In this material, we will briefly consider the biography of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin: only the most important thing 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 in the noble, but at the same time poor Bunin family, who was named Ivan. Almost immediately after birth, the family moved to an estate in the Oryol province, where Ivan spent his childhood.
The basics of education were obtained by Ivan at home. In 1881, young Bunin entered the nearest gymnasium, Yelets, but could not finish it and in 1886 returned to the estate. Ivan was helped with his education by his brother Julius, who studied excellently and graduated from the university as one of the best in his class.
After returning from the gymnasium, 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 with the simple title "Poems" was published, 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 Sky and Falling Leaves.
Ivan Bunin was fond of not only poems - he also composed prose. For example, the stories "Antonov apples", "Pines". And this is all for a 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 member of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.
Ivan was quite critical of the idea of revolution and left Russia. All his later 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: "Mitina Love", "Sunstroke", as well as the best novel "The Life of Arseniev", for which in 1933 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Before his death, Bunin worked on a literary portrait of Chekhov, but was often ill and could not finish it. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin died on November 8, 1953 and was buried in Paris.
The first Russian Nobel laureate Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is called a jeweler of the word, a prose writer-painter, a genius of Russian literature and the brightest representative of the Silver Age. Literary critics agree that in Bunin's works there is a relationship with paintings, and in terms of attitude, the stories and novels of Ivan Alekseevich are similar to canvases.
Childhood and youth
Ivan Bunin's contemporaries argue that the writer felt "breed", innate aristocracy. There is nothing to be surprised: Ivan Alekseevich is a representative of the oldest noble family, rooted in the 15th century. The Bunin family coat of arms is included in the coat of arms of the noble families of the Russian Empire. Among the ancestors of the writer is the founder of romanticism, the writer of ballads and poems.
Ivan Alekseevich was born in October 1870 in Voronezh, in the family of a poor nobleman and petty official Alexei Bunin, married to his cousin Lyudmila Chubarova, a meek but impressionable woman. She bore her husband nine children, of whom four survived.
The family moved to Voronezh 4 years before the birth of Ivan to educate their eldest sons Yuli and Evgeny. They settled in a rented apartment on Bolshaya Dvoryanskaya Street. When Ivan was four years old, his parents returned to the Butyrka family estate in the Oryol province. Bunin spent his childhood on the farm.
The love of reading was instilled in the boy by his tutor, a student of Moscow University, Nikolai Romashkov. At home, Ivan Bunin studied languages, focusing on Latin. The first books of the future writer that he read on his own were The Odyssey and a collection of English poems.
In the summer of 1881, Ivan's father brought him to Yelets. The youngest son passed the exams and entered the 1st grade of the male gymnasium. Bunin liked to study, but this did not apply to the exact sciences. In a letter to his older brother, Vanya admitted that he considers the math exam "the most terrible." After 5 years, Ivan Bunin was expelled from the gymnasium in the middle of the school year. The 16-year-old boy came to his father's estate Ozerki for the Christmas holidays, but never returned to Yelets. For non-appearance at the gymnasium, the teachers' council expelled the guy. Ivan's elder brother Julius took up further education.
Literature
Ivan Bunin's creative biography began in Ozerki. In the estate, he continued to work on the novel “Passion” begun in Yelets, but the work did not reach the reader. But the poem of the young writer, written under the impression of the death of an idol - the poet Semyon Nadson - was published in the Rodina magazine.
In his father's estate, with the help of his brother, Ivan Bunin prepared for the final exams, passed them and received a matriculation certificate.
From the autumn of 1889 to the summer of 1892, Ivan Bunin worked in the journal Orlovsky Vestnik, where his stories, poems and literary criticism were published. In August 1892, Julius called his brother to Poltava, where he got Ivan a job as a librarian in the provincial government.
In January 1894, the writer visited Moscow, where he met with a congenial soul. Like Lev Nikolaevich, Bunin criticizes urban civilization. In the stories "Antonov apples", "Epitaph" and "New road" nostalgic notes for the passing era are guessed, regret is felt for the degenerate nobility.
