In this material we will look briefly at the biography of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin: only the most important things from the life of the famous Russian writer and poet.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin(1870-1953) - famous Russian writer and poet, one of the main writers of the Russian diaspora, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
On October 10 (22), 1870, a boy was born into the noble, but at the same time poor family of the Bunins, who was named Ivan. Almost immediately after birth, the family moved to an estate in the Oryol province, where Ivan spent his childhood.
Ivan received the basics of education at home. In 1881, young Bunin entered the nearest gymnasium, Yeletskaya, but was unable to graduate and in 1886 returned to the estate. His brother Julius helped Ivan with his education, he studied excellently and graduated from the university as one of the best in his class.
After returning from high school, Ivan Bunin became intensely interested in literature, and his first poems were published already in 1888. A year later, Ivan moved to Oryol and got a job as a proofreader in a newspaper. Soon the first book was published with the simple title “Poems”, in which, in fact, the poems of Ivan Bunin were collected. Thanks to this collection, Ivan gained fame, and his works were published in the collections “Under the Open Air” and “Leaf Fall.”
Ivan Bunin was not only interested in poetry - he also wrote prose. For example, the stories “Antonov Apples”, “Pines”. And this is all for good reason, because Ivan was personally acquainted with Gorky (Peshkov), Chekhov, Tolstoy and other famous writers of that time. Ivan Bunin's prose was published in the collections "Complete Works" in 1915.
In 1909, Bunin became an honorary academician of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.
Ivan was quite critical of the idea of revolution and left Russia. His entire subsequent life consisted of traveling - not only to different countries, but also to continents. However, this did not stop Bunin from doing what he loved. On the contrary, he wrote his best works: “Mitya’s Love”, “Sunstroke”, as well as the best novel “The Life of Arsenyev”, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933.
Before his death, Bunin was working on a literary portrait of Chekhov, but was often ill and was unable to complete it. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin died on November 8, 1953 and was buried in Paris.
Bunin Ivan Alekseevich (1870-1953), prose writer, poet, translator.
Born on October 22, 1870 in Voronezh into a well-born but impoverished noble family. Bunin spent his childhood partly in Voronezh, partly on an ancestral estate near Yelets (now in the Lipetsk region).
Absorbing traditions and songs from the courtyards, he early discovered artistic abilities and rare impressionability. Having entered the Yelets gymnasium in 1881, Bunin was forced to leave it in 1886: there was not enough money to pay for training. The course at the gymnasium, and partly at the university, was completed at home under the guidance of his older brother, member of the People’s Will, Yuli.
Bunin published his first collection of poems in 1891, and five years later he published a translation of the poem by the American romantic poet G. Longfellow “The Song of Hiawatha,” which, together with the later collection of poems “Falling Leaves” (1901), brought him 1903 Pushkin Prize of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
In 1909, Bunin received the second Pushkin Prize and was elected an honorary academician. At the end of the 19th century. He increasingly comes forward with stories, at first similar to picturesque sketches. Gradually, Bunin became more and more noticeable both as a poet and as a prose writer.
Wide recognition came to him with the publication of the story “The Village” (1910), which shows rural life of the writer’s time. The destruction of patriarchal life and ancient foundations is depicted in the work with a harshness that was rare at that time. The end of the story, where the wedding is described as a funeral, takes on a symbolic meaning. Following “The Village”, based on family legends, the story “Sukhodol” (1911) was written. Here the degeneration of the Russian nobility is depicted with majestic gloom.
The writer himself lived with a premonition of an impending catastrophe. He felt the inevitability of a new historical turning point. This feeling is noticeable in the stories of the 10s. "John the Weeper" (1913), "The Grammar of Love", "The Master from San Francisco" (both 1915), "Easy Breathing" (1916), "Chang's Dreams" (1918).
Bunin met the revolutionary events with extreme hostility, documenting the “bloody madness” in his diary, later published in exile under the title “Cursed Days” (1918, published in 1925).
In January 1920, together with his wife Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, the writer from Odessa sailed to Constantinople. From then on, Bunin lived in France, mainly in Paris and Grasse. In emigration they spoke of him as the first among modern Russian writers.
