The life of I. A. Bunin is rich and tragic, interesting and multifaceted. Bunin was born on October 10, 1870 in Voronezh, where his parents moved to educate his older brothers. Vanya Bunin's childhood was spent in the wilderness, in one of the small family estates 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, music, and literature,” the writer recalled. Bunin's artistic abilities also manifested themselves early. He could imitate or introduce someone he knew with one or two gestures, which delighted them. those around you. Thanks to these abilities, Bunin later became an excellent reader of his works.
At the age of ten, Vanya Bunin was sent to the Yeletsk gymnasium. While studying, he lives in Yelets with relatives and in private apartments. Four years later, 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 (estate deceased grandmother Chubarova), where, under the guidance of his older brother Yuli, he takes a gymnasium course, and in some subjects a university course. Yuli Alekseevich was highly educated person, one of the people closest to Bunin. Throughout his life, Yuliy 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 the 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 transformed." Bunin himself went to the peasant huts at gatherings, on the streets together with the village children, he sang “suffering”, guarded 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.” During this year, ten more poems and stories “Two Wanderers” and “Nefedka” were published there. 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 had to do - a proofreader, an editorial writer, and a theater critic...”. At this time the young writer lived only literary work, 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 N. V. Uspensky, about T. G. Shevchenko, whose talent he admired from his youth. Later, articles appeared about the poets E. A. Baratynsky and A. M. Zhemchuzhnikov. In Orel, Bunin, in his words, “was struck down... long love"to 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 is "Poems 1887 - 1891." published in 1891 in Oryol, as a supplement to the Oryol Bulletin. As the poet himself recalls, it was a book of “purely youthful, overly intimate” poems. A little later, the young writer’s poems and stories appeared in thick metropolitan magazines - “Russian Wealth”, “Northern Messenger”, “Bulletin of Europe”. 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 Leo Tolstoy. Ivan Alekseevich visited Tolstoyan colonies in Ukraine, decided to take up the craft of 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 never had 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 bowed to Chekhov. Bunin learned about the death of A. Chekhov in the village. In his memoirs, he writes: “On July 4, 1904, I rode a horse 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 in the sky, with a hot southern 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. 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 "amongst almost unanimous praise." In 1898, the collection of poems "Under open air"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 creativity. In Odessa, 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. Their friendship lasted throughout their lives.
At the beginning of 1901, the Scorpion publishing house 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 “The Song of Hiawatha” were awarded the Pushkin Prize Russian Academy Sci.
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 creative work, Bunin's poetry was most characterized by landscape lyrics, which have amazing specificity and precision of designation. Since the 900s, the poet has turned to 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 finds its embodiment in poetry and writing in prose. Philosophical lyrics penetrate the landscape and transform 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. 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 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 literary circle"Wednesday", organized by N.D. Teleshov. Regular visitors to "Wednesdays" 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 meetings of "Wednesday" 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 discussed, sometimes heated debates flared up, and they stayed up long after midnight. It is impossible not to mention the fact that F. I. Chaliapin often sang at the meetings of “Sreda”, and S. accompanied him. V. Rachmaninov. These were unforgettable evenings!
All his life, Bunin never had his own home; he lived in hotels, with 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 to 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 "Shadow of a Bird" from 1907 - 1911 and the story "Many Waters" from 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!”
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 - The Village, which brought the author even greater fame and was a whole event in the literary world of Russia.
In December 1911, in Cyprus, Bunin finished the story "Sukhodol", dedicated to the topic 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'm interested in reproducing the original folk speech, vernacular", 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 ".
- January 17, 1910 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. Chekhov’s relatives were sitting in the literary box on the right side: mother, sister, Ivan Pavlovich and his family, probably other brothers - I don’t remember. My performance caused real delight, because that, reading our conversations with Anton Pavlovich, I 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 was solemnly celebrated literary activity I. Bunina. 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 the temporary chairman of the Society.
In 1913, on October 6, at the celebration of the half-century anniversary of the newspaper “Russian Vedomosti”, Bunin spoke. The literary and artistic circle instantly became famous 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 90 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. But despite everything latest events, in St. Petersburg in 1915, the Complete Works of Bunin in six volumes was published by the publishing house of A.F. Marx. As the author wrote, it “includes everything that I consider more or less worthy of publication.” Bunin's books "John the Rydalec: Stories and Poems 1912 - 1913." (M., 1913), "The Cup of Life: Stories of 1913 - 1914." (M., 1915), "Mr. from San Francisco: Works of 1915 - 1916." (M., 1916) contain the best works 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. 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 steamship "Sparta", the Bunins sailed to Constantinople, forever leaving Russia - 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. Most of The Bunins spent years 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 a hole...” , "Rooster on the church cross." In 1929, the final book of Bunin, the poet, “Selected Poems,” was published in Paris, which established 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: “The Rose of Jericho” (Berlin, 1924), “Mitya’s Love” (Paris, 1925), “Sunstroke” (Paris, 1927), “The Tree of God” "(Paris, 1931) and others.
The writer often 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 classical traditions 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 most major work writer 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. He was immediately transferred to different languages peace. 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.”