In 1897, Ivan Bunin published the book "To the End of the World" in St. Petersburg. A year earlier he had translated Henry Longfellow's poem The Song of Hiawatha. Bunin's translation included poems by Alkey, Saadi, Adam Mickiewicz and.
In 1898, Ivan Alekseevich's poetry collection Under the Open Sky was published in Moscow, warmly received by literary critics and readers. Two years later, Bunin presented poetry lovers with a second book of poems - Falling Leaves, which strengthened the author's authority as a "poet of the Russian landscape." Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1903 awards Ivan Bunin the first Pushkin Prize, followed by the second.
But in the poetic environment, Ivan Bunin earned a reputation as an "old-fashioned landscape painter." In the late 1890s, “fashionable” poets became favorites, bringing the “breath of city streets” to Russian lyrics, and with its restless heroes. in a review of Bunin's collection Poems, he wrote that Ivan Alekseevich found himself aloof "from the general movement", but from the point of view of painting, his poetic "canvases" reached "the end points of perfection." Critics call the poems “I Remember a Long Winter Evening” and “Evening” as examples of perfection and adherence to the classics.
Ivan Bunin, the poet, does not accept symbolism and critically looks at the revolutionary events of 1905-1907, calling himself "a witness to the great and vile." In 1910, Ivan Alekseevich published the story "The Village", which marked the beginning of "a whole series of works that sharply depict the Russian soul." The continuation of the series is the story "Dry Valley" and the stories "Strength", "Good Life", "Prince in Princes", "Sand Shoes".
In 1915, Ivan Bunin was at the height of his popularity. His famous stories "The Gentleman from San Francisco", "Grammar of Love", "Easy Breath" and "Chang's Dreams" are published. In 1917, the writer leaves revolutionary Petrograd, avoiding the "terrible proximity of the enemy." Bunin lived in Moscow for six months, from there in May 1918 he left for Odessa, where he wrote the diary "Cursed Days" - a furious denunciation of the revolution and the Bolshevik government.
Portrait "Ivan Bunin". Artist Evgeny Bukovetsky It is dangerous for a writer who criticizes the new government so fiercely to remain in the country. In January 1920, Ivan Alekseevich leaves Russia. He leaves for Constantinople, and in March he ends up in Paris. A collection of short stories called "The Gentleman from San Francisco" was published here, which the public greets enthusiastically.
Since the summer of 1923, Ivan Bunin lived in the Belvedere villa in ancient Grasse, where he visited him. During these years, the stories "Initial Love", "Numbers", "The Rose of Jericho" and "Mitina's Love" were published.
In 1930, Ivan Alekseevich wrote the story "The Shadow of a Bird" and completed the most significant work created in exile - the novel "The Life of Arseniev." The description of the hero's experiences is covered with sadness about the departed Russia, "who died before our eyes in such a magically short time."
In the late 1930s, Ivan Bunin moved to the Jeannette Villa, where he lived during the Second World War. The writer was worried about the fate of his homeland and joyfully met the news about the slightest victory of the Soviet troops. Bunin lived in poverty. He wrote about his predicament:
“I was rich - now, by the will of fate, I suddenly became poor ... I was famous all over the world - now no one in the world needs ... I really want to go home!”
The villa was dilapidated: the heating system did not function, there were interruptions in electricity and water supply. Ivan Alekseevich told his friends in letters about the "cave continuous hunger." In order to get at least a small amount, Bunin asked a friend who had left for America to publish the collection Dark Alleys on any terms. The book in Russian with a circulation of 600 copies was published in 1943, for which the writer received $300. The collection includes the story "Clean Monday". The last masterpiece of Ivan Bunin - the poem "Night" - was published in 1952.
Researchers of the prose writer's work have noticed that his novels and stories are cinematic. For the first time, a Hollywood producer spoke about the film adaptation of Ivan Bunin's works, expressing a desire to make a film based on the story "The Gentleman from San Francisco." But it ended with a conversation.
In the early 1960s, Russian directors drew attention to the work of a compatriot. A short film based on the story "Mitya's Love" was shot by Vasily Pichul. In 1989, the screens released the picture "Unurgent Spring" based on the story of the same name by Bunin.
