Brief summary of the story of Gorky Makar Chudra. Analysis of the story “Makar Chudra” (Gorky)

A short story Maxim Gorky’s “Makar Chudra” is a great work about love and lack of will.

Makar Chudra is an old gypsy. He sits on the shore of the already cold autumn sea by the fire and tells his story that love is dangerous, love is lack of will and shackles that destroy freedom. One writer listens to this long and interesting story. His story about the once famous Eastern Europe clever horse thief Loiko Zobar. Zobar was handsome, young, hot and free. Nothing could drive him crazy, neither girls, nor money, except maybe horses. He loved horses, adored their freedom and passion.

That year the camp was in Bukovina. The gypsies lived well, there were endless fields nearby, beauty, warmth and joy in their souls. Radda, a girl, lived there unearthly beauty. Her father was the soldier Danila. You can’t count the men that Radda conquered, you can’t count their wounded hearts. They called her as a wife and offered to make her rich, but the beauty was adamant. She refused everyone. She often spent time with people. So on the day when Loiko Zobar came to the camp, Radda was there.

The young gypsy was handsome both in body and face, he arrived on a beautiful horse, smiling from ear to ear so that others, looking at him, involuntarily began to smile. Zobar took out a violin and played it. His performance was so heartfelt that many began to cry. And then Radda praised the gypsy’s performance. He told her that the strings of the violin were made from the heart of a young girl, to which Radda said that the gypsy was stupid. Their short skirmish bore fruit - Loiko drew attention to the girl and fixed his gaze on her.

I was visiting a gypsy in Radda’s house with her father Danila, and suddenly in the morning he appeared in front of everyone with a bandaged head. He said that his horse was an accident, but the people immediately understood: Radda had killed the guy so as not to interfere. There was talk and gossip. Everyone was talking about only one thing: Loiko is good for a girl, but she is too narrow-minded.

Zobar was a favorite of the gypsies, smart, handsome, and how he sang! One day he sang a song, everyone liked it, and only Radda laughed, not finding anything special in it. The gypsy then asked the girl’s father to give her to him as a wife. Danilo agreed if the girl said yes, and the gypsy could tame her. Zobar then opened up to Radda, told her about his feelings, and instead of answering, he was thrown to the ground with a whip by the legs in front of everyone. Everyone gasped. Radda seemed to laugh at him and at his feelings, then walked away calmly and lay down in the grass. A smile painted her lips. She didn’t care at all, and Loiko turned purple with anger.

The guy jumped up and rushed as fast as he could into the steppe, where he sat motionless for several hours until Radda approached him. A young man in love pointed a knife at her, but she took out a gun, pointed it at him and said that she didn’t want to quarrel and came to talk, to make peace. The girl promised to love him, but on one condition. This condition was humiliation and torture for the gypsy, but he accepted it. She won his soul with her inaccessibility, pride and beauty, Loiko ceased to be himself. In his heart there were no longer any free expanses of the steppes, no majestic horses, but only one dark-haired girl who drove the men around him crazy.

Loiko Zobar decided to fulfill Radda’s will, and her request was this: he needed to kneel in front of her, as before an eldest, and kiss her right hand. This had to be done in front of everyone. For freedom-loving gypsies, kneeling could only be a humiliating position. Once in their lives, for example, at a wedding, they knelt before their elders, but otherwise it was a shame.

In front of everyone, Loiko went to Radda and said that he would now fulfill her request for the sake of love for her, and at the same time he would check whether her heart was as strong as she said. At these words the gypsy took out his sharp knife and thrust it into the heart of the beautiful Radda. Everything happened so quickly that no one had time to think that a tragedy could happen. Then Zobar knelt before his beloved and kissed her right hand, fulfilling the decree.

Seeing that his daughter was killed, Danilo rushed to Loiko and also plunged a knife into his chest. This is how the story of two lovers who mistook a high feeling for steel shackles or chains ended tragically. Pride is a dangerous feeling that runs in the blood of gypsies.

