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On November 8, 1953, Ivan Bunin, Russian poet, novelist, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1933, died at the age of 83. From the article:
"Ivan Bunin
Biographical
I come from an old and noble house that has given to Russia a good many illustrious persons in politics as well as in the arts, among whom two poets of the early nineteenth century stand out in particular: Anna Búnina and Vasíly Zhukóvsky, one of the great names in Russian literature, the son of Athanase Bunin and the Turk Salma.
All my ancestors had close ties with the soil and the people: they were country gentlemen. My parents were no exception. They owned estates in Central Russia, in those fertile steppes in which the ancient Muscovite czars had settled colonists from all over the country for their protection against Tartar invasions from the South. That is why in that region there developed the richest of all Russian dialects, and almost all of our great writers from Turgenev to Leo Tolstoy have come from there.
I was born in Vorónezh in 1870; my childhood and youth were spent almost entirely in the country on my father’s estates. During my adolescence the death of my little sister caused a violent religious crisis, but it left no permanent scars on my soul. I had a passion for painting, which, I think, shows in my writings. I wrote both poetry and prose fairly early and my works were also published from an early date.
Ever since I began to publish, my books have been both in prose and poetry, original writings as well as translations (from the English). If one divides my work by genre, one would find volumes of original poetry, two volumes of translations, and ten volumes of prose.
My works were soon recognized by the critics. They were subsequently honoured on several occasions, receiving in particular the Pushkin Prize, the highest prize awarded by the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1909 that Academy elected me one of its twelve honorary members, a position that corresponds to the immortals of the French Academy. Among their number was Leo Tolstoy.
Nonetheless, there were several reasons why I was not widely known for a considerable time. I kept aloof from politics and in my writings did not touch upon questions concerning it. I did not belong to any literary school; I was neither decadent, nor symbolist, romantic, or naturalist. Moreover, I frequented few literary circles. I lived chiefly in the country; I travelled much in Russia as well as abroad; I visited Italy, Sicily, Turkey, the Balkans, Greece, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, and the tropics. According o the words of Saadi I tried to «look at the world and leave upon it the imprint of my soul». I was interested in problems of philosophy, religion, morals, and history.
In 1910 I published my novel Derévnya [The Village]. It was the first of a series of works to give picture of the Russian without make-up: his character and his soul, his original complexity, his foundations at once luminous and obscure, but almost always essentially tragic. These «ruthless» works caused passionate discussions among our Russian critics and intellectuals who, owing to numerous circumstances peculiar to Russian society and – in these latter days – to sheer ignorance or political advantage, have constantly idealized the people. In short, these works made me notorious; this success has been confirmed by more recent works.
I left Moscow because of the Bolshevik regime in May, 1918; until February, 1920, when I finally emigrated abroad, I lived in the south of Russia. Since then I have lived in France, dividing my time between Paris and the maritime Alps.
Biographical note on Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin
In addition to Derévnya, Bunin (1870-1953) wrote such novels as Sukhodól (1911-12) and Mítina lyubóv (1924-25) [Mitya’s Love], the short story Gospodín iz San Francisco (19I6) [The Gentleman from San Francisco], end the autobiographical novel in two volumes, Zhizn Arsénieva (Part I, Istóki dnéy [1930], translated as The Well of Days; Part II, Lika [1939]). He is the author of several volumes of short stories mixed with poetry, and, in 1950, he published the autobiography Vospominániya [Memories and Portraits]. Bunin died in France in 1953. There are two editions of his collected works – one in twelve volumes (Berlin,1934-36) and the other in six volumes (Moscow, 1956) – as well as collections of his stories (Moscow, 1961) end of his poetry (Leningrad, 1961)."
"Ivan Bunin
Biographical
I come from an old and noble house that has given to Russia a good many illustrious persons in politics as well as in the arts, among whom two poets of the early nineteenth century stand out in particular: Anna Búnina and Vasíly Zhukóvsky, one of the great names in Russian literature, the son of Athanase Bunin and the Turk Salma.
All my ancestors had close ties with the soil and the people: they were country gentlemen. My parents were no exception. They owned estates in Central Russia, in those fertile steppes in which the ancient Muscovite czars had settled colonists from all over the country for their protection against Tartar invasions from the South. That is why in that region there developed the richest of all Russian dialects, and almost all of our great writers from Turgenev to Leo Tolstoy have come from there.
I was born in Vorónezh in 1870; my childhood and youth were spent almost entirely in the country on my father’s estates. During my adolescence the death of my little sister caused a violent religious crisis, but it left no permanent scars on my soul. I had a passion for painting, which, I think, shows in my writings. I wrote both poetry and prose fairly early and my works were also published from an early date.
Ever since I began to publish, my books have been both in prose and poetry, original writings as well as translations (from the English). If one divides my work by genre, one would find volumes of original poetry, two volumes of translations, and ten volumes of prose.
My works were soon recognized by the critics. They were subsequently honoured on several occasions, receiving in particular the Pushkin Prize, the highest prize awarded by the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1909 that Academy elected me one of its twelve honorary members, a position that corresponds to the immortals of the French Academy. Among their number was Leo Tolstoy.