On November 9, 1933, it arrived from Stockholm; news of the Nobel Prize being awarded to Bunin. Bunin was the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize. It was world recognition the talent of Ivan Bunin and Russian literature in general. Presentation Nobel Prize took place on December 10, 1933 in Stockholm. 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 Petropolis publishing house 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). 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 craftsmanship." Ivan Alekseevich considered the best of the stories in the collection " Clean Monday“, 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 with interest. Soviet Russia, speaks enthusiastically about the work of K. G. Paustovsky and A. T. Tvardovsky.
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 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.
Bunin knew many famous writers 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.). 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. Ivan Alekseevich recalled Lermontov’s poems, accompanying them with his assessment: “How extraordinary! It’s not like Pushkin or 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.
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:
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.
Since 1910, the center of Bunin’s work has become “the soul of the Russian man in in a deep sense, images of the psychic traits of the Slavs." Trying to guess the future of Russia after the revolutionary upheavals of 1905 - 1907. Bunin did not share the hopes of M. Gorky and other representatives of proletarian literature.
I.A. Bunin went through a lot historical events(three Russian revolutions, wars, emigration), which influenced his personal life and work. In his assessment of these events, Bunin was sometimes contradictory. During the revolution of 1905 - 1907, the writer, on the one hand, paid tribute to the motives of the protest, continued to collaborate with the “Znanievoites” who represented democratic forces, on the other hand, Bunin went to travel at a turning point in history and admitted that he was happy because he was “3000 miles from my homeland.” In Bunin’s wartime works, the feeling of the catastrophic nature of human life and the vanity of the search for “eternal” happiness intensifies. The contradictions of social life are reflected in the sharp contrast of characters, aggravated oppositions of the “basic” principles of being - life.
In 1907 - 1911 I.A. Bunin wrote a series of works, “The Shadow of the Bird,” in which diary entries, impressions of cities, architectural monuments, and paintings are intertwined with the legends of ancient peoples. In this cycle, Bunin for the first time looked at various events from the point of view of a “citizen of the world,” noting that during his travels he decided to “experience the melancholy of all times.”
Since the mid-1910s, I.A. Bunin moved away from Russian themes and the depiction of Russian character, his hero became man in general (the influence of Buddhist philosophy, which he became acquainted with in India and Ceylon), and the main theme was the suffering that arises from any contact with life, the insatiability of human desires. These are the stories “Brothers”, “Dreams of Chang”, some of these ideas are heard in the stories “The Mister from San Francisco”, “The Cup of Time”.
An expression of unfulfilled hopes, common tragedy life becomes for Bunin a feeling of love, in which he sees, however, the only justification of existence. The idea of love as highest value life will become the main pathos of the works of Bunin and the emigrant period. Love for Bunin’s heroes is “the ultimate, all-encompassing, it is the thirst to contain the entire visible and invisible world in your heart and again give it to someone” (“Brothers”). There cannot be eternal, “maximum” happiness; for Bunin it is always associated with a feeling of catastrophe, death (“Grammar of Love”, “Chang’s Dreams”, “Brothers”, stories of the 30-40s). In the love of Bunin's heroes? there is something incomprehensible, fatal and unrealizable, just as the happiness of life itself is unrealizable (“In Autumn”, etc.).
Traveling through Europe and the East, acquaintance with colonial countries, and the outbreak of the First World War sharpened the writer's rejection of the inhumanity of the bourgeois world and the feeling of the general catastrophic nature of reality. This attitude appeared in the story “The Gentleman from San Francisco” (1915).
The story “The Gentleman from San Francisco” arose in the creative mind of the writer when he read the news of the death of a millionaire who came to Capri and stayed in one of the hotels. The work was originally called "Death on Capri". Having changed the name, I.A. Bunin emphasized that the focus is on the figure of a nameless millionaire, fifty-eight years old, who went from San Francisco on vacation to Italy. Having become “decrepit,” “dry,” and unhealthy, he decided to spend time among his own kind. The American city of San Francisco was named after the Christian saint Francis of Assisi, who preached extreme poverty, asceticism, and renunciation of any property. The writer skillfully selects details (the episode with the cufflink) and uses the technique of contrast to contrast the outer respectability of the gentleman from San Francisco with his inner emptiness and squalor. With the death of a millionaire, a new starting point for time and events arises. Death seems to cut the story into two parts. This determines the originality of the composition.
Bunin's story evokes feelings of hopelessness. The writer emphasizes: “We must live today, without postponing happiness until tomorrow.”
No, it’s not the landscape that attracts me,
It’s not the colors that I’m trying to notice,
And what shines in these colors -
Love and joy of being."
I. Bunin
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born on October 22, 1870 in Voronezh, on Dvoryanskaya Street. The impoverished landowners Bunins belonged to a noble family (V.A. Zhukovsky and poetess Anna Bunina - ancestors of the Bunins).