In 2000, the director's biography film "The Diary of His Wife" was released, which tells the story of relationships in the family of the prose writer.
The premiere of the drama "Sunstroke" in 2014 caused a resonance. The tape is based on the story of the same name and the book Cursed Days.
Nobel Prize
Ivan Bunin was first nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1922. The Nobel Prize winner was busy with this. But then the prize was given to the Irish poet William Yeats.
In the 1930s, Russian emigrant writers joined the process, and their efforts were crowned with victory: in November 1933, the Swedish Academy awarded Ivan Bunin a literature prize. The appeal to the laureate said that he deserved the award for "recreating in prose a typical Russian character."
Ivan Bunin spent 715 thousand francs of the prize quickly. Half in the first months he distributed to those in need and to everyone who turned to him for help. Even before receiving the award, the writer admitted that he received 2,000 letters asking for help with money.
3 years after the Nobel Prize, Ivan Bunin plunged into habitual poverty. Until the end of his life, he did not have his own house. Best of all, Bunin described the state of affairs in a short poem "The bird has a nest", where there are lines:
The beast has a hole, the bird has a nest.
How the heart beats, sadly and loudly,
When I enter, being baptized, into a strange, rented house
With his old knapsack!
Personal life
The young writer met his first love when he worked at the Oryol Herald. Varvara Pashchenko - a tall beauty in pince-nez - seemed to Bunin too arrogant and emancipated. But soon he found an interesting interlocutor in the girl. A romance broke out, but Varvara's father did not like the poor young man with vague prospects. The couple lived without a wedding. In his memoirs, Ivan Bunin calls Barbara just that - "an unmarried wife."
After moving to Poltava, the already difficult relations escalated. Varvara, a girl from a wealthy family, was fed up with a beggarly existence: she left home, leaving Bunin a farewell note. Soon Pashchenko became the wife of actor Arseny Bibikov. Ivan Bunin suffered a hard break, the brothers feared for his life.
In 1898, in Odessa, Ivan Alekseevich met Anna Tsakni. She became the first official wife of Bunin. In the same year, the wedding took place. But the couple did not live together for long: they broke up two years later. The only son of the writer, Nikolai, was born in marriage, but in 1905 the boy died of scarlet fever. Bunin had no more children.
The love of Ivan Bunin's life is the third wife of Vera Muromtseva, whom he met in Moscow, at a literary evening in November 1906. Muromtseva, a graduate of the Higher Women's Courses, was fond of chemistry and spoke three languages fluently. But Vera was far from literary bohemia.
The newlyweds married in exile in 1922: Tsakni did not give Bunin a divorce for 15 years. He was the best man at the wedding. The couple lived together until the very death of Bunin, although their life cannot be called cloudless. In 1926, rumors about a strange love triangle appeared among the emigrants: a young writer Galina Kuznetsova lived in the house of Ivan and Vera Bunin, to whom Ivan Bunin had by no means friendly feelings.
Kuznetsova is called the last love of the writer. She lived at the villa of the Bunin spouses for 10 years. Ivan Alekseevich survived the tragedy when he learned about Galina's passion for the sister of the philosopher Fyodor Stepun - Margarita. Kuznetsova left Bunin's house and went to Margo, which caused the writer's protracted depression. Friends of Ivan Alekseevich wrote that Bunin at that time was on the verge of insanity and despair. He worked for days on end, trying to forget his beloved.
After parting with Kuznetsova, Ivan Bunin wrote 38 short stories included in the collection Dark Alleys.
Death
In the late 1940s, doctors diagnosed Bunin with emphysema. At the insistence of doctors, Ivan Alekseevich went to a resort in the south of France. But the state of health has not improved. In 1947, 79-year-old Ivan Bunin spoke for the last time to an audience of writers.
Poverty forced to seek help from the Russian emigrant Andrei Sedykh. He secured a pension for a sick colleague from the American philanthropist Frank Atran. Until the end of Bunin's life, Atran paid the writer 10,000 francs a month.
In the late autumn of 1953, Ivan Bunin's health deteriorated. He didn't get out of bed. Shortly before his death, the writer asked his wife to read the letters.