Nonetheless, there were several reasons why I was not widely known for a considerable time. I kept aloof from politics and in my writings did not touch upon questions concerning it. I did not belong to any literary school; I was neither decadent, nor symbolist, romantic, or naturalist. Moreover, I frequented few literary circles. I lived chiefly in the country; I travelled much in Russia as well as abroad; I visited Italy, Sicily, Turkey, the Balkans, Greece, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, and the tropics. According o the words of Saadi I tried to «look at the world and leave upon it the imprint of my soul». I was interested in problems of philosophy, religion, morals, and history.
In 1910 I published my novel Derévnya [The Village]. It was the first of a series of works to give picture of the Russian without make-up: his character and his soul, his original complexity, his foundations at once luminous and obscure, but almost always essentially tragic. These «ruthless» works caused passionate discussions among our Russian critics and intellectuals who, owing to numerous circumstances peculiar to Russian society and – in these latter days – to sheer ignorance or political advantage, have constantly idealized the people. In short, these works made me notorious; this success has been confirmed by more recent works.
I left Moscow because of the Bolshevik regime in May, 1918; until February, 1920, when I finally emigrated abroad, I lived in the south of Russia. Since then I have lived in France, dividing my time between Paris and the maritime Alps.
Biographical note on Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin
In addition to Derévnya, Bunin (1870-1953) wrote such novels as Sukhodól (1911-12) and Mítina lyubóv (1924-25) [Mitya’s Love], the short story Gospodín iz San Francisco (19I6) [The Gentleman from San Francisco], end the autobiographical novel in two volumes, Zhizn Arsénieva (Part I, Istóki dnéy [1930], translated as The Well of Days; Part II, Lika [1939]). He is the author of several volumes of short stories mixed with poetry, and, in 1950, he published the autobiography Vospominániya [Memories and Portraits]. Bunin died in France in 1953. There are two editions of his collected works – one in twelve volumes (Berlin,1934-36) and the other in six volumes (Moscow, 1956) – as well as collections of his stories (Moscow, 1961) end of his poetry (Leningrad, 1961)."
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1933
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David Morrissey reads the short story Sunstroke by Ivan Bunin.
www.onceuponaquarantine.com presents actor David Morrissey reading the short story Sunstroke by Ivan Bunin. Once Upon A Quarantine was created in 2020 by act...
Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on November 8, 1953 Russian poet, novelist, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1933 Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin died at the age of 83.
David Morrissey reads the short story Sunstroke by Ivan Bunin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdBy0aQGv3E
Images:
1. Vera and Ivan Bunin at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, 1933
2. Ivan Bunin and Vera Muromtseva, 1910s
3. Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin
4. Ivan Bunin with his brother Yuli
Biographies:
1. poetryfoundation.org/poets/ivan-bunin
2. russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/ivan-bunin
1. Background from {[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ivan-bunin]}
Ivan Bunin
1870–1930
Poet and novelist Ivan Bunin was the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Born in Voronezh, Russia to a noble family that counted the poets Anna Búnina and Vasíly Zhukovsky among their ancestors, Bunin spent his early childhood in the rural Russian Provinces. He attended secondary school in Yelets, Russia but did not graduate for financial reasons.
Bunin published his first poem in a St. Petersburg magazine in 1887. In 1892 Bunin began working for The Orlovsky Herald and published his first book, Poems: 1887-1891, as a supplement to the newspaper. In the following decade, Bunin’s popularity grew and he became friends with Anton Chekhov and other literary elite in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Bunin also became involved with the growing Russian Symbolist movement; his book of poetry Falling Leaves (1901) reflects this involvement.
Bunin authored several important works of prose, including the short story collections To the Edge of the World and Other Stories (1897), The Scent of Apples (1900), The Gentleman from San Francisco (1916), and Temple of the Sun (1917); the novels The Village (1910) and Dry Valley (1912); and Cursed Days (1918-1920), his diary and notes detailing the Bolsheviks' rise to power. Bunin also translated several works from English to Russian, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha (1898).
Bunin is the winner of the 1903 and 1909 Pushkin Prize. In 1909 he was elected to the Russian Academy. When Bunin won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1933 many considered him a crucial voice against Communism. Much of Bunin’s writing celebrates the natural world and decries the divide between the intelligentsia and uncultured masses. His classical prose style recalls Leo Tolstoy, whom Bunin greatly admired. Bunin’s verse is noted for its technical precision and artistry.
Bunin disapproved of the Russian Revolution and immigrated to France in 1920. During this time, he published many works that made him one of the most popular émigré writers, including the short story collection Dark Avenues (1946), the novel Mitya’s Love (1924), and the autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev (1952). Bunin also wrote books on Chekhov and Tolstoy. Bunin split his time between Paris and the French Alps until his death in 1953."
2. Background from {[https://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/ivan-bunin/]}
Prominent Russians: Ivan Bunin
October 22, 1870 – November 8, 1953
Poor and uneducated noble
Born into a family of impoverished landowners who descended from an ancient and noble family, he spent his childhood in the countryside, which left a great impression on him. Bunin would later write that his childhood was a life close to ‘the field and peasant huts.’