The Bunins appeared in Voronezh three years before Vanya was born, to train their eldest sons: Yulia (13 years old) and Evgeniy (12 years old). Julius was unusually capable of languages and mathematics, he studied brilliantly, Evgeniy studied poorly, or rather, did not study at all, and left the gymnasium early; he was a gifted artist, but in those years he was not interested in painting, he was more interested in chasing pigeons. And about the younger oneMotherLyudmila Aleksandrovna said: Vanya was different from other children from birth, I always knew that he was special, no one has a soul like him.
In 1874, the Bunins decided to move from the city to the village to the Butyrki farm, in the Yeletsky district of the Oryol province, to the last estate of the family. This spring, Yuliy graduated from the gymnasium with a gold medal and in the fall was supposed to leave for Moscow to enter the mathematics department of the university.
In the village, little Vanya “heard enough” of songs and fairy tales from his mother and the servants.Buninwrote thathis memoriesOchildhoodyearsfrom seven are connected with the field, with peasant huts,theirinhabitants. He disappeared all day long in nearby villages, tended cattle with peasant children, and traveled at night.Imitating the shepherd, he and his sister Masha ate black bread, radishes, “rough and lumpy cucumbers,” and “without realizing it, they were communing with the earth itself, with everything sensual, material from which the world was created,” Bunin wrote in his autobiographical novel.” Life of Arsenyev." With a rare power of perception, he felt, by his own admission, the “divine splendor of the world,” which was the main motive of his work. Bunineven thenwas tallantly storyteller. When Ivan was eight years old, he wrote his first poem.
In his eleventh year he entered the Yelets Gymnasium. At first I studied well, everything came easy; could remember a whole page of poetry from one reading if it interested him. But from year to year I studied worse, in the 3rd grade I remained in the second year.He did not graduate from high school; he then studied independently under the guidance of his older brother Yuli Alekseevich, a candidate at the university.
In the autumn of 1889, Bunin began working in the editorial office of the newspaper "Orlovsky Vestnik",HeHe published his stories, poems, literary-critical articles and notes in it in the permanent section “Literature and Printing”. He lived by literary work and was in great need.In the editorial office, Bunin met Varvara Vladimirovna Pashchenko, who worked as a proofreader. His passionate love for her was at times overshadowed by quarrels. In 1891 she got married, but their marriage was not legalized, they lived without getting married, the father and mother did not want to marry their daughter to a poor poet. Bunin's youth novel formed the plot of the fifth book, "The Life of Arsenyev", which was published separately under the title "Lika".
Many people imagine Bunin as dry and cold. V.N. Muromtseva-Bunina says: “True, sometimes he wanted to seem like that - he was a first-class actor,” but “whoever did not know him completely cannot imagine what tenderness his soul was capable of.” He was one of those who did not open up to everyone. He was distinguished by the great strangeness of his nature. It is hardly possible to name another Russian writer who, with such selflessness, so impulsively expressed his feeling of love, as he did in letters to Varvara Pashchenko, combining in his dreams an image with all the beauty that he found in nature, as well as in poetry and music .
At the end of August 1892, Bunin and Pashchenko moved to Poltava, where Yuli Alekseevich worked as a statistician in the provincial zemstvo government. He took both Pashchenko and his younger brother into his management. In the Poltava zemstvo there was a group of intelligentsia involved in the populist movement of the 70-80s. The Bunin brothers were members of the editorial board of the Poltava Provincial Gazette, which had been under the influence of the progressive intelligentsia since 1894. Bunin published his works in this newspaper. By order of the zemstvo, he also wrote essays “about the fight against harmful insects, about the harvest of bread and herbs.” As he believed, so many of them were printed that they could make up three or four volumes.
He also contributed to the newspaper "Kievlyanin". Now Bunin's poems and prose began to appear more often in "thick" magazines - "Bulletin of Europe", "World of God", "Russian Wealth" - and attracted the attention of the luminaries of literary criticism. N.K. Mikhailovsky spoke well of the story “Village Sketch” (later entitled “Tanka”) and wrote about the author that he would make a “great writer.” At this time, Bunin's lyrics acquired a more objective character; autobiographical motifs characteristic of the first collection of poems (it was published in Orel as a supplement to the newspaper "Orelsky Vestnik" in 1891), according to the author himself, too intimate, gradually disappeared from his work, which was now receiving more complete forms.