The story “Mitya's Love” (1925), the stories “Sunstroke” (1927) and “The Tree of God” (1931) were perceived by contemporaries as living classics. In the 30s short stories began to appear, in which Bunin showed an exceptional ability to compress enormous material into one or two pages, or even several lines.
In 1930, a novel with an obvious autobiographical “lining” - “The Life of Arsenyev” - was published in Paris. In 1933, Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize. This is an event behind which, essentially, stood the fact of recognition of the literature of emigration.
During the Second World War, Bunin lived in Grasse, avidly followed military events, lived in poverty, hid Jews from the Gestapo in his house, and rejoiced at the victories of the Soviet troops. At this time, he wrote stories about love (included in the book “Dark Alleys”, 1943), which he himself considered the best of all that he had created.
The writer’s post-war “warmth” towards Soviet power was short-lived, but it managed to quarrel with many long-time friends. Bunin spent his last years in poverty, working on a book about his literary teacher A.P. Chekhov.
In October 1953, Ivan Alekseevich’s condition deteriorated sharply, and on November 8 the writer died. The cause, according to Dr. V. Zernov, who observed the patient in recent weeks, was asthma and pulmonary sclerosis. Bunin was buried at the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery. The monument on the grave was made according to a drawing by the artist Alexandre Benois.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin (1870 - 1953) - famous writer and poet, the first Russian winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. He spent many years of his life in exile, becoming one of the main writers of the Russian diaspora.
The writer's childhood and education
Ivan Bunin was born into a poor noble family on October 10 (22), 1870. Then, in Bunin’s biography, he moved to an estate in the Oryol province near the city of Yelets. Bunin spent his childhood in this very place, among the natural beauty of the fields.
Bunin's primary education was received at home. Then, in 1881, the young poet entered the Yelets gymnasium. However, without finishing it, he returned home in 1886. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin received further education thanks to his older brother Yuli, who graduated from the university with honors.
Literary activity
Bunin's poems were first published in 1888. The following year, Bunin moved to Orel, starting to work as a proofreader in a local newspaper. Bunin's poetry, collected in a collection called "Poems", became the first book published. Soon Bunin's work gained fame. Bunin's following poems were published in the collections “Under the Open Air” (1898), “Leaf Fall” (1901).
Meeting the greatest writers (Gorky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, etc.) leaves a significant imprint on Bunin’s life and work. Bunin's stories "Antonov Apples" and "Pines" are published.
The writer in 1909 became an honorary academician of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Bunin reacted rather harshly to the ideas of the revolution, and left Russia forever.
Life in exile and death
The biography of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin almost entirely consists of moves and travels (Europe, Asia, Africa). In exile, Bunin actively continued to engage in literary activities, writing his best works: “Mitya’s Love” (1924), “Sunstroke” (1925), as well as the main novel in the writer’s life, “The Life of Arsenyev” (1927-1929, 1933), which brought Bunin the Nobel Prize in 1933. In 1944, Ivan Alekseevich wrote the story “Clean Monday”.
Before his death, the writer was often ill, but at the same time he did not stop working and creating. In the last few months of his life, Bunin was busy working on a literary portrait of A.P. Chekhov, but the work remained unfinished
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin died on November 8, 1953. He was buried in the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois cemetery in Paris.
- Having only 4 classes at the gymnasium, Bunin regretted all his life that he did not receive a systematic education. However, this did not prevent him from receiving the Pushkin Prize twice. The writer's older brother helped Ivan study languages and sciences, going through the entire gymnasium course with him at home.
- Bunin wrote his first poems at the age of 17, imitating Pushkin and Lermontov, whose work he admired.
- Bunin was the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
- The writer had no luck with women. His first love, Varvara, never became Bunin’s wife. Bunin's first marriage also did not bring him happiness. His chosen one, Anna Tsakni, did not respond to his love with deep feelings and was not at all interested in his life. The second wife, Vera, left because of infidelity, but later forgave Bunin and returned.
