Ivan Bunin

1. In his youth, Ivan Bunin was a Tolstoyan. He dreamed of "a clean, healthy," kind "life among nature, by his own labors, in simple clothes . " The writer visited the settlements of the followers of the Russian classic near Poltava. In 1894 he met Leo Tolstoy himself . This meeting made a "stunning impression" on Bunin . Tolstoy advised the young writer not to “take it easy,” but to always act according to his conscience: “Do you want to live a simple, working life? This is good, just don’t force yourself, don’t make a uniform out of it, in any life you can be a good person .

2. Bunin loved to travel. He traveled all over the South of Russia, was in many eastern countries, knew Europe well, wandered around Ceylon and Africa. On trips, he was "occupied with psychological, religious, historical issues", he "sought to survey the faces of the world and leave in it the stamp of his soul" . Bunin created some of his works under the influence of travel impressions. For example, while traveling on a steamer from Italy, he had the idea for the story "The Gentleman from San Francisco", and after a trip to Ceylon, he composed the story "Brothers".

3. Bunin was outraged by city writers who spoke about the countryside in their works. Many of them had never been to the countryside and did not understand what they were writing about.

One well-known poet ... said in his poems that he was walking, “dismantling the ears of millet”, while such a plant does not exist in nature: as you know, there is millet, the grain of which is millet, and the ears (more precisely, panicles) grow so low that it is impossible to disassemble them by hand on the go; another ( Balmont ) compared the harrier, an evening bird of the breed of owls, with gray-haired plumage, mysteriously quiet, slow and completely silent during flights, with passion (“and the passion left like a flying harrier”), admired the flowering of the plantain (“the plantain is all in bloom!”), although the plantain, which grows on the field roads with small green leaves, never blooms. Ivan Bunin

4. In 1918, a decree “On the introduction of a new spelling” was issued, which changed the spelling rules and excluded several letters from the Russian alphabet. Bunin did not accept this reform and continued to write in accordance with the old spelling. He insisted that "Dark Alleys" be published according to pre-revolutionary rules, but the publisher released the book according to new ones and confronted the author with a fait accompli. The writer even refused the American publishing house named after Chekhov to publish his books in the new spelling.

5. Ivan Bunin was very sensitive to his appearance. Writer Nina Berberova in her autobiography recalled how Bunin argued that he was more beautiful than Alexander Blok . And Vladimir Nabokov noted that Bunin was very worried about age-related changes: “When I met him, he was painfully occupied with his own aging. From the very first words we said to each other, he noted with pleasure that he was standing straighter than me, although thirty years older .

6. Ivan Bunin had an unloved letter - "f". He tried to use it as little as possible, so in his books there were almost no heroes in whose name this letter would be present. Literary chronicler Alexander Bahrakh recalled how Bunin told him: “You know, they almost called me Philip. <...> What could still happen - "Philip Bunin". How vile that sounds! I probably wouldn't publish it . "

7. In the USSR, the first after the revolution, the five-volume Collected Works of Bunin, shortened and cleaned out by censorship, was published only in 1956. It did not include "Cursed Days", letters and diaries of the writer - this journalism was the main reason for hushing up the author's work in his homeland. It was only during perestroika that the author's forbidden works were published in full.

The Second World War found the Bunins in the French city of Grasse. By that time, the money from the Nobel Prize had ended, and the family had to live from hand to mouth.

Cracked fingers from the cold, no bathing, no washing of feet, nauseating soups made from white turnips <…> I was “rich” - now, by the will of fate, I suddenly became a beggar, like Job. Was "famous all over the world" - now no one in the world needs it - the world is not up to me! Ivan Bunin

Meanwhile, Bunin continued to work. The 74-year-old writer noted in his diary: “Lord, prolong my strength for my lonely, poor life in this beauty and work!” In 1944, he completed the collection Dark Alleys, which included 38 stories. Among them - "Clean Monday", "Ballad", "Muse", "Business cards". Later, nine years later, he supplemented the collection with two more stories, "In the Spring, in Judea" and "Overnight". The author himself considered the story “Dark Alleys” to be his best work.

The war reconciled the writer with the hated Bolshevik regime. Everything went by the wayside, the motherland came to the fore. Bunin bought a map of the world and noted on it the course of hostilities, which he read about in the newspapers. He celebrated the defeat of the Nazi army at Stalingrad as a personal victory, and during the days of the Tehran meeting, surprised at himself, he wrote in his diary: which didn't happen on the road . At the end of the war, the writer often thought about returning to his homeland.