Old man Makar finished his story. It was already cold in the steppe, a tired herd of horses wandered nearby, and a fire smoldered. The writer who listened to the story was impressed. He still couldn’t fall asleep, he looked at the sea, and before his eyes were Radda and Loiko. Here he is, Loiko, floating in the depths of the sea, and in front of him is Radda’s body. Both of them are young and beautiful, and the gypsy still cannot catch up with his beloved.

“Makar Chudra” is the same story that made Alexei Peshkov famous under the pseudonym Maxim Gorky. He first appeared on the pages of the Kavkaz newspaper in 1892. This story was written based on a story told to him in Tiflis by a certain Alexander Kalyuzhny. Gorky said that Kalyuzhny himself suggested that he write down and publish these tales. This is where the story began creative activity great writer.

Have you read Makar Chudra? A brief summary of the work will be presented below. This is the first romantic work of Maxim Gorky. Distinctive feature- confrontation between two ideas.

"Makar Chudra": summary works

The story begins with the narrator and an old gypsy named Makar Chudra sitting on the seashore.

He has already seen a lot and knows how to surprise a person. The next story was about the “eagle and the eagle” - about the healthy gypsy Loiko Zobar and Radd.

Loiko Zobar was known to all Slavic countries. His fame has been known for a long time. He was dexterous and smart, many dreamed of killing him. Loiko was a horse lover and despised money. He could help someone in need in difficult times, and the gypsy was incredibly handsome.

It is worth noting that a brief summary of “Makar Chudra” will help to evaluate the conflict of the work and get to know the main characters.

Loiko arrived in a noble camp. One of the gypsies had a beautiful daughter, Radda, who was known for her beauty and independence of character. Everyone liked Radda: her black long hair and the same black eyes captivated men. In the evening, Zobar played the violin: all the “local women” burst into tears, only Radda remained stoic. Loiko didn’t like this. The next time Zobar sang a song, Radda was the only one laughing. After this, Zobar decided to ask for her hand in marriage, to which the father agreed.

The central image of each romantic work of the author is a free person. This is exactly what Maxim Gorky made Radda and Loiko. Makar Chudra (the summary of the story of the same name is a kind of plan for the original work) is a unique, colorful figure in the story. He talks about freedom succinctly and beautifully.

Loiko approached the free gypsy woman and told her that she had captured his heart and that he was taking her as his wife. To which he received an unexpected answer: “A free man will live the way he wants.” Zobar fled to the steppe, where three hours later Radda came and put a pistol to her head. Loiko was overcome with the desire to kill her, but he heard that Radda had come to make peace and that she loved him. She promised Zobar that she would become an obedient wife if he bowed at her feet in front of the whole camp. Zobar agreed. Returning to the camp, Loiko told the old people that now she was the only one in his heart and that he was ready to fulfill her request. As soon as Radda arrived, he first threw himself at her feet, and then took out a knife and stabbed her to the very hilt. Radda, covering the wound with her hair, replied that she expected such a death, laughed and fell dead. At that moment, the father of the free gypsy stuck the same knife into the back of the handsome Zobar. So they fell together, “the eagle and the eagle.” Makar Chudra, a summary of this work should become an impulse to read the original, told his interlocutor a legend about freedom. Thus, he confirmed that two freedom-loving proud people cannot be together.

“Makar Chudra” (a summary of the story is needed to evaluate and analyze the story) is a complex compositional work. The story-within-a-story structure makes it original and interesting. Beautiful story The love of two people who put freedom above all else ends in tragedy: independence turned out to be beyond all feelings for them.

A damp, cold wind blew from the sea, carrying across the steppe the thoughtful melody of the splash of a wave running onto the shore and the rustling of coastal bushes. Occasionally his impulses brought with them wrinkled, yellow leaves and threw them into the fire, fanning the flames; the darkness surrounding us autumn night shuddered and, timidly moving away, revealed for a moment to the left - the boundless steppe, to the right - the endless sea and right opposite me - the figure of Makar Chudra, an old gypsy - he was guarding the horses of his camp, spread out about fifty steps from us.

