to my own unity, and only through this correspondence, unity on both sides do I enter the sea of ​​universal love human.

That is why even the most primitive people, starting their short love, certainly feel that it is not for them alone, but for everyone, to live well on earth, and even if it is obvious that a good life does not work out, it is still possible for a person to be happy. So, only through love can one find oneself as a person, and only through a person can one enter the world of human love: love - virtue. "

“... Every young man who is not tempted, every man who is not depraved and unhappy with need contains his own tale about his beloved woman, about the possibility of impossible happiness. And when, it happens, a woman appears, then the question arises:

- Wasn't it SHE, the one I was waiting for?

Then the answers follow in a sequence:

- As if she is!

- No, not her!

And then, it happens, very rarely, a person, not believing himself, says:

- Is she really?

And every day, assuring himself of actions and easy communication during the day, he exclaims: "Yes, it is SHE!"

And at night, touching, he enthusiastically accepts the miraculous current of life and assures himself of the phenomenon of a miracle: the fairy tale has become reality - this is SHE, undoubtedly SHE!

“… Oh, how trivial the French“ look for a woman ”is! Meanwhile, this is the truth. All muses are vulgar, but the sacred fire continues to burn in our time, as it burned from time immemorial in the history of man on earth. So my writing, from beginning to end, is a timid, very bashful song of some creature singing the only word in the spring chorus of nature: "Come!"

Love is an unknown country, and we all sail there, each on his own ship, and each of us on his ship is a captain and leads the ship in his own way. "

“… To us, inexperienced and learned from novels, it seems that women should strive for lies, and so on. Meanwhile, they are sincere to such an extent that we cannot even imagine it without experience, only this sincerity, sincerity itself, is not at all similar to our concept of it, we mix it with the truth. "

“... At night I thought that love on earth, the same ordinary love for a woman, specifically for a woman, is everything, and here is God, and all other love within its borders: love-pity and love-understanding are from here.

“… I think with love about the absent Lyala. It is now becoming clear to me, as it never was, that Lyalya is the best thing that I have met in my life, and any thought about some kind of personal “freedom” must be discarded as absurdity, because there is no freedom greater than that which is given love. And if I am always at my height, she will never stop loving me. In love, you have to fight for your height and thus win. In love one must grow and grow oneself.

I said:

- I love you more and more.

- After all, I told you this from the very beginning that you will love more and more.

She knew it, but I did not know. I brought up in myself the idea that love passes, that it is impossible to love forever, and that for a while is not worth the trouble. This is the division of love and our common misunderstanding: one love (some kind) is passing, and the other is eternal. In one man needs children to continue through them; the other, strengthening, unites with eternity ”.

"In love, you can reach everything, everything will be forgiven, just not a habit ...".

“... The woman stretched out her hand to the harp, touched it with her finger, and from the touch of her finger to the string, a sound was born. So it was with me: she touched - and I began to sing.

The most amazing and special thing was in my complete absence of that teasing image of a woman, which is impressed upon the first meeting. I was impressed by her soul - and her understanding of my soul. There was a touch of souls, and only very slowly, very gradually passing into the body, and without the slightest break in the soul and flesh, without the slightest shame and reproach. It was incarnation. "

"- My friend! In you is my only salvation when I am in misfortune ... But when I am happy in my deeds, then, rejoicing, I bring you my joy and love, and you answer - which love is dearer to you: when I am in misfortune or when I am healthy , rich and glorious, and come to you as a winner?

“Of course,” she replied, “that love is higher when you are a winner. And if in misfortune you grab hold of me in order to be saved, then this is what you love for yourself! So be happy and come to me as a winner: this is better. But I myself love you equally - both in sorrow and in joy. "

“… What is love? Nobody said this correctly. But only one thing can be said about love correctly, that it contains the desire for immortality and eternity, and at the same time, of course, as something small and self-explanatory and necessary, the ability of a creature engulfed in love to leave behind more or less lasting things from small children to Shakespeare's lines. "

How much tenderness and light are in these wise thoughts of Mikhail PRISHVIN. It is a pity that the truth of true love is not revealed to everyone.


Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin is rightfully called the singer of the Russian land. In his works, the surrounding nature becomes the main character, forests, fields, meadows appear with incredible completeness and fine detail on the pages of essays and stories. He enthusiastically sang the praises of nature, as if putting into these descriptions feelings that he so lacked in life.

First discoveries


Intricate, funny and dexterous Dunyasha worked as a servant in the Prishvins' house. Misha often noticed that when sweeping the floor or wiping it with a rag, Dunyasha raises her skirt very high, as if showing her legs to the teenager. The teenager was embarrassed, blushed and diligently looked away from the snow-white skin of the ingenuous seductress. She clearly sympathized with the master's boy and without much hesitation tried to win, if not his heart, then his body.

At the moment when the closeness of Dunyasha and Mikhail became possible, the boy suddenly realized how his heart was protesting against such a relationship. It is difficult to say where such thoughts came from in the mind of a teenager. But he felt that simple carnal pleasures would not bring him happiness if they were not backed up by deep feeling.

Varenka



Mikhail Mikhailovich himself will describe his feelings after a failed intimacy in his diaries. It was this episode that made the future writer think about the complexities of his nature, which left an imprint on his entire future life. The thirst for love inexplicably coexisted in him along with the denial of temptation. This turned into a personal drama for the man when he met the one he sincerely loved.

Mikhail Prishvin, a student at the University of Leipzig, went on vacation to Paris in 1902. In this city, as if created for love, a meeting of the future writer with Varenka took place, a student of the Sorbonne Varvara Petrovna Izmalkova studied history, was the daughter of a major official from St. Petersburg. The romance between Varvara and Mikhail quickly whirled the lovers. They spent days and nights together, enthusiastically talking about everything in the world. Bright, happy days filled with feelings and emotions. But everything was cut short after three weeks. Prishvin blamed himself and his idealistic expectations for this.

The young man could not even imagine that he would offend his beloved with physical lust. He idolized his Varenka, he admired her and could not touch his dream. The girl wanted a simple female happiness, an ordinary life with children. Varenka wrote a letter to her parents and showed it to her lover. She talked about her relationship with Mikhail, already imagining her future family life. But her aspirations were so different from the idea of ​​Prishvin's future that the difference in views on love led to bitter disappointment and breakup. Varvara tore up the letter.


Many years later, the writer admits that this very event will make him a writer. Not finding comfort in love, Mikhail Mikhailovich will look for him in writing. The image of Vary, appearing in his dreams, will inspire him and encourage him to write new and new works.