In May 1945, the Bunins arrived in Paris, where they celebrated the day of victory over Nazi Germany. Here, in 1946, they learned about their restoration of citizenship of the USSR and even wanted to return. In a letter to the prose writer Mark Aldanov, Bunin wrote: “But here, too, a beggarly, painful, anxious existence awaits us. So, after all, there is only one thing left: home. This, as you can hear, they really want and promise mountains of gold in every sense. But how do you decide? I'll wait, I'll think ... " But after the Decree" On the magazines "Zvezda" and "Leningrad" of 1946, in which the Central Committee of the USSR criticized the work of Mikhail Zoshchenko and Anna Akhmatova , the writer changed his mind about returning.

Ivan Bunin died in Paris on November 8, 1953. The writer was buried in the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery .

During the years of emigration, Bunin worked hard, his books were published almost every year. He wrote the stories "The Rose of Jericho", "Mitina's Love", "Sunstroke" , "God's Tree". In his works, Bunin sought to combine poetic and prose language, so figurative details of the second plan occupied an important place in them. For example, in "Sunstroke" the author picturesquely described the white-hot Volga landscape.

In 1933, Ivan Bunin completed the most significant work of the foreign period of creativity - the novel "The Life of Arseniev". It was for him that Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in the same year. The name of the author became world famous, but his fame was overshadowed by the fact that in Soviet Russia this achievement was hushed up, and his works were not published.

The funds received from the Swedish Academy did not make Bunin rich. He gave a significant part of the prize to those in need.#

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. Now this is especially difficult. Do you know how many letters I received asking for help? In the shortest time, up to 2000 such letters came. Ivan Bunin

Bunin perceived the October Revolution and the Civil War as a catastrophe in the life of the country and compatriots. From Petrograd, he moved first to Moscow , then to Odessa. In parallel, he kept a diary in which he wrote a lot about the destructive power of the Russian revolution and the power of the Bolsheviks. Later, a book with these memories was published abroad under the title Cursed Days.

“Having drunk the cup of unspeakable mental suffering,” Bunin left Russia in early 1920. Together with his wife, he sailed on a Greek steamer from Odessa to Constantinople, from there - via Sofia and Belgrade - to Paris. At that time, Russian emigrant journalists and exiled writers lived in the French capital, which is why it was often called the "district of Russian literature."

Everything that remained in the USSR seemed alien and hostile to the writer. Abroad, he began to conduct social and political activities and soon became one of the main figures of the emigrant opposition. In 1920, Bunin became a member of the Parisian Union of Russian Writers and Journalists, wrote to the political and literary newspaper Vozrozhdenie and called for the fight against Bolshevism. At home, for his anti-Soviet position, the writer was nicknamed the White Guard.

Abroad, Bunin began to publish collections of his pre-revolutionary works. European critics have accepted these books cordially.

Bunin is a real Russian talent, bleeding, uneven, and at the same time courageous and big. His book contains several stories that are worthy of Dostoevsky in strength . French monthly art and literature magazine La Nervie, December 1921

In 1900, Ivan Bunin left Anna Tsakni, who was pregnant at that time. A few years after the birth of the writer's child became seriously ill and died. Ivan Bunin had no more children.

The second and last wife of Ivan Bunin was Vera Muromtseva. The writer met her in 1906 at a literary evening. Together they spent almost every day, went to exhibitions, literary readings. A year later, they began to live together, but they could not legalize their relationship: Anna Tsakni did not give Bunin a divorce.

Ivan Bunin and Vera Muromtseva got married only in 1922, in Paris. Together they lived for almost half a century. Vera Muromtseva became a devoted friend of Bunin for life, together they went through all the hardships of emigration and war.

In 1894, Varvara Pashchenko left Ivan Bunin and married the wealthy landowner Arseny Bibikov, a friend of Bunin. The writer was very worried - the older brothers even feared for his life. The agony of first love Ivan Bunin later reflected in the last part of the novel "The Life of Arseniev" - "Lika".

The first official wife of the writer was Anna Tsakni. Bunin proposed to her a few days after they met. In 1899 they got married. By that time, Tsakni was 19 years old, and Bunin was 27. However, some time passed after the wedding, and family life went wrong. Tsakni blamed her husband for callousness, he blamed her for frivolity.

