Brief Biography of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
The future poet and writer, but for now just young Vanya Bunin, was lucky to be born into a fairly decent and wealthy family of a noble noble family, which had the honor of living in a luxurious noble estate, which fully corresponded to the status of the noble family of his family. Even in early childhood, the family decided to move from Voronezh to the Oryol province, where Ivan spent his early years, not attending any educational institutions until the age of eleven - the boy was successfully educated at home, read books and improved his knowledge, delving into good, high-quality and educational literature. In 1881, at the request of his parents, Ivan nevertheless entered a decent gymnasium, however, studying at the educational institution did not bring the boy any pleasure at all - already in the fourth grade, during the holidays, he declared that he did not want to return to school, and he found it much more pleasant to study at home and more productive. He nevertheless returned to the gymnasium - perhaps this was due to the desire of his father, an officer, perhaps a simple desire to gain knowledge and be brought up in a team, but already in 1886 Ivan still returned home, but did not give up his education - now his teacher, mentor and leader Elder brother Julius became involved in the educational process, and he followed the successes of the future famous Nobel laureate.
Ivan began writing poetry at a very early age, but then he himself, being well-read and educated, understood that such creativity was not serious. At the age of seventeen, his creativity moved to a new level, and that’s when the poet realized that he needed to become one of the people, and not put his works of art on the table.
Already in 1887, Ivan Alekseevich published his works for the first time, and, satisfied with himself, the poet moved to Orel, where he successfully got a job as a proofreader in a local newspaper, gaining access to interesting and sometimes classified information and ample opportunities for development. It is here that he meets Varvara Pashchenko, with whom he falls madly in love, together with her he abandons everything that he has acquired through back-breaking labor, contradicts the opinions of his parents and others, and moves to Poltava.
The poet meets and communicates with many famous personalities - for example, for quite a long time he was with the already famous Anton Chekhov at that time, with whom, in 1895, Ivan Alekseevich was lucky enough to meet personally. In addition to personal acquaintance with an old pen pal, Ivan Bunin makes acquaintances and finds common interests and common ground with Balmont, Bryusov and many other talented minds of his time.
A happy and measured family life did not at all prevent the poet and writer from traveling a lot, getting to know new cities and countries, recording his impressions on paper and sharing his emotions with his surroundings. The trips that took place during these years of the writer’s life were largely reflected in his creative path - Bunin often created his works either on the road or at the time of arrival at a new place - in any case, creativity and travel were inextricably and tightly linked.
Bunin. Confession
Bunin was nominated for a surprising number of different awards in the field of literature, thanks to which at a certain period he was even subjected to straightforward condemnations and harsh criticism from those around him - many began to notice the writer’s arrogance and inflated self-esteem, however, in fact, Bunin’s creativity and talent were quite corresponded to his ideas about himself. Bunin was even awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but he did not spend the money he received on himself - already living abroad in exile or getting rid of the Bolshevik culture, the writer helped the same creative people, poets and writers, as well as people in the same way how he fled the country.Bunin and his wife were distinguished by their kindness and open hearts - it is known that during the war years they even hid fugitive Jews on their plot, protecting them from repression and extermination. Today there are even opinions that Bunin should be given high awards and titles for many of his actions related to humanity, kindness and humanism.
Almost all of his adult life after the Revolution, Ivan Alekseevich spoke rather harshly against the new government, which is why he ended up abroad - he could not tolerate everything that was happening in the country. Of course, after the war his ardor cooled down a little, but, nevertheless, until his very last days, the poet worried about his country and knew that something was wrong in it.
The poet died calmly and quietly in his sleep in his own bed. They say that next to him at the time of his death was a volume of a book by Leo Tolstoy.
The memory of the great literary figure, poet and writer is immortalized not only in his famous works, which are passed down from generation to generation in school textbooks and a variety of literary publications. The memory of Bunin lives in the names of streets, crossroads, alleys and in every monument erected in memory of the great personality who created real changes in all Russian literature and pushed it to a completely new, progressive and modern level.
Works of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
The work of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is that necessary component, without which today it is simply impossible to imagine not only domestic, but also all world literature. It was he who made his constant contribution to the creation of works, a new, fresh look at the world and endless horizons, from which poets and writers around the world still take their example. Oddly enough, today the work of Ivan Bunin is much more revered abroad; for some reason he has not received such wide recognition in his homeland, even despite the fact that his works are quite actively studied in schools from the earliest grades. His works have absolutely everything that a lover of exquisite, beautiful style, unusual play on words, bright and pure images and new, fresh and still relevant ideas are looking for.
Bunin, with his characteristic skill, describes his own feelings - here even the most experienced reader understands what exactly the author felt at the moment of creating this or that work - the experiences are so vividly and openly described. For example, one of Bunin’s poems talks about a difficult and painful parting with his beloved, after which all that remains is to make a faithful friend - a dog that will never betray, and succumb to reckless drunkenness, ruining oneself without stopping.
Female images in Bunin's works are described especially vividly - each heroine of his works is depicted in the reader's mind in such detail that one gets the impression of personal acquaintance with this or that woman.
The main distinguishing feature of the entire work of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is the universality of his works. Representatives of the most different classes and interests can find something close and dear, and his works will captivate both experienced readers and those who have taken up the study of Russian literature for the first time in their lives.
Bunin wrote about absolutely everything that surrounded him, and in most cases the themes of his works coincided with different periods of his life. Early works often described simple village life, native open spaces and the surrounding nature. During the Revolution, the writer, naturally, described everything that was happening in his beloved country - this is what became the real legacy not only of Russian classical literature, but also of the entire national history.
Ivan Alekseevich wrote about himself and his life, described his own feelings passionately and in detail, often plunged into the past and recalled pleasant and negative moments, trying to understand himself and at the same time convey to the reader a deep and truly great thought. There is a lot of tragedy in his lines, especially for love works - here the writer saw tragedy in love and death in it.
The main themes in Bunin's works were:
Revolution and life before and after it
Love and all its tragedy
The world surrounding the writer himself
Of course, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin left a contribution of unimaginable proportions to Russian literature, which is why his legacy is still alive today, and the number of his admirers never decreases, but, on the contrary, is actively progressing.
Works of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
I.A. Bunin was born in Voronezh, and spent almost his entire childhood and youth on the run-down, half-ruined farmstead estate of his father Butyrka, located in what is now the Oryol region. There, among the forests and fields of the Central Russian strip, in living communication with nature, in close connection with the life of the working peasantry, his childhood and youth passed. Perhaps it was precisely the poverty and shabbiness of the once noble Bunin family that led to the fact that already in his youth the future writer was close to people’s work and everyday life.
Konstantin Fedin called Bunin “a Russian classic at the turn of two centuries.” Ivan Alekseevich’s creative path began with poetry. The best poetic work (awarded the Pushkin Prize) was the poem “Falling Leaves” (1901). Nature in Bunin’s lyrics is a source of harmony and spiritual strength; only in the unity of man with nature can one feel and understand the secret essence of life. The artist writes about the gift of love, about the continuous connection between man and nature, about the subtlest movements of the soul. The realist writer saw the inevitable destruction and desolation of the “nests of the nobility”, the onset of bourgeois relations, and created many images of peasants.
The writer's prose brought him wide fame. In his work, two ideological and thematic centers can be traced: “village prose” (in the center of which is the relationship between the gentleman and the peasant) and lyrical-philosophical (in which “eternal” themes are raised: love, beauty, nature). During this period, “Antonov Apples” (1900), “Sukhodol” (1911), “The Grammar of Love” (1915), “The Mister from San Francisco” (1915) and others were created.