Later Prishvin made one attempt to get closer to his muse. And he himself did not use it. He wrote to Varvara Petrovna about his unquenchable feelings. The girl answered him by making an appointment. But the writer shamefully confused the date of the meeting, and Varya could not forgive him for this oversight, refusing to listen to his explanations.

Efrosinya Pavlovna Smogaleva



For a long time and painfully, Mikhail suffered the loss of his ideal love. Sometimes it seemed to him that he was really going crazy. The writer was already over 40 when he met a young woman who had survived the death of her husband. There was a one-year-old child in her arms, and the look of her huge eyes is so sad that the writer at first simply felt sorry for Frosya. The fascination with the idea of ​​the guilt of the intelligentsia before ordinary people, which Prishvin was infected with, led to the marriage. The writer tried on the role of a savior. He sincerely believed that he could mold an uneducated and rude Euphrosyne into a real beautiful woman with the power of his love. But they were too different from Frosya. The girl from a resigned sad peasant woman very quickly turned into an imperious and rather grumpy wife.


Sensitive and very vulnerable Prishvin began to increasingly avoid the company of his wife. He began to travel a lot in Russia, admiring the grandeur and uniqueness of nature. At the same time, he will begin to work hard, trying to escape from his catastrophic loneliness and lack of understanding of loved ones. He blamed only himself for his loneliness, reproached for excessive haste and inability to recognize the soul of another person.

A rather unhappy marriage, which brought a lot of suffering to the writer, lasted more than 30 years. And all this time Mikhail Mikhailovich was waiting for some miracle, a wonderful deliverance from his mental wounds and an agonizing desire for happiness. He often mentioned in his diaries that he still hopes to meet with the one who can become for him the light of his whole life.

Valeria Dmitrievna Liorko (Lebedeva)


Mikhail Mikhailovich is 67 years old. By this time, he was already living separately from his wife. The famous and recognized writer has long thought about publishing his diaries, but he still lacked the strength, time and patience to sort through the numerous archives. He decided to hire a secretary, certainly a woman who would be distinguished by special delicacy. In the diaries there were too many personal, secret, infinitely dear to the heart of the writer.

On January 16, 1940, forty-year-old Valeria Dmitrievna knocked on Prishvin's door. She had a difficult life, two marriages behind her shoulders and persecution from the authorities for her noble origins. Working with Mikhail Mikhailovich could be a real salvation for her.

The first meeting was rather dry. For some reason, Mikhail and Valeria turned out to be not sympathetic to each other. However, joint work, gradual recognition of each other led to the emergence of sympathy, and then that very deep, beautiful feeling, in anticipation of which Mikhail Mikhailovich lived all his life.


Valeria Dmitrievna became for the writer his evening star, his happiness, his dream, his ideal woman. Working on the writer's diaries opened up more and more facets of Prishvin's personality to Valeria Dmitrievna. Translating his thoughts into typed text, the woman became more and more convinced of the uncommonness of her employer. Subtle sensuality and endless loneliness of the writer found a response in the heart of his secretary. And along with the knowledge of his thoughts came an understanding of the kinship of their souls.

They talked for hours and could not stop talking until late at night. In the morning, Mikhail Mikhailovich was in a hurry to open the door, ahead of the housekeeper, in order to see his Valeria as soon as possible.

He wrote a lot about her, about his feelings for this amazing woman, he was afraid of his feelings and was very afraid of being rejected. And he hoped that at the end of his life he was still able to find his happiness. And all his hopes and dreams suddenly became his own embodied fairy tale. Valeria Dmitrievna did not see an old man in him, she felt masculine strength and depth in the writer.


The wife of Prishvin, having learned about the relationship between Mikhail Mikhailovich and Valeria, made a real scandal. She complained to the Writers' Union and categorically did not agree to a divorce. For the opportunity to dissolve the marriage, Prishvin had to sacrifice his apartment. Only in exchange for the re-registration of housing for her, Efrosinya Pavlovna agreed to give freedom to Mikhail Mikhailovich.

Since that time, the life of the prose writer has changed. He loved and was loved. He met his ideal woman, whom he had been looking for all his life.

Crystal years



Beloved Lyalya gave the writer everything that he dreamed of in his youth. Prishvin's romanticism was complemented by her open bluntness. Openly confessing her feelings, she encouraged Mikhail Mikhailovich to take decisive action. She gave the writer the strength to fight at a time when everyone took up arms against their tender romance.

And they survived, overcame all the obstacles on the way to their marriage. The writer took his Valeria to the fabulous outback, to the village of Tryazhino near Bronnitsy. The couple spent the last 8 years of the writer's life in the village of Dunino, Odintsovo District, Moscow Region. They enjoyed their late happiness, their love, common views on feelings and events. The Crystal Years, as Prishvin called it.


The couple wrote the book “We are with you. Love Diaries ". In this diary, their feelings, their views, their happiness were described in great detail. The writer was not blinded, he fully noticed the shortcomings of his wife, but they absolutely did not prevent him from being happy.

On January 16, 1954, on the day of the fourteenth anniversary of the writer’s acquaintance with his evening star, Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin left this world. Having met his love at sunset, finding happiness and peace, he left absolutely happy.

In contrast to calm happiness in adulthood, it is interesting to learn about.

When a person loves, he penetrates into the essence of the world.
The white hedge was covered with frost needles, red and gold bushes. The silence is such that not a single leaf will touch the tree.

Composition

Love is that feeling that seems to have appeared along with the human race. There is an opinion that it appeared even earlier, because each of us at birth is the fruit of love, a source of beauty and purity, and only later, over time, a sponge that absorbs the cruelty of realities. But what really is love and how does it affect a person? This is the question over which M.M. Prishvin.

“When a person loves, he penetrates into the essence of the world,” the text given to us begins with these words, and with each further sentence the author plunges us into the atmosphere of the magic of this feeling, leading us to the great and all-consuming meaning of love. MM. Prishvin seeks to convey to the reader the idea that a person, seized by this bright feeling, begins to perceive the world around him and feel nature in a different way - he literally merges with space, because he remains alone with love “embracing the whole world”. A person who has lost this feeling ceases to feel himself immortal, loses inner harmony, as if he is being emptied from the inside.

The idea that the author develops in the text is related to the underestimation of such a feeling as love. It, according to the writer, is the happiness and harmony of man. It is only thanks to love that we have the opportunity to feel our fullness in this world, to live in unity with everything around us, and with all this, which is very important, "leave behind more or less lasting things."