In 1893-1894, Bunin, in his words, “from falling in love with Tolstoy as an artist,” was a Tolstoyan and “adapted to the Bondar craft.” He visited Tolstoyan colonies near Poltava and went to Sumy district to visit sectarians in the village. Pavlovka - "Malevans", in their views close to Tolstoyans. At the very end of 1893, he visited the Tolstoyans of the Khilkovo farm, which belonged to the prince. D. A. Khilkov. From there he went to Moscow to see Tolstoy and visited him one day between January 4 and 8, 1894. The meeting made a “stunning impression” on Bunin, as he wrote. Tolstoy dissuaded Bunin from “saying goodbye to the end.”In the spring and summer of 1894, Bunin traveled around Ukraine. “In those years,” he recalled, “I was in love with Little Russia, with its villages and steppes, I eagerly sought rapprochement with its people, I eagerly listened to their songs, their soul.” 1895 was a turning point in Bunin’s life: after the “flight” of Pashchenko, who left Bunin and married his friend Arseny Bibikov, he left his service in Poltava and went to St. Petersburg, and then to Moscow. November 21Bunin successfully gave a reading of the story "To the End of the World"at a literary eveningin the hall of the Credit Society in St. Petersburg.Hismeetings with writers were varied: D. V. Grigorovich andone of the creators of "Kozma Prutkov"A. M. Zhemchuzhnikov, who continued the classical 19th century; populists N.K. Mikhailovsky and N.N. Zlatovratsky; symbolists and decadents K. D. Balmont and F. K. Sologub. In December in Moscow, Bunin met the leader of the Symbolists Bryusov, and on December 12 in the “Big Moscow” hotel - with Chekhov. V. G. Korolenko was very interested in Bunin’s talent - Bunin met him on December 7, 1896 in St. Petersburg at the anniversary of K. M. Stanyukovich; In the summer of 1897, in Lustdorf, near Odessa, Bunin metwith Kuprin
Literary "Wednesdays" in Teleshov's house. 1902
Top row from left to right: Stepan Skitalets, Fyodor Chaliapin, Evgeny Chirikov
Bottom row: Maxim Gorky, Leonid Andreev, Ivan Bunin, Nikolai Teleshov
In June 1898, Bunin left for Odessa.There he married Anna Nikolaevna Tsakni (1879-1963). Family life did not go well and at the beginning of March 1900 they separated.
At the beginning of April 1899, Bunin visited Yalta, met with Chekhov, and met Gorky. On his visits to Moscow, Bunin attended N.D. Teleshov’s “Wednesdays,” which united prominent realist writers, and eagerly read his unpublished works; The atmosphere in this circle was friendly; no one was offended by frank, sometimes destructive criticism. On April 12, 1900, Bunin arrived in Yalta, where the Art Theater staged his “The Seagull,” “Uncle Vanya” and other performances for Chekhov. Bunin met Stanislavsky, Knipper, Rachmaninov, with whom he established a friendship forever.
The 1900s were a turning point in lifeBuninA,Heconqueredrecognitionin literature. He performed mainly with poetry.
On September 11, 1900, Bunin, together with Kurovsky, traveled to Berlin, Paris, to Switzerland, was in the Alps, climbed to great heights. Upon returning from abroad, he stopped in Yalta, lived in Chekhov’s house, and spent “an amazing week” with Chekhov, who arrived from Italy a little later. In Chekhov's family, Bunin became, as he put it, “one of our own”; He had an “almost brotherly relationship” with his sister Maria Pavlovna. Chekhov was always “gentle, friendly, and cared for him like an elder.”Since 1899,Bunin metwith Chekhov every yearin Yalta and Moscow until Anton Pavlovich’s departure abroad in 1904. Chekhov predicted that Bunin would become a “great writer.”“Great,” in his opinion, are “Dreams” and “Bonanza,” in which “there are places that are simply surprising.”
At the beginning of 1901, a collection of poems “Falling Leaves” was published, which attracted numerous critical reviews. Kuprin wrote about the “rare artistic subtlety” in conveying mood. For “Falling Leaves” and other poems, Blok recognized Bunin’s right to “one of the main places” among modern Russian poetry. "Falling Leaves" and Longfellow's translation of "The Song of Hiawatha" were awarded the Pushkin Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences, awarded to Bunin on October 19, 1903. Since 1902, the collected works of Bunin began to appear in separate numbered volumes in Gorky's publishing house "Znanie". And again travels - to Constantinople, to France and Italy, to the Caucasus. Ivan Bunin spoke about himself with a quote from Saadi: “I sought to survey the face of the world and leave in it the stamp of my soul.” Having grown up in the quiet of his parents' rural estates, he had some kind of irrepressible thirst for travel. The East especially attracted him. He was even seriously interested in religions for some time, but at the same time he knew the Holy Scriptures by heart. And he lived according to Christian commandments. “You must always hold a candle in front of you,” Bunin liked to repeat.
In November 1906, Ivan Bunin in the house of the writer Zaitsev, in Moscowmetwith Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva. INin the springIn 1907, Bunin and Vera Nikolaevna set off from Moscow to the countries of the East.They arrived there through Turkey, Greece, Egypt and on April 22 reached the shores of the Holy Land. “We celebrated the Holy Resurrection of Christ on the open sea,” recalled Muromtseva-Bunina. Ivan Alekseevich himself developed in detail the pilgrimage route to Palestine. The result of the pilgrimage was a book of essays - “travel poems in prose” - “Temple of the Sun”.