His early attempts at poetry were made in the first grade, although Bunin was forced at one point to abandon his schooling due to financial difficulties until his elder brother Julius Bunin came to his aid, putting him through high school and most of university.
After the publication of his first poem in 1887 in St. Petersburg’s Rodina newspaper, Bunin moved to Kharkov, where Julius lived, and started to work. In less then a year he became a court statistician, a librarian and even handled a book shop, until settling to work at Orlovsky Vestnik, a local newspaper.
There he met Varvara Pashchenko, whom he soon came to love. Their relationship lasted until 1894 and became an inspiration for “Life of Arseniev” published in 1930.
After his break-up with Pashchenko, Bunin was quick to enter an abrupt marriage with Anna Nikolaevna Zakhni, the daughter of a Greek revolutionary, in 1898. The marriage soon ended after Bunin’s only offspring, his and Zakhni’s son, died tragically at the age of five.
Shaping influences
Meanwhile, Bunin began a correspondence with Anton Chekhov and fell heavily under the influence Leo Tolstoy. He even visited some of Tolstoy’s followers’ communes in Ukraine. However when he met Tolstoy himself in 1891, the master played down the role of his followers, urging Bunin not to get too involved in the movement.
In his early years Bunin was also close with Maksim Gorky, but when the latter wrote about Bunin’s Antonov Apples, the short story seen by some as Bunin’s ‘birth certificate’ written in 1900, that they ‘do smell good, but they smell not at all democratically’ the two grew more and more distant.
Next in the list of authors who influenced Bunin is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In 1890 Bunin taught himself English and translated Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha, which was published as a supplement to the Orlovsky Vestnik.
The iconic Ukrainian Taras Shevchenko was also among the authors whose works Bunin translated in his early years.
Major writer and poet
In 1895 Bunin moved to St. Petersburg and subsequently to Moscow where he met many of Russia’s literary elite. It took Bunin two years to finish his first book of short stories, and six to complete his first collection of poems entitled Listopad (Leaf Fall).
Bunin’s first major award – the Pushkin’s prize for Listopad and the Song of Hiawatha – came in 1903. By then Bunin had undergone a major transition from poetry to writing short stories, which was seen by many as a wrong move, including most notably, Vladimir Nabokov, who held Bunin’s poetry in very high esteem, while his prose less so.
Settling down in Moscow was obviously going well for Bunin. After publishing a number of successive novels such as The Village and Dry Valley, he was considered a major Russian writer. He met and married Vera Muromsteva in 1906, and travelled with her to the Middle East. An array of successive books and translations of Byron, Tennyson, and Musset brought Bunin his second Pushkin prize which landed him in Russia’s Academy of Science.
After spending the winters of 1912-1914 with Gorky on the Italian resort island of Capri, Bunin wrote probably his most famous short story The Gentleman from San Francisco. It deals with the dramatic death of a retired U.S. nouveau riche at a pompous Capri hotel, during his travels in Europe.
Anti-Bolshevik émigré
Bunin did not greet the 1917 October Revolution with enthusiasm; he left Moscow for Odessa soon after the Bolshevik state was formed. In 1920, Bunin left the Soviet Union altogether to settle in the French town of Grasse.
He was hailed by the West as the eldest and biggest Russian writer alive and immediately became a chair of the Union of Russian Writers and Journalists. In the mid-1920s he contributed to various French media and published his diary from the early months of the Bolshevik Regime – The Accursed Days.
The love affair
In the late 1920s, while still married, Bunin met the last major passion of his life – the young poetess Galina Kuznetsova. Of course Bunin’s romances with other women continued right up to the end of his life (his private life is the subject of the internationally acclaimed Russian movie His Wife’s Diary), but his affair with Kuznetsova stands taller then the rest.
They met at a Cote d’Azur cafe and despite an age gap of 30 years, quickly fell in love. Kuznetsova left her husband and spent a lot of time at the estate that the Bunins’ leased, helping Ivan with his life’s greatest work – his autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev.
Their affair lasted until 1933, when Kuznetsova fell in love with a female singer.
Homeless Nobel Prize winner
Another remarkable event for Bunin happened in 1933: he became the first Russian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Despite this acclaim Bunin never managed to properly settle down in France, wandering between rented houses in Grasse, Paris and the Cote d’Azur.
Though the official statement claimed Bunin was awarded for his ‘artistic talent, which helped him to recreate a typical Russian character,’ everyone knew the real reason behind his winning the prize was the publishing of The Accursed Days, which voiced his aristocratic aversion to the harsh realties of the Soviet state.
Though one might call awarding Bunin a populist move, it is no less justified
by the scale of his talent, which in due course showed itself in his diaries. The Accursed Days is a most striking account of how things were done in the early Bolshevik years that contains painfully realistic portraits of some important figures of the time.
The quote below is a vivid example.
«…And after that I was at another festivity devoted once more to Finland – a banquette in the honor of Finns, following the opening of the exhibition. […] All the same attended – the whole ‘crème of
Russian intelligentsia’, meaning famous painters, artists, writers, socialites, newly appointed minister and a foreign elite member: the French ambassador. But the one to overcome everybody else was the poet Mayakovsky . I was sitting with Gorky and Finnish painter Gallen.