The story “Antonov Apples” shows the decline of noble life. Through the narrator’s memories, Bunin conveys lyrical sadness and longing for the old days (“...I remember an early fine autumn.” “...I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinned garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen foliage and - the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness. The air is clean, as if there was none at all..,"). The story begins and ends with an ellipsis - a story without beginning and end. By this, the author shows that life goes on and does not stand still. The author does not put an end to it, inviting the reader to think about it, and perhaps re-read the work again, once again consider the paintings, inspired by the unity of man with nature and love for the homeland. A whole world is passing away - noble and peasant, a world saturated with the aroma of Antonov apples, a world in which it was so “cold, dewy and ... good to live.” “Antonov Apples” is a story about something lost forever.
In the story “Sukhodol” the idea of the degeneration of the nobility is combined with the author’s thought about the responsibility of the masters for the peasants, about their terrible guilt before them. Using the example of “Sukhodol”, Ivan Alekseevich shows a person’s attachment to his homeland (“Where he was born, he was good for there...”).
The plot of the story "Mr. from San Francisco" is based on the story of several months in the life of a wealthy American who arranged a trip for his family to Europe. The hero spent his entire life in pursuit of profit, but he believed that before that he “didn’t live, but existed,” striving to become like his ideal. This man was convinced that money gave him power over everything, and in this world he was truly a “master.” But money has no power over death. In a hotel on Capri, the “master” suddenly dies and his corpse is sent back to the ship in a wooden box.
The composition of the story is two-part. The climax, the death of the character, divides the text into two parts, allowing the reader to see the hero from two spatiotemporal perspectives: during life and after death. The living space of the gentleman from San Francisco corresponds to his role - the role of a significant person, significant in his own mind and in the perception of others. The death of the hero is natural: “having existed for 58 years, he dies from the fact that he never learned to live.” Death in Bunin's story reveals the true significance of the hero. The dead gentleman from San Francisco has no value in the eyes of others. As a kind of symbol of falsehood, the author showed a couple in love, whom the passengers admired. And only one captain knows that these are “hired lovers” who play love for the public for money. In the story “Mr. from San Francisco,” Bunin discusses universal issues. The relationship between man and the world, true and imaginary values, the meaning of human existence - these are the questions that concern the author. Ivan Alekseevich not only reflects on numerous problems himself, but he will not leave a single reader who has picked up his works in his hands indifferent.
Composition
A classic of Russian literature, an honorary academician in the category of belles-lettres, the first Russian writer, Nobel laureate, poet, prose writer, translator, publicist, literary critic Ivan Alekseevich Bunin has long won worldwide fame. His work was admired by T. Mann, R. Rolland, F. Mauriac, R. - M. Rilke, M. Gorky, K. Paustovsky, A. Tvardovsky and others. I. Bunin followed his own path all his life; he did not belong to any literary group, much less a political party. He stands apart, a unique creative personality in the history of Russian literature of the late 19th - 20th centuries.
The life of I. A. Bunin is rich and tragic, interesting and multifaceted. Bunin was born on October 10 (old style) 1870 in Voronezh, where his parents moved to educate his older brothers. Ivan Alekseevich came from an ancient noble family, which dates back to the 15th century. The Bunin family is very extensive and branched, and its history is extremely interesting. From the Bunin family came such representatives of Russian culture and science as the famous poet, translator Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky, poetess Anna Petrovna Bunina, and the outstanding geographer and traveler Pyotr Petrovich Semenov - Tyan-Shansky. The Bunins were related to the Kireevskys, Shenshins, Grots, and Voeikovs.
The very origin of Ivan Alekseevich is also interesting. Both the writer’s mother and father come from the Bunin family. Father - Alexey Nikolaevich Bunin married Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Chubarova, who was his niece. I. Bunin was very proud of his ancient family and always wrote about his origins in every autobiography. Vanya Bunin's childhood was spent in the wilderness, in one of the small family estates (the Butyrka farmstead of the Yeletsky district of the Oryol province). Bunin received his initial knowledge from his home teacher, a student at Moscow University, a certain N. O. Romashkov, a man... very talented - in painting, in music, and in literature, - the writer recalled, - probably his fascinating stories on winter evenings... and the fact that my first books to read were "The English Poets" (ed. Herbel) and Homer's Odyssey, awakened in me a passion for poetry, the fruit of which was several infant verses...\ “Bunin’s artistic abilities also showed up early. He could imitate or introduce someone he knew with one or two gestures, which delighted those around him. Thanks to these abilities, Bunin later became an excellent reader of his works.
For ten years, Vanya Bunin was sent to the Yeletsk gymnasium. While studying, he lives in Yelets with relatives and in private apartments. “Gymnasium and life in Yelets,” Bunin recalled, left me with far from joyful impressions, “we know what a Russian, and even a district gymnasium is, and what a district Russian city is!” The transition from a completely free life from the cares of a mother to life in the city, to the absurd strictures in the gymnasium and to the difficult life of those bourgeois and merchant houses where I had to live as a freeloader." But Bunin studied in Yelets for just over four years. In March 1886, he was expelled from the gymnasium for failure to appear from vacation and non-payment of tuition. Ivan Bunin settles in Ozerki (the estate of his deceased grandmother Chubarova), where, under the guidance of his older brother Yulia, he takes a gymnasium course, and in some subjects a university course. Yuliy Alekseevich was a highly educated man, one of the people closest to Bunin. Throughout his life, Yuli Alekseevich was always the first reader and critic of Bunin’s works.
The future writer spent his entire childhood and adolescence in the village, among fields and forests. In his "Autobiographical Notes" Bunin writes: "My mother and the servants loved to tell stories - from them I heard a lot of songs and stories... I also owe them my first knowledge of language - our richest language, in which “Thanks to geographical and historical conditions, so many dialects and dialects from almost all parts of Rus' merged and were transformed.” Bunin himself went to the peasant huts in the evenings for gatherings, sang “suffering” on the streets with the village children, guarded the horses at night... All this had a beneficial effect on the developing talent of the future writer. At the age of seven or eight, Bunin began to write poetry, imitating Pushkin and Lermontov. He loved to read Zhukovsky, Maykov, Fet, Ya. Polonsky, A.K. Tolstoy.
Bunin first appeared in print in 1887. The St. Petersburg newspaper "Rodina" published the poems "Over the grave of S. Ya. Nadson" and "The Village Beggar." There, during this year, ten more poems and stories "Two Wanderers" and "Nefedka" were published. This is how I.A.’s literary activity began. Bunina. In the fall of 1889, Bunin settled in Orel and began to collaborate in the editorial office of the newspaper Orlovsky Vestnik, where he was everything he needed to be - a proofreader, an editorial writer, and a theater critic... At this time, the young writer lived only by literary work, he was in great need. His parents could not help him, since the family was completely ruined, the estate and land in Ozerki were sold, and his mother and father began to live separately, with their children and relatives. Since the late 1880s, Bunin has been trying his hand at literary criticism. He published articles about the self-taught poet E. I. Nazarov, about T. G. Shevchenko, whose talent HE admired from his youth, about N. V. Uspensky, G. I. Uspensky’s cousin. Later, articles appeared about the poets E. A. Baratynsky and A. M. Zhemchuzhnikov. In Orel, Bunin, in his words, was “struck..., to great... misfortune, by a long love” for Varvara Vladimirovna Pashchenko, the daughter of an Yelets doctor. Her parents were categorically against marriage with a poor poet. Bunin's love for Varya was passionate and painful, sometimes they quarreled and went to different cities. These experiences lasted about five years. In 1894, V. Pashchenko left Ivan Alekseevich and married his friend A. N. Bibikov. Bunin took this departure terribly hard, his relatives even feared for his life.