In Palestine, Ivan Alekseevich first saw the rose of Jericho. A nondescript gray-brown withered ball like our tumbleweed. But as soon as you put it in the water, immediatelyrosebegins to open up, spreading its green branches with barely pinkish tips. About Bunin’s depiction of the East, Yu. I. Aikhenvald wrote: “He is captivated by the East, the “luminous countries”, which he now recalls with the unusual beauty of the lyrical word...Buninknows how to findfor the East, biblical and modern, there is a corresponding style, solemn and sometimes as if bathed in the sultry waves of the sun, decorated with precious inlays and arabesque imagery; and when we are talking about gray-haired antiquity, lost in the distances of religion and mythology, then you get the impression that some majestic chariot of humanity is moving in front of us."Bunin's prose and poetry acquired new colors. These new features permeated Bunin's prose stories "Shadow of the Bird." The Academy of Sciences awarded Bunin the second Pushkin Prize in 1909 for poems and translations of Byron; the third - also for poetry. In the same year, Bunin was elected honorary academician.
The story "The Village", published in 1910, caused great controversy and was the beginning of Bunin's enormous popularity. “The Village,” the first major work, was followed by other stories and short stories, as Bunin wrote, “sharply depicting the Russian soul, its light and dark, often tragic foundations,” and his “merciless” works evoked “passionate hostile responses.” During these years, I felt how my literary powers were becoming stronger every day." Gorky wrote to Bunin that “no one has taken the village so deeply, so historically.” Bunin widely captured the life of the Russian people, touches on problems of historical, national, and what was the topic of the day - war and revolution - depicts, in his opinion, “in the footsteps of Radishchev”, a contemporary village without any beauty, after Bunin’s story, with its “merciless truth”, based on a deep knowledge of the “peasant kingdom”, It became impossible to portray the peasants in the tone of populist idealization.
Bunin developed his view of the Russian village partly under the influence of travel, “after a sharp slap in the face abroad.” The village is not depicted as motionless, new trends penetrate it, new people appear, and Tikhon Ilyich himself thinks about his existence as a shopkeeper and innkeeper. The story “The Village” (which Bunin also called a novel), like his work as a whole, affirmed the realistic traditions of Russian classical literature in a century when they were attacked and rejected by modernists and decadents. It captures the richness of observations and colors, the strength and beauty of the language, the harmony of the drawing, the sincerity of tone and truthfulness. But "Village" is not traditional. People appeared in it, mostly new to Russian literature: the Krasov brothers, Tikhon’s wife, Rodka, Molodaya, Nikolka Gray and his son Deniska, girls and women at Molodaya and Deniska’s wedding. Bunin himself noted this.
In mid-December 1910, Bunin and Vera Nikolaevna went to Egypt and further to the tropics - to Ceylon, where they stayed for half a month. We returned to Odessa in mid-April 1911. The diary of their voyage is “Many Waters.” The stories “Brothers” and “City of the King of Kings” are also about this journey. What the Englishman felt in “Brothers” is autobiographical. According to Bunin, travel played a “huge role” in his life; Regarding travel, he even developed, as he said, “a certain philosophy.” The 1911 diary “Many Waters,” published almost unchanged in 1925-26, is a high example of lyrical prose, new to Bunin and Russian literature.
He wrote that “this is something like Maupassant.” Close to this prose are the stories immediately preceding the diary - “The Shadow of the Bird” - poems in prose, as the author himself defined their genre. From their diary - a transition to "Sukhodol", which synthesized the experience of the author of "The Village" in creating everyday prose and lyrical prose. “Sukhodol” and the stories, soon written, marked a new creative rise of Bunin after “The Village” - in the sense of great psychological depth and complexity of images, as well as the novelty of the genre. In Sukhodol, in the foreground is not historical Russia with its way of life, as in The Village, but “the soul of a Russian person in the deep sense of the word, an image of the features of the Slav’s psyche,” said Bunin.
Bunin followed his own path, did not join any fashionable literary movements or groups, in his words, “did not throw out any banners” and did not proclaim any slogans. Critics noted Bunin's powerful language, his art of raising “everyday phenomena of life” into the world of poetry. For him there were no “low” topics unworthy of the poet’s attention. His poems have a great sense of history. A reviewer for the magazine "Bulletin of Europe" wrote: "His historical style is unparalleled in our poetry... Prosaism, accuracy, beauty of the language are brought to the limit. There is hardly another poet whose style would be so unadorned, everyday, as here; throughout dozens of pages you will not find a single epithet, not a general comparison, not a single metaphor... such a simplification of poetic language without damage to poetry is only possible by true talent... In terms of pictorial accuracy, Mr. Bunin has no rivals among Russian poets " .
The book "The Cup of Life" (1915) touches on the deep problems of human existence. The French writer, poet and literary critic Rene Gil wrote to Bunin in 1921 about the “Cup of Life” created in French: “How complex everything is psychologically! And at the same time - this is your genius, everything is born from simplicity and from the very accurate observation of reality: an atmosphere is created where you breathe something strange and disturbing, emanating from the very act of life! This kind of suggestion, the suggestion of that secret that surrounds the action, we also know in Dostoevsky, but with him it comes from the abnormality, imbalance of the characters. , because of his nervous passion, which hovers, like some kind of exciting aura, around some cases of madness, with you it’s the other way around: everything is a radiation of life, full of forces, and disturbs precisely with its own forces, primitive forces, where complexity, something, lurks under the visible unity. inescapable, violating the usual but clear norm."
