Actors after the ball. "After the Ball" (main characters)
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.
Started in 1889 independent life- with a change of professions, with work both in the provincial and in the capital 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 the poetry collection Under the Open Air, as well as the translation of Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha, which received very appreciated and 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).
First World War brought Bunin "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 own the best works: "Mitya's love" (1924), " Sunstroke”(1925), “The Case of the 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, the decree of the Soviet government of 1946 "On the restoration of the citizenship of the USSR subjects of the former Russian Empire... "called it a "generous measure." However, the Zhdanov decree on the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad (1946), which trampled A. Akhmatova and M. Zoshchenko, forever averted the writer 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 subjected to harsh criticism. 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 literary portrait 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.
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Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is a representative of a noble family, which was rooted in the 15th century and had a coat of arms included in the "General Armorial of the Noble Families of the All-Russian Empire" (1797). Among the writer's relatives were the poetess Anna Bunina, the writer Vasily Zhukovsky and other figures of Russian culture and science. Great-great-grandfather of Ivan Alekseevich - Semyon Afanasyevich - served as secretary of the State patrimonial board.
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The writer's father - landowner Alexei Nikolaevich Bunin (1827-1906) - did not receive good education: after graduating from the first class of the Oryol gymnasium, he left his studies, and at the age of sixteen he got a job in the office of the provincial noble assembly. As part of the Yelets militia squad, he participated in the Crimean campaign. Ivan Alekseevich recalled his father as a man who possessed remarkable physical strength, hot and generous at the same time: “His whole being was ... saturated with the feeling of his lordly origin.” Despite the dislike for learning that had taken root since adolescence, until old age he “read everything that came to hand with great willingness”
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Ivan Alekseevich was born on October 10, 1870 in Voronezh, in house number 3 on Bolshaya Dvoryanskaya Street, which belonged to the provincial secretary Anna Germanovskaya, who rented out rooms to tenants. The Bunin family moved to the city from the village in 1867 to give a gymnasium education to their eldest sons Yuli and Evgeny. As the writer later recalled, his childhood memories were associated with Pushkin, whose poems were read aloud by everyone in the house - both parents and brothers. At the age of four, Bunin moved with his parents to family estate to the Butyrki farm of the Yelets district.
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In the summer of 1881, Alexei Nikolaevich brought younger son Yelets male gymnasium. In a petition addressed to the director, the father wrote: “I wish to educate my son Ivan Bunin in the entrusted to you educational institution»; in an additional document, he promised to pay the fee for the “right to teach” in a timely manner and notify the boy of changes in the boy’s place of residence. After delivery entrance exams Bunin was enrolled in the 1st grade.
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Studying at the gymnasium ended for Ivan Alekseevich in the winter of 1886. Having gone on vacation to his parents, who moved to their Ozerki estate, he decided not to return to Yelets. In early spring, the teachers' council expelled Bunin from the gymnasium for not appearing "from the Christmas vacation." The older brother, realizing that mathematics causes rejection in the younger, concentrated his main teaching efforts on the humanities. In January 1889, the publisher of the Orlovsky Vestnik, Nadezhda Semyonova, offered Bunin to take the position of assistant editor in her newspaper. Before agreeing or refusing, Ivan Alekseevich decided to consult with Julius, who, having left Ozerki, moved to Kharkov. So in the life of the writer began a period of wandering. In Kharkov, Bunin settled with his brother, who helped him find a simple job in the zemstvo council. Having received a salary, Ivan Alekseevich went to the Crimea, visited Yalta, Sevastopol. He returned to the editorial office of the Oryol newspaper only in the fall.
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At that time, Varvara Pashchenko (1870-1918) worked as a proofreader in Orlovsky Vestnik, whom researchers call the first - "unmarried" - wife of the writer. She graduated from the seven classes of the Yelets women's gymnasium, then entered the additional course"for the special study of the Russian language". In a letter to his brother, Ivan Alekseevich said that at the first meeting, Varvara - "tall, with very beautiful features, in pince-nez" - seemed to him a very arrogant and emancipated girl; later he characterized her as an intelligent, interesting conversationalist.