- Bunin spent many years in exile, but always dreamed of returning to Russia. Unfortunately, the writer did not manage to accomplish this before his death.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born on October 22, 1870 in Voronezh into a noble family. He spent his childhood and youth on an impoverished estate in the Oryol province.
He spent his early childhood on a small family estate (the Butyrka farmstead in Yeletsky district, Oryol province). At the age of ten he was sent to the Yeletsk gymnasium, where he studied for four and a half years, was expelled (for non-payment of tuition fees) and returned to the village. The future writer did not receive a systematic education, which he regretted all his life. True, the elder brother Yuli, who graduated from the university with flying colors, went through the entire gymnasium course with Vanya. They studied languages, psychology, philosophy, social and natural sciences. It was Julius who had a great influence on the formation of Bunin’s tastes and views.
An aristocrat in spirit, Bunin did not share his brother’s passion for political radicalism. Julius, sensing his younger brother’s literary abilities, introduced him to Russian classical literature and advised him to write himself. Bunin read Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov with enthusiasm, and at the age of 16 he began to write poetry himself. In May 1887, the magazine "Rodina" published the poem "Beggar" by sixteen-year-old Vanya Bunin. From that time on, his more or less constant literary activity began, in which there was a place for both poetry and prose.
In 1889, an independent life began - with a change of professions, with work in both provincial and metropolitan periodicals. While collaborating with the editors of the newspaper "Orlovsky Vestnik", the young writer met the newspaper's proofreader, Varvara Vladimirovna Pashchenko, who married him in 1891. The young couple, who lived unmarried (Pashchenko's parents were against the marriage), subsequently moved to Poltava (1892) and began to serve as statisticians in the provincial government. In 1891, Bunin's first collection of poems, still very imitative, was published.
The year 1895 became a turning point in the writer’s fate. After Pashchenko got along with Bunin’s friend A.I. Bibikov, the writer left his service and moved to Moscow, where his literary acquaintances took place with L.N. Tolstoy, whose personality and philosophy had a strong influence on Bunin, with A.P. Chekhov, M. Gorky, N.D. Teleshov.
Since 1895, Bunin has lived in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Literary recognition came to the writer after the publication of such stories as “On the Farm”, “News from the Motherland” and “At the End of the World”, dedicated to the famine of 1891, the cholera epidemic of 1892, the resettlement of peasants to Siberia, as well as impoverishment and the decline of the small landed nobility. Bunin called his first collection of stories “At the End of the World” (1897). In 1898, Bunin published the poetry collection “Under the Open Air,” as well as a translation of Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha,” which received very high praise and was awarded the Pushkin Prize of the first degree.
In 1898 (some sources indicate 1896) he married Anna Nikolaevna Tsakni, a Greek woman, the daughter of the revolutionary and emigrant N.P. Tsakni. Family life again turned out to be unsuccessful and in 1900 the couple divorced, and in 1905 their son Nikolai died.
On November 4, 1906, an event occurred in Bunin’s personal life that had an important influence on his work. While in Moscow, he meets Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, the niece of the same S.A. Muromtsev, who was the chairman of the First State Duma. And in April 1907, the writer and Muromtseva went together on their “first long journey,” visiting Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. This trip not only marked the beginning of their life together, but also gave birth to a whole cycle of Bunin’s stories “Shadow of the Bird” (1907 - 1911), in which he wrote about the “luminous countries” of the East, their ancient history and amazing culture.
In December 1911, in Capri, the writer completed the autobiographical story “Sukhodol”, which, being published in “Bulletin of Europe” in April 1912, was a huge success among readers and critics. On October 27-29 of the same year, the entire Russian public solemnly celebrated the 25th anniversary of I.A.’s literary activity. Bunin, and in 1915 in the St. Petersburg publishing house A.F. Marx published his complete works in six volumes. In 1912-1914. Bunin took an intimate part in the work of the “Book Publishing House of Writers in Moscow”, and collections of his works were published in this publishing house one after another - “John Rydalets: stories and poems of 1912-1913.” (1913), "The Cup of Life: Stories of 1913-1914." (1915), "Mr. from San Francisco: Works 1915-1916." (1916).