Bunin developed his ethical ideal under the influenceessaysSocrates, expounded by his students Xenophon and Plato. He read the semi-philosophical, semi-poetic work of the “divine Plato” (Pushkin) in the form of a dialogue - “Phidon”. Bunin wrote in his diary on August 21, 1917: “How much Socrates said in Indian and Jewish philosophy!” " Last minutes Socrates, as always, worried me very much."Bunin was fascinated by his doctrine of value human personality. And he saw in each of the people, to some extent, “concentration ... of high forces,” to the knowledge of which, Bunin wrote in the story “Returning to Rome,” Socrates called for. In his fascination with Socrates, he followed Leo Tolstoy, who, as V. Ivanov said, went “following the paths of Socrates in search of the norm of goodness.” Tolstoy was close to Bunin in that for him the concepts of goodness and beauty, ethics and aesthetics were indissoluble. “Beauty is like the crown of goodness,” wrote Tolstoy. Affirmation of eternal values - goodness and beautyin creativity, gaveBunina feeling of connection, unity with the past, historical continuityof existence. “Brothers”, “Mr. from San Francisco”, “Looping Ears”, based on real facts of modern life, are not only accusatory, but also philosophical. "Brothers" is a story on the eternal themes of love, life and death, and not just about the dependent existence of colonial peoples. The embodiment of the concept of this story is equally based on the impressions of the trip to Ceylon and on the myth of Mara - the legend of the god of life and death. Mara is the evil demon of Buddhists - at the same time - the personification of existence. Bunin took a lot of prose and poetry from Russian and world folklore; his attention was drawn to Buddhist and Muslim legends, Syrian legends, Chaldean, Egyptian myths and myths of idolaters of the Ancient East, legends of the Arabs.
UBuninbut it was hugesense of homeland, language, history. He said: all these sublime words, wondrous beauty of the song, “cathedrals - all this is needed, all this was created over the centuries...”. Folk speechbecameone of the sources of his creativity.
In May 1917 Buninwith my wifeWe arrived in the village of Glotovo, in the Vasilyevskoye estate, Oryol province. In October they left for Moscow, lived on Povarskaya (now Vorovskogo Street), in Baskakov’s house No. 26, with Vera Nikolaevna’s parents. It was an alarming time; a gun thundered past their windows along Povarskaya. Bunin lived in Moscow during the winter of 1917-1918. A guard was set up in the lobby of the building where the Muromtsevs had an apartment; the doors were locked, the gates were blocked with logs. Bunin was also on duty.
Bunin became involved in literary life, which, despite all the rapidity of social, political and military events, despite devastation and famine, did not stop. Heparticipated in the work"Book publishing of writers", in the literary circle "Wednesday", in the Art circle.
On May 21, 1918, Bunin and Vera Nikolaevna left Moscow - through Orsha and Minsk to Kyiv, then to Odessa; in January 1920 they sailed to Constantinople, then via Sofia and Belgrade they arrived in Paris on March 28, 1920. Began for many years emigration - in Paris and in the south of France, in Grasse, near Cannes. Bunin told his wife that “he cannot live in the new world, that he belongs to the old world, to the world of Goncharov, Tolstoy, Moscow, St. Petersburg; that poetry is only there, and in the new world he does not grasp it.”Ivan Alekseevich returned to literary creativity slowly. Longing for Russia and uncertainty about the future depressed him. Because firstreleased abroadThe collection of stories "Scream" consisted only of stories written in Bunin's happiest time - in 1911-1912.
And yet the writer gradually overcame the feeling of oppression. In the story “The Rose of Jericho” there are such heartfelt words: “There is no separation and loss as long as my soul, my Love, Memory lives! I immerse the roots and stems of my past into the living water of the heart, into the pure moisture of love, sadness and tenderness... "WritteneBuninin exile:“Mitya’s Love” (1924), “Sunstroke” (1925), “The Case of Cornet Elagin” (1925), “The Life of Arsenyev” (1927-1929, 1933) works marked new achievements in Russian prose. Bunin himself spoke about the “piercing lyricism” of “Mitya’s Love.” This is what is most exciting about his stories and stories of the last three decades. They also - one might say in the words of their author - have a certain “wisdom”, poetic quality. The prose of these years excitingly conveys a sensory perception of life. Contemporaries noted the great philosophical meaning of such works as "Mitya's Love" and "The Life of Arsenyev." In them, Bunin broke through “to a deep metaphysical feeling of the tragic nature of man.” Paustovsky characterized "The Life of Arsenyev" as "one of the most remarkable phenomena in world literature."
In 1927-30, Bunin wrote short stories ("Elephant", "Sky above the Wall" and many others) - a page, half a page, and sometimes several lines, they were included in the book "God's Tree". What Bunin wrote in this genre was the result of a bold search for new forms of extremely laconic writing, which began not with Tergenev, as some of his contemporaries claimed, but with Tolstoy and Chekhov. Professor of Sofia University P. Bicilli wrote: “It seems to me that the collection “The Tree of God” is the most perfect of all Bunin’s creations and the most revealing. No other one has such eloquent laconicism, such clarity and subtlety of writing, such creative freedom, such truly royal domination over matter. Therefore, no other contains so much data for studying his method, for understanding what lies at its basis and on what it, in essence, is exhausted. This is the most seemingly simple, but also the most rare. and a valuable quality that unites Bunin with the most truthful Russian writers, with Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov: honesty, hatred of all falsehood..."