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Bunin did not hide his annoyance due to the poor attention of critics to his early works; in many of his letters there was the phrase "Praise, please, praise!". Lacking literary agents capable of organizing press reviews, he sent his books to friends and acquaintances, accompanying the mailing list with requests for reviews. Bunin's debut collection of poems, published in Orel, almost did not arouse interest in the literary environment - the reason was indicated by one of the authors of the journal "Observer" (1892, No. 3), who noted that "Mr. Bunin's verse is smooth and correct, but who writes in rough verses? A certain recognition came to Bunin after the release of the poetry collection “Leaf Fall”, published by the symbolist publishing house “Scorpio” in 1901 and which, according to Vladislav Khodasevich, became “the first book to which he owes the beginning of his fame”
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In 1898, Bunin met the editor of the publication "Southern Review" - Nikolai Tsakni from Odessa. His daughter - nineteen-year-old Anna - became the first official wife of Ivan Alekseevich. In a letter to Julius, talking about the upcoming marriage, Bunin reported that his chosen one was "beautiful, but the girl is amazingly pure and simple." In September of the same year, a wedding took place, after which the newlyweds went on a trip by boat. Despite entering the family of wealthy Greeks, the writer’s financial situation remained difficult - for example, in the summer of 1899, he turned to his older brother with a request to send at least ten rubles immediately, noting: “I won’t ask Tsakni, even if I die.” After two years of marriage, the couple broke up; their only son, Nikolai, died of scarlet fever in 1905. Subsequently, already living in France, Ivan Alekseevich admitted that he did not have “special love” for Anna Nikolaevna, although she was a very pleasant lady: “But this pleasantness consisted of this Lanzheron, big waves on the shore and also that every day for dinner there was an excellent trout with white wine, after which we often went with her to the opera "[
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On October 18, 1903, the voting of the commission for the award of the Pushkin Prize took place (the chairman was literary historian Alexander Veselovsky). Bunin received eight electoral votes and three non-electoral ones. As a result, he was awarded half the prize (500 rubles), the second part went to the translator Petr Weinberg
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At the evening, which took place on November 4, twenty-five-year-old Vera Muromtseva, who was friends with the mistress of the house, was present. After reading poetry, Ivan Alekseevich met future wife. Since Anna Tsakni did not give Bunin a divorce, the writer could not formalize his relationship with Muromtseva (they got married after leaving Russia, in 1922; Alexander Kuprin was the best man). The beginning of their life together was a trip abroad: in April-May 1907, Bunin and Vera Nikolaevna made a trip to the countries of the East. Nikolai Dmitrievich Teleshov gave them money for the voyage.
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Bunin's first nomination for the Nobel Prize in Literature took place shortly after the writer's arrival in France. At the origins of the Nobel "Russian project" was the prose writer Mark Aldanov, who wrote in 1922 in one of the questionnaires that in the emigrant environment the most authoritative figures are Bunin, Kuprin and Merezhkovsky; their joint candidacy for the award could raise the prestige of "exiled Russian literature." The official text of the Swedish Academy stated that "The Nobel Prize in Literature ... is awarded to Ivan Bunin for the rigorous skill with which he develops the traditions of Russian classical prose"
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In October 1953, Ivan Alekseevich's health deteriorated sharply. Family friends who helped Vera Nikolaevna take care of the sick were almost constantly in the house, including Alexander Bakhrakh; Doctor Vladimir Zernov came every day. A few hours before his death, Bunin asked his wife to read Chekhov's letters to him aloud. As Zernov recalled, on November 8 he was called to the writer twice: the first time he performed the necessary medical procedures, and when he arrived again, Ivan Alekseevich was already dead. The cause of death, according to the doctor, was cardiac asthma and pulmonary sclerosis. Bunin was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois. The monument on the grave was made according to a drawing by the artist Alexandre Benois.