One cannot but agree with the opinion of M.M. Prishvin. I also believe that love is a bright and all-consuming ray of light, a ray of warmth and goodness, which allows each of us to see all the most beautiful that is in the world around us. Love gives us a sharpening of feelings, gives us new emotions, pushes us to creativity and ensures eternal existence. In love, it seems to me, there is the meaning of human existence.

How love can affect a person's life is discussed by A.I. Kuprin in the story "Garnet Bracelet". Using Zheltkov as an example, the author shows that love from the very first moments can become the meaning of a person's life, his greatest happiness. Once having met Vera Nikolaevna, the main character could no longer let her out of his heart. The whole subsequent life of Zheltkov, every minute of him was filled with this woman, and the feeling given to him was so sweet for him that he was more afraid of losing him than death. However, unfortunately, this love was not destined to become mutual, and Zheltkov, immensely respecting the princess, did not dare to interfere in her life with more than a few letters - he just had to write them and live in short moments of meeting with Vera Nikolaevna, in these few seconds he considered himself the happiest person in the whole world.

A good example of true, sincere and pure love is the poetry of A.S. Pushkin. It seems that love has always been in the heart of this poet, which is why he was so close to nature and so keenly felt any change in it. In the poem "On the hills of Georgia lies the haze of the night ..." the author shows that the lyrical hero is truly happy that he has the opportunity to love. There is no severity of negative emotions in him - his sadness is light, and his heart is aflame with love, because it can no longer be otherwise, and why? After all, this feeling allows the lyrical hero, even in the darkness of the night, to see the world in bright, light colors.

Many words have been said about love and many lines have been written. In conclusion of all of the above, I would like to recall the words written by N.A. Berdyaev, who, as never before, describe the meaning of love better: "Love is the universal energy of life, which has the ability to transform evil passions into creative passions."

Russian Soviet writer Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin was born in the village of Khrushchevo, Yeletsky district on February 4, 1873 into a merchant family. Despite his origins, Prishvin was not a wealthy man, as his father lived on a grand scale and squandered his fortune when Mikhail was just a child.

At the age of six, thanks to the efforts of his mother, Mikhail entered the Yelets gymnasium, but after studying there for 4 years, he was expelled for insolence towards the teacher (some sources claim that Prishvin was not only a notorious hooligan, but also a poor student).
Thanks to the petition of his uncle, a wealthy steamship owner, Misha went to finish his studies at the Tyumen real school: he was taken there "with a wolf ticket" on his uncle's recommendation.
Then, from 1893 to 1897, the future writer becomes a student at the Riga Polytechnic University, which also does not finish due to his arrest. Prishvin began to actively participate in the Marxist circle, at the next meeting of which he was discovered by the police. Mikhail was greatly influenced by his university friend V.D. Ulrich, who actively promoted Marxism.
Prishvin was caught red-handed distributing leaflets and imprisoned for a year for his rebellious thoughts, and then exiled to his native Yelets for another two years.
In 1900, the young Prishvin decides to end politics and goes to study as an agronomist at the University of Leipzig, after graduating from which, in 1902, he works in his specialty, and in the evenings he is engaged in writing. The creative path of the writer and his becoming a "tramp" began in 1906 with a move to St. Petersburg.

Mikhail Mikhailovich considers 1906 to be the year of the beginning of his creative activity, then his first work "Sashok" was published. But the name of Prishvin became famous after the publication of his "Travel Notes", which he publishes after the end of his trip to the far north, Karelia and the Volga region. Prishvin becomes a real local lore traveler. He traveled all over Crimea, Kazakhstan, visited Norway, was in the Far East ... The writer makes a forced break in his work only with the arrival of the First World War. Since 1918 he has been a war correspondent, since 1919 he has been a village teacher in Smolensk. It took 15 long years before moving to Moscow and settling in the writers' house (next to the Tretyakov Gallery). This happened only in 1937.

Since 1940, Prishvin has published his observation diary in stories and essays. After the war, the writer travels "closer to nature", he acquires a dacha and works there tirelessly.

The writer died on January 16, 1954. His body was buried at the Moscow Vvedenskoye cemetery.

Prishvin's main achievements

In our country, Prishvin is known as the creator of natural philosophy, as a writer who keenly observed what was happening in nature and kept diaries called "Notes of a Hunter".

- The name of Prishvin is associated with works that so clearly and naturally describe nature, where Mikhail Mikhailovich himself found so much artistic natural philosophy. During his lifetime he was called a "singer of nature" who was able to clothe his diary entries into real art. Among his literary heritage are essays, stories, and, most importantly, stories, those that were read to us by our parents in our distant childhood. The most significant, according to literary scholars, are: collections of essays "In the Land of Unafraid Birds" (1907) and "Behind the Magic Kolobok" (1908), phenological notes "Calendar of Nature" (1935), the story "Spring of Light" (1940), the story "Unclothed Spring" (1940), a lyrical and philosophical book "Forest drops" (1940) and a cycle of miniatures of the same name, published in 1943, a fairy tale novel "The Condemned Road" (1957) and an autobiographical novel "Kashcheeva's Chain", published after the death of the writer. Prishvin was also fond of writing articles on agronomy, of which he had more than a hundred in publication alone.

Important dates in the biography of Prishvin

In 1897, Prishvin was sentenced to three years in prison for his political beliefs. In prison and exile, the writer decides to completely change his attitude to power and no longer engage in politics. The last years of the late 19th century can be considered a turning point in the life of the young Prishvin.
- Since Mikhail was forbidden to live in large cities after prison and exile, he asks for permission to go abroad and continue his studies. And at the beginning of 1900 he received it, after which he moved to Germany and "learns to be a person useful to his homeland." In 1902, the writer returned to Russia and settled in Klin, where he worked as an assistant to an agronomist: now he brings advanced ideas to agronomy and agriculture.

- Agronomy has become his specialty forever. 1904 - Prishvin was offered a job in Moscow, in the laboratory of the Petrovskaya Agricultural Academy under the guidance of the famous professor D.M. Pryanishnikov. In 1905, Prishvin published his first article "Potatoes in garden and field culture". He begins to write after the first positive review of his story "Sashok", which was published in 1906.
- Prishvin believed that a person's personal life should develop. At the age of 25, he married a simple peasant woman from the Smolensk region, from whose marriage he had three sons, two of whom also gained fame in literature.