The First World War brought Bunin “great spiritual disappointment.” But it was during this senseless world massacre that the poet and writer especially acutely felt the meaning of the word, not so much journalistic as poetic. In January 1916 alone, he wrote fifteen poems: “Svyatogor and Ilya”, “A Land without History”, “Eve”, “The day will come - I will disappear...” and others. In them, the author fearfully awaits the collapse of the great Russian power. Bunin reacted sharply negatively to the revolutions of 1917 (February and October). The pathetic figures of the leaders of the Provisional Government, as the great master believed, were capable of leading Russia only to the abyss. His diary was dedicated to this period - the pamphlet "Cursed Days", first published in Berlin (Collected works, 1935).
In 1920, Bunin and his wife emigrated, settling in Paris and then moving to Grasse, a small town in the south of France. You can read about this period of their life (until 1941) in Galina Kuznetsova’s talented book “The Grasse Diary”. A young writer, a student of Bunin, she lived in their house from 1927 to 1942, becoming Ivan Alekseevich’s last very strong passion. Vera Nikolaevna, infinitely devoted to him, made this, perhaps the greatest sacrifice in her life, understanding the emotional needs of the writer (“For a poet, being in love is even more important than traveling,” Gumilyov used to say).
In exile, Bunin created his best works: “Mitya’s Love” (1924), “Sunstroke” (1925), “The Case of Cornet Elagin” (1925) and, finally, “The Life of Arsenyev” (1927-1929, 1933). These works became a new word both in Bunin’s work and in Russian literature in general. And according to K. G. Paustovsky, “The Life of Arsenyev” is not only the pinnacle work of Russian literature, but also “one of the most remarkable phenomena of world literature.”
In 1933, Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize, as he believed, primarily for “The Life of Arsenyev.” When Bunin came to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize, people in Sweden already recognized him by sight. Bunin's photographs could be seen in every newspaper, in store windows, and on cinema screens.
With the outbreak of World War II, in 1939, the Bunins settled in the south of France, in Grasse, at the Villa Jeannette, where they spent the entire war. The writer closely followed events in Russia, refusing any form of cooperation with the Nazi occupation authorities. He experienced the defeats of the Red Army on the eastern front very painfully, and then sincerely rejoiced at its victories.
In 1945, Bunin returned to Paris again. Bunin repeatedly expressed his desire to return to his homeland; he called the decree of the Soviet government of 1946 “On the restoration of USSR citizenship to subjects of the former Russian Empire...” “a generous measure.” However, Zhdanov’s decree on the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad” (1946), which trampled A. Akhmatova and M. Zoshchenko, forever turned the writer away from his intention to return to his homeland.
Although Bunin's work received wide international recognition, his life in a foreign land was not easy. The latest collection of short stories, Dark Alleys, written during the dark days of the Nazi occupation of France, went unnoticed. Until the end of his life he had to defend his favorite book from the “Pharisees.” In 1952, he wrote to F.A. Stepun, the author of one of the reviews of Bunin’s works: “It’s a pity that you wrote that in “Dark Alleys” there is some excess of consideration of female charms... What an “excess” there! I gave only a thousandth how men of all tribes and peoples “consider” women everywhere, always from the age of ten until the age of 90.”
At the end of his life, Bunin wrote a number of other stories, as well as the extremely caustic “Memoirs” (1950), in which Soviet culture is sharply criticized. A year after the appearance of this book, Bunin was elected the first honorary member of the Pen Club. representing writers in exile. In recent years, Bunin also began work on his memoirs about Chekhov, which he planned to write back in 1904, immediately after the death of his friend. However, the literary portrait of Chekhov remained unfinished.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin died on the night of November 8, 1953 in the arms of his wife in terrible poverty. 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 survive... 1905, then the First World War, followed by the 17th year and its continuation, Lenin , Stalin, Hitler... How not to envy our forefather Noah! Only one flood befell him..." Bunin was buried in the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery near Paris, in a crypt, in a zinc coffin.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin Russian writer, poet, honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1909), the first Russian winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1933), was born on October 22 (Old Style - October 10), 1870 in Voronezh, in the family of an impoverished nobleman who belonged to the old nobility family Bunin's father is a minor official, his mother is Lyudmila Aleksandrovna, nee Chubarova. Of their nine children, five died at an early age. Ivan spent his childhood on the Butyrki farm in the Oryol province, communicating with peasant peers.