In 1933 Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for the rigorous artistic talent with which he recreated the typically Russian character in literary prose.”. When Bunin came to receive the bonus,to Stockholme himthey recognized it because Bunin’s photographs could be seen in the newspaper, in store windows, and on cinema screens. Swedeslooked around, seeing a Russian writer. Bunin pulled his lambskin cap over his eyes and grumbled:What's happened? A perfect success for the tenor.
Writer Boris Zaitsev spoke about Bunin's Nobel days: "... You see, well, we were some kind of last people there, emigrants, and suddenly an emigrant writer was awarded an international prize! A Russian writer!.. And they awarded it not for some political writings, but for artistic ones... At that time I was writing in the newspaper "Vozpozhdenie"... So I was urgently assigned to write an editorial about receiving the Nobel Prize. It was very late, I remember that it was ten in the evening when they told me this. For the first time in my life, I went to the printing house and wrote at night... I remember that I came out in such an excited state (from the printing house), went to place d'Italie and there, you know, I went around all the bistros and drank a glass in each bistro cognac for the health of Ivan Bunin!.. I came home in such a cheerful mood... at about three in the morning, four, maybe..."
In 1936, Bunin went on a trip to Germany and other countries to meet with publishers and translators. In the German city of Lindau, for the first time he encountered fascist ways; Bunin was arrested and unceremoniously searched. In October 1939, Bunin settled in Grasse at the Villa Jeannette,Herehe lived through the entire war and wrote the book “Dark Alleys” - . According to Bunin thisstories about love“about its “dark” and most often very gloomy and cruel alleys,” she“speaks about the tragic and about many tender and beautiful things - I think that this is the best and most original thing that I have written in my life.”
Under the Germans, Bunin did not publish anything, he lived in great lack of money and hunger. He treated the conquerors with hatred and rejoiced at the victories of the Soviet and allied troops. In 1945 he said goodbye to Grasse forever and returned to Paris in May.
Ivan Alekseevich repeatedly expressed his desire to return to Russia; in 1946 he called the decree of the Soviet government “On the restoration of the citizenship of the USSR to subjects of the former Russian Empire...” a “magnanimous measure”, but Zhdanov’s decree on the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad” (1946) ), which trampled Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Zoshchenko, led to Bunin forever abandoning his intention to return to his homeland.
Your last diary entry Ivan Alekseevich did on May 2, 1953. “This is still amazing to the point of tetanus! In some, very short time, I will be gone - and the affairs and fate of everything, everything will be unknown to me!”
At two o'clock in the morning from November 7 to 8, 1953, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin died quietly. The funeral service was solemn - in the Russian church on Daru Street in Paris with a large crowd of people. All newspapers - both Russian and French - published extensive obituaries.
In his memoirs, Bunin wrote: “I was born too late. If I had been born earlier, my writing memories would not have been like this. I would not have had to go through... 1905, then the First World War, followed by the 17th year and its continuation , Lenin, Stalin, Hitler... How can one not envy our forefather Noah! Only one flood befell him..."
You are a thought, you are a dream. Through the smoky snowstorm
Crosses are running - arms outstretched.
I listen to the pensive spruce -
A melodious ringing... Everything is just thoughts and sounds!
What lies in the grave, is that you?
Marked by separations and sadness
Your hard way. Now they are gone. Crosses
They keep only the ashes. Now you are a thought. You are eternal.
http://bunin.niv.ru/bunin/bio/biografiya-1.htm
He opened new horizons for the most demanding readers. He skillfully wrote captivating stories and stories. He had a keen sense of literature and his native language. Ivan Bunin is a writer, thanks to whom people looked at love differently.
On October 10, 1870, a boy, Vanya, was born in Voronezh. He grew up and was brought up in the family of a landowner in the Oryol and Tula provinces, who became impoverished because of his love for cards. However, despite this fact, aristocracy was felt in the writer for a reason, because his family roots lead us to the poetess A.P. Bunina and V.A. Zhukovsky’s father, A.I. Bunin. The Bunin family was a worthy representative of the noble families of Russia.
Three years later, the boy’s family moved to an estate on the Butyrka farm in Oryol province. Many of Bunin’s childhood memories are associated with this place, which we can see between the lines in his stories. For example, in “Antonov Apples” he describes with love and reverence the family nests of relatives and friends.
Youth and education
In 1881, having successfully passed the exams, Bunin entered the Yelets Gymnasium. The boy showed interest in learning and was a very capable student, but this did not apply to the natural and exact sciences. In his letter to his older brother, he wrote that the mathematics exam was “the most terrible” for him. He did not graduate from high school, as he was expelled due to absence from the holidays. He continued his studies with his brother Julius at his parental estate Ozerki, with whom he later became very close. Knowing the child’s preferences, the relatives focused on the humanities.