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"Cursed Days" is an artistic and philosophical-journalistic work that reflects the era of the revolution that followed it civil war. Due to the accuracy with which Bunin managed to capture the experiences, thoughts and worldviews that prevailed in Russia at that time, the book is of great historical interest. Also, "Cursed Days" are important for understanding Bunin's entire work, as they reflect a turning point both in life and in creative biography writer. The basis of the work is Bunin's documentation and comprehension of the revolutionary events unfolding in Moscow in 1918 and in Odessa in 1919, which he witnessed. Perceiving the revolution as a national catastrophe, Bunin was very upset by the events taking place in Russia, which explains the gloomy, depressed intonation of the work.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin (1870 - 1953) - Russian writer and poet. Ivan Bunin was born into a noble, poor family on October 10, 1870. Then, in the biography of Bunin, there was a move to the estate of the Oryol province near the city of Yelets. Bunin spent his childhood in this place, among the natural beauty of the fields.
Primary education in Bunin's life was received at home. Bunin's first poems were written at the age of seven. Then the young poet went to study at the Yelets gymnasium. However, he did not finish it when he returned home. Further education in biography
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was received thanks to his older brother Julius.
Bunin's poems were first published in 1888. The following year, Bunin moved to Orel, becoming a proofreader for a local newspaper. Bunin's poetry, collected in a collection called "Poems", became the first published book. Soon, Bunin's work gains fame. The following poems by Bunin were published in the collections Under the Open Air (1898), Falling Leaves (1901).
dating the greatest writers(Bitter, Tolstoy, Chekhov, etc.) leaves a significant imprint in the life and work of Bunin. The best come out
Bunin's stories Antonov apples"," Pines. Bunin's prose was published in The Complete Works (1915).
Almost all of Ivan Bunin's biography consists of moving, traveling (Europe, Asia, Africa). The writer in 1909 becomes an honorary academician of the Academy of Sciences. Having sharply met the revolution, he leaves Russia forever. In 1933, Bunin's work "The Life of Arseniev" received the Nobel Prize.
The main themes and images of poetry. Bunin entered literature with poetry. He said: "I am a poet more than a writer." However, Bunin's poet is a man of a special view of the world. Speaking of his lyrics, we cannot clearly distinguish between the themes of his poetry, because Bunin's poetry and prose seem to go side by side. His lyrics are a collection of subtle thematic facets. In Bunin's poetry, one can distinguish such thematic facets as poems about life, about the joy of earthly existence, poems about childhood and youth, about loneliness, about longing. That is, Bunin wrote about life, about a person, about what touches a person.
One of these facets is poems about the world of nature and the world of man. The poem "Evening" is written in the genre of a classic sonnet. Here the world of man and the world of nature are sung.
We always remember happiness.
And happiness is everywhere. Maybe it
This autumn garden behind the barn
And clean air pouring through the window.
In the bottomless sky with a light, clean cut
Rise, the cloud shines. For a long time
I follow him ... We see little, we know.
And happiness is given only to those who know.
The window is open. She squeaked and sat down
A bird on the windowsill. And from books
I look away tired for a moment.
The day is getting dark, the sky is empty,
The hum of the threshing machine is heard on the threshing floor.
I see, I hear, I am happy. Everything is in me.
This poem says that we are chasing happiness, looking for it, but we don’t realize that it is around us (“We only remember about happiness ...”). People can't always look at ordinary things unusual look; they don't notice them, they don't notice happiness. (“We see little, we know, but happiness is given only to those who know”). But neither a cloud nor a bird escapes the poet's keen eye, these everyday things that bring happiness. The happiness formula according to Bunin is expressed in the last line of the poem: “I see, I hear, I am happy. Everything is in me."
The image of the sky dominates in the poem. In Bunin's lyrics, the sky is the leitmotif, it personifies life, it is unusual and eternal (the poem "The sky opened up").
In Bunin's poetry, "star lyrics" are especially distinguished, this is the focus of the themes of the sky, stars, eternity and beauty. He wrote magnificent night, twilight poems, as if filled with shimmer. This can be explained by his special perception of the world. Bunin said: "I will not get tired of singing you stars." One of these songs to the stars was the poem "Sirius". The star Sirius is white, chamomile, the most bright Star in the night sky. AT Ancient Egypt Sirius was considered a sacred star. In this poem, admiration for a beloved star and philosophical reflections are intertwined. lyrical hero. The star is a symbol of fate, it is associated with life, youth, homeland. Bunin considers the star to be a philosophical concept, since both a person on earth and a star in the sky have a high mission - to serve eternal beauty.
The intimate lyrics of I. A. Bunin are tragic, they sound like a protest against the imperfection of the world.