Bunin's first book - \"Poems 1887 - 1891\" was published in 1891 in Orel, as a supplement to \"The Oryol Bulletin\". As the poet himself recalls, it was a book of “purely youthful, overly intimate” poems. Reviews from provincial and metropolitan critics were generally sympathetic and impressed by the accuracy and picturesque nature of the pictures. A little later, the young writer’s poems and stories appear in thick metropolitan magazines - Russian Wealth, Severny Vestnik, Vestnik Evropy. Writers A. M. Zhemchuzhnikov and N. K. Mikhailovsky responded approvingly to Bunin’s new works, who wrote that Ivan Alekseevich would make a “great writer.”
In 1893 - 1894, Bunin experienced the enormous influence of the ideas and personality of L. N. Tolstoy. Ivan Alekseevich visited Tolstoyan colonies in Ukraine, decided to take up cooperage and even learned how to put hoops on barrels. But in 1894, in Moscow, Bunin met with Tolstoy, who himself dissuaded the writer from saying goodbye to the end. Leo Tolstoy for Bunin is the highest embodiment of artistic skill and moral dignity. Ivan Alekseevich literally knew entire pages of his works by heart and all his life he admired the greatness of Tolstoy’s talent. The result of this attitude was later Bunin’s deep, multifaceted book “The Liberation of Tolstoy” (Paris, 1937).
At the beginning of 1895, Bunin traveled to St. Petersburg and then to Moscow. From that time on, he entered the capital's literary environment: he met N.K. Mikhailovsky, S.N. Krivenko, D.V. Grigorovich, N.N. Zlatovratsky, A.P. Chekhov, A.I. Ertel, K. Balmont, V. Ya. Bryusov, F. Sologub, V. G. Korolenko, A. I. Kuprin. Particularly important for Bunin was his acquaintance and further friendship with Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, with whom he stayed for a long time in Yalta and soon became part of his family. Bunin recalled: “I didn’t have such a relationship with any of the writers as I did with Chekhov. For all that time, there was never the slightest hostility. He was invariably discreetly gentle with me, friendly, caring like an elder.” Chekhov predicted that Bunin would become a “great writer.” Bunin admired Chekhov, whom he considered one of “the greatest and most delicate Russian poets,” a man of “rare spiritual nobility, good manners and grace in the best meaning of these words, gentleness and delicacy with extraordinary sincerity and simplicity, sensitivity and tenderness with rare truthfulness." Bunin learned about the death of A. Chekhov in the village. In his memoirs, he writes: “On the Fourth of July 1904, I rode horseback to the village to the post office, took newspapers and letters there and went to the blacksmith to reshod the horse’s leg. It was a hot and sleepy steppe day, with a dull shine to the sky, with a hot south wind. I unfolded the newspaper, sitting on the threshold of the blacksmith's hut, and suddenly it was like an icy razor slashed across my heart."
Speaking about Bunin's work, it should be especially noted that he was a brilliant translator. In 1896, Bunin's translation of the poem by the American writer G. W. Longfellow "The Song of Hiawatha" was published. This translation was reprinted several times, and over the years the poet made amendments and clarifications to the translation text. “I tried everywhere,” the translator wrote in the preface, “to stay as close as possible to the original, to preserve the simplicity and musicality of speech, comparisons and epithets, characteristic repetitions of words and even, if possible, the number and arrangement of verses.” The translation, which retained maximum fidelity to the original, became a notable event in Russian poetry of the early twentieth century and is considered unsurpassed to this day. Ivan Bunin also translated J. Byron - \"Cain\", \"Manfred\", \"Heaven and Earth\"; \"Godiva\" by A. Tennyson; poems by A. de Musset, Lecomte de Lisle, A. Mickiewicz, T. G. Shevchenko and others. Bunin's translation activities made him one of the outstanding masters of poetic translation. Bunin's first book of stories, "To the End of the World," was published in 1897, "to almost unanimous praise." In 1898, the collection of poems "Under the Open Air" was published. These books, along with the translation of G. Longfellow's poem, brought Bunin fame in literary Russia.
Often visiting Odessa, Bunin became close to members of the "Association of South Russian Artists": V.P. Kurovsky, E.I. Bukovetsky, P.A. Nilus. Bunin was always drawn to artists, among whom he found subtle connoisseurs of his work. Bunin has a lot to do with Odessa. This city is the setting for some of the writer's stories. Ivan Alekseevich collaborated with the editors of the newspaper "Odessa News". In 1898, in Odessa, Bunin married Anna Nikolaevna Tsakni. But the marriage turned out to be unhappy, and already in March 1899 the couple separated. Their son Kolya, whom Bunin adored, died in 1905 at the age of five. Ivan Alekseevich took the loss of his only child seriously. All his life Bunin carried a photograph of Kolinka with him. In the spring of 1900, in Yalta, where the Moscow Art Theater was located in his time, Bunin met the founders of the theater and its actors: K. Stanislavsky, O. Knipper, A. Vishnevsky, V. Nemirovich-Danchenko, I. Moskvin. And also on this visit, Bunin met the composer S.V. Rachmaninov. Later, Ivan Alekseevich recalled this \"meeting when, after talking almost all night on the seashore, he hugged me and said: \"We will be friends forever!\" And indeed, their friendship lasted all their lives.
At the beginning of 1901, the publishing house "Scorpio" in Moscow published a collection of Bunin's poems "Falling Leaves" - the result of the writer's short collaboration with the Symbolists. Critical response was mixed. But in 1903, the collection "Falling Leaves" and the translation of "Songs of Hiawatha" were awarded the Pushkin Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The poetry of I. Bunin has won a special place in the history of Russian literature thanks to many advantages inherent only to it. A singer of Russian nature, a master of philosophical and love lyrics, Bunin continued the classical traditions, opening up the unknown possibilities of “traditional” verse. Bunin actively developed the achievements of the golden age of Russian poetry, never breaking away from the national soil, remaining a Russian, original poet. At the beginning of his creativity, landscape lyrics, which have amazing specificity and precision of designation, are most characteristic of Bunin’s poetry. philosophical lyrics. Bunin is interested in both Russian history with its legends, fairy tales, traditions, and the origins of disappeared civilizations, the ancient East, ancient Greece, early Christianity. The Bible and the Koran are the poet’s favorite reading during this period. And all this is embodied in poetry and write in prose Philosophical lyricism penetrates the landscape and transforms it.In its emotional mood, Bunin's love lyrics are tragic.
I. Bunin himself considered himself, first of all, a poet, and only then a prose writer. And in prose, Bunin remained a poet. The story "Antonov Apples" (1900) is a clear confirmation of this. This story is a "prose poem" about Russian nature. From the beginning of the 1900s, Bunin's collaboration with the publishing house "Znanie" began, which led to a closer relationship between Ivan Alekseevich and A. M. Gorky, who headed this publishing house. Bunin often published in the collections of the Znanie partnership, and in 1902 - 1909, the Znanie publishing house published the first Collected Works of the writer in five volumes. Bunin's relationship with Gorky was uneven. At first, a friendship seemed to begin, they read their works to each other, Bunin visited Gorky more than once in Capri. But as the revolutionary events of 1917 in Russia approached, Bunin’s relationship with Gorky became increasingly cool. After 1917, there was a final break with the revolutionary-minded Gorky.