In 1881, Ivan went to first grade at the gymnasium. In Yelets, the boy studied for about four and a half years - until mid-winter 1886, when he was expelled from the gymnasium for non-payment of tuition. Having moved to Ozerki, under the guidance of his brother Yuli, a university candidate, Ivan successfully prepared to pass the matriculation exams.
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In the fall of 1886, the young man began writing the novel “Passion,” which he finished on March 26, 1887. The novel was not published.
Since the autumn of 1889, Bunin worked at the Orlovsky Vestnik, where his stories, poems and literary critical articles were published. The young writer met the newspaper's proofreader, Varvara Pashchenko, who married him in 1891. True, due to the fact that Paschenko’s parents were against the marriage, the couple never got married.
At the end of August 1892, the newlyweds moved to Poltava. Here the elder brother Julius took Ivan to his council. He even came up with a position as a librarian for him, which left enough time for reading and traveling around the province.
After the wife got together with Bunin’s friend A.I. Bibikov, the writer left Poltava. For several years he led a hectic life, never staying anywhere for long. In January 1894, Bunin visited Leo Tolstoy in Moscow. Echoes of Tolstoy's ethics and his criticism of urban civilization can be heard in Bunin's stories. The post-reform impoverishment of the nobility evoked nostalgic notes in his soul (“Antonov Apples”, “Epitaph”, “New Road”). Bunin was proud of his origins, but was indifferent to “blue blood,” and the feeling of social restlessness grew into the desire to “serve the people of the earth and the God of the universe, - God, whom I call Beauty, Reason, Love, Life and who permeates everything that exists.”
In 1896, Bunin’s translation of G. Longfellow’s poem “The Song of Hiawatha” was published. He also translated Alcaeus, Saadi, Petrarch, Byron, Mickiewicz, Shevchenko, Bialik and other poets. In 1897, Bunin’s book “To the End of the World” and other stories were published in St. Petersburg.
Having moved to the shores of the Black Sea, Bunin began to collaborate in the Odessa newspaper “Southern Review”, publishing his poems, stories, literary criticism. Newspaper publisher N.P. Tsakni invited Bunin to take part in the publication of the newspaper. Meanwhile, Ivan Alekseevich took a liking to Tsakni’s daughter Anna Nikolaevna. On September 23, 1898, their wedding took place. But life did not work out for the young people. In 1900 they divorced, and in 1905 their son Kolya died.
In 1898, a collection of Bunin’s poems “Under the Open Air” was published in Moscow, which strengthened his fame. The collection “Falling Leaves” (1901), which together with the translation of “The Song of Hiawatha” was awarded the Pushkin Prize of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1903, received enthusiastic reviews and earned Bunin the fame of “the poet of the Russian landscape.” A continuation of poetry was the lyrical prose of the beginning of the century and travel essays (“Shadow of a Bird,” 1908).
“Bunin’s poetry was already distinguished by its devotion to the classical tradition; this trait would later permeate all of his work,” writes E.V. Stepanyan. - The poetry that brought him fame was formed under the influence of Pushkin, Fet, Tyutchev. But she possessed only her inherent qualities. Thus, Bunin gravitates towards a sensually concrete image; The picture of nature in Bunin’s poetry is made up of smells, sharply perceived colors, and sounds. A special role is played in Bunin’s poetry and prose by the epithet, used by the writer as if emphatically subjective, arbitrary, but at the same time endowed with the persuasiveness of sensory experience.”
Not accepting symbolism, Bunin joined neorealist associations - the Knowledge partnership and the Moscow literary circle Sreda, where he read almost all of his works written before 1917. At that time, Gorky considered Bunin “the first writer in Rus'.”
Bunin responded to the revolution of 1905–1907 with several declarative poems. He wrote about himself as “a witness to the great and the vile, a powerless witness to atrocities, executions, torture, executions.”