So, the main features of the lyre. Bunin's poetry - aspirations to describe. details, brightness concr. details, classic simplicity, conciseness, poetization of eternal people. values, and above all native nature. The richness of subtext, frequent reference to symbolism, close fusion with Russian. prose, in particular with Chekhov's povelistics; attraction to the philosophical frequent roll-call with own. stories, gravitation towards the philosophical frequent roll-call with own. stories.
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Bunin is the greatest master of Russian realistic prose and an outstanding poet of the early 20th century. His literary activity began in the late 80s of the XIX century. In his first stories (“Kastryuk”, “On the Foreign Side”, “On the Farm” and others), the young writer depicts the hopeless poverty of the peasantry.
In the 90s, Bunin met Chekhov, Gorky. During these years, he tries to combine realistic traditions in his work with new techniques and principles of composition close to impressionism (blurred plot, creating a musical, rhythmic pattern). So in the story "Antonov apples" outwardly unrelated episodes of the life of the fading patriarchal-noble life, colored with lyrical sadness and regret, are shown. However, there is not only longing for the desolated “noble nests”. Beautiful pictures appear on the pages of the work, fanned by a feeling of love for the motherland, the happiness of the fusion of man with nature is affirmed.
But social problems still do not let Bunin go. Here we have the former Nikolaev soldier Meliton (“Meliton”), who was driven with whips “through the ranks”. In the stories “Ore”, “Epitaph”, “New Road”, pictures of hunger, poverty and the ruin of the village arise.
In 1911-1913, Bunin increasingly covers various aspects of Russian reality. In his works of these years, he raises the following topics: the degeneration of the nobility (“Dry Valley”, “The Last Date”), the ugliness of the petty-bourgeois life (“ Good life”, “The Cup of Life”), the theme of love, which is often fatal (“Ignat”, “On the Road”). In an extensive cycle of stories about the peasantry (“Merry Yard”, “Everyday Life”, “Victim” and others), the writer continues the “village” theme.
In the story "Dry Valley" the tradition of poetization of estate life, admiration for the beauty of the fading "noble nests" is resolutely revised. The idea of the blood unity of the local nobility and the people is combined here with the author's idea of the responsibility of the masters for the fate of the peasants, of their terrible guilt before them.
The protest against false bourgeois morality is heard in the stories "The Brothers", "The Gentleman from San Francisco". In the first work written by Bunin after a trip to Ceylon, images are given of a cruel, jaded Englishman and a young native rickshaw who is in love with a native girl. The ending is tragic: the girl ends up in a brothel, the hero commits suicide. The colonialists, the author tells readers, bring destruction and death with them.
In the story “The Gentleman from San Francisco,” the writer does not name the hero. The American millionaire, who spent his whole life in pursuit of profit, in his declining years, together with his wife and daughter, travels to Europe on the Atlantis, a luxurious steamer of those years. He is self-confident and anticipates in advance those pleasures that can be bought with money. But everything is insignificant before death. In a hotel in Capri, he suddenly dies. His corpse in an old soda box is sent back to the steamer. Bunin testified that the gentleman from San Francisco, this “ new person with an old heart,” one of those who made their fortune by walking over the corpses of other people. Yes, now he and others like him drink expensive liquors and smoke expensive Havana cigars. As a kind of symbol of the falsity of their existence, the author showed a couple in love, which the passengers admired. And “only one captain of the ship knew that these were“ hired lovers ”playing love for a well-fed audience for money. And here is the contrast between the lives of the rich and the poor. The images of the latter are fanned with warmth and love. This is the bellboy Luigi, and the boatman Lorenzo, and the highlanders-pipers, opposing the immoral and deceitful world of the well-fed.
After 1917, Bunin went into exile. In Paris, he writes a cycle of short stories "Dark Alleys". The female images are especially attractive in these stories. Love, the author claims, is the highest happiness, but even it can be short-lived and fragile, lonely and bitter (“Cold Autumn”, “Paris”, “In a Foreign Land”).
The novel "The Life of Arseniev" is written on autobiographical material. It touches upon the themes of homeland, nature, love, life and death. The author sometimes poeticizes the past of monarchist Russia.