Mayakovsky began by approaching us without any invitation, putting a chair between us and starting to eat from our plates and drink from our goblets. Gallen stared at him the way he would probably stare at a horse, if someone would’ve brought it into the hall. Gorky laughed. I moved away. Mayakovsky took a notice.
– You hate me a lot, don’t you? – he asked me lively. Without any constraint I responded, that I don’t: that would do him too much honour. He almost opened his trough-shaped mouth, to ask something else, but at that moment the Minister of Foreign Affairs rose to tell an official toast, and Mayakovsky ran for him to the middle of the table.
There he stood on a chair and barked something obscene out, startling the Minister. In a second, recovering, he started again: “Gentlemen!” But Mayakovsky screamed even lauder then before. After another vain attempt the Minister lifted his hands in dismay and sat down. […]
Yet another festivity was on in Petersburg at the time – Lenin’s arrival. “Welcome!” – Gorky hailed him in his newspaper. And he came – as another claimant of the heirloom, with his claims very serious and clear. But he was greeted with the honor guard and music at the train station. Lenin was also let to live in one of the city’s best houses, not a least bit owned by him of course…»
Nostalgic WWII survivor
Bunin was a strong opponent of the Nazis, which was hardly just the consequences of an
inconvenient detention on his way to accept the Nobel Prize in Stockholm by the Nazi authorities, who made him drink a bottle of castor oil to prove false the ridiculous jewel smuggling allegations against him.
During the occupation of France, Bunin sheltered a Jewish writer in his house in Grasse and wrote his celebrated cycle of nostalgic stories The Dark Alleys, published in 1946.
Towards the end of his life Bunin seldom wrote poetry and started to treat the Soviet Union with some warmth. He even made plans of returning, which were cut short by his death.
Bunin died of a heart attack in 1953, the same year as Joseph Stalin , and just a year later his works began to be published in Soviet Union.
He is buried in the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois Russian Cemetery."
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David Morrissey reads the short story Sunstroke by Ivan Bunin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdBy0aQGv3E
Images:
1. Vera and Ivan Bunin at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, 1933
2. Ivan Bunin and Vera Muromtseva, 1910s
3. Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin
4. Ivan Bunin with his brother Yuli
Biographies:
1. poetryfoundation.org/poets/ivan-bunin
2. russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/ivan-bunin
1. Background from {[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ivan-bunin]}
Ivan Bunin
1870–1930
Poet and novelist Ivan Bunin was the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Born in Voronezh, Russia to a noble family that counted the poets Anna Búnina and Vasíly Zhukovsky among their ancestors, Bunin spent his early childhood in the rural Russian Provinces. He attended secondary school in Yelets, Russia but did not graduate for financial reasons.
Bunin published his first poem in a St. Petersburg magazine in 1887. In 1892 Bunin began working for The Orlovsky Herald and published his first book, Poems: 1887-1891, as a supplement to the newspaper. In the following decade, Bunin’s popularity grew and he became friends with Anton Chekhov and other literary elite in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Bunin also became involved with the growing Russian Symbolist movement; his book of poetry Falling Leaves (1901) reflects this involvement.
Bunin authored several important works of prose, including the short story collections To the Edge of the World and Other Stories (1897), The Scent of Apples (1900), The Gentleman from San Francisco (1916), and Temple of the Sun (1917); the novels The Village (1910) and Dry Valley (1912); and Cursed Days (1918-1920), his diary and notes detailing the Bolsheviks' rise to power. Bunin also translated several works from English to Russian, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha (1898).
Bunin is the winner of the 1903 and 1909 Pushkin Prize. In 1909 he was elected to the Russian Academy. When Bunin won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1933 many considered him a crucial voice against Communism. Much of Bunin’s writing celebrates the natural world and decries the divide between the intelligentsia and uncultured masses. His classical prose style recalls Leo Tolstoy, whom Bunin greatly admired. Bunin’s verse is noted for its technical precision and artistry.
Bunin disapproved of the Russian Revolution and immigrated to France in 1920. During this time, he published many works that made him one of the most popular émigré writers, including the short story collection Dark Avenues (1946), the novel Mitya’s Love (1924), and the autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev (1952). Bunin also wrote books on Chekhov and Tolstoy. Bunin split his time between Paris and the French Alps until his death in 1953."
2. Background from {[https://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/ivan-bunin/]}
Prominent Russians: Ivan Bunin
October 22, 1870 – November 8, 1953
Poor and uneducated noble
Born into a family of impoverished landowners who descended from an ancient and noble family, he spent his childhood in the countryside, which left a great impression on him. Bunin would later write that his childhood was a life close to ‘the field and peasant huts.’
His early attempts at poetry were made in the first grade, although Bunin was forced at one point to abandon his schooling due to financial difficulties until his elder brother Julius Bunin came to his aid, putting him through high school and most of university.