At the same time, Bunin met his true love - Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, the daughter of Nikolai Andreevich Muromtsev, a member of the Moscow City Council, and the niece of Sergei Andreevich Muromtsev, the Chairman of the State Duma. G.V. Adamovich, who knew the Bunins well in France for many years, wrote that Ivan Alekseevich found in Vera Nikolaevna “a friend who is not only loving, but also devoted with his whole being, ready to sacrifice himself, to give in in everything, while remaining a living person, without turning into a voiceless shadow".
Since the end of 1906, Bunin and Vera Nikolaevna met almost daily. Since the marriage with his first wife was not dissolved, they were able to get married only in 1922 in Paris.
Together with Vera Nikolaevna, Bunin traveled to Egypt, Syria and Palestine in 1907, and visited Gorky in Capri in 1909 and 1911. In 1910–1911 he visited Egypt and Ceylon. In 1909, Bunin was awarded the Pushkin Prize for the second time and he was elected an honorary academician, and in 1912 - an honorary member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature (until 1920 - a fellow chairman).
In 1910, the writer wrote the story “The Village”. According to Bunin himself, this was the beginning of “a whole series of works that sharply depict the Russian soul, its peculiar interweavings, its light and dark, but almost always tragic foundations.” The story “Sukhodol” (1911) is the confession of a peasant woman, convinced that “the masters had the same character as the slaves: either to rule or to be afraid.” The heroes of the stories “Strength”, “The Good Life” (1911), “Prince among Princes” (1912) are yesterday’s slaves who are losing their human form in acquisitiveness; the story “The Gentleman from San Francisco” (1915) is about the miserable death of a millionaire. At the same time, Bunin painted people who had nowhere to apply their natural talent and strength (“Cricket”, “Zakhar Vorobyov”, “Ioann Rydalets”, etc.). Declaring that he “is most interested in the soul of the Russian man in a deep sense, the image of the features of the Slav’s psyche,” the writer looked for the core of the nation in the element of folklore, in excursions into history (“Six-Winged,” “Saint Procopius,” “The Dream of Bishop Ignatius of Rostov,” "Prince Vseslav") This search was intensified by the First World War, towards which Bunin’s attitude was sharply negative.
The October Revolution and the Civil War summed up this socio-artistic research. “There are two types among the people,” wrote Bunin. - In one, Rus' predominates, in the other - Chud, Merya. But in both there is a terrible changeability of moods, appearances, “unsteadiness,” as they said in the old days. The people themselves said to themselves: “From us, like from wood, there is both a club and an icon,” depending on the circumstances, on who will process the wood.”
From revolutionary Petrograd, avoiding the “terrible proximity of the enemy,” Bunin left for Moscow, and from there on May 21, 1918, to Odessa, where the diary “Cursed Days” was written - one of the most furious denunciations of the revolution and the power of the Bolsheviks. In his poems, Bunin called Russia a “harlot” and wrote, addressing the people: “My people! Your guides led you to death.” “Having drunk the cup of unspeakable mental suffering,” on the twenty-sixth of January 1920, the Bunins left for Constantinople, from there to Bulgaria and Serbia, and arrived in Paris at the end of March.
In 1921, a collection of Bunin’s stories, “The Gentleman from San Francisco,” was published in Paris. This publication evoked numerous responses in the French press. Here is just one of them: “Bunin... 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 power" (Nervie, December 1921).
“In France,” Bunin wrote, “I lived for the first time in Paris, and in the summer of 1923 I moved to the Alpes-Maritimes, returning to Paris only for some winter months.”
Bunin settled in the Belvedere villa, and below was an amphitheater of the ancient Provençal town of Grasse. The nature of Provence reminded Bunin of the Crimea, which he loved very much. Rachmaninov visited him in Grasse. Aspiring writers lived under Bunin's roof - he taught them literary skills, criticized what they wrote, and expressed his views on literature, history and philosophy. He talked about his meetings with Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky. Bunin’s closest literary circle included N. Teffi, B. Zaitsev, M. Aldanov, F. Stepun, L. Shestov, as well as his “students” G. Kuznetsova (Bunin’s last love) and L. Zurov.