On November 8, the doctor declared the death of Ivan Alekseevich. It was caused by cardiac asthma and pulmonary sclerosis. The Nobel laureate was buried at the cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois, the place where hundreds of Russian emigrants were buried.
Bibliography
- "Antonov apples"
- "Village"
- "Dry Valley"
- "Easy breath"
- "Chang's Dreams"
- "Lapti"
- "Grammar of Love"
- "Mitina's love"
- "Cursed Days"
- "Sunstroke"
- "The Life of Arseniev"
- "Caucasus"
- "Dark alleys"
- "Cold fall"
- "Numbers"
- "Clean Monday"
- "The Case of Cornet Yelagin"
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin- one of the largest writers and poets of Russia of the 20th century. He received worldwide recognition for his works, which became classics during his lifetime.
A brief biography of Bunin will help you understand what life path this outstanding writer went through, and for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize.
This is all the more interesting because great people are motivated and inspire the reader to new achievements. By the way, .
Ivan Bunin
Short biography of Bunin
Conventionally, the life of our hero can be divided into two periods: before emigration, and after. After all, it was the Revolution of 1917 that drew a red line between the pre-revolutionary existence of the intelligentsia and the Soviet system that replaced it. But first things first.
Childhood and youth
Ivan Bunin was born into a simple noble family on October 10, 1870. His father was a poorly educated landowner who graduated from only one class of the gymnasium. He was distinguished by a sharp disposition and extraordinary energy.
The mother of the future writer, on the contrary, was a very meek and pious woman. Perhaps it was thanks to her that little Vanya was very impressionable and began to learn the spiritual world early.
Bunin spent most of his childhood in the Oryol province, which was surrounded by picturesque landscapes.
Ivan received his primary education at home. Studying the biographies of prominent personalities, one cannot fail to notice the fact that the vast majority of them received their first education at home.
In 1881, Bunin managed to enter the Yelets Gymnasium, which he never graduated from. In 1886, he returned to his home again. The thirst for knowledge does not leave him, and thanks to his brother Julius, who graduated with honors from the university, he is actively working on self-education.
Personal life
In Bunin's biography, it is noteworthy that he was constantly unlucky with women. His first love was Barbara, but they never managed to marry, due to various circumstances.
The first official wife of the writer was 19-year-old Anna Tsakni. There was a rather cold relationship between the spouses, and this could be called a forced friendship rather than love. Their marriage lasted only 2 years, and Kolya's only son died of scarlet fever.
The second wife of the writer was 25-year-old Vera Muromtseva. However, this marriage was also unhappy. Upon learning that her husband was cheating on her, Vera left Bunin, although she later forgave everything and returned.
Literary activity
Ivan Bunin wrote his first poems in 1888 at the age of seventeen. A year later, he decides to move to Orel and gets a job as an editor of a local newspaper.
It was at this time that many poems began to appear in him, which would later form the basis of the book "Poems". After the publication of this work, he first received a certain literary fame.
But Bunin does not stop, and a few years later, collections of poems “Under the open sky” and “Leaf fall” come out from under his pen. The popularity of Ivan Nikolaevich continues to grow and over time he manages to meet with such outstanding and recognized masters of the word as Tolstoy and Chekhov.
These meetings turned out to be significant in Bunin's biography, and left an indelible impression in his memory.
A little later, collections of short stories "Antonov apples" and "Pines" appeared. Of course, a short biography does not imply a complete list of Bunin's extensive works, so we will manage to mention key works.
In 1909, the writer was awarded the title of honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
M. Gorky, D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak, N. D. Teleshov and I. A. Bunin. Yalta, 1902 Life in exile
Ivan Bunin was alien to the Bolshevik ideas of the 1917 revolution, which swallowed up all of Russia. As a result of this, he forever leaves his homeland, and his further biography consists of countless wanderings and travels around the world.
Being in a foreign land, he continues to work actively and writes some of his best works - Mitina's Love (1924) and Sunstroke (1925).
It was thanks to The Life of Arseniev that in 1933 Ivan became the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Naturally, this can be considered the peak of Bunin's creative biography.