After the publication of his first poem in 1887 in St. Petersburg’s Rodina newspaper, Bunin moved to Kharkov, where Julius lived, and started to work. In less then a year he became a court statistician, a librarian and even handled a book shop, until settling to work at Orlovsky Vestnik, a local newspaper.
There he met Varvara Pashchenko, whom he soon came to love. Their relationship lasted until 1894 and became an inspiration for “Life of Arseniev” published in 1930.
After his break-up with Pashchenko, Bunin was quick to enter an abrupt marriage with Anna Nikolaevna Zakhni, the daughter of a Greek revolutionary, in 1898. The marriage soon ended after Bunin’s only offspring, his and Zakhni’s son, died tragically at the age of five.
Shaping influences
Meanwhile, Bunin began a correspondence with Anton Chekhov and fell heavily under the influence Leo Tolstoy. He even visited some of Tolstoy’s followers’ communes in Ukraine. However when he met Tolstoy himself in 1891, the master played down the role of his followers, urging Bunin not to get too involved in the movement.
In his early years Bunin was also close with Maksim Gorky, but when the latter wrote about Bunin’s Antonov Apples, the short story seen by some as Bunin’s ‘birth certificate’ written in 1900, that they ‘do smell good, but they smell not at all democratically’ the two grew more and more distant.
Next in the list of authors who influenced Bunin is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In 1890 Bunin taught himself English and translated Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha, which was published as a supplement to the Orlovsky Vestnik.
The iconic Ukrainian Taras Shevchenko was also among the authors whose works Bunin translated in his early years.
Major writer and poet
In 1895 Bunin moved to St. Petersburg and subsequently to Moscow where he met many of Russia’s literary elite. It took Bunin two years to finish his first book of short stories, and six to complete his first collection of poems entitled Listopad (Leaf Fall).
Bunin’s first major award – the Pushkin’s prize for Listopad and the Song of Hiawatha – came in 1903. By then Bunin had undergone a major transition from poetry to writing short stories, which was seen by many as a wrong move, including most notably, Vladimir Nabokov, who held Bunin’s poetry in very high esteem, while his prose less so.
Settling down in Moscow was obviously going well for Bunin. After publishing a number of successive novels such as The Village and Dry Valley, he was considered a major Russian writer. He met and married Vera Muromsteva in 1906, and travelled with her to the Middle East. An array of successive books and translations of Byron, Tennyson, and Musset brought Bunin his second Pushkin prize which landed him in Russia’s Academy of Science.
After spending the winters of 1912-1914 with Gorky on the Italian resort island of Capri, Bunin wrote probably his most famous short story The Gentleman from San Francisco. It deals with the dramatic death of a retired U.S. nouveau riche at a pompous Capri hotel, during his travels in Europe.
Anti-Bolshevik émigré
Bunin did not greet the 1917 October Revolution with enthusiasm; he left Moscow for Odessa soon after the Bolshevik state was formed. In 1920, Bunin left the Soviet Union altogether to settle in the French town of Grasse.
He was hailed by the West as the eldest and biggest Russian writer alive and immediately became a chair of the Union of Russian Writers and Journalists. In the mid-1920s he contributed to various French media and published his diary from the early months of the Bolshevik Regime – The Accursed Days.
The love affair
In the late 1920s, while still married, Bunin met the last major passion of his life – the young poetess Galina Kuznetsova. Of course Bunin’s romances with other women continued right up to the end of his life (his private life is the subject of the internationally acclaimed Russian movie His Wife’s Diary), but his affair with Kuznetsova stands taller then the rest.
They met at a Cote d’Azur cafe and despite an age gap of 30 years, quickly fell in love. Kuznetsova left her husband and spent a lot of time at the estate that the Bunins’ leased, helping Ivan with his life’s greatest work – his autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev.
Their affair lasted until 1933, when Kuznetsova fell in love with a female singer.
Homeless Nobel Prize winner
Another remarkable event for Bunin happened in 1933: he became the first Russian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Despite this acclaim Bunin never managed to properly settle down in France, wandering between rented houses in Grasse, Paris and the Cote d’Azur.
Though the official statement claimed Bunin was awarded for his ‘artistic talent, which helped him to recreate a typical Russian character,’ everyone knew the real reason behind his winning the prize was the publishing of The Accursed Days, which voiced his aristocratic aversion to the harsh realties of the Soviet state.
Though one might call awarding Bunin a populist move, it is no less justified
by the scale of his talent, which in due course showed itself in his diaries. The Accursed Days is a most striking account of how things were done in the early Bolshevik years that contains painfully realistic portraits of some important figures of the time.
The quote below is a vivid example.
«…And after that I was at another festivity devoted once more to Finland – a banquette in the honor of Finns, following the opening of the exhibition. […] All the same attended – the whole ‘crème of
Russian intelligentsia’, meaning famous painters, artists, writers, socialites, newly appointed minister and a foreign elite member: the French ambassador. But the one to overcome everybody else was the poet Mayakovsky . I was sitting with Gorky and Finnish painter Gallen.
Mayakovsky began by approaching us without any invitation, putting a chair between us and starting to eat from our plates and drink from our goblets. Gallen stared at him the way he would probably stare at a horse, if someone would’ve brought it into the hall. Gorky laughed. I moved away. Mayakovsky took a notice.