Since the second half of the 1890s, Bunin has been an active participant in the literary circle "Sreda", organized by N.D. Teleshov. Regular visitors to "Wednesday" were M. Gorky, L. Andreev, A. Kuprin, Yu. Bunin and others. Once on "Wednesday" V.G. Korolenko and A.P. Chekhov were present. At the "Wednesday" meetings the authors read and discussed their new works. Such an order was established that everyone could say whatever they thought about this literary creation without any offense on the part of the author. The events of the literary life of Russia were also discussed, sometimes heated debates flared up, and people stayed up long after midnight. It is impossible not to mention the fact that F. I. Chaliapin often sang at the “Wednesday” meetings , and S. V. Rachmaninov accompanied him. These were unforgettable evenings! Bunin’s wandering nature was manifested in his passion for travel. Ivan Alekseevich did not stay anywhere for long. All his life Bunin never had his own home, he lived in hotels, with relatives and friends. hotels, relatives and friends. In his wanderings around the world, he established a certain routine for himself: "... in winter the capital and the countryside, sometimes a trip abroad, in the spring the south of Russia, in the summer mainly the countryside."
In October 1900, Bunin traveled with V.P. Kurovsky in Germany, France, and Switzerland. From the end of 1903 and the beginning of 1904, Ivan Alekseevich, together with the playwright S.A. Naydenov, was in France and Italy. In June 1904, Bunin traveled around the Caucasus. Impressions from travel formed the basis of some of the writer's stories (for example, the cycle of stories 1907 - 1911 "Shadow of a Bird" and the story "Many Waters" 1925 - 1926), revealing to readers another facet of Bunin's work: travel essays.
In November 1906, in Moscow, in the house of the writer B.K. Zaitsev, Bunin met Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva (1881 - 1961). An educated and intelligent woman, Vera Nikolaevna shared her life with Ivan Alekseevich, becoming a devoted and selfless friend of the writer. After his death, she prepared Ivan Alekseevich’s manuscripts for publication, wrote the book “The Life of Bunin” containing valuable biographical data and her memoirs “Conversations with Memory”. Bunin told his wife: “Without you, I would not have written anything. I would have disappeared!”
Ivan Alekseevich recalled: “Since 1907, V.N. Muromtseva has shared her life with me. From then on, the thirst to travel and work took possession of me with special force... Invariably spending the summer in the village, we gave almost the rest of the time to foreign lands. I visited Turkey more than once, along the shores of Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt up to Nubia, traveled through Syria, Palestine, was in Oran, Algeria, Constantine, Tunisia and on the outskirts of the Sahara, sailed to Ceylon, traveled almost all of Europe, especially Sicily and Italy (where we spent the last three winters in Capri), was in some cities of Romania, Serbia...\".
In the fall of 1909, Bunin was awarded the second Pushkin Prize for the book "Poems 1903 - 1906", as well as for the translation of Byron's drama "Cain" and Longfellow's book "From the Golden Legend". In the same 1909, Bunin was elected honorary academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the category of fine literature. At this time, Ivan Alekseevich was working hard on his first big story - from the Village, which brought the author even greater fame and was a whole event in the literary world of Russia. Fierce debate flared up around the story, mainly discussing the objectivity and truthfulness of this work. A. M. Gorky responded about the story this way: “No one has taken a village so deeply, so historically.”
In December 1911, in Cyprus, Bunin finished the story "Sukhodol", dedicated to the theme of the extinction of noble estates and based on autobiographical material. The story was a huge success among readers and literary critics. The great master of words, I. Bunin studied the folklore collections of P. V. Kireevsky, E. V. Barsov, P. N. Rybnikov and others, making numerous extracts from them. The writer himself made folklore recordings. “I am interested in the reproduction of genuine folk speech, the folk language,” he said. The writer called the over 11 thousand ditties and folk jokes he collected “an invaluable treasure.” Bunin followed Pushkin, who wrote that "the study of ancient songs, fairy tales, etc. is necessary for perfect knowledge of the properties of the Russian language." On January 17, 1910, the Art Theater celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the birth of A.P. Chekhov. V. I. Nemirovich - Danchenko asked Bunin to read his memoirs about Chekhov. Ivan Alekseevich talks about this significant day: “The theater was crowded. In the literary box on the right side sat Chekhov’s relatives: mother, sister, Ivan Pavlovich and his family, probably other brothers, I don’t remember.
My speech caused real delight, because I, reading our conversations with Anton Pavlovich, conveyed his words in his voice, his intonations, which made an amazing impression on the family: my mother and sister cried. A few days later, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich came to me and offered to join their troupe." On October 27-29, 1912, the 25th anniversary of I. Bunin’s literary activity was solemnly celebrated. At the same time, he was elected an honorary member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature at Moscow University and until 1920 he was a fellow chairman, and later temporary chairman of the Society.
In 1913, on October 6, at the celebration of the half-century anniversary of the newspaper "Russian Vedomosti", Bunin said: The literary and artistic circle instantly became famous with a speech directed against "ugly, negative phenomena" in Russian literature. When you read the text of this speech now, you are struck by the relevance of Bunin’s words, but this was said 80 years ago!
In the summer of 1914, while traveling along the Volga, Bunin learned about the beginning of the First World War. The writer always remained her determined opponent. The elder brother Yuli Alekseevich saw in these events the beginning of the collapse of the state foundations of Russia. He predicted \"Well, it's the end of us! Russia's war for Serbia, and then the revolution in Russia. The end of our entire former life!\" Soon this prophecy began to come true...
But, despite all the recent events in St. Petersburg, in 1915 the publishing house of A.F. Marx published the Complete Works of Bunin in six volumes. As the author wrote, it “includes everything that I consider more or less worthy of publication.”
Bunin's books \"John Rydalets: Stories and Poems 1912 - 1913\" (M., 1913), \"The Cup of Life: Stories 1913 - 1914\" (M., 1915), \"Mr. from San - Francisco: Works of 1915 - 1916" (M., 1916) contain the best creations of the writer of the pre-revolutionary era.
In January and February 1917, Bunin lived in Moscow. The writer perceived the February Revolution and the ongoing First World War as terrible omens of an all-Russian collapse. Bunin spent the summer and autumn of 1917 in the village, spending all his time reading newspapers and observing the growing wave of revolutionary events. On October 23, Ivan Alekseevich and his wife left for Moscow. Bunin did not accept the October Revolution decisively and categorically. He rejected any violent attempt to rebuild human society, assessing the events of October 1917 as "bloody madness" and "general madness." The writer's observations of the post-revolutionary period were reflected in his diary of 1918 - 1919, "Cursed Days." This is a bright, truthful, sharp and apt journalistic work, permeated with a fierce rejection of the revolution. This book shows unquenchable pain for Russia and bitter prophecies, expressed with melancholy and powerlessness to change anything in the ongoing chaos of the destruction of centuries-old traditions, culture, and art of Russia. On May 21, 1918, the Bunins left Moscow for Odessa. Recently in Moscow, Bunin lived in the Muromtsevs’ apartment at 26 Povarskaya Street. This is the only house preserved in Moscow where Bunin lived. From this apartment on the first floor, Ivan Alekseevich and his wife went to Odessa, leaving Moscow forever. In Odessa, Bunin continues to work, collaborates with newspapers, and meets with writers and artists. The city changed hands many times, power changed, orders changed. All these events are reliably reflected in the second part of "Cursed Days".