His first literary works date back to this period. At 15, the young writer creates the novel “Passion,” but it is not published anywhere. The first published poem was “Over the grave of S. Ya. Nadson” in the magazine “Rodina” (1887).
Creative path
This is where the period of Ivan Bunin’s wanderings begins. Beginning in 1889, he worked for 3 years in the Orlovsky Vestnik magazine, which published his short literary works and articles. Later he moves to his brother in Kharkov, where he gets him a job in the provincial government as a librarian.
In 1894 he went to Moscow, where he met Leo Tolstoy. As mentioned earlier, the poet already then subtly senses the surrounding reality, which is why in the stories “Antonov Apples”, “New Road” and “Epitaph” nostalgia for the bygone era will be so keenly traced and dissatisfaction with the urban environment will be felt.
1891 is the year of publication of Bunin’s first collection of poems, in which the reader first encounters the theme of the bitterness and sweetness of love, which permeates the works dedicated to the unhappy love for Paschenko.
In 1897, a second book appeared in St. Petersburg - “To the End of the World and Other Stories.”
Ivan Bunin also distinguished himself as a translator of works by Alcaeus, Saadi, Francesco Petrarch, Adam Mickiewicz and George Byron.
The writer's hard work yielded results. In Moscow in 1898, the poetry collection “Under the Open Air” appeared. In 1900, a collection of poems “Falling Leaves” was published. In 1903, Bunin was awarded the Pushkin Prize, which he received from St. Petersburg Academy Sci.
Every year the talented writer enriched literature more and more. 1915 is the year of his creative success. His most famous works were published: “The Mister from San Francisco”, “Easy Breathing”, “Chang’s Dreams” and “The Grammar of Love”. Dramatic events The craftsmen in the country were very inspiring.
In his book of life he began new page after moving to Constantinople in the 20s. Later he ends up in Paris as a political emigrant. He did not accept the coup and condemned the new government with all his heart. The most significant novel created during the period of emigration is “The Life of Arsenyev.” For it, the author received the Nobel Prize in 1933 (the first for a Russian writer). This is a grandiose event in our history and a big step forward for Russian literature.
During the Second World War, the writer lives very poorly in the Villa Janet. His work abroad does not find the same response as at home, and the author himself suffers from longing for his native land. Latest literary work Bunin is published in 1952.
Personal life
- The first was Varvara Pashchenko. This love story cannot be called happy. At first, the obstacle to their relationship was the young lady’s parents, who were categorically against their daughter’s marriage to a failed young man, who was also a year younger than her. Then the writer himself became convinced of the dissimilarity of the characters. As a result, Pashchenko married a rich landowner, with whom she had a close relationship secret from Bunin. The author dedicated poetry to this gap.
- In 1898, Ivan married the daughter of the migrant revolutionary A. N. Tsakni. It was she who became a “sunstroke” for the writer. However, the marriage did not last long at all, since the Greek woman did not experience the same strong attraction to her husband.
- His third muse was his second wife, Vera Muromtseva. This woman truly became Ivan’s guardian angel. Just as after the wreck of a ship during a storm there is a calm lull, so Vera appeared at the most necessary moment for Bunin. They lived in marriage for 46 years.
- But everything was going smoothly only until Ivan Alekseevich brought his student, the aspiring writer Galina Kuznetsova, into the house. It was a fatal love - both were not free, both were separated by a gap in age (she was 26, and he was 56 years old). Galina left her husband for him, but Bunin was not ready to do the same with Vera. So the three of them lived together for 10 years until Marga appeared. Bunin was in despair: his second wife was taken away by another woman. This event was a big blow for him.
Death
IN recent years In his life, Bunin is nostalgic for Russia and really wants to go back. But his plans never came to fruition. November 8, 1953 is the date of death of the great writer of the Silver Age, Ivan Bunin.
He made a huge contribution to the development literary creativity in Russia, became a symbol of Russian emigrant prose of the 20th century.
If you were missing anything in this article, write in the comments and we’ll add it.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is a very extraordinary personality and in many ways turned the course of development of everything around literary world. Of course, many critics with their characteristic skepticism regard the achievements of the great author, but to deny his significance in all Russian literature It's simply impossible. Like any poet or writer, the secrets of creating great and memorable works are closely connected with the biography of Ivan Alekseevich himself, and his rich and multifaceted life largely influenced both his immortal lines and all Russian literature in general.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. Back in early childhood the family decided to move from Voronezh to the Oryol province, where Ivan spent his early years, without attending any educational institutions until the age of eleven - the boy successfully studied 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 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 that studying at home was much more pleasant and productive for him. 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 V educational process became the elder brother Julius, who 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.
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 various 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 other 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 the very last days the poet was 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 great personality, which 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.
Women's 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 the village simple life, native spaces and surrounding nature. During the Revolution, the writer, naturally, described everything that was happening in his beloved country - this is what became the real heritage not only of the Russian classical literature, but also throughout Russian 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.