- Since 1906, Prishvin has been working in St. Petersburg, where he publishes his favorites: "In the Land of Unafraid Birds" and "Kolobok". It is during this period that the writer begins to keep his notes, which he does not interrupt throughout his life. Their total volume was 25 volumes!
- In September 1917, Prishvin, working in the newspaper "Will of the People", is preparing to release his first collection.
In 1937, the writer moved to Moscow and published his most significant works there until the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War.


- In September 1941, the writer's family moved with him to the remote village of Usolye near the town of Pereslavl Zalessky and remained there until the end of the war. In 1943, Mikhail Prishvin was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
- From 1946 to 1954, Mikhail Mikhailovich lives at his dacha near Zvenigorod, where the Prishvin Museum is now operating.

Interesting facts from the life of Prishvin

Having gone to study in Leipzig, young Prishvin fell in love with an Englishwoman. It was student love that the poet needed not for marriage, but rather for a flight. But the girl was strict in manners and refused reciprocity to the future writer. From such bitter disappointment, Prishvin began to write poetry, and then returned to his homeland altogether. But the girl and withered away in some bank office. But Prishvin suffers no less, so he agrees to an “unequal marriage”, he marries the semi-literate simpleton Efrosinya Pavlovna, in whom until old age he looks for the features of a lost Englishwoman. Euphrosyne bore him three sons, never meddled in her husband's affairs and devoted thirty years of her life to him. After her death, he suddenly ... married again. This happened in 1950, when the writer was looking for a secretary. A certain Valeria Lebedeva got a job with him, who promised the writer that not a single line from his manuscripts would be lost. He looked at the woman intently and offered her his hand and heart. So Prishvin got married a second time.
- In 1919, Prishvina was almost shot by pure chance: he was confused with a Jew when Mamontov's Cossacks came to the city.
- In the early 30s, the passion for cars was very fashionable. Mikhail, without fear, got behind the wheel of a car that he bought one of the first in Moscow. He did not let anyone drive his "Moskvich"; Mikhail Mikhailovich's dogs were also trained to the car, with whom he set off on his four-legged horse along the off-road to the forest for inspiration.

Love stories. From the diaries of Mikhail Prishvin.

All his life, Prishvin kept a diary that absorbed everything that the writer experienced in his homeland: the revolution and wars, writing under the tsar and the Bolsheviks, the God-seeking of the intelligentsia at the beginning of the century and the destructive atheism of nature transformers, the difficulties of his own life, loneliness, despite many years of family ties ...

There is such a special fear of closeness to a person, based on the general experience that everyone harbors some kind of personal sin and with all their might tries to hide it from prying eyes with a beautiful veil. When we meet a stranger, we also show ourselves from the good side, and so little by little, a society of harboring personal sins from prying eyes is created.

There are naive people who believe in the reality of this convention between people; there are pretenders, cynics, satyrs, who know how to use convention as a sauce for a delicious dish. And there are very few who, not being satisfied with the illusion that conceals sin, are looking for ways to sinless rapprochement, believing in the recesses of the soul that there is such a He or She who can unite sinlessly and forever and live on earth as the forefathers before the Fall.

In truth, the paradise story repeats itself and is still countless: almost every love begins with paradise.

* The beginning of love is in attention, then in election, then in achievement, because love is dead without work.

* Love is like the sea, sparkling with heavenly flowers. Happy is he who comes to the shore and, enchanted, harmonizes his soul with the greatness of the whole sea. Then the boundaries of the soul of the poor person expand to infinity, and the poor person then realizes that there is no death either ... You cannot see "that" shore in the sea, and love has no shores at all.

But the other comes to the sea not with a soul, but with a jug and, having scooped it up, brings from the whole sea only a jug, and the water in the jug is salty and useless.

Love is a deception, says such a person and never returns to the sea.

* Who is deceived in someone, he deceives the other. This means that one cannot deceive, but one cannot be deceived either.

* The garden blooms, and everyone is loaded with aroma in it. So a person is like a blooming garden: he loves everything, and everyone enters into his love.

* It was during the rain: two drops rolled towards each other on the telegraph wire. They would have met and fell to the ground in one big drop, but some bird, flying by, touched the wire, and the drops fell to the ground before meeting each other.

That's all about the drops, and their fate for us disappears into the damp earth. But for ourselves, we humans know that the disturbed movement of the two towards each other and there, in this dark land, continues.

And so many exciting books have been written about the possibility of a meeting of two creatures striving for one another that two raindrops running along the wire are enough to tackle a new possibility of meeting in human destiny.

* A woman knows that to love is worth her whole life, and that is why she is afraid and runs away. You shouldn't catch up with her - you won't take her like that: the new woman knows her worth. If you need to take it, then prove that it is worth giving your life for you.

* If a woman interferes with creativity, then you need to be with her, like Stepan Razin, and if you don’t want to, like Stepan, then you will find your own Taras Bulba, and let him shoot you.

But if a woman helps to create life, keeps a house, gives birth to children or participates in creativity with her husband, then she should be honored as a queen. It is given to us by a harsh struggle. And maybe that's why I hate weak men.

* Imaginary end of the novel. They were so obliged to each other, so delighted at their meeting that they tried to give away all their wealth stored in their souls, as it were, in some kind of competition: you gave, and I gave more, and again the same on the other side, and until neither one nor the other had nothing left of their reserves. In such cases, people who have given their all to another, consider this other as their property, and this tortures each other for the rest of their lives. But these two, wonderful and free people, having learned once that they had given each other everything, and they had nothing more to change, and they had nowhere to grow higher in this exchange, they hugged, kissed tightly and dispersed without tears and without words. Be blessed, wonderful people!

* So, love, as creativity, is the embodiment of each of the lovers in another of his ideal image. The lover, under the influence of the other, as it were, finds himself, and both of these found, new creatures are united into a single person: there is, as it were, the restoration of the divided Adam.

* The person you love in me is, of course, better than me: I am not like that. But you love, and I will try to be better than myself ...

* When people live in love, they do not notice the onset of old age, and even if they notice a wrinkle, they do not attach any importance to it: that is not the point. So, if people loved each other, they would not do cosmetics at all.

* Love - as understanding or as a path to like-mindedness. There are all shades of understanding in love, starting from physical touch, similar to how water understands the earth in spring, and this leaves a floodplain. When the water leaves, the muddy earth remains, ugly at first, and how quickly the land understood by water, this floodplain, begins to decorate, grow and bloom!

So we see every year in nature, as in a mirror, our own human way of understanding, like-mindedness and rebirth.

* To understand the essence of marriage itself, as the path of love of like-mindedness, in which the Third is born, all the same, let it be a human child or a qualitative thought (image).