On January 26, 1920, on the foreign steamer "Sparta", the Bunins sailed to Constantinople, leaving Russia forever - their beloved Motherland. Bunin suffered painfully from the tragedy of separation from his homeland. The writer's state of mind and the events of those days are partly reflected in the story "The End" (1921). By March, the Bunins reached Paris, one of the centers of Russian emigration. The entire subsequent life of the writer is connected with France, not counting short trips to England, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, and Estonia. The Bunins spent most of the year in the south of the country in the town of Grasse, near Nice, where they rented a dacha. The Bunins usually spent the winter months in Paris, where they had an apartment on Jacques Offenbach Street.
Bunin was not immediately able to return to creativity. In the early 1920s, books of pre-revolutionary stories by the writer were published in Paris, Prague, and Berlin. In exile, Ivan Alekseevich wrote few poems, but among them there are lyrical masterpieces: \"And flowers, and bumblebees, and grass, and ears of corn...\", \"Mikhail\", \"The bird has a nest, the beast has hole...\", \"Rooster on the church cross\". In 1929, the final book of Bunin, the poet, “Selected Poems,” was published in Paris, establishing the writer as one of the first places in Russian poetry. Mainly in exile, Bunin worked on prose, which resulted in several books of new stories: \"Rose of Jericho\" (Berlin, 1924), \"Mitya's Love\" (Paris, 1925), \"Sunstroke\" (Paris, 1927), \"Tree of God\" (Paris, 1931) and others.
It should be especially noted that all of Bunin’s works of the emigrant period, with very rare exceptions, are based on Russian material. The writer recalled his Motherland in a foreign land, its fields and villages, peasants and nobles, its nature. Bunin knew the Russian peasant and the Russian nobleman very well; he had a rich stock of observations and memories of Russia. He could not write about the West, which was alien to him, and never found a second home in France. Bunin remains faithful to the classical traditions of Russian literature and continues them in his work, trying to solve eternal questions about the meaning of life, about love, about the future of the whole world.
Bunin worked on the novel "The Life of Arsenyev" from 1927 to 1933. This is the writer’s largest work and the main book in his work. The novel "The Life of Arsenyev" seemed to combine everything that Bunin wrote about. Here are lyrical pictures of nature and philosophical prose, the life of a noble estate and a story about love. The novel was a huge success. It was immediately translated into different languages of the world. The translation of the novel was also a success. \"The Life of Arsenyev\" is a novel - a reflection on the bygone Russia, with which Bunin's entire creativity and all his thoughts are connected. This is not the writer’s autobiography, as many critics believed, which infuriated Bunin. Ivan Alekseevich argued that “every work of any writer is autobiographical to one degree or another. If a writer does not put part of his soul, his thoughts, his heart into his work, then he is not a creator... - True, and autobiographical is something must be understood not as the use of one’s past as the outline of a work, but, namely, as the use of one’s own, unique to me, vision of the world and one’s own thoughts, reflections and experiences evoked in connection with this."
On November 9, 1933, it arrived from Stockholm; news of the Nobel Prize being awarded to Bunin. Ivan Alekseevich was nominated for the Nobel Prize back in 1923, then again in 1926, and since 1930 his candidacy has been considered annually. Bunin was the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize. This was global recognition of the talent of Ivan Bunin and Russian literature in general.
The Nobel Prize was awarded on December 10, 1933 in Stockholm. Bunin said in an interview that he received this prize possibly for a body of work: “I think, however, that the Swedish Academy wanted to crown my last novel, “The Life of Arsenyev.” In the Nobel diploma, made especially for Bunin in the Russian style, it was It is written that the prize was awarded "for artistic excellence, thanks to which he continued the traditions of Russian classics in lyrical prose" (translated from Swedish).
Bunin distributed about half of the prize he received to those in need. He gave Kuprin only five thousand francs at once. Sometimes money was given to complete strangers. Bunin told Segodya newspaper correspondent P. Pilsky, “As soon as I received the prize, I had to give away about 120,000 francs. Yes, I don’t know how to handle money at all. Now it’s especially difficult.” As a result, the prize dried up quickly, and it was necessary to help Bunin himself. In 1934 - 1936 in Berlin, the publishing house "Petropolis" published the Collected Works of Bunin in 11 volumes. In preparing this building, Bunin carefully corrected everything previously written, mainly mercilessly abbreviating it. In general, Ivan Alekseevich always took a very demanding approach to each new publication and tried to improve his prose and poetry every time. This collection of works summed up Bunin's literary activity for almost fifty years.
In September 1939, the first salvos of the Second World War rang out. Bunin condemned the advancing fascism even before the outbreak of hostilities. The Bunins spent the war years in Grasse at the Villa Jeannette. M. Stepun and G. Kuznetsova, L. Zurov also lived with them, and A. Bakhrakh lived for some time. Ivan Alekseevich greeted the news of the start of the war between Germany and Russia with particular pain and excitement. Under pain of death, Bunin listened to Russian radio and noted the situation at the front on the map. During the war, the Bunins lived in terrible beggarly conditions and went hungry. Bunin greeted Russia’s victory over fascism with great joy.
Despite all the hardships and hardships of the war, Bunin continues to work. During the war, he wrote a whole book of stories under the general title "Dark Alleys" (first complete edition - Paris, 1946). Bunin wrote: \"All the stories in this book are only about love, about its \"dark\" and most often very gloomy and cruel alleys\"~. The book "Dark Alleys" is 38 stories about love in its various manifestations. In this brilliant creation, Bunin appears as an excellent stylist and poet. Bunin "considered this book the most perfect in skill." Ivan Alekseevich considered “Clean Monday” to be the best of the stories in the collection; he wrote about it like this: “I thank God that he gave me the opportunity to write “Clean Monday”.
In the post-war years, Bunin followed literature in Soviet Russia with interest and spoke enthusiastically about the work of K. G. Paustovsky and A. T. Tvardovsky. Ivan Alekseevich wrote about A. Tvardovsky’s poem “Vasily Terkin” in a letter to N. Teleshov: a. I (the reader, as you know, is picky and demanding) am completely delighted with his talent - this is a truly rare book: what freedom, what wonderful prowess, what accuracy, precision in everything and what an extraordinary folk, soldier's language - not a hitch, not a single false, ready-made, that is, literary - vulgar word! It is possible that he will remain the author of only one such book, will begin to repeat himself, write worse, but even this can be forgiven for "Terkin."
After the war, Bunin met more than once in Paris with K. Simonov, who invited the writer to return to his homeland. At first there were hesitations, but in the end, Bunin abandoned this idea. He imagined the situation in Soviet Russia and knew very well that he would not be able to work under orders from above and also would not hide the truth. this and knew perfectly well that he would not be able to work on orders from above and would also not hide the truth. This is probably why, and maybe for some other reasons, Bunin never returned to Russia, suffering all his life due to separation from his homeland.
I. Bunin's circle of friends and acquaintances was large. Ivan Alekseevich always tried to help young writers, gave them advice, corrected their poems and prose. He did not shy away from youth, but, on the contrary, carefully observed the new generation of poets and prose writers. Bunin was rooting for the future of Russian literature. The writer himself had young people living in his house. This is the already mentioned writer Leonid Zurov, whom Bunin wrote out to live with him for a while until he got a job, but Zurov remained to live with Bunin. The young writer Galina Kuznetsova, the journalist Alexander Bakhrakh, and the writer Nikolai Roshchin lived for some time. Often young writers who knew I. Bunin, and even those who had not met him, considered it an honor to give Ivan Alekseevich their books with dedicatory inscriptions, in which they expressed their deep respect for the writer and admiration for his talent.