Not paying attention to the fact that the cold waves of wind, having opened the check, exposed his hairy chest and beat it mercilessly, he reclined in a beautiful, strong pose, facing me, methodically sipped from his huge pipe, released thick clouds of smoke from his mouth and nose and, motionless, looking somewhere over my head into the dead silent darkness of the steppe, he talked to me, without stopping and without making a single movement towards protection from the sharp blows of the wind.

- So are you walking? This is good! You have chosen a glorious fate for yourself, falcon. That’s how it should be: go and look, you’ve seen enough, lie down and die - that’s all!

- Life? Other people? – he continued, skeptically listening to my objection to his “That’s how it should be.” - Hey! What do you care about that? Are you not life yourself? Other people live without you and will live without you. Do you think that someone needs you? You are not bread, not a stick, and no one needs you.

– Study and teach, you say? Can you learn to make people happy? No you can not. You turn gray first, and say that you need to teach. What to teach? Everyone knows what they need. Those who are smarter take what they have, those who are dumber get nothing, and everyone learns on their own...

- They're funny, those people of yours. They’re huddled together and crushing each other, and there’s so much room on the ground,” he waved his hand broadly toward the steppe. - And everyone works. For what? To whom? No one knows. You see how a man plows, and you think: drop by drop with sweat, he will drain his strength onto the ground, and then he will lie down in it and rot in it. There will be nothing left for him, he sees nothing from his field and dies as he was born - a fool.

- Well, was he born then, perhaps, to dig up the earth, and die, without even having time to dig out his own grave? Does he know his will? Is the expanse of the steppe clear? Talk sea ​​wave does his heart rejoice? He is a slave - as soon as he was born, he is a slave all his life, and that’s it! What can he do with himself? He'll only hang himself if he grows a little wiser.

“But look, at the age of fifty-eight I have seen so much that if I wrote it all on paper, it wouldn’t fit into a thousand bags like yours.” Come on, tell me, what parts have I not been to? You can't tell. You don’t even know the places where I’ve been. This is how you need to live: go, go - and that’s all. Don't stand in one place for a long time - what's in it? Just as they run day and night, chasing each other, around the earth, so you run away from thoughts about life, so as not to stop loving it. And if you think about it, you will stop loving life, this always happens. And it happened to me. Hey! It was, falcon.

– I was in prison, in Galicia. “Why do I live in the world?” - I thought out of boredom, - it’s boring in prison, falcon, oh, how boring! - and longing took me by the heart, as I looked out of the window at the field, took it and squeezed it with pincers. Who can say why he lives? No one will say, falcon! And you don’t need to ask yourself about this. Live, and that's it! And walk around and look around you, and the melancholy will never take over. Then I almost strangled myself with my belt, that’s how it happened!

- Heh! I spoke with one person. A strict man, one of your Russians. You need, he says, to live not as you yourself want, but as it is said in God’s word. Submit to God, and he will give you everything you ask of him. And he himself is full of holes, torn. I told him to let himself new clothes asked God. He got angry and drove me away, cursing. And before that he said that we need to forgive people and love them. He would have forgiven me if my speech offended his lordship. Also a teacher! They teach them to eat less, but they themselves eat ten times a day.

He spat into the fire and fell silent, filling his pipe again. The wind howled plaintively and quietly, horses neighed in the darkness, and a tender and passionate song-thought floated from the camp. This was sung by the beautiful Nonka, daughter of Makar. I knew her voice with a thick, chesty timbre, always sounding somehow strange, dissatisfied and demanding - whether she was singing a song or saying “hello.” The arrogance of the queen froze on her dark, matte face, and in her dark brown eyes, covered with some kind of shadow, the consciousness of the irresistibility of her beauty and contempt for everything that was not herself sparkled.

Makar handed me the phone.