And this is the general law of life, otherwise why, according to general admission, it is in babies that the best image of a person is seen!

It is in this way that the direction of our human culture should be determined.

What are fish with their caviar, aspen with their down! And a person, the further he perfects in the human being, the more difficult it is for him to multiply and, finally, he is born in his ideal.

When Rafael still knew it - when! - and I just now ... And this can be found only in the rarest, most difficult experience of love for men.

* In her depths, it seems to me, she knows everything and she contains the answer to every question of deep consciousness. If I could ask about everything - she would answer everything. But I rarely have enough strength to ask her. Life is often so-so, as if you are riding a cart, having the opportunity to fly on an airplane. But only this is a great wealth, to realize that everything is from myself and if I just want to, I will change from the cart to the plane or ask Lyalya any question and get any answer from her.

Lyalya remains for me an inexhaustible source of thought, the highest synthesis of what is called nature.

* Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna were childless. Children born in the light of both love: in one case, love for children is a particularity of common love, in the other, love for children excludes all other love: the most vicious, predatory creature can have love for children.

So, all love is a connection, but not all connection is love. True love is moral creativity.

* Art in its essence is a man's business, or rather, one of the fields of purely masculine action, like the song of bird males. And the woman's business is direct love.

* How many thousand times from morning until night you need to tweet your callsigns to the female so that a vital response awakens in her. The sparrow starts with the first warm ray, and the female will respond, well if in a month, with the first swollen pregnant kidney.

For some reason, it seems to us that if these are birds, they fly a lot, if they are fallow deer or tigers, they are constantly running and jumping. In fact, birds sit more than fly, tigers are very lazy, fallow deer graze and only move their lips. So do people too. We think that people's lives are filled with love, and when we ask ourselves and others - who loved how much, and it turns out - that's so little! That's how lazy we are too!

* Do you know that love when you yourself have nothing and will not come from it, but you still love everything around you through it, and walk across the field and meadow, and pick up colorfully, one to one, blue cornflowers smelling of honey, and blue forget-me-nots.

* ... I affirm that people have great love on earth, united and boundless. And in this world of love, intended for a person to nourish the soul to the same extent as air for blood, I find the only one that corresponds to my own unity, and only through this correspondence, unity on both sides do I enter the sea of ​​universal love human.

* That is why even the most primitive people, starting their short love, certainly feel that it is not for them alone, but for everyone to live well on earth, and even if it is obvious that a good life does not work out, then it is still possible for a person and should be happy. So, only through love can one find oneself as a person, and only through a person can one enter the world of human love: love - virtue.

Otherwise: only through personal love can one join universal love.

* Every young man not tempted, every man who is not depraved and unhappy with need contains his own fairy tale about his beloved woman, about the possibility of impossible happiness.

And when, it happens, a woman appears, then the question arises:

Was it not she who appeared, the one I was waiting for?

Then the answers follow in a sequence:

As if she is!

No, not her!

And it happens, very rarely, a person, not believing himself, says:

Is she really?

And every day, assuring him of actions and easy communication during the day, he exclaims: "Yes, this is her!"

And at night, touching, he enthusiastically accepts the miraculous current of life and assures himself of the phenomenon of a miracle: the fairy tale has become reality - this is it, undoubtedly it!

* Oh, how trivial the French "seek a woman" is! And yet this is the truth. All muses are vulgar, but the sacred fire continues to burn in our time, as it burned from time immemorial in the history of man on earth. So my writing, from beginning to end, is a timid, very bashful song of some creature singing a single word in the spring chorus of nature:

Come!

* Love is an unknown country, and we all sail there, each on his own ship, and each of us on his own ship is a captain and leads the ship in his own way.

* To us, inexperienced and learned from novels, it seems that women should strive for lies, etc. Meanwhile, they are sincere to such an extent that we cannot even imagine it without experience, only this sincerity, sincerity itself, is not at all similar to our concept of it, we mix it with the truth.

* What to call that joyful feeling when it seems as if the river is changing, swimming into the ocean - freedom? love? I want to hug the whole world, and if not everyone is good, then the eyes meet only with those who are good, and that is why it seems that everyone is good. Rarely did anyone not have such joy in life, but rarely did anyone cope with this wealth: one squandered it, the other did not believe it, and most often quickly picked up from this great wealth, stuffed his pockets and then sat down to guard his treasures for the rest of his life, became their owner or slave.

* At night I thought that love on earth, that same ordinary love for a woman, specifically for a woman, is everything, and here is God, and all other love within its borders: love-pity and love-understanding are from here.

* I think with love about the absent Lyala. It is now becoming clear to me, as it never was, that Lyalya is the best thing that I have met in my life, and any thought about some kind of personal “freedom” must be discarded as absurdity, because there is no freedom greater than that which is given love. And if I'm always at my height, she will never stop loving me. In love, you have to fight for your height and thus win. In love one must grow and grow oneself.

* I said: - I love you more and more.

And she: - After all, I told you this from the very beginning, that you will love more and more.

She knew it, but I did not know. I brought up in myself the idea that love passes, that it is impossible to love forever, and that for a while is not worth the trouble. This is the division of love and our common misunderstanding: one love (some kind) is passing, and the other is eternal. In one man needs children to continue through them; the other, strengthening, unites with eternity.

* I, creating joy for the distant unknown reader, did not pay attention to my neighbor and did not want to be an ass for him. I was a horse for a distant one and did not want to be a donkey for a neighbor.

But Lyalya came, I fell in love with her and agreed to be a "donkey" for her. A donkey's business is not only in carrying heavy loads, as in a simple donkey, but in that special attention to his neighbor, who reveals shortcomings in him with the obligation to overcome them.

This overcoming of one's neighbor's shortcomings is the whole morality of mankind, all its "donkey" business.

* Motherhood, as a force that creates a bridge from the present to the future, remained the only driving force of life ...

Modern times are characterized by the greatness of motherhood: this is a woman's victory.

Today we came to the forest, I put my head on her lap and fell asleep. And when I woke up, she was sitting in the same position when I fell asleep, looking at me, and I recognized in those eyes not my wife, but my mother ...

* Today I suddenly became very clear about this creature - more than my reach, and most of all, and best of all, I know, this creature is a mother.

You say it's love, but all I see is patience and pity.

So this is love: patience and pity.

God is with you! But where is the joy and happiness, are they condemned to remain outside of love?

Joy and happiness are children of love, but love itself, as strength, is patience and pity. And if you are now happy and enjoy life, then thank your mother for this: she pitied you and endured a lot so that you grow up and become happy.