Bunin was familiar with many famous writers of the Russian emigration. Bunin's closest circle included G.V. Adamovich, B.K. Zaitsev, M.A. Aldanov, N.A. Teffi, F. Stepun and many others.
In Paris in 1950, Bunin published the book "Memoirs", in which he openly wrote about his contemporaries, without embellishing anything, and expressed his thoughts about them in poisonously sharp assessments. Therefore, some essays from this book were not published for a long time. Bunin was more than once reproached for being too critical of some writers (Gorky, Mayakovsky, Yesenin, etc.). We will not justify or condemn the writer here, but only one thing should be said: Bunin was always honest, fair and principled and never made any compromises. And when Bunin saw lies, falsehood, hypocrisy, meanness, deceit, hypocrisy - no matter who it came from - he openly spoke about it, because he could not tolerate these human qualities.
At the end of his life, Bunin worked hard on a book about Chekhov. This work proceeded gradually for many years; the writer collected a lot of valuable biographical and critical material. But he did not have time to complete the book. The unfinished manuscript was prepared for printing by Vera Nikolaevna. The book "About Chekhov" was published in New York in 1955; it contains valuable information about the brilliant Russian writer, Bunin's friend - Anton Pavlovich Chekhov.
Ivan Alekseevich wanted to write a book about M. Yu. Lermontov, but did not have time to realize this intention. M. A. Aldanov recalls his conversation with Bunin three days before the death of the writer: “I always thought that our greatest poet was Pushkin,” said Bunin, “no, it’s Lermontov! It’s simply impossible to imagine to what height this the man would have risen if he had not died at the age of twenty-seven." Ivan Alekseevich recalled Lermontov’s poems, accompanying them with his assessment: “How extraordinary! Neither Pushkin nor anyone else! Amazing, there is no other word.” The life of the great writer ended in a foreign land. I. A. Bunin died on November 8, 1953 in Paris, and was buried in the Russian cemetery of Saint. - Genevieve de Bois near Paris.
In the final version, the story "Bernard" (1952), whose hero remarked before his death: "I think I was a good sailor," ended with the author's words: "It seems to me that I, as an artist, have earned the right to say about to myself, in my last days, something similar to what Bernard said while dying."
I. Bunin bequeathed to us to treat the Word with caution and care, he called for preserving it, having written back in January 1915, when a terrible world war was going on, a deep and noble poem "The Word", which still sounds just as relevant; So let’s listen to the great master of words:
The tombs, mummies and bones are silent, -
Only the word is given life
From ancient darkness, on the world graveyard,
Only the Letters sound.
And we have no other property!
Know how to take care
At least to the best of my ability, in days of anger and suffering,
Our immortal gift is speech.
Take Bunin out of Russian literature and it will fade...
M. Gorky
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin - the greatest master of Russian realistic prose and an outstanding poet of the early 20th century, was born on October 10 (22), 1870.
Bunin saw and experienced a lot in his long life. His rare memory contained a lot, his great talent responded to a lot. The rural and provincial wilderness of Central Russia, the countries of Western Europe, the life of a Russian peasant, a Ceylon rickshaw puller and an American millionaire, ancient guard mounds of the Wild Field, places where Igor's regiments fought, Greece, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, the outskirts of the Sahara, the pyramids of Cheops, the ruins of Baalbek , tropics, ocean... In the words of his beloved poet Saadi, Bunin spoke about himself: “I tried to survey the face of the world and leave the stamp of my soul on it.” There was, perhaps, no other writer who would so closely perceive and accommodate in his consciousness distant antiquity and modernity, Russia, the West and the East.
The realist writer saw the inevitable destruction and desolation of noble estates, the onset of bourgeois relations penetrating into the village. He truthfully showed the darkness and inertia of the old village, created many unique, memorable characters of Russian peasants. He wrote insightfully about the wonderful gift of love, about the inextricable connection between man and nature, about the subtlest movements of the soul.
As a sensitive artist, Bunin felt the proximity of great social upheavals. Observing social evil, ignorance, and cruelty around him, Bunin at the same time expected with sorrow and fear the imminent collapse, the fall of the “great Russian power.” This determined his attitude towards the revolution and the fratricidal civil war and forced him to leave his homeland.
He wrote one of the most famous works about the 1917 revolution - “The Life of Arsenyev” - which is stunning in its truthfulness. This is one of the few writers of old Russia who did not accept the revolution and remained true to himself and his convictions to the end.
Bunin's literary activity began in the late 80s of the 19th century. The young writer, in such stories as “Kastryuk”, “On the Other Side”, “On a Farm” and others, depicts the hopeless poverty of the peasantry. In the story “The Edge of the World,” the author describes the resettlement of landless peasants of Ukraine to the distant Ussuri region, conveys the tragic experiences of the migrants at the moment of separation from their native places, the tears of children and the thoughts of old people.
The works of the 90s are distinguished by democracy and knowledge of people's life. Bunin meets writers of the older generation. During these years, Bunin tried to combine realistic traditions with new techniques and principles of composition. He becomes close to impressionism. In the stories of that time, a blurred plot dominates, and a musical rhythmic pattern is created.
For example, the story “Antonov Apples”. It shows seemingly unrelated episodes in the life of a fading patriarchal-noble life, which are colored with lyrical sadness and regret. However, the story is not only about longing for desolate noble estates. On the pages, enchanting landscapes appear before us, covered with a feeling of love for the homeland, which affirm the happiness of that moment when a person can completely merge with nature.
And yet social aspects are constantly present in his works. Here is the former soldier Meliton from the story “Meliton”, who was driven through the ranks and lost his family. Or pictures of hunger in the stories “Ore”, “Epitaph”, “New Road”. This social accusatory theme seems to be relegated to the background in the stories “Fog” and “Silence”. In them, the eternal problems of life and death and the unfading beauty of nature come to the fore.
In 1909, Bunin returned to the theme of the village. He writes a wonderful work “Village”. Village life is given in it through the perception of the brothers Tikhon and Kuzma Krasnov.
Kuzma wants to study, Tikhon is an inveterate fist who is merciless towards the peasants. The story truthfully shows the negative side of rural life, the oppression of the peasants, their ruin.
In 1911-1913, Bunin increasingly covered various aspects of Russian reality. During this period, he wrote “Sukhodol”, “The Last Date”, “The Good Life”, “The Cup of Life”, “Ignat” and other stories. For example, in the story “Sukhodol” Bunin reconsiders the traditions of poeticization of estate life, admiration for the beauty of fading noble nests.
On the eve of the revolutionary events, Bunin writes stories, especially exposing the pursuit of profit. They sound a condemnation of bourgeois society. In the story “Mr. from San Francisco,” the writer especially emphasized the ephemeral power of money over a person. As soon as a rich gentleman dies, his money and position cease to play the slightest role in the fate of his family. The story condemns this elderly gentleman, who, in pursuit of his millions, ruined thousands of other people's lives.
The stories “Easy Breathing” and “Cold Autumn” became classic works about love. They show the characters of Russian women with incredible power. “Easy Breathing” is a poetic takeoff of a young, enthusiastic soul, which burned in the flames of its unexpressed feelings and suffocated with an unusually light breath. “Cold Autumn” is a later work of the writer. In it, through the story about the life of a woman who carried through war, death, hardships love for man and homeland, one can feel Bunin’s longing for his homeland, his experiences, love for Russia.
