French Lessons
1 hr. 14 min.
Language
Russian
Author
Valentin Rasputin
Author
Valentin Rasputin
Narrator
Ilya Zmeev
Narrator
Ilya Zmeev
Description
“French Lessons” is one of Valentin Rasputin’s best works. The story’s heroine is a young French teacher—she only has to see how hard life is for her talented but half-starved student.
After trying every available way to help him, she decides—according to the school principal—on a “crime”: she agrees to play “the wall” (pristyenok) with the boy for money. What did this turn into for the teacher herself? How did the boy judge the motives behind her actions? Years later, the story’s hero remembers—having lived through plenty and gradually, for himself, understood the meaning of these “lessons”: lessons in humanity, kindness, and compassion.
Strange—why do we feel guilty toward our teachers the same way we do toward our parents, again and again? And not for what happened at school—no. Rather for what happened to us afterward.
“I went to fifth grade in 1948. Better to say, I traveled: in our village there was only an elementary school, so to continue my education I had to set out from home, fifty kilometers to the district center. A week earlier, my mother had gone there, arranged with her acquaintance that I would live with her, and on the last day of August Uncle Vanya, the driver of the only truck in the collective farm, dropped me off on Podkamennaya Street, where I was to live. He helped carry the bedding bundle into the house, patted me encouragingly on the shoulder as a farewell, and drove off. That’s how, at eleven, my independent life began…”
After trying every available way to help him, she decides—according to the school principal—on a “crime”: she agrees to play “the wall” (pristyenok) with the boy for money. What did this turn into for the teacher herself? How did the boy judge the motives behind her actions? Years later, the story’s hero remembers—having lived through plenty and gradually, for himself, understood the meaning of these “lessons”: lessons in humanity, kindness, and compassion.
Strange—why do we feel guilty toward our teachers the same way we do toward our parents, again and again? And not for what happened at school—no. Rather for what happened to us afterward.
“I went to fifth grade in 1948. Better to say, I traveled: in our village there was only an elementary school, so to continue my education I had to set out from home, fifty kilometers to the district center. A week earlier, my mother had gone there, arranged with her acquaintance that I would live with her, and on the last day of August Uncle Vanya, the driver of the only truck in the collective farm, dropped me off on Podkamennaya Street, where I was to live. He helped carry the bedding bundle into the house, patted me encouragingly on the shoulder as a farewell, and drove off. That’s how, at eleven, my independent life began…”
