Ivan Bunin - biography, personal life: Lonely hunter. Short biography of Ivan Bunin: the most important and interesting Message about Bunin
He opened new horizons for the most demanding readers. He skillfully wrote fascinating stories and short stories. He subtly felt literature and native language. Ivan Bunin is a writer, thanks to whom people took a different look at love.
On October 10, 1870, the boy Vanya was born in Voronezh. He grew up and was brought up in the family of a landowner in the Oryol and Tula provinces, who became impoverished because of his love for cards. However, despite this fact, the writer did not just feel aristocratic, because his family roots lead us to the poetess A.P. Bunina and the father of V.A. Zhukovsky - A.I. Bunin. The Bunin family was a worthy representative of the noble families of Russia.
Three years later, the boy's family moved to the estate on the Butyrka farm in the Oryol province. Many childhood memories of Bunin are connected with this place, which we can see between the lines in his stories. For example, in "Antonov apples" he describes with love and awe the family nests of relatives and friends.
Youth and education
In 1881, having successfully passed the exams, Bunin entered the Yelets gymnasium. The boy showed interest in learning and was a very capable student, but this did not apply to the natural and exact sciences. In his letter to his older brother, he wrote that the math exam was “the most terrible” for him. He did not graduate from the gymnasium, as he was expelled due to absence from the holidays. He continued his studies with his brother Julius at the Ozerki parental estate, with whom he subsequently became very close. Knowing about the preferences of the child, the relatives focused on the humanities.
His first literary works belong to this period. At 15, the young writer creates the novel "Passion", but it is not published anywhere. The very first published poem was “Over the Grave of S. Ya. Nadson” in the Rodina magazine (1887).
creative path
Here begins the period of wanderings of Ivan Bunin. Starting in 1889, he worked for 3 years in the Orlovsky Vestnik magazine, in which his small literary works and articles were published. Later he moved to his brother in Kharkov, where he arranged for him in the provincial government as a librarian.
In 1894 he went to Moscow, where he met with Leo Tolstoy. As mentioned earlier, the poet even then subtly feels the surrounding reality, therefore, in the stories “Antonov apples”, “New road” and “Epitaph”, nostalgia for the passing era will be so sharply traced and dissatisfaction with the urban environment will be felt.
1891 is the year of the publication of the first collection of poems by Bunin, in which the reader first encounters the theme of bitterness and sweetness of love, which permeate the works dedicated to unhappy love for Pashchenko.
In 1897, the second book appeared in St. Petersburg - "To the End of the World and Other Stories".
Ivan Bunin also distinguished himself as a translator of the works of Alcaeus, Saadi, Francesco Petrarch, Adam Mickiewicz and George Byron.
The writer's hard work paid off. In Moscow in 1898, a poetry collection "Under the open sky" appeared. In 1900, a collection of poems "Leaf Fall" was published. In 1903, Bunin was awarded the Pushkin Prize, which he received from the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
Every year the talented writer enriched literature more and more. 1915 is the year of his creative success. His most famous works were published: "The Gentleman from San Francisco", "Easy Breath", "Chang's Dreams" and "Grammar of Love". The dramatic events in the country greatly inspired the master.
In his book of life, he began a new page after moving to Constantinople in the 1920s. Later he ends up in Paris as a political exile. He did not accept the coup and condemned the new government with all his heart. The most significant novel created during the period of emigration is Arseniev's Life. For him, the author received the Nobel Prize in 1933 (the first for a Russian writer). This is a grandiose event in our history and a big step forward for Russian literature.
During the Second World War, the writer lives very poorly in the Villa Janet. His work abroad does not find such a response as at home, and the author himself is sick of longing for his native land. Bunin's last literary work was published in 1952.
Personal life
- The first was Varvara Pashchenko. This love story is not a happy one. At first, the young lady's parents became an obstacle to their relationship, who were categorically against the marriage of their daughter to a failed young man, who, moreover, was a year younger than her. Then the writer himself became convinced of the dissimilarity of the characters. As a result, Pashchenko married a wealthy landowner, with whom she had a close relationship secretly from Bunin. The author dedicated poems to this gap.