Living in exile, Bunin suffered severely from separation from Russia, gloomily convinced everyone and himself of its end, and in the first years wrote half-articles, half-pamphlets, half-stories with a hot pen. However, his soul, blackened with grief, did not stop stealthily returning to his native places.
Among the topics, one was outlined - the main one. Bunin was looking for a comprehensive, whole person - “The Life of Arsenyev” was already being prepared - this monologue about Russia, about its unique nature, the culture nurtured in its depths, about its national soul. The autobiographical basis of “The Life of Arsenyev” is undeniable. But what we have before us, in fact, is not a memoir, but a work in which long-standing events and facts are transformed and rethought. The first impressions of childhood and adolescence, life in the estate and study in the gymnasium, pictures of Russian nature and the life of the impoverished nobility serve only as a canvas for Bunin’s philosophical and ethical concept. The autobiographical material is transformed by the writer so strongly that this book merges with the stories of the foreign cycle, in which eternal problems - life, love, death - are artistically comprehended.
The main thing in the novel is the flowering of a person’s personality. What we have here is the confession of a great artist, his recreation in the greatest detail of the environment in which his earliest creative impulses manifested themselves. “The Life of Arsenyev” is summary in nature, generalizing the events and phenomena of almost half a century ago. The novel stands out among Bunin's later works for its sense of complete triumph of love over death.
“The Life of Arsenyev” is Bunin’s main book, the main one because it is. despite its small volume, it seemed to have collected everything he had written before it.
In 1933, “for the rigorous artistic talent with which he recreated the typically Russian character in literary prose,” Bunin was awarded the most prestigious prize - the Nobel Prize in Literature.
For a long time, the fame of Bunin the prose writer somewhat obscured his poetry for readers. The writer's lyrics provide us with an example of high national culture.
Love for his native land, its nature, its history inspires Bunin’s muse. At the turn of the twentieth century, when the first shoots of proletarian literature were already emerging and the symbolist movement was growing stronger, Bunin’s poems stood out for their commitment to strong classical traditions.
Proximity to nature, to village life, its labor interests, and its aesthetics could not but be reflected in the formation of young Bunin’s literary tastes and passions. His poetry becomes deeply national. The image of the Motherland, Russia, develops imperceptibly in poetry. He is already prepared with landscape lyrics, which are inspired by the impressions of his native Oryol region, Central Russian nature. In the poem “Motherland” (1891), Bunin speaks sharply and courageously about his native country:
They mock you
They, O Motherland, reproach
You with your simplicity,
Poor looking black huts...
So son, calm and impudent,
Ashamed of his mother -
Tired, timid and sad
Among his city friends...
Nature was his favorite theme in his poems. Her image runs through all of his poetic work.
Infinitely feeling a living connection with nature, the poet managed, following Fet and Polonsky, to achieve true beauty and perfection of verse. Only by speaking with nature in its language, one could enter its endless and mysterious world:
The estate was silent in autumn.
The whole house was dead in the midnight silence,
And, like an abandoned child, she screamed
Long-eared dummy on the threshing floor.
In contrast to the carefree attitude towards nature of populist poets, Bunin, with extreme meticulousness, accurately reproduces its world:
The leaves rustled as they flew around,
The forest was starting to howl in autumn...
A flock of some gray birds
Spun in the wind with leaves.
I wanted to go along with the noisy whirlwind
Spinning through the forest, screaming -
And meet every copper sheet
With joyfully mad delight!
Bunin wrote a huge number of beautiful works, where he philosophizes, reflects on the meaning of life, on the purpose of man in this world:
I am a man: like God, I am doomed
To experience the melancholy of all countries and all times.
Philosophical lyrics of the period of 1917 are increasingly crowding out landscape poetry. Bunin strives to look beyond the limits of reality. His poetry takes on the features of doom, the doom of the noble class that was born to him. The mystical and mortal breath is palpable in his poems, which will especially intensify in emigration. Where is the way out? Bunin finds it in a return to nature and love. The poet appears in the guise of a lyrical hero. It should be noted that Bunin's love lyrics are small in quantity. But it reveals many of the quests of late times.
Abroad, in exile, Bunin remains true to himself and his talent. He depicts the beauty of the world, Russian nature, and reflects on the mystery of life. But in his poems, until his death, pain and longing for his homeland and the irreplaceability of this loss are heard...
Bunin was an excellent translator. He translated Byron (“Cain”, “Manfred”), Mickiewicz (“Crimean Sonnets”).
Bunin the emigrant did not accept the new state, but today we have returned as a national treasure all the best that was created by the writer. A singer of Russian nature, a master of intimate lyrics, Bunin continues the classical traditions, teaches to love and appreciate one’s native word.
For us, he is an eternal symbol of love for his Fatherland and an example of culture.
A nobleman by birth, a commoner by way of life, a poet by talent, an analyst by mentality, a tireless traveler, Bunin combined seemingly incompatible facets of his worldview: a sublimely poetic structure of the soul and an analytically sober vision of the world, an intense interest in modern Russia and the past , to the countries of ancient civilizations, a tireless search for the meaning of life and religious humility before its unknowable essence.
Take Bunin out of Russian literature and it will fade...
M. Gorky
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin - the greatest master of Russian realistic prose and an outstanding poet of the early 20th century, was born on October 10 (22), 1870.
Bunin saw and experienced a lot in his long life. His rare memory contained a lot, his great talent responded to a lot. The rural and provincial wilderness of Central Russia, the countries of Western Europe, the life of a Russian peasant, a Ceylon rickshaw puller and an American millionaire, ancient guard mounds of the Wild Field, places where Igor's regiments fought, Greece, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, the outskirts of the Sahara, the pyramids of Cheops, the ruins of Baalbek , tropics, ocean... In the words of his beloved poet Saadi, Bunin spoke about himself: “I tried to survey the face of the world and leave the stamp of my soul on it.” There was, perhaps, no other writer who would so closely perceive and accommodate in his consciousness distant antiquity and modernity, Russia, the West and the East.
The realist writer saw the inevitable destruction and desolation of noble estates, the onset of bourgeois relations penetrating into the village. He truthfully showed the darkness and inertia of the old village, created many unique, memorable characters of Russian peasants. He wrote insightfully about the wonderful gift of love, about the inextricable connection between man and nature, about the subtlest movements of the soul.
As a sensitive artist, Bunin felt the proximity of great social upheavals. Observing social evil, ignorance, and cruelty around him, Bunin at the same time expected with sorrow and fear the imminent collapse, the fall of the “great Russian power.” This determined his attitude towards the revolution and the fratricidal civil war and forced him to leave his homeland.
He wrote one of the most famous works about the 1917 revolution - “The Life of Arsenyev” - which is stunning in its truthfulness. This is one of the few writers of old Russia who did not accept the revolution and remained true to himself and his convictions to the end.
Bunin's literary activity began in the late 80s of the 19th century. The young writer, in such stories as “Castryuk”, “On the Other Side”, “On the Farm” and others, depicts the hopeless poverty of the peasantry. In the story “The Edge of the World,” the author describes the resettlement of landless peasants of Ukraine to the distant Ussuri region, conveys the tragic experiences of the migrants at the moment of separation from their native places, the tears of children and the thoughts of old people.
The works of the 90s are distinguished by democracy and knowledge of people's life. Bunin meets writers of the older generation. During these years, Bunin tried to combine realistic traditions with new techniques and principles of composition. He becomes close to impressionism. In the stories of that time, a blurred plot dominates, and a musical rhythmic pattern is created.