The prize was presented to the writer by the Swedish king Gustav V. The laureate was also issued a check for 170,330 Swedish kronor. He gave part of his fee to needy people who found themselves in a difficult life situation.
Last years
By the end of his life, Ivan Alekseevich was often ill, but this did not stop him from working. He had a goal - to create a literary portrait of A.P. Chekhov. However, this idea remained unrealized due to the death of the writer.
Bunin died on November 8, 1953. An interesting fact is that until the end of his days he remained a stateless person, being, in fact, a Russian exile.
He never managed to fulfill the main dream of the second period of his life - a return to Russia.
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In this article, we will briefly tell you about the biography of the great writer.
The famous Russian writer Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born on October 10, 1870 in Voronezh, where his parents moved three years before his birth.
The reason for the change of residence of the family was the study of older brothers, Yulia and Evgeny. But as soon as the capable and gifted Julius graduated from the gymnasium with a gold medal, and Yevgeny, who had difficulty in science, dropped out, the family immediately left for their estate on the Butyrki farm in the Yelets district.
In this wilderness passed the sad childhood of little Vanya. Soon he had two sisters: Masha and Alexandra. Sashenka died very young, and Ivan gazed into the night sky for a long time to guess which star her soul settled on. One of the summer days almost ended tragically for Ivan and his grown sister Masha: the children tasted poisonous henbane, but the nanny promptly gave them hot milk to drink.
Ivan's life in the village was mainly filled with games with village boys and studies under the guidance of his father's friend Nikolai Osipovich, who lived with them. Sometimes he was thrown from one extreme to another: either he began to deceive everyone intensely, then he studied the lives of the saints and prayed earnestly, then he killed a rook with a crippled wing with his father's dagger.
Bunin felt a poetic gift in himself at the age of eight, at the same time he wrote his first poem.
Gymnasium years
At the age of 11, Ivan Bunin entered the Yelets gymnasium, which was located 30 miles from his native Butyrki. The entrance exams amazed him with their ease: it was only necessary to talk about the Amiliki, recite a verse, correctly write "snow is white, but not tasty" and multiply two-digit numbers. The young schoolboy hoped that further studies would be just as easy.
By the beginning of the school year, a uniform was sewn and an apartment was found for living in the house of the tradesman Byakin, with a payment of 15 rubles a month. After the village freemen, it was hard to get used to the strict order prevailing in rented housing. The owner of the house kept his children in strictness, and the second tenant Yegor even tore his ears for any offense or poor study.
For all the years of study, the high school student Bunin had to live in several houses, and during this time his parents moved from Butyrki to more civilized Ozerki.
Paradoxically, but the future Nobel Prize winner did not work out with his studies. In the third grade of the gymnasium, he was left for the second year, and in the middle of the fourth grade he dropped out altogether. Subsequently, he greatly regretted this rash act. The role of the teacher had to be taken over by the brilliantly educated brother Julius, who taught foreign languages and other sciences to Ivan, who had escaped from the gymnasium. My brother was in Ozerki under three years of house arrest as a member of the revolutionary movement.
In 1887, Ivan Bunin decided to send the fruits of his creativity to Rodina magazine. The first published poem was "Over the Grave of S.Ya. Nadson" (February 1887), the second - "The Village Beggar" (May 1887). The collection of poems "Poems" was published in 1891, followed by other collections, the award of the Pushkin Prizes and the title of honorary academician of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.
Independent life
In 1889, Ivan left his parental home and rushed towards a big and difficult fate. Escaped from the wilderness, he first went to his brother Julius in Kharkov, visited Yalta and Sevastopol, and in the autumn he began work in the Oryol Bulletin.
In 1891, Bunin, who did not study at the gymnasium and did not have any benefits, had to go to serve in the army. To avoid being drafted, the writer, on the advice of a friend, ate almost nothing and slept little for a month before the medical examination. As a result, he looked so haggard that he received a blue ticket.
In the Orlovsky Messenger, Ivan met a pretty and educated girl, Varvara Pashchenko, who acted as a proofreader and was his age. Since Varvara's father did not approve of their relationship, the young lovers left for a while to live in Poltava. The writer made an official proposal to his beloved girl, but the whole Pashenko family was against this marriage, as they considered the potential groom to be a beggar and a vagabond.