- Smoke! Does the girl sing well? That's it! Would you like someone like you to love you? No? Fine! That's the way it should be - don't trust the girls and stay away from them. Kissing a girl is better and more pleasant than smoking a pipe for me, but if you kissed her, the will in your heart died. She will tie you to her with something that is not visible, but cannot be broken, and you will give her your whole soul. Right! Watch out girls! They always lie! I love her, he says, more than anything in the world, come on, prick her with a pin, she will break your heart. I know! Hey, how much do I know! Well, falcon, do you want me to tell you a true story? And you remember it and, as you remember it, you will be a free bird throughout your life.

“There was once Zobar, a young gypsy, Loiko Zobar. All of Hungary, and the Czech Republic, and Slavonia, and everything around the sea knew him - he was a daring fellow! There wasn’t a village in those parts in which five or two residents had not sworn an oath to God to kill Loiko, but he lived for himself, and if he liked the horse, even if you put a regiment of soldiers to guard that horse, Zobar will still prance on it! Hey! Was he afraid of anyone? Yes, if Satan had come to him with all his retinue, if he hadn’t thrown a knife at him, he would probably have had a strong fight, and he would have given the devil a kick in the snout - that’s just it!

Makar Chudra
Maksim Gorky

First published in the Tiflis newspaper “Caucasus”, 1892, number 242, September 12/24 under the pseudonym: M. Gorky.

The story was written in 1892 in Tiflis, where Gorky worked in the workshops of the Transcaucasian Railways.

The story was included in all collected works.

Published based on the text prepared by Gorky for his collected works in the “Book” edition.

Maksim Gorky

Makar Chudra

A damp, cold wind blew from the sea, carrying across the steppe the thoughtful melody of the splash of a wave running onto the shore and the rustling of coastal bushes. Occasionally, his gusts brought with them wrinkled, yellow leaves and threw them into the fire, fanning the flames; the darkness of the autumn night that surrounded us shuddered and, fearfully moving away, revealed for a moment the boundless steppe on the left, the endless sea on the right, and directly opposite me - the figure of Makar Chudra, an old gypsy - he was guarding the horses of his camp, spread out about fifty paces from us.

Not paying attention to the fact that the cold waves of wind, having opened the check, exposed his hairy chest and beat it mercilessly, he reclined in a beautiful, strong pose, facing me, methodically sipped from his huge pipe, released thick clouds of smoke from his mouth and nose and, motionless, looking somewhere over my head into the dead silent darkness of the steppe, he talked to me, without stopping and without making a single movement towards protection from the sharp blows of the wind.

- So are you walking? This is good! You have chosen a glorious fate for yourself, falcon. That’s how it should be: go and look, you’ve seen enough, lie down and die - that’s all!

- Life? Other people? – he continued, skeptically listening to my objection to his “That’s how it should be.” - Hey! What do you care about that? Are you not life yourself? Other people live without you and will live without you. Do you think that someone needs you? You are not bread, not a stick, and no one needs you.

– Study and teach, you say? Can you learn to make people happy? No you can not. You turn gray first, and say that you need to teach. What to teach? Everyone knows what they need. Those who are smarter take what they have, those who are dumber get nothing, and everyone learns on their own...

- They're funny, those people of yours. They’re huddled together and crushing each other, and there’s so much room on the ground,” he waved his hand broadly toward the steppe. - And everyone works. For what? To whom? No one knows. You see how a man plows, and you think: drop by drop with sweat, he will drain his strength onto the ground, and then he will lie down in it and rot in it. There will be nothing left for him, he sees nothing from his field and dies as he was born - a fool.

- Well, was he born then, perhaps, to dig up the earth, and die, without even having time to dig out his own grave? Does he know his will? Is the expanse of the steppe clear? Does the sound of the sea wave make his heart happy? He is a slave - as soon as he was born, he is a slave all his life, and that’s it! What can he do with himself? He'll only hang himself if he grows a little wiser.

“But look, at the age of fifty-eight I have seen so much that if I wrote it all on paper, it wouldn’t fit into a thousand bags like yours.” Come on, tell me, what parts have I not been to? You can't tell. You don’t even know the places where I’ve been. This is how you need to live: go, go - and that’s all. Don't stand in one place for a long time - what's in it? Just as they run day and night, chasing each other, around the earth, so you run away from thoughts about life, so as not to stop loving it. And if you think about it, you will stop loving life, this always happens. And it happened to me. Hey! It was, falcon.