A woman is by nature compassionate, and every unfortunate person finds comfort in her. It all comes down to motherhood, they drink from this source, and then they boast: everyone can be taken! How many tears were shed from this deception!

* A beautiful woman was undressing in the lobby, and at that time her boy began to cry. The woman bent down to him, picked him up and kissed him, but how she kissed him! Not only did she not smile, did not look back at the people, but the whole, as in music, entirely, serious and sublime, went into these kisses. And I closely recognized her soul.

To die means to surrender to the end, just as a woman is given over to the work of being born and through this she becomes a mother ... And the death of a mother is not death, but assassination.

* I seem to get living water from the deep well of her soul, and from this I find in her face, open some kind of correspondence to this depth.

From this, too, her face in my eyes is forever changing, forever worried, like a star reflected in deep water.

* I was close to love in my youth - two weeks of kisses - and forever ... So I never had love in my life, and all my love turned into poetry, poetry enveloped me all over and closed me in solitude. I am almost a child, almost chaste. And he himself did not know this, being satisfied with the release of mortal melancholy or intoxicated with joy. And perhaps a little more time would have passed, and I would have died without knowing at all the power that moves all the worlds.

* If you think about her, looking her straight in the face, and not somehow from the side, or "about", then poetry runs straight to me like a stream. Then it seems as if love and poetry are two names for the same source. But this is not entirely true: poetry cannot replace all love and only flows from it, like from a lake.

* We have not yet been as happy as we are now, we are even at the limit of possible happiness, when the essence of life - joy - passes into infinity (merges with eternity) and death is not afraid of much. How can you be happy while ... Impossible! And then a miracle happened - and we are happy. This means that it is possible under any conditions.

* He will look at you, smile and illuminate everything so brightly that the evil one has nowhere to go, and all the evil creeps away behind his back, and you stand face to face rescued, powerful, clear.

* In love, you can reach everything, everything will be forgiven, just not a habit ...

* At that distant time, I never dreamed of writing, but when I fell madly in love, then in the midst of feelings somewhere in the carriage on a piece of paper I tried to write down successively the stages of my love: I wrote and cried, for what, for whom, why did I write down? My God! And five years ago, when the love affair with Lyalya began, isn't it the same thing, when I share my soul with the secrets of life, was it not the same with my gray paw on paper?

She wrote letters to me without thinking about whether they were well written or bad. I tried my best to turn my feeling for her into poetry. But if our letters were to be judged, it would turn out that my letters are beautiful, and her letters weigh more on the scales, and that I, thinking about poetry, will never write a letter like her, who thinks nothing of poetry.

So, it turns out, there is an area in which, with all the talent in poetry, nothing can be done. And there is "something" that means more than poetry. And not only me, but also Pushkin, and Dante, and the greatest poet cannot argue with this “something”.

All my life I was vaguely afraid of this "something" and many times I vowed not to be tempted by "something" more poetry, as Gogol was tempted. I thought my humility, the consciousness of the modesty of my place, my favorite prayer would help from this temptation:

"Thy will be done (and I am a humble artist)." And so, in spite of everything, I came to the fatal line between poetry and faith.

He wrote intimate pages about a woman, there was something missing in them ... She slightly corrected, only touched, and these same pages became beautiful. This is what I have lacked all my life for a woman to touch my poetry.

* The woman stretched out her hand to the harp, touched it with her finger, and from the touch of her finger to the string, a sound was born. So it was with me: she touched - and I began to sing.

* The most amazing and special thing was in my complete absence of that teasing image of a woman, which is impressed upon the first meeting. I was impressed by her soul - and her understanding of my soul. There was a touch of souls, and only very slowly, very gradually passing into the body, and without the slightest break in the soul and flesh, without the slightest shame and reproach. It was incarnation.

I can almost remember how her beautiful eyes were created in my Psyche, a smile blossomed, the first life-giving tears of joy, and a kiss, and a fiery contact, in which our different flesh was fused into unity.

It seemed to me then that the ancient god, who punished man with exile, returned his favor to him and transferred into my hands the continuation of the ancient creation of the world, interrupted by disobedience.

Everything was found in her for me, and through her everything came together in me.

* Hygiene of love consists in never looking at a friend from the outside and never judging him together with someone else.

* Mikhail, be happy that your lily of the valley stood behind some leaf and the whole crowd passed by him. And only at the very end, only one woman opened you behind that leaf, and did not rip you off, but bent over to you herself.

* How much a person is measured in width - so much happiness, how much in depth - so much misery. So, happiness or unhappiness is our envy of one person before another. And so there is nothing: happiness and unhappiness are only two measures of fate: happiness - in width, unhappiness - in depth.

* A young couple is walking: it seemed that it was long gone, but here she is, and it is so clear that this is eternal: an eternal insane attempt to make the whole world happy with their personal happiness.

* And at night it seemed to me that my charm was over, I no longer love. Then I saw that there was nothing else in me and my whole soul was like a devastated land in deep autumn: the cattle were driven away, the fields are empty, where it’s black, where there’s snow, and there are traces of cats in the snow.

I thought about love, that it is, of course, one, and if it breaks up into sensual and platonic, then this is how the very life of a person breaks up into spiritual and physical: and this is, in essence, death.

When a person loves, he penetrates into the essence of the world.

* I remembered my old thought, somewhere happily published in Soviet times. I said then: "Who of us thinks more about eternity, more solid things come out from under his hands."

And now, probably approaching old age, I begin to think that not from eternity, but everything from love: each of us can rise high by all kinds of means, but to keep up for a long time can only be a strong radiation of love.

* Love is like big water: a thirsty person comes to it, gets drunk or scoops up a bucket and takes it away to his own measure. And the water runs on.

* The step is not heard, the heart does not knock, the eye is comforted by the blue radiance of the sky through the trunks of undressed trees, the grateful heart recognized the beloved in the first lemongrass - a butterfly, in the first yellow - radiant flower, in the splash of a stream and a golden earring of an alder and in a spreading song of a chaffinch on a willow ...

I hear the whisper of my beloved, a gentle touch and such confidence in the truth of this my being that if death were now approaching, I would, it seems to me, have found the strength to bring my beloved closer, hugging her, painlessly throw off the body I no longer need.

* So it seemed to happen, and in me, in my immeasurable joy of complete possession, there was even a place for a little sadness about the eternal deception in which death is located: she wants to get herself a beautiful human soul, and instead, like an evil mockery, she receives the ugly altered, worm-worthy remains of what man was on earth.