All these years, Bunin wrote a lot, his new books appeared almost every year. Following “Mr. from San Francisco,” the collection “Initial Love” was published in Prague in 1921, “Rose of Jericho” in Berlin in 1924, “Mitya’s Love” in Paris in 1925, and “Mitya’s Love” in the same place in 1929. Selected Poems" - Bunin's only poetry collection in emigration evoked positive responses from V. Khodasevich, N. Teffi, V. Nabokov. In “blissful dreams of the past,” Bunin returned to his homeland, recalled his childhood, adolescence, youth, “unquenched love.”
As noted by E.V. Stepanyan: “The binary nature of Bunin’s thinking - the idea of the drama of life, associated with the idea of the beauty of the world - imparts intensity of development and tension to Bunin’s plots. The same intensity of being is palpable in Bunin’s artistic detail, which has acquired even greater sensory authenticity in comparison with the works of early creativity.”
Until 1927, Bunin spoke in the newspaper Vozrozhdenie, then (for financial reasons) in Latest News, without joining any of the emigrant political groups.
In 1930, Ivan Alekseevich wrote “The Shadow of a Bird” and completed, perhaps, the most significant work of the emigration period - the novel “The Life of Arsenyev.”
Vera Nikolaevna wrote in the late twenties to the wife of the writer B.K. Zaitseva about Bunin’s work on this book:
“Ian is in a period (not to jinx it) of binge work: he sees nothing, hears nothing, writes all day without stopping... As always during these periods, he is very meek, gentle with me in particular, sometimes he reads what he has written to me alone - this is his "a huge honor". And very often he repeats that he has never been able to compare me with anyone in my life, that I am the only one, etc.”
The description of Alexei Arsenyev’s experiences is filled with sadness about the past, about Russia, “which perished before our eyes in such a magically short period of time.” Bunin was able to translate even purely prosaic material into poetic sound (a series of short stories from 1927–1930: “The Calf’s Head”, “The Hunchback’s Romance”, “The Rafters”, “The Killer”, etc.).
In 1922, Bunin was nominated for the Nobel Prize for the first time. His candidacy was nominated by R. Rolland, as reported to Bunin by M.A. Aldanov: “...Your candidacy was announced and declared by a person extremely respected throughout the world.”
However, the Nobel Prize in 1923 was awarded to the Irish poet W.B. Yeats. In 1926, negotiations were again underway to nominate Bunin for the Nobel Prize. Since 1930, Russian emigrant writers resumed their efforts to nominate Bunin for the prize.
The Nobel Prize was awarded to Bunin in 1933. The official decision to award Bunin the prize states:
“By a decision of the Swedish Academy on November 9, 1933, the Nobel Prize in Literature for this year was awarded to Ivan Bunin for the rigorous artistic talent with which he recreated the typical Russian character in literary prose.”
Bunin distributed a significant amount of the prize he received to those in need. A commission was created to distribute funds. Bunin told Segodnya newspaper correspondent P. Nilsky: “... 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 this is especially difficult. Do you know how many letters I received asking for help? In the shortest possible time, up to 2,000 such letters arrived.”
In 1937, the writer completed the philosophical and literary treatise “The Liberation of Tolstoy” - the result of lengthy reflections based on his own impressions and testimonies of people who knew Tolstoy closely.
In 1938, Bunin visited the Baltic states. After this trip, he moved to another villa - “Zhannette”, where he spent the entire Second World War in difficult conditions. Ivan Alekseevich was very worried about the fate of his Motherland and enthusiastically accepted all the reports about the victories of the Red Army. Bunin dreamed of returning to Russia until the last minute, but this dream was not destined to come true.
Bunin failed to complete the book “About Chekhov” (published in New York in 1955). His last masterpiece, the poem “Night,” dates from 1952.
On November 8, 1953, Bunin died and was buried in the Russian cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois near Paris.
Based on materials from “100 Great Nobel Laureates” Mussky S.
- Biography