– I was in prison, in Galicia. “Why do I live in the world?” - I thought out of boredom, - it’s boring in prison, falcon, oh, how boring! - and longing took me by the heart, as I looked out of the window at the field, took it and squeezed it with pincers. Who can say why he lives? No one will say, falcon! And you don’t need to ask yourself about this. Live, and that's it! And walk around and look around you, and the melancholy will never take over. Then I almost strangled myself with my belt, that’s how it happened!

- Heh! I spoke with one person. A strict man, one of your Russians. You need, he says, to live not as you yourself want, but as it is said in God’s word. Submit to God, and he will give you everything you ask of him. And he himself is full of holes, torn. I told him to ask God for new clothes. He got angry and drove me away, cursing. And before that he said that we need to forgive people and love them. He would have forgiven me if my speech offended his lordship. Also a teacher! They teach them to eat less, but they themselves eat ten times a day.

He spat into the fire and fell silent, filling his pipe again. The wind howled plaintively and quietly, horses neighed in the darkness, and a tender and passionate song-thought floated from the camp. This was sung by the beautiful Nonka, daughter of Makar. I knew her voice with a thick, chesty timbre, always sounding somehow strange, dissatisfied and demanding - whether she was singing a song or saying “hello.” The arrogance of the queen froze on her dark, matte face, and in her dark brown eyes, covered with some kind of shadow, the consciousness of the irresistibility of her beauty and contempt for everything that was not herself sparkled.

Makar handed me the phone.

- Smoke! Does the girl sing well? That's it! Would you like someone like you to love you? No? Fine! That's the way it should be - don't trust the girls and stay away from them. Kissing a girl is better and more pleasant than smoking a pipe for me, but if you kissed her, the will in your heart died. She will tie you to her with something that is not visible, but cannot be broken, and you will give her your whole soul. Right! Watch out girls! They always lie! I love her, he says, more than anything in the world, come on, prick her with a pin, she will break your heart. I know! Hey, how much do I know! Well, falcon, do you want me to tell you a true story? And you remember it and, as you remember it, you will be a free bird throughout your life.

“There was once Zobar, a young gypsy, Loiko Zobar. All of Hungary, and the Czech Republic, and Slavonia, and everything around the sea knew him - he was a daring fellow! There wasn’t a village in those parts in which five or two residents had not sworn an oath to God to kill Loiko, but he lived for himself, and if he liked the horse, even if you put a regiment of soldiers to guard that horse, Zobar will still prance on it! Hey! Was he afraid of anyone? Yes, if Satan had come to him with all his retinue, if he hadn’t thrown a knife at him, he would probably have had a strong fight, and he would have given the devil a kick in the snout - that’s just it!

And all the camps knew him or heard about him. He loved only horses and nothing else, and even then only for a short time - he would ride and sell them, and whoever wants the money, take it. He didn’t have what he cherished - you need his heart, he himself would tear it out of his chest and give it to you, if only it would make you feel good. That's what he was, a falcon!

Our camp was roaming around Bukovina at that time - about ten years ago. One spring night we were sitting: I, Danilo the soldier, who fought with Kossuth together, and old Nur, and all the others, and Radda, Danilo’s daughter.

Do you know my Nonka? Queen girl! Well, Radda cannot be compared with her - a lot of honor to Nonke! You can’t say anything about her, this Radda, in words. Perhaps its beauty could be played on a violin, and even then to someone who knows this violin like his own soul.

She dried out a lot of young people’s hearts, wow, a lot! On Morava, one magnate, an old, brown-haired man, saw her and was dumbfounded. He sits on a horse and looks, trembling, as if in a fire. He was as handsome as the devil on a holiday, the zhupan was embroidered with gold, the saber on his side sparkled like lightning, the horse stamped his foot, this whole saber was covered in precious stones, and the blue velvet on his cap was like a piece of the sky - he was an important old ruler! He looked and looked and said to Radda: “Hey! A kiss, I’ll give you a wallet of money.” And she turned to the side, and that’s all! “Forgive me if I offended you, look at least kindly,” the old tycoon immediately lowered his arrogance and threw a wallet at her feet - a big wallet, brother! And she seemed to accidentally kick him in the dirt, and that’s all.