In 1894, Varvara suddenly left her common-law husband, leaving only a farewell note. All three Bunina brothers rushed after the fugitive to Yelets, but the girl's relatives refused to give her new address. This parting was so painful for Ivan that he was even going to commit suicide. Varvara Vladimirovna not only abandoned the novice writer, with whom she lived for three years in a civil marriage, but very soon she married his friend of her youth, Arseny Bibikov.
After that, Bunin left the service of an extra in Poltava and went to conquer St. Petersburg and Moscow. There he met the literary titans Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, struck up a friendship with the young Kuprin, reminiscent of a big child. After the drama he experienced, due to his internal unstable state, Bunin could not stay in one place for a long time, he moved from city to city all the time or visited his parents in Ozerki. In a fairly short period of time, he visited Kremenchug, Gurzuf, Yalta, Yekaterinoslav.
In 1898, a passionate travel lover found himself in Odessa, where he married the daughter of the editor of the Southern Review, the beautiful Greek Anna Tsakni. The spouses did not feel particularly deep feelings for each other, so they broke up two years later. In 1905 their little child died of scarlet fever.
In 1906, Ivan Bunin again visited Moscow. At a literary evening, the writer, gaining fame, met a very beautiful girl with magical crystal eyes. Vera Muromtseva was the niece of a member of the State Duma, she spoke several languages: French, English, Italian, German.
The joint life of the writer and Vera Nikolaevna, far from literature, began in the spring of 1907, and the wedding ceremony was performed only in 1922 in France. Together they traveled to many countries: Egypt, Italy, Turkey, Romania, Palestine, even visited the island of Ceylon.
Bunin's life in Grasse (France)
After the revolution of 1917, the couple emigrated to France, where they settled in the small resort town of Grasse at the Villa Belvedere.
Here, under the southern sun, such wonderful works as "The Life of Arseniev", "Dark Alleys", "Mitina's Love" came out from under the pen of Bunin. His literary works were highly appreciated by his contemporaries - in 1933 he was awarded the Nobel Prize, for which he went to Stockholm with his beloved women - his wife Vera Nikolaevna and beloved Galina Kuznetsova.
The aspiring writer Kuznetsova settled in the Villa Belvedere back in 1927, and Vera Nikolaevna favorably accepted her husband’s late love, turning a blind eye to the gossip that arose both in Grasse and beyond.
With each passing year, the situation escalated. The composition of the inhabitants of the villa was replenished with a young writer Leonid Zurov, who, in turn, felt sympathy for Vera Nikolaevna. To top it off, Galina became interested in the singer Margarita Stepun and in 1934 left the Bunin house. With her treacherous act, she struck a blow right in the heart of the writer. But be that as it may, the friends again lived with the Bunins in 1941-1942, and in 1949 they left for America.
Having crossed the eighty-year milestone, Bunin began to get sick often, but did not stop working. So he met his death hour - with a pen in his hand, devoting the last days of his life to creating a literary portrait of Anton Chekhov. The famous writer died on November 8, 1953 and found peace not in his native land, but in foreign confines.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born on October 22, 1870 in Voronezh into a noble family. His childhood and youth were spent in the impoverished estate of the Oryol province.
He spent his early childhood in a small family estate (the Butyrki farm in the Yelets district of the Oryol province). Ten years old he was sent to the Yelets 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 older brother Julius, who graduated with flying colors from the university, went through the entire gymnasium course with Vanya. They were engaged in 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, feeling the literary abilities of his younger brother, introduced him to Russian classical literature, advised him to write himself. Bunin enthusiastically read Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, and at the age of 16 he began to write poetry himself. In May 1887, Rodina magazine published the poem "The Beggar" by sixteen-year-old Vanya Bunin. Since that time, his more or less constant literary activity began, in which there was a place for both poetry and prose.
Since 1889, an independent life began - with a change of professions, with work both in provincial and metropolitan periodicals. Collaborating with the editorial office of the Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper, the young writer met the newspaper's proofreader Varvara Vladimirovna Pashchenko, who married him in 1891. The young spouses, who lived unmarried (Pashchenko's parents were against 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.