– You hate me a lot, don’t you? – he asked me lively. Without any constraint I responded, that I don’t: that would do him too much honour. He almost opened his trough-shaped mouth, to ask something else, but at that moment the Minister of Foreign Affairs rose to tell an official toast, and Mayakovsky ran for him to the middle of the table.
There he stood on a chair and barked something obscene out, startling the Minister. In a second, recovering, he started again: “Gentlemen!” But Mayakovsky screamed even lauder then before. After another vain attempt the Minister lifted his hands in dismay and sat down. […]
Yet another festivity was on in Petersburg at the time – Lenin’s arrival. “Welcome!” – Gorky hailed him in his newspaper. And he came – as another claimant of the heirloom, with his claims very serious and clear. But he was greeted with the honor guard and music at the train station. Lenin was also let to live in one of the city’s best houses, not a least bit owned by him of course…»
Nostalgic WWII survivor
Bunin was a strong opponent of the Nazis, which was hardly just the consequences of an
inconvenient detention on his way to accept the Nobel Prize in Stockholm by the Nazi authorities, who made him drink a bottle of castor oil to prove false the ridiculous jewel smuggling allegations against him.
During the occupation of France, Bunin sheltered a Jewish writer in his house in Grasse and wrote his celebrated cycle of nostalgic stories The Dark Alleys, published in 1946.
Towards the end of his life Bunin seldom wrote poetry and started to treat the Soviet Union with some warmth. He even made plans of returning, which were cut short by his death.
Bunin died of a heart attack in 1953, the same year as Joseph Stalin , and just a year later his works began to be published in Soviet Union.
He is buried in the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois Russian Cemetery."
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LTC Stephen F.
Alla Demidova reads Bunin's story Wolves. Bunin loved the idea that Russians were unique because they lived in a wild, untamed country.
Alla Demidova reads Bunin's story Wolves. Bunin loved the idea that Russians were unique because they lived in a wild, untamed country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAGxGXUc0-M
Images:
1. Portrait of Ivan Bunin by Leonard Turzhansky
2. Ivan Bunin in November 1937
3. Maxim Gorky, Ivan Bunin and Nikolai Teleshov, 1900.
4. Ivan Bunin's grave, Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery
Background from {[https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Ivan_Bunin]}
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (Ива́н Алексе́евич Бу́нин) (October 22, 1870 – November 8, 1953) was the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The texture of his poems and stories, sometimes referred to as "Bunin brocade," is one of the richest in the language. His last book of fiction, The Dark Alleys (1943), is arguably the most widely read twentieth century collection of short stories in Russia. Bunin came to literature through journalism and his attention to detail belies a journalistic background. From the gentry class, he was an early opponent of the Bolsheviks. Forced out of Moscow by the revolution, he worked in Odessa and later abroad. As an outspoken critic of the regime, he became popular and was warmly received by the Russian emigre community.
Contents
• 1 Early life
• 2 Renown
• 3 Emigration
• 4 References
• 5 External links
• 6 Credits
Early life
Bunin was born on his parents' estate in Voronezh province in central Russia. He came from a long line of landed gentry and serf owners, but his grandfather and father had squandered nearly all of the estate.
He was sent to the public school in Yelets in 1881, but had to return home after five years. His brother, who was university educated, encouraged him to read the Russian classics and to write.
At 17, he published his first poem in 1887 in a St. Petersburg literary magazine. His first collection of poems, Listopad (1901), was warmly received by the critics. Although his poems are said to continue the nineteenth century traditions of the Parnassian poets, they are steeped in oriental mysticism and sparkle with striking, carefully chosen epithets. Vladimir Nabokov, who scorned Bunin's prose, was a great admirer of his verse, comparing him with the great symbolist poet, Alexander Blok.
In 1889, he followed his brother to Kharkov, where he became a government clerk, assistant editor of a local paper, librarian, and court statistician. Bunin also began a correspondence with Anton Chekhov, with whom he became close friends. He had a more distant relationship with Maxim Gorky and Leo Tolstoy. He would later write books on both Chekhov and Tolstoy.
In 1891, he published his first short story, "Country Sketch" in a literary journal. As the time went by, he switched from writing poems to short stories. His first acclaimed novellas were "On the Farm," "The News From Home," "To the Edge of the World," "Antonov Apples," and "The Gentleman from San Francisco," his most representative piece, which was translated into English by D. H. Lawrence.
Bunin was a well-known translator himself. The best known of his translations is Longfellow's "The Song of Hiawatha" for which Bunin was awarded the Pushkin Prize in 1903. He also translated works of Byron, Tennyson, and Musset. In 1909, he was elected to the Russian Academy.
Renown
From 1895 on, Bunin divided his time between Moscow and St. Petersburg. He married the daughter of a Greek revolutionary in 1898, but the marriage ended in divorce. Although he remarried in 1907, Bunin's romances with other women continued until his death. His tempestuous private life in emigration is the subject of the internationally acclaimed Russian movie, The Diary of His Wife (2000).