At the heart of love is an unshakable place of complete confidence and fearlessness. If there is an encroachment on my part in this, then I have a means of struggle against myself: I put all of myself at the complete disposal of a friend and through this I find out what I am right and what I am guilty of. If I see that my friend has encroached on my shrine, I will test him as myself. And if the worst and last thing happens: my friend becomes indifferent to what I am burning with, then I will take my travel stick and leave the house, and my shrine will remain untouched anyway.

* The most surprising thing from our relationship came out that my educated disbelief in the reality of love, poetry of life and everything that is considered invalid, but only inherent in people as an age-related experience, turned out to be false. In fact, there is much more reality than ordinary general certainty.

This is confidence in the existence of something for the expression of which it has become impossible to manage with worn-out conventional concepts that turn into emptiness the usual words spoken by everyone about truth, God, and especially what is given to us in the word "mysticism."

Without words, without mysticism, but in reality: there is something precious on earth, because of which it is worth living, working and being cheerful and joyful.

* - My friend! In you is my only salvation when I am in misfortune ... But when I am happy in my deeds, then, rejoicing, I bring you my joy and love, and you answer - which love is dearer to you: when I am in misfortune or when I am healthy , rich and glorious, and come to you as a winner?

Of course, - she answered, - that love is higher when you are the winner. And if in misfortune you grab hold of me in order to be saved, then this is what you love for yourself! So be happy and come to me as a winner: this is better. But I myself love you equally - in sorrow and in joy.

* Love is knowledge ... There is a side in a person and in the whole world that can be recognized only through the power of love.

* The last truth is that the world exists as beautiful as it was seen by children and lovers. Disease and poverty do the rest.

* Each family is surrounded by its own secret, which is incomprehensible not only to others, but, perhaps, even more incomprehensible to the members of the family themselves. This is due to the fact that marriage is not a "grave of love", as they think, but a personal, hence, sacred war. Upon entering into marriage, a given person with his will meets another, limiting his will, and thus is the "secret" of the two, who are in the struggle with an unknown end.

In this struggle, there are, as it were, landslides, in which life crumbles, and strangers can read the secret of the family through the rubble. Such a collapse was in the family of L. Tolstoy.

* What is love? Nobody said this correctly. But only one thing can be said about love correctly, that it contains the desire for immortality and eternity, and at the same time, of course, as something small and self-explanatory and necessary, the ability of a creature engulfed in love to leave behind more or less lasting things. from small children to Shakespearean lines.

* Only love paints a person, starting from the first love for a woman, ending with love for the world and a person - everything else disfigures a person, leads him to death, that is, to power over another person, understood as violence.

Any weakness of a man in relation to a woman must be justified by the force of action (courage): and this is the whole dialectic of Man and Woman.

* Almost all men striving for a woman are in deception, relying on the power of their collected cheerfulness. And in almost every woman a terrible deception lurks, returning the self-deceived to his insignificance.

Close, close, I approached happiness, and now, it seems, if only I could take it with my hand, but here, instead of happiness, a knife to the very place where happiness lives. Some time passed, and I got used to this sore spot of mine: not that I made up, but in this way I began to understand everything in the world - not in breadth, as before, but in depth. And the whole world changed for me, and people began to appear completely different.

Hunger for love or the poisonous food of love? I got a love hunger.

* Beauty avoids those who chase after it: a person loves his own something, works, and because of love, sometimes beauty will appear. It grows free, like rye or happiness. We cannot make beauty, but we can sow and fertilize the land for this ...

* Today my thought was about the fear of death, that this fear passes, if only it turns out that you have to die with your friend together. From this I conclude that death is the name of the loneliness unconquered by love and that with loneliness a person will not be born, but gradually, growing old, in struggle, acquires it like a disease. So the feeling of loneliness and the accompanying fear of death is also a disease (egoism), cured only by love.

* Today, while walking, I looked around and suddenly found a group of undressed young people in the green bark of tall trees, communicating with the sky. I immediately remembered from them the trees in the Bois de Boulogne 47 years ago. Then I was thinking about a way out of the situation created thanks to my novel, and I also looked at the trees spread out across the burning sky, and suddenly all the movement of the worlds, suns of all kinds, stars became clear to me, and from there I spread into my confused relationship with a girl, and the solution came out so logically correct that it had to be revealed to her immediately. I rushed to the exit from the forest, found a postal booth, bought a blue piece of paper, asked my beloved to come on a date immediately, because everything was decided.

Probably, she could not understand me: nothing came of the date, and I completely forgot the system of my evidence, borrowed from the stars.

Was it my madness? No, it was not madness, but, of course, it became madness when it did not meet what it was supposed to be embodied in.

Exactly the same thing happened to me ten years ago. A woman came to me, I began to reveal one of my thoughts to her. She did not understand me, considering it abnormal. Then soon another woman came, I told her the same thing, and she immediately understood me, and soon she and I entered the same mind.

So, probably, it would have been in that explanation 47 years ago: I would have understood - that's all! And then after almost half a century I thought of myself as crazy, trying to write in such a way that everyone would understand me, until I finally achieved my goal: a friend came, understood me, and I became as good, simple and intelligent person as most of the people on earth.

It is interesting here that the action of sex was covered up by the state of mind: it was necessary for them (in spirit) to converge, in order to thereby open up the possibility of action here (in the flesh, in ordinary experiences).

* ... Soon the train brings me to Zagorsk. Here the spring of light is so strong that tears flow from pain in the eyes and the very soul shines through, and penetrates behind the soul, somewhere, perhaps, into paradise, and further beyond paradise, into such a depth where only saints live ... Saints ... And here for the first time I think that the saints come from light and that, perhaps, at the beginning of everything, there is somewhere, beyond paradise, only light, and all the best comes from light, and if I know this, no one it will not take my love away from me, and my love will be a light for everyone ...

* There was no trace of what people call love in the life of this old artist. All his love, all that people live for themselves, he gave to art. Wrapped in his visions, wrapped in a veil of poetry, he survived as a child, content with explosions of mortal melancholy and intoxication with the joy of the life of nature. Perhaps a little time would have passed, and he died, confident that this was all life on earth ...

But one day a woman came to him, and he babbled her "love" to her, not to his dream.

So everyone says, and Phacelia, expecting a special and extraordinary expression of feelings from the artist, asked:

And what does it mean, "I love"?

This means, - he said, - that if I have the last piece of bread, I will not eat it and will give it to you, if you are sick, I will not leave you, if you have to work for you, I will harness like a donkey. ..