1895 was a turning point in the life of the writer. After Pashchenko agreed with Bunin's friend A.I. Bibikov, the writer left the service and moved to Moscow, where he made literary acquaintances 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 been living 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 in Siberia, and impoverishment and the decline of the petty nobility. Bunin called his first collection of short stories At the End of the World (1897). In 1898, Bunin published a poetry collection Under the Open Air, as well as a translation of Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha, which received a very high appraisal 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 a revolutionary and emigrant N.P. Click. 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 impact on his work. While in Moscow, he met Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, the niece of the same S.A. Muromtsev, who was chairman of the First State Duma. And in April 1907, the writer and Muromtseva went on their "first long journey" together, visiting Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. This journey not only marked the beginning of their life together, but also gave birth to a whole cycle of Bunin's stories "The Shadow of a Bird" (1907 - 1911), in which he wrote about the "light-bearing countries" of the East, their ancient history and amazing culture.
In December 1911, in Capri, the writer finished the autobiographical story "Sukhodol", which, being published in Vestnik Evropy in April 1912, was a huge success with readers and critics. On October 27-29 of the same year, the entire Russian public solemnly celebrated the 25th anniversary of I.A. 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 a close 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 1912-1913." (1913), "The Cup of Life: Stories 1913-1914." (1915), "The Gentleman from San Francisco: Works 1915-1916." (1916).
The First World War brought Bunin "a great spiritual disappointment." But it was precisely during this senseless world slaughter 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", "Land without history", "Eve", "The day will come - I will disappear ...", etc. In them, the author fearfully expects the collapse of the great Russian state. 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 only capable of leading Russia to the abyss. This period was devoted to his diary - the pamphlet "Cursed Days", first published in Berlin (Sobr. soch., 1935).
In 1920, Bunin and his wife emigrated, settling in Paris and then moving to Grasse, a small town in southern France. About this period of their life (until 1941) can be read in the talented book by Galina Kuznetsova "Grasse Diary". A young writer, a student of Bunin, she lived in their house from 1927 to 1942, becoming the last very strong hobby of Ivan Alekseevich. Infinitely devoted to him, Vera Nikolaevna made this, perhaps the biggest sacrifice in her life, understanding the emotional needs of the writer (“Being in love is even more important for a poet than traveling,” Gumilyov used to say).
In exile, Bunin creates his best works: "Mitina's Love" (1924), "Sunstroke" (1925), "The Case of Cornet Elagin" (1925) and, finally, "The Life of Arseniev" (1927-1929, 1933). These works have become a new word in Bunin's work, and in Russian literature as a whole. And according to K. G. Paustovsky, "The Life of Arseniev" 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 Arseniev." When Bunin arrived in Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize, in Sweden he was already recognized by sight. Bunin's photographs could be seen in every newspaper, in shop windows, on the cinema screen.
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 the events in Russia, refusing any form of cooperation with the Nazi occupation authorities. He experienced the defeat 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 a desire to return to his homeland, calling the decree of the Soviet government of 1946 "On the restoration of citizenship of the USSR subjects of the former Russian Empire ..." called "a generous measure." However, the Zhdanov decree on the magazines "Zvezda" and "Leningrad" (1946), which trampled on A. Akhmatova and M. Zoshchenko, forever turned the writer away from the intention to return to his homeland.
Although Bunin's work received wide international recognition, his life in a foreign land was not easy. Written in the dark days of the Nazi occupation of France, Dark Alleys, the latest collection of short stories, has gone 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 a certain excess of looking at female seductions ... What an “excess” there! I gave only a thousandth how men of all tribes and peoples "consider" everywhere, always women from their ten years of age until they are 90 years old.
At the end of his life, Bunin wrote a number of more 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 memoirs about Chekhov, which he was going to write back in 1904, immediately after the death of a 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 dire 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 that. , Stalin, Hitler ... How not to envy our forefather Noah! Only one flood fell to his lot ... "Bunin was buried in the cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois near Paris, in a crypt, in a zinc coffin.