For example, the story "Antonov Apples". It shows seemingly unrelated episodes in the life of a fading patriarchal-noble life, which are colored with lyrical sadness and regret. However, the story is not only about longing for desolate noble estates. On the pages, enchanting landscapes appear before us, covered with a feeling of love for the homeland, which affirm the happiness of that moment when a person can completely merge with nature.
And yet social aspects are constantly present in his works. Here is the former soldier Meliton from the story "Meliton", who was driven through the ranks and lost his family. Or the pictures of hunger in the stories “Ore”, “Epitaph”, “New Road”. This social accusatory theme seems to be relegated to the background in the stories “Fog” and “Silence”. In them, the eternal problems of life and death and the unfading beauty of nature come to the fore.
In 1909, Bunin returned to the theme of the village. He writes a wonderful work "The Village". Village life is given in it through the perception of the brothers Tikhon and Kuzma Krasnov.
Kuzma wants to study, Tikhon is an inveterate fist who is merciless towards the peasants. The story truthfully shows the negative side of rural life, the oppression of the peasants, their ruin.
In 1911-1913, Bunin increasingly covered various aspects of Russian reality. During this period he wrote “Sukhodol”, “The Last Date”, “The Good Life”, “The Cup of Life”, “Ignat” and other stories. For example, in the story "Sukhodol" Bunin reconsiders the traditions of poeticization of estate life, admiration for the beauty of fading noble nests.
On the eve of the revolutionary events, Bunin writes stories, especially exposing the pursuit of profit. They sound a condemnation of bourgeois society. In the story “Mr. from San Francisco,” the writer especially emphasized the ephemeral power of money over a person. As soon as a rich gentleman dies, his money and position cease to play the slightest role in the fate of his family. The story condemns this elderly gentleman, who, in pursuit of his millions, ruined thousands of other people's lives.
The stories “Easy Breathing” and “Cold Autumn” became classic works about love. They show the characters of Russian women with incredible power. “Easy Breathing” is a poetic takeoff of a young, enthusiastic soul, which burned in the flames of its unexpressed feelings, suffocated by an unusually light breath. "Cold Autumn" is a later work of the writer. In it, through the story about the life of a woman who carried through war, death, hardships love for man and homeland, one can feel Bunin’s longing for his homeland, his experiences, love for Russia.
Living in exile, Bunin suffered severely from separation from Russia, gloomily convinced everyone and himself of its end, and in the first years wrote half-articles, half-pamphlets, half-stories with a hot pen. However, his soul, blackened with grief, did not stop stealthily returning to his native places.
Among the topics, one was outlined - the main one. Bunin was looking for a comprehensive, whole person - “The Life of Arsenyev” was already being prepared - this monologue about Russia, about its unique nature, the culture nurtured in its depths, about its national soul. The autobiographical basis of "The Life of Arsenyev" is undeniable. But what we have before us, in fact, is not a memoir, but a work in which long-standing events and facts are transformed and rethought. The first impressions of childhood and adolescence, life in the estate and study in the gymnasium, pictures of Russian nature and the life of the impoverished nobility serve only as a canvas for Bunin’s philosophical and ethical concept. The autobiographical material is transformed by the writer so strongly that this book merges with the stories of the foreign cycle, in which eternal problems - life, love, death - are artistically comprehended.
The main thing in the novel is the flowering of a person’s personality. What we have here is the confession of a great artist, his recreation in the greatest detail of the environment in which his earliest creative impulses manifested themselves. “The Life of Arsenyev” is conclusive in nature, summarizing the events and phenomena of almost half a century ago. The novel stands out among Bunin's later works for its sense of complete triumph of love over death.
"The Life of Arsenyev" is Bunin's main book, the main one because it is... despite its small volume, it seemed to have collected everything he had written before it.
In 1933, “for the rigorous artistic talent with which he recreated the typically Russian character in literary prose,” Bunin was awarded the most prestigious prize - the Nobel Prize in Literature.
For a long time, the fame of Bunin the prose writer somewhat obscured his poetry for readers. The writer's lyrics provide us with an example of high national culture.
Love for his native land, its nature, its history inspires Bunin’s muse. At the turn of the twentieth century, when the first shoots of proletarian literature were already emerging and the symbolist movement was growing stronger, Bunin’s poems stood out for their commitment to strong classical traditions.
Proximity to nature, to village life, its labor interests, and its aesthetics could not but be reflected in the formation of young Bunin’s literary tastes and passions. His poetry becomes deeply national. The image of the Motherland, Russia, develops imperceptibly in poetry. He is already prepared with landscape lyrics, which are inspired by the impressions of his native Oryol region, Central Russian nature. In the poem “Motherland” (1891), Bunin speaks sharply and courageously about his native country:
They mock you
They, O Motherland, reproach
You with your simplicity,
Poor looking black huts...
So son, calm and impudent,
Ashamed of his mother -
Tired, timid and sad
Among his city friends...
Nature was his favorite theme in his poems. Her image runs through all of his poetic work.
Infinitely feeling a living connection with nature, the poet managed, following Fet and Polonsky, to achieve true beauty and perfection of verse. Only by speaking with nature in its language, one could enter its endless and mysterious world:
The estate was silent in autumn.
The whole house was dead in the midnight silence,
And, like an abandoned child, she screamed
Long-eared dummy on the threshing floor.
In contrast to the carefree attitude towards nature of populist poets, Bunin, with extreme meticulousness, accurately reproduces its world:
The leaves rustled as they flew around,
The forest was starting to howl in autumn...
A flock of some gray birds
Spun in the wind with leaves.
I wanted to go along with the noisy whirlwind
Spinning through the forest, screaming -
And meet every copper sheet
With joyfully mad delight!
Bunin wrote a huge number of beautiful works, where he philosophizes, reflects on the meaning of life, on the purpose of man in this world:
I am a man: like God, I am doomed
To experience the melancholy of all countries and all times.
Philosophical lyrics of the period of 1917 are increasingly crowding out landscape poetry. Bunin strives to look beyond the limits of reality. His poetry takes on the features of doom, the doom of the noble class that was born to him. The mystical and mortal breath is palpable in his poems, which will especially intensify in emigration. Where is the way out? Bunin finds it in a return to nature and love. The poet appears in the guise of a lyrical hero. It should be noted that Bunin's love lyrics are small in quantity. But it reveals many of the quests of late times.
Abroad, in exile, Bunin remains true to himself and his talent. He depicts the beauty of the world, Russian nature, and reflects on the mystery of life. But in his poems, until his death, pain and longing for his homeland and the irreplaceability of this loss are heard...
Bunin was an excellent translator. He translated Byron ("Cain", "Manfred"), Mickiewicz ("Crimean Sonnets").
Bunin the emigrant did not accept the new state, but today we have returned as a national treasure all the best that was created by the writer. A singer of Russian nature, a master of intimate lyrics, Bunin continues the classical traditions, teaches to love and appreciate one’s native word.
For us, he is an eternal symbol of love for his Fatherland and an example of culture.
A nobleman by birth, a commoner by way of life, a poet by talent, an analyst by mentality, a tireless traveler, Bunin combined seemingly incompatible facets of his worldview: a sublimely poetic structure of the soul and an analytically sober vision of the world, an intense interest in modern Russia and the past , to the countries of ancient civilizations, a tireless search for the meaning of life and religious humility before its unknowable essence.