- Eh, girl! - he groaned, and he hit the horse with a whip - only the dust rose in a cloud.

And the next day he appeared again. "Who is her father?" - thunder thunders through the camp. Danilo left. “Sell your daughter, take what you want!” And Danilo tell him: “It’s only the gentlemen who sell everything, from their pigs to their conscience, but I fought with Kossuth and don’t trade anything!” He began to roar, and for his saber, but one of us put a lit tinder in the horse’s ear, and he carried away the young man. And we filmed and went. We walked for a day or two, we looked - we caught up! “You are gay,” he says, before God and you my conscience is clear, give the girl to me as a wife: I will share everything with you, I am very rich!” It burns all over and, like a feather grass in the wind, sways in the saddle. We thought about it.

- Come on, daughter, speak up! – Danilo said into his mustache.

- If an eagle entered the raven’s nest of her own free will, what would she become? – Radda asked us. Danilo laughed, and we all laughed with him.

- Nice, daughter! Did you hear, sir? It's not working! Look for the doves - they are more pliable. - And we went forward.

And that ruler grabbed his hat, threw it on the ground and galloped so that the earth shook. That's what Radda was like, the falcon!

- Yes! So one night we were sitting and heard music floating across the steppe. Good music! The blood burned in her veins, and she called somewhere. All of us, we felt, from that music we wanted something that would make us no longer need to live, or, if we were to live, then be kings over the whole earth, falcon!

Here a horse was cut out of the darkness, and a man was sitting on it and playing, riding up to us. He stopped by the fire, stopped playing, smiling, looking at us.

- Hey, Zobar, it's you! – Danilo shouted to him joyfully. So here he is, Loiko Zobar!

The mustache lay on the shoulders and mixed with the curls, the eyes glow like clear stars, and the smile is the whole sun, by God! It was as if he had been forged from one piece of iron along with the horse. He stands covered in blood in the fire of the fire and his teeth sparkle, laughing! I'll be damned if I didn't already love him as myself before he said a word to me or simply noticed that I, too, live in this world!

Look, falcon, what kind of people there are! He will look into your eyes and fill your soul, and you are not at all ashamed of this, but also proud for you. With such a person you become a better person. There are few such people, my friend! Well, okay, if it’s not enough. If there were a lot of good things in the world, it would not be considered good. So that! And listen further.

Radda says: “You’re playing well, Loiko! Who made you such a sonorous and sensitive violin?” And he laughs: “I did it myself!” And I made it not from wood, but from the breast of a young girl whom I loved dearly, and I twisted the strings from her heart. The violin is still lying a little, well, I know how to hold a bow in my hands!”

It is known that our brother tries to immediately cloud the girl’s eyes, so that they do not set his heart on fire, and they themselves would be filled with sadness for you, and so does Loiko. But - I got to the wrong place. Radda turned to the side and, yawning, said: “They also said that Zobar was smart and dexterous - that’s how people lie!” - and walked away.

- Hey, beauty, your teeth are sharp! – Loiko’s eyes sparkled, getting off his horse. - Hello, brothers! Here I come to you!

- We ask for a guest! – Danilo said in response to him. We kissed, talked and went to bed... We slept soundly. And the next morning, we see, Zobar has a rag tied around his head. What is this? And this horse killed him with a sleepy hoof.

Eh, eh, eh! We realized who the horse was and smiled into our mustaches, and Danilo smiled. Well, wasn't Loiko worth Radda? Well, I do not! No matter how good the girl is, her soul is narrow and shallow, and even if you hang a pound of gold around her neck, it doesn’t matter better than that as she is, not to be her. Oh, okay!