Bunin published his first full-length work, The Village, when he was 40. It was a bleak portrayal of village life, with its stupidity, brutality, and violence. It's harsh realism recalls that of Anton Chekhov. Like Chekhov's "Peasants," Bunin's work is an antidote to the romanticization of the peasants that is found in Russian literature (Tolstoy's peasant-philosopher, Platon Kataev from War and Peace, is a prime example) as well as idealization of the peasant commune in much later nineteenth and early twentieth century Russian social thought. Bunin described the work thusly, "the characters having sunk so far below the average of intelligence as to be scarcely human." The work brought him in touch with Maxim Gorky. Two years later, he published Dry Valley, which was a veiled portrayal of his family.
Before World War I, Bunin traveled in Ceylon, Palestine, Egypt, and Turkey, and these travels left their mark on his writing. He spent the winters from 1912 to 1914 on Capri with Gorky.
Emigration
Bunin left Moscow after the Russian Revolution of 1917, moving to Odessa. He lived there during the Russian Civil War, leaving Odessa on the last French ship in 1919, settling in Grasse, France. There, he published his diary, The Accursed Days, which voiced his aristocratic aversion to the Bolshevik regime. About the Soviet government he wrote: "What a disgusting gallery of convicts!"
Bunin was much lionized in emigration, where he came to be viewed as the last living link to the lineage of Russian writers in the tradition of Tolstoy and Chekhov. Accordingly, he was the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1933. On the journey through Germany to accept the prize in Stockholm, he was detained by the Nazis, ostensibly for jewel smuggling, and forced to drink a bottle of castor oil.
In the 1930s, Bunin published two parts of a projected autobiographic trilogy: The Life of Arsenyev and Lika, which were "neither a short novel, nor a novel, nor a long short story, but . . . of a genre yet unknown." Later, he worked on his celebrated cycle of nostalgic stories with a strong erotic undercurrent and a Proustian ring. They were published as the Dark Alleys in 1943.
Bunin was a strong opponent of the Nazis and reportedly sheltered a Jew in his house in Grasse throughout the occupation. To the end of his life, he remained interested in Soviet literature and even entertained plans of returning to Russia, as Alexander Kuprin had done before. Bunin died of a heart attack in a Paris attic flat, his invaluable book of reminiscences on Chekhov still unfinished. Several years later, his works were allowed to be published in the Soviet Union.
References
• Bunin, Ivan. Night of Denial: Stories and Novellas. Trans. Robert Bowie. Northwestern 2006 ISBN 0-8101-1403-8
• Bunin, Ivan. The Life of Arsenyev. Edited by Andrew Baruch Wachtel. Northwestern 1994 ISBN 0-8101-1172-1
• Terras, Victor. A History of Russian Literature. Yale University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-300-04971-4
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAGxGXUc0-M
Images:
1. Portrait of Ivan Bunin by Leonard Turzhansky
2. Ivan Bunin in November 1937
3. Maxim Gorky, Ivan Bunin and Nikolai Teleshov, 1900.
4. Ivan Bunin's grave, Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery
Background from {[https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Ivan_Bunin]}
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (Ива́н Алексе́евич Бу́нин) (October 22, 1870 – November 8, 1953) was the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The texture of his poems and stories, sometimes referred to as "Bunin brocade," is one of the richest in the language. His last book of fiction, The Dark Alleys (1943), is arguably the most widely read twentieth century collection of short stories in Russia. Bunin came to literature through journalism and his attention to detail belies a journalistic background. From the gentry class, he was an early opponent of the Bolsheviks. Forced out of Moscow by the revolution, he worked in Odessa and later abroad. As an outspoken critic of the regime, he became popular and was warmly received by the Russian emigre community.
Contents
• 1 Early life
• 2 Renown
• 3 Emigration
• 4 References
• 5 External links
• 6 Credits
Early life
Bunin was born on his parents' estate in Voronezh province in central Russia. He came from a long line of landed gentry and serf owners, but his grandfather and father had squandered nearly all of the estate.
He was sent to the public school in Yelets in 1881, but had to return home after five years. His brother, who was university educated, encouraged him to read the Russian classics and to write.
At 17, he published his first poem in 1887 in a St. Petersburg literary magazine. His first collection of poems, Listopad (1901), was warmly received by the critics. Although his poems are said to continue the nineteenth century traditions of the Parnassian poets, they are steeped in oriental mysticism and sparkle with striking, carefully chosen epithets. Vladimir Nabokov, who scorned Bunin's prose, was a great admirer of his verse, comparing him with the great symbolist poet, Alexander Blok.
In 1889, he followed his brother to Kharkov, where he became a government clerk, assistant editor of a local paper, librarian, and court statistician. Bunin also began a correspondence with Anton Chekhov, with whom he became close friends. He had a more distant relationship with Maxim Gorky and Leo Tolstoy. He would later write books on both Chekhov and Tolstoy.
In 1891, he published his first short story, "Country Sketch" in a literary journal. As the time went by, he switched from writing poems to short stories. His first acclaimed novellas were "On the Farm," "The News From Home," "To the Edge of the World," "Antonov Apples," and "The Gentleman from San Francisco," his most representative piece, which was translated into English by D. H. Lawrence.