It seems to me that Bunin is close to Chekhov. Ivan Alekseevich was a wonderful short story writer, a master of detail, and an excellent landscape painter. Unlike Kuprin, he did not strive for captivating plots; his work is distinguished by deep lyricism.
A recognized master of prose, Bunin was also an outstanding poet. Here is the image of autumn (the poem “Falling Leaves”), a “quiet widow” entering the forest mansions:
Forest, like a painted tower,
Purple, gold, crimson,
Cheerful motley crowd
It stands over a bright meadow.
I especially like Bunin's poems “Giordano Bruno”, “Wasteland”, “Plowman”, “Haymaking”, “On Plyushchikha”, “Song” and others.
In addition, Bunin was an excellent translator (“Cain” and “Manfred” by Byron, “Crimean Sonnets” by Mickiewicz, “Song of Hiawatha” by Longfellow and others).
For us, the high poetic culture of Bunin, his possession of the treasures of the Russian language, the high lyricism of his artistic images, the perfection of the forms of his works are important.
The writing
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born on October 10 (22), 1870 in Voronezh in the family of Oryol landowners Alexei Nikolayevich and Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Bunin. Four years later, his parents, along with their children, moved to their Ozerki estate on the Butyrki farm in the Yelets district of the Oryol province, where the future writer spent his childhood. Bunin received his initial education at home - his teacher was a student at Moscow University. At the age of eleven, the boy entered the first class of the Yelets gymnasium, but in 1886 he was expelled from it for poor progress. Bunin spent the next four years at the Ozerki estate. He successfully completed the gymnasium course at home, under the guidance of his beloved elder brother Julius. Attachment to his brother also caused Bunin's arrival in Kharkov in 1889, where he briefly became close to the populists. In the autumn of the same year, he returned to Orel, collaborated with the newspaper "Orlovsky Vestnik".
At the same time, he met Varvara Vladimirovna Pashchenko, love for whom left a deep mark on the writer's work. The young people lived together until 1894, but their civil marriage broke up, V.V. Pashchenko left and soon got married. Bunin was having a hard time breaking up with his beloved, his despair reached thoughts of suicide. Early and so deep suffering did not pass without a trace for his work: every beautiful moment of earthly existence that he sang is always filled with ultimate joy and endless torment. Literary activity Bunin began with the publication of poetry. His first poetry collection was published as an appendix to the "Orlovsky Bulletin" in 1891, and already in 1903 one of the following poetic cycles - "Leaf Fall" - was awarded the Pushkin Prize Russian Academy Sciences. By that time, the writer had already gained fame both as the author of stories published in leading Russian magazines, and as a translator of G. Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha. The end of the 1890s was marked in Bunin's life by his friendship with A.P. Chekhov, whose loyalty he carried through his entire writing career. In the house of A.P. Chekhov, Bunin also met Maxim Gorky, who introduced him to the circle of realist writers grouped at the Znanie publishing house. The years of close creative and human friendship of these two writers ended in mutual cooling and rupture: the attitude of Bunin and Gorky to the events of social and political life was too different. political life Russia.
In 1898, Bunin married the actress Anna Nikolaevna Tsakni, who became the mother of his only son. However, this marriage was not successful: the couple broke up a year later, and their child died in early childhood. A new stage in the writer's creative biography began in 1900 with the release of the story "Antonov apples", recognized as the pinnacle of prose of the beginning of the century. The next few years Bunin traveled extensively in Europe, made a trip to the Caucasus. He was irresistibly attracted by the East, and in 1907 he went to Egypt, visited Syria and Palestine. The creative result of this journey was the cycle of travel essays "Shadow of a Bird" (1907-1911). Bunin's pilgrimage to the countries of the East was preceded by his marriage to Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva (this marriage was consecrated by the church only in 1922). By the end of the first decade of the century, Bunin's name had become widely known. The Gorky publishing house "Knowledge" publishes the first collected works of Bunin in five volumes. He is awarded the second Pushkin Prize, the writer is elected an honorary academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 1910 can be considered the beginning of the period of Bunin's creative maturity. His first major prose work, The Village, is being published. The story aroused great interest among readers and stormy debates among critics: for the first time, topics were touched upon in it, which were hardly touched by the literature of the previous period. Having made a trip with his wife to France, Algeria, Capri, a trip to Egypt and Ceylon, on his return he publishes the story "Dry Valley". In the last pre-October decade, Bunin created such masterpieces of Russian prose as "The Cup of Life", "The Gentleman from San Francisco", "Light Breath", "Chang's Dreams". An event in the cultural life of Russia was the publication in the publishing house of A. F. Marx Complete collection Bunin's writings (1915).