We live and live in that place, things were good for us at that time, and Zobar is with us. It was a comrade! And he was as wise as an old man, and knowledgeable in everything, and understood Russian and Magyar letters. It used to be that he would go talk and wouldn’t sleep for a long time listening to him! And he plays - God bless me if anyone else in the world played like that! He used to draw a bow along the strings - and your heart would tremble, draw it again - and it would freeze, listening, and he plays and smiles. I wanted to cry and laugh at the same time while listening to him. Now someone is moaning bitterly to you, asking for help and cutting your chest like a knife. But the steppe tells tales to the sky, sad tales. The girl is crying, seeing off the good fellow! A good fellow calls the girl to the steppe. And suddenly - gay! A free, live song thunders, and the sun itself, just look, will dance across the sky to that song! That's it, falcon!

Every life in your body understood that song, and the whole of you became a slave to it. And if Loiko had then shouted: “To the knives, comrades!” - then we would all go to the knives, with whom he would indicate. He could do anything to a person, and everyone loved him, loved him deeply, only Radda is the only one who doesn’t look at the guy; and it’s okay, if only this, otherwise he’ll laugh at him. She touched Zobar's heart firmly, so tightly! Loiko grinds his teeth, tugging at his mustache, his eyes look darker than the abyss, and sometimes there is such a sparkle in them that you become afraid for your soul. Loiko will go far into the steppe at night, and his violin will cry until the morning, crying, burying Zobarov’s will. And we lie and listen and think: what should we do? And we know that if two stones roll towards each other, you cannot stand between them - they will mutilate you. That's how things went.

Here we sat, all assembled, and talked about business. It got boring. Danilo asks Loiko: “Sing, Zobar, a song, cheer your soul!” He pointed his eye at Radda, who was lying face up not far from him, looking at the sky, and struck the strings. And so the violin began to speak, as if it really was a girl’s heart! And Loiko sang:

Gay-gay! There's a fire burning in my chest,
And the steppe is so wide!
My greyhound horse is as fast as the wind,
My hand is strong!

Radda turned her head and, standing up, grinned into the singer’s eyes. He flared up like the dawn.

Gay-hop, gay! Well, my comrade!
Let's jump forward, shall we?
The steppe is dressed in harsh darkness,
And there the dawn awaits us!

Gay-gay! Let's fly and see the day.
Soar to the heights!
Just don't touch me with my mane
Beautiful moon!

He sang! Nobody sings like that anymore! And Radda says, as if he were straining water:

“You shouldn’t fly so high, Loiko, you’ll fall unevenly, yes, your nose will fall into a puddle, you’ll get your mustache dirty, look.” “Loiko looked at her like a beast, but didn’t say anything—the guy endured it and sang to himself:

Gay-hop! Suddenly the day will come here,
And you and I are sleeping.
Hey gay! After all, you and I then
We will burn in the fire of shame!

- Is a song! - said Danilo. – I’ve never heard such a song; Let Satan make a pipe out of me if I'm lying!

Old Nur twirled his mustache and shrugged his shoulders, and we all liked Zobar’s daring song! Only Radda didn’t like it.

“That’s how a mosquito hummed once, mimicking the screech of an eagle,” she said, as if she had thrown snow at us.

The most dexterous and desperate horse thief is Loiko Zobar, about whom there are legends. And in the neighboring camp, Danila the soldier had a daughter, Rada, such a beauty that all the men lost their heads at one glance from her.

Loiko fell in love with Rada, but she did not love him. The whole camp looked at this and marveled, because he was handsome, and smart, and played the violin, so he wanted to cry and laugh, and he was lucky in everything.

So they competed in their love; whoever wins will be the first in marriage and in the family. Loiko humiliated Rada in front of all the gypsies and he could not stand it, he stabbed her with a knife. Then old Danila killed Zobar. And they lay side by side, united in death, as if on a wedding bed. This story was told to the author by Makar Chudra, an old camp gypsy.

Conclusion (my opinion)

Probably, both Zobar and Rada were too proud people to allow someone to get the better of them. A real love doesn’t think about it, people there think first of all about the good of their loved one.