Bunin was a well-known translator himself. The best known of his translations is Longfellow's "The Song of Hiawatha" for which Bunin was awarded the Pushkin Prize in 1903. He also translated works of Byron, Tennyson, and Musset. In 1909, he was elected to the Russian Academy.
Renown
From 1895 on, Bunin divided his time between Moscow and St. Petersburg. He married the daughter of a Greek revolutionary in 1898, but the marriage ended in divorce. Although he remarried in 1907, Bunin's romances with other women continued until his death. His tempestuous private life in emigration is the subject of the internationally acclaimed Russian movie, The Diary of His Wife (2000).
Bunin published his first full-length work, The Village, when he was 40. It was a bleak portrayal of village life, with its stupidity, brutality, and violence. It's harsh realism recalls that of Anton Chekhov. Like Chekhov's "Peasants," Bunin's work is an antidote to the romanticization of the peasants that is found in Russian literature (Tolstoy's peasant-philosopher, Platon Kataev from War and Peace, is a prime example) as well as idealization of the peasant commune in much later nineteenth and early twentieth century Russian social thought. Bunin described the work thusly, "the characters having sunk so far below the average of intelligence as to be scarcely human." The work brought him in touch with Maxim Gorky. Two years later, he published Dry Valley, which was a veiled portrayal of his family.
Before World War I, Bunin traveled in Ceylon, Palestine, Egypt, and Turkey, and these travels left their mark on his writing. He spent the winters from 1912 to 1914 on Capri with Gorky.
Emigration
Bunin left Moscow after the Russian Revolution of 1917, moving to Odessa. He lived there during the Russian Civil War, leaving Odessa on the last French ship in 1919, settling in Grasse, France. There, he published his diary, The Accursed Days, which voiced his aristocratic aversion to the Bolshevik regime. About the Soviet government he wrote: "What a disgusting gallery of convicts!"
Bunin was much lionized in emigration, where he came to be viewed as the last living link to the lineage of Russian writers in the tradition of Tolstoy and Chekhov. Accordingly, he was the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1933. On the journey through Germany to accept the prize in Stockholm, he was detained by the Nazis, ostensibly for jewel smuggling, and forced to drink a bottle of castor oil.
In the 1930s, Bunin published two parts of a projected autobiographic trilogy: The Life of Arsenyev and Lika, which were "neither a short novel, nor a novel, nor a long short story, but . . . of a genre yet unknown." Later, he worked on his celebrated cycle of nostalgic stories with a strong erotic undercurrent and a Proustian ring. They were published as the Dark Alleys in 1943.
Bunin was a strong opponent of the Nazis and reportedly sheltered a Jew in his house in Grasse throughout the occupation. To the end of his life, he remained interested in Soviet literature and even entertained plans of returning to Russia, as Alexander Kuprin had done before. Bunin died of a heart attack in a Paris attic flat, his invaluable book of reminiscences on Chekhov still unfinished. Several years later, his works were allowed to be published in the Soviet Union.
References
• Bunin, Ivan. Night of Denial: Stories and Novellas. Trans. Robert Bowie. Northwestern 2006 ISBN 0-8101-1403-8
• Bunin, Ivan. The Life of Arsenyev. Edited by Andrew Baruch Wachtel. Northwestern 1994 ISBN 0-8101-1172-1
• Terras, Victor. A History of Russian Literature. Yale University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-300-04971-4
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LTC Stephen F.
Kasimir Stanislavovitch by Ivan Bunin Full Unabridged AudioBook
Audible Summer Promo: https://amzn.to/2B8RhYz http://bit.ly/Get3Audiobooks http://bit.ly/Choose_Your_2_FREE_AUDIOBOOKS http://bit.ly/KindleUnlimitedUK http:/...
Kasimir Stanislavovitch by Ivan Bunin Full Unabridged AudioBook
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rswGPafRrX4
Image:
1. Stephan Skitalets, Leonid Nikolaevic Andreev, Maxim Gorky, Ivan Alekseevic Bunin, Cialapin, Tieleciov, Evgeny Chirikov - intellectuals of modern Russia, photograph by Hejk, from L'Illustrazione Italiana, Year XXXII, No 34, August 20, 1905
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rswGPafRrX4
Image:
1. Stephan Skitalets, Leonid Nikolaevic Andreev, Maxim Gorky, Ivan Alekseevic Bunin, Cialapin, Tieleciov, Evgeny Chirikov - intellectuals of modern Russia, photograph by Hejk, from L'Illustrazione Italiana, Year XXXII, No 34, August 20, 1905
FYI LTC John Shaw SPC Diana D. LTC Hillary Luton
1SG Steven ImermanSSG Pete FishGySgt Gary CordeiroPO1 H Gene LawrenceSPC Chris Bayner-CwikSgt Jim BelanusSGM Bill FrazerMSG Tom EarleySSgt Marian MitchellSGT Michael HearnPO2 Frederick DunnSP5 Dennis LobergerCPO John BjorgeSGT Randell RoseSSG Jimmy CernichSGT Denny EspinosaMSG Fred Bucci
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