And he told her a lot of things that people endure because of love.

Phacelia waited in vain for the unprecedented.

To give the last piece of bread, to go after the sick, to work as a donkey, '' she repeated,

And this is what I want, - the artist replied, - so that I have it now, like everyone else. This is exactly what I am saying, that I finally feel great happiness not to consider myself a special person, lonely and to be like all good people.

* I stand mute with a cigarette, but all the same I pray at this morning hour, how and to whom I don’t know, I open the window and hear: in the impregnable guillemot, the black grouse are still muttering, the crane is calling the sun, and even here, on the lake, now before our eyes, the catfish stirred and launched a wave like a ship.

I stand mute and only then write down:

“On the coming day, enlighten, Lord, our past and preserve in the new everything that was good before, our forests are reserved, the sources of mighty rivers, preserve birds, multiply fish, return all the animals to the forests and free our soul from them” ...

* Late autumn is sometimes just like early spring: there is white snow, there is black earth. Only in spring does it smell like earth from thawed patches, and in autumn it smells like snow. It certainly happens: we get used to snow in winter, and in spring we smell of the earth, and in summer we sniff at the ground, and in late autumn we smell of snow.

It rarely happens that the sun shines for an hour, but what a joy it is! Then a dozen leaves on a willow tree, already frozen, but surviving from storms, or a very small blue flower under our feet, gives us great pleasure.

I lean towards the blue flower and with surprise I recognize Ivan in it: it is only Ivan left from the former double flower, well-known to all Ivan da Marya.

In truth, Ivan is not a real flower. It is composed of very small curly leaves, and only its color is purple, for which it is called a flower. A real flower with pistils and stamens is only yellow Marya. It was from Marya that seeds fell on the autumn ground, in order to cover the ground with Ivans and Marya again in the new year. Marya's case is much more difficult, that's right, that's why she fell out before Ivan.

But I like that Ivan suffered frosts and even turned blue. Watching the blue flower of late autumn with my eyes, I say slowly:

Ivan, Ivan, where is your Marya now?

Based on the book "Almost every love begins with paradise". © L.A. Ryazanova. Compilation. Foreword. 1998.

About the book "Prishvin M. M. The Road to a Friend: Diaries"; comp. A. Grigoriev

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin has never seen this book - it was published a quarter of a century after the death of the author. At that time, Prishvin had two official literary incarnations: a children's writer and a "singer of Russian nature." But in 1978, the publishing house "Children's Literature" suddenly published a small, almost pocket-sized book, where after the title "The Road to a Friend" there was a subtitle - "Diaries". Few people knew then that in fact the diaries of Mikhail Prishvin occupy hundreds of pages, only the initiates understood that they were the diaries of a philosopher. And The Way to a Friend, addressed to “middle and high school age,” turned out to be just a thin strip of light that is visible through the open door of a large house.

This is an unusual book and probably very controversial. It is composed of tiny fragments, separate lines, chosen not by the author, but by another person (compiled by A. Grigoriev), its name and division into "chapters" - everything is arbitrary, conditional, "brought from outside." But this is a delicate work of a like-minded person, which no one dares to call “simplification”. Prishvin cannot be "adapted" at all. His naturally simple words are filled with that wisdom that cannot be "reduced", because it is in everything: in the meaning of the word, the sound of the word, its rhythm and breathing:

"My friend! I am alone, but I cannot be alone. As if not falling leaves rustle over my head, but a river of living water runs, and I need to give it to you. I want to say that the whole point, and joy, and my duty, and everything is only that I find you and give you something to drink. I cannot rejoice alone, I am looking for you, I am calling you, I am in a hurry, I am afraid: the river of eternal life will now go to its sea, and we will be left alone again, forever separated ... "

The first unmistakable weapon in the struggle for oneself is the diary. "Human , - writes Prishvin, - ToSomeone notices his actions and discusses them to himself - this is not every person. And a person who lives and writes everything down for himself is a rarity, he is a writer. To live in such a way, in order to remain normal and to look like everyone else, and at the same time to notice and record everything behind oneself, is extremely difficult, much more difficult than walking on a tightrope high above the ground ... " It is very possible that the "LJ writers" will not agree with such a statement of the question.

From a certain point of view, the ineradicable thirst for publicity may also seem like a "diary" open to the world. But Prishvin, who had never seen a computer, had something completely different in mind. "In desert,- he said, - thoughts can only be their own, that is why they are afraid of the desert, that they are afraid to be left alone with themselves. "

Where can one get the strength to overcome the accursed emptiness that threatens everyone? The answer is difficult and simple, like any truth: you need to grow yourself to the size of the universe. First, the astonished observer whispers: "I could hear the mouse gnawing the root under the snow." Then he summarizes: "Attention is the nourishing organ of the soul - every soul is the same, great and small" ... Observing himself in the midst of life and life in himself, he comes to the conclusion: "There is nothing dead in matter, everything living in it". And then the terrible feeling of the desert comes to an end:

“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 under my feet, the whole earth.
Leaning on the ground, I rise: and above me the sky - all my sky "
.

No, this is not a superman anthem. This is a necessary and sufficient condition to hope for a meeting. "The first , - writes Prishvin, - and the greatest joy that I give myself is trust in people. Be like everyone else. To suffer because I am not like everyone else ... My whole path was from loneliness to people ". The old man Mikhail Prishvin knew for certain how difficult it is to hope for happiness. “It was during the rain: two drops rolled towards each other on the telegraph wire. They would have met and fell to the ground in one big drop, but some bird, flying by, touched the wire, and the drops fell to the ground before meeting each other ... " However, the happy Mikhail Prishvin knew something else: "When a person loves, he penetrates into the essence of the world" ... And again this essence is simple, because it is again the truth: “The person you love in me is, of course, better than me: I'm not like that. But love, I will try to be better than myself ... "

There are only one hundred and fifty small pages in the little book "The Way to a Friend", and how many revelations are on each page depends on the reader. The book has been published twice. The second edition of 1982 is identical to the first, only the cover is of a different color and the drawings of the artist V. Zvontsov are arranged differently. The afterword by Igor Motyashov "School of the Soul" both at the time of the books' appearance and, even more so, now, makes a sad impression: an attempt to match the writer Prishvin with the era of developed socialism is deliberately doomed. But who knows? - maybe without this afterword there would not have been the publication itself?

Indeed, in fact, the kind, apolitical, innocent "singer of nature" Mikhail Prishvin knew too serious a secret:
“The world is always the same and stands, turned away from us. Our happiness is to look the world in the face ”.