It is impossible to say that she is a complete fool, but her nature is childishly stupid and self-confident - this is the fruit of my long and most impartial observations. <...> Not a single word of mine, not a single opinion of mine about anything - she does not even put it in the market. She is… as undeveloped as a puppy, I repeat to you. And therefore there is no hope that I can develop her poor head in any way, no hope for other interests. From a letter from Ivan Bunin to his brother Yuliy Bunin

Being a true and great poet, he stands apart from the general movement in the field of Russian verse. <...> But on the other hand, he has an area in which he has reached the end points of perfection. This is the area of ​​pure painting, brought to the extreme limits that are accessible to the elements of the word. Maximilian Voloshin

Being a true and great poet, he stands apart from the general movement in the field of Russian verse. <...> But on the other hand, he has an area in which he has reached the end points of perfection. This is the area of ​​pure painting, brought to the extreme limits that are accessible to the elements of the word. Maximilian Voloshin

The first love of Ivan Bunin was Varvara Pashchenko. He met her at the editorial office of the Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper. “Tall, with very beautiful features, wearing pince-nez,” she at first seemed to the young writer arrogant and overly emancipated - but soon Bunin was already writing letters to his brother, in which he painted the mind and talents of his beloved. However, her father did not allow Varvara Pashchenko to officially marry Bunin, and she herself did not think about marriage with an aspiring writer.

I love him very much and appreciate him as an intelligent and good person, but we will never have a family, peaceful life. It's better, no matter how hard, now we disperse than in a year or six months. <...> All this inexpressibly oppresses me, I lose both energy and strength. <...> He constantly says that I belong to a vulgar environment, that I have both bad tastes and habits rooted - and this is all true, but again it is strange to demand that I discard them like old gloves ... If you knew, how hard it is for me! From a letter from Varvara Pashchenko to Yuli Bunin, brother of Ivan Bunin

Being a true and great poet, he stands apart from the general movement in the field of Russian verse. <...> But on the other hand, he has an area in which he has reached the end points of perfection. This is the area of ​​pure painting, brought to the extreme limits that are accessible to the elements of the word. Maximilian Voloshin

In 1905, the first Russian revolution broke out, devastating peasant riots swept the country. The writer did not support what was happening. After the events of that time, Bunin wrote "a whole series of works that sharply depict the Russian soul, its peculiar interweaving, its light and dark, but almost always tragic foundations . "

Among them are the stories "Village" and "Dry Valley", the stories "Strength", "Good Life", "Prince in Princes", "Sand Shoes".

In 1909, the Academy of Sciences awarded Ivan Bunin the Pushkin Prize for the third volume of the Collected Works and translation of George Byron's mystery drama Cain. Soon after that, the writer received the title of honorary academician in the category of fine literature, and in 1912 he became an honorary member of the Society of Russian Literature Lovers.

Ivan Bunin was born on October 22, 1870 in Voronezh . Three and a half years later, the family moved to the Butyrka family estate in the Oryol province. Here, "in the deepest silence of the field" , the boy got acquainted with folklore . During the day he worked with the peasants in the fields, and in the evenings he stayed with them to listen to folk tales and legends. From the time of the move, Bunin's creative path began. Here, at the age of eight, he composed his first poem, followed by essays and short stories. The young writer imitated in his manner either Alexander Pushkin or Mikhail Lermontov .

In 1881, the Bunin family moved to the Ozerki estate - "a large and rather prosperous village with three landlord estates sunk in gardens, with several ponds and spacious pastures . " In the same year, Ivan Bunin entered the Yelets Men's Gymnasium. The first impressions of life in the county town were bleak: “The transition from a completely free life, from mother’s worries to life in the city, to ridiculous strictness in the gymnasium and to the hard life of those philistine and merchant houses where I had to live as a freeloader was also abrupt . ”

Bunin studied at the gymnasium for a little over four years: in the winter of 1886, after the holidays, he did not return to classes. At home, he became even more interested in literature. In 1887, in the St. Petersburg newspaper "Rodina" Bunin published his poems - "Over the grave of S. Ya. Nadson" and "The Village Beggar" , and a little later - the stories "Two Wanderers" and "Nefedka". In his work, he constantly turned to childhood memories.

In 1889, Ivan Bunin moved to Orel, in central Russia, “where the richest Russian language was formed and from where almost all the greatest Russian writers, led by Turgenev and Tolstoy, came out . ” Here, the 18-year-old writer entered the service of the provincial newspaper Orlovsky Vestnik, where he worked as a proofreader, wrote theater reviews and articles. In Orel, Bunin's first poetry collection Poems was published, in which the young poet reflected on philosophical topics and described Russian nature.

Ivan Bunin traveled a lot and taught foreign languages ​​on foreign trips. So the writer began to translate poetry. Among the authors were the ancient Greek poet Alkey, Saadi, Francesco Petrarch, Adam Mickiewicz, George Byron, Henry Longfellow. In parallel, he continued to write himself : in 1898 he published a poetry collection Under the Open Air, three years later - a collection of poems Falling Leaves. For Falling Leaves and the translation of The Song of Hiawatha, Henry Longfellow Bunin received the Pushkin Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences. However, in the poetic environment, many considered the poet an "old-fashioned landscape painter."