Bunin experienced the October Revolution tragically. The premonition of a near and inevitable catastrophe resulted in a spiritual and creative crisis. In 1920, Bunin left Russia forever, taking his infinitely beloved and lost homeland into his heart.
Speaking about the emigrant period of Bunin's life, it must be remembered that he ended up in a foreign land as an already established artist with well-defined tastes and predilections. In the pre-revolutionary prose of the writer, as well as in his poetic works, the main themes and motives, features of writing and forms of all his work were quite clearly traced. His personality itself had long been formed, the passion of nature was combined in him with aristocratic restraint, with an amazing sense of proportion, intolerance for any kind of pose and pretense. Bunin had strong character and at the same time was distinguished by masterful variability of moods. In Russian foreign culture, he introduced the unique aura of the last "village" nobility with its increased commitment to the family, with its memory of the life of previous generations, an organic sense of the unity of man and nature. At the same time, Bunin's worldview was almost always imbued with the experience of the imminent and inevitable collapse of this way of life, its end. Hence the eternal Bunin's desire to overcome the boundaries of the circle of life, to go beyond the limits destined by it. The need for spiritual liberation made the writer himself an eternal wanderer, and filled his artistic world with the “light breath” of self-regenerating life.
The whole second half of Bunin's life was spent in France. In March 1920, the writer and his wife, V. N. Muromtseva-Bunina, ended up in Paris. The main journeys and the external impressions of life connected with them are a thing of the past. Bunin spent the next three decades in painstaking and exacting work at his desk. In exile, he wrote ten books, which, however, did little to help fight poverty. Even the writer's collaboration with the leading "thick" magazine of the Russian abroad - "Modern Notes" - did not save the Bunin family from constant lack of money. Having settled in Grasse, in the south of France, the writer found a kind of his own home. At his modest villa Jeannette, literary friendships were struck up with new people, including the young writers M. Aldanov and L. Zurov. For several years, Jeannette was a haven for G. N. Kuznetsova, whose love inspired Bunin to create his best book, Dark Alleys, as he himself repeatedly said. In 1920-1930, the old acquaintances of the Bunins were renewed - with writers B. Zaitsev, V. Khodasevich, G. Adamovich, philosophers F. Stepun, L. Shestov, G. Fedotov. Of those outstanding contemporaries who ended up in France, D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius and A. Remizov were not close to Bunin. In 1926, Grass visited one of Bunin's dearest friends - S. Rachmaninov, the great Russian composer, pianist and conductor, with whom the writer especially appreciated spiritual kinship.
In 1933, Bunin became the first Russian writer to be awarded Nobel Prize in the field of literature - "for the truthful artistic talent with which he recreated a typical Russian character in fiction." The writer received such high recognition after the publication of the book "The Life of Arseniev", which was a significant milestone in the literary process of the 20th century. A short period of material well-being was overshadowed for Bunin by a premonition of a new historical catastrophe - a world war. The fact of the detention and humiliating search of the writer during his trip through Germany is widely known. In 1940, after German occupation France, the Bunins tried to escape from Grasse, but soon returned. During the Second World War, living in need, in constant anxiety for the fate of Russia, the writer turned to the theme of love, writing his "Book of Results" - "Dark Alleys". The first edition was published in 1943 in New York, and three years later its expanded Paris edition appeared, which was recognized as the final version.
In the late 1940s, Bunin moved from Grasse to Paris. For some time, he became close with the Soviet representatives in France, the possibility of publishing Bunin's works in the USSR and even his return was discussed. However, Bunin ultimately refused to return to his homeland. Last years The writer devoted his creative work to work on the book "Memoirs" and on the remaining unfinished book about Chekhov. On November 8, 1953, Bunin died in his Paris apartment and was buried in the Russian cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois near Paris.