- In 1898 Ivan marries the daughter of a migrant revolutionary A. N. Tsakni. It was she who became the "sunstroke" for the writer. However, the marriage did not last long, since the Greek woman did not experience the same strong attraction to her husband.
- His third muse was his second wife, Vera Muromtseva. This woman truly became Ivan's guardian angel. As after the crash of a ship during a storm, a calm lull follows, so Vera appeared at the most necessary moment for Bunin. They have been married for 46 years.
- But everything was smooth only until the moment when Ivan Alekseevich brought his student into the house - the beginning writer Galina Kuznetsova. It was a fatal love - both were not free, both were separated by an abyss in age (she was 26, and he was 56 years old). Galina left her husband for him, but Bunin was not ready to do the same with Vera. So the three of them lived for 10 years before the appearance of Marga. Bunin was in despair: another woman took his second wife away. This event was a big blow for him.
Death
In the last years of his life, Bunin is nostalgic for Russia and really wants to go back. But his plans never came to fruition. November 8, 1953 - the date of death of the great writer of the Silver Age, Ivan Bunin.
He made a huge contribution to the development of literary creativity in Russia, became a symbol of Russian émigré prose of the 20th century.
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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 is a very extraordinary person who in many ways turned the course of development of the entire literary world. Of course, many critics, with their characteristic skepticism, treat the achievements of the great author, but it is simply impossible to deny his significance in all Russian literature. Like any poet or writer, the secrets of creating great and memorable works are closely connected with the biography of Ivan Alekseevich himself, and his rich and multifaceted life largely influenced both his immortal lines and all Russian literature as a whole.Brief Biography of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
The future poet and writer, but for now just a young Vanya Bunin, was lucky to be born into a fairly decent and wealthy family of a noble noble family, which had the honor of living in a luxurious noble estate, which fully corresponded to the status of the noble family of his family. Even in early childhood, the family decided to move from Voronezh to the Oryol province, where Ivan spent his early years without attending any educational institutions until the age of eleven - the boy successfully studied at home, read books and improved his knowledge, delving into a good, high-quality and informative literature. In 1881, at the request of his parents, Ivan nevertheless entered a decent gymnasium, however, studying at an educational institution did not bring the boy any pleasure at all - already in the fourth grade on vacation, he announced that he did not want to return to school, and it was much more pleasant for him to study at home and more productive. He nevertheless returned to the gymnasium - perhaps the reason for this was the desire of his father, an officer, perhaps a simple desire to gain knowledge and be brought up in a team, but already in 1886 Ivan nevertheless returned home, but did not quit his education - now his teacher, mentor and leader in the educational process was the elder brother Julius, who followed the success of the future famous Nobel laureate.
Ivan began to write poetry at a very early age, but then he himself, being well-read and educated, understood that such creativity was not serious. At the age of seventeen, his work moved to a new level, and that's when the poet realized that he needed to break out into people, and not put his works of art on the table.
Already in 1887, Ivan Alekseevich published his works for the first time, and, pleased with himself, the poet moved to Orel, where he successfully got a job as a proofreader in a local newspaper, gaining access to interesting and sometimes classified information and ample opportunities for development. It is here that he meets Varvara Pashchenko, whom he falls in love with unconsciously, with her throws everything that was acquired by overwork, contradicts the opinion of his parents and others and moves to Poltava.
The poet meets and communicates with many famous personalities - for example, for quite a long time he was with Anton Chekhov, already famous at that time, with whom, in the end, in 1895, Ivan Alekseevich was lucky to meet personally. In addition to a personal acquaintance with an old pen pal, Ivan Bunin makes acquaintance and finds common interests and points of contact with Balmont, Bryusov and many other talented minds of his time.
A happy and measured family life did not at all prevent the poet and writer from traveling a lot, getting to know new cities and countries, writing down his impressions on paper and sharing his emotions with his surroundings. The trips that took place during these years of the writer's life were largely reflected in his creative path - Bunin often created his works either on the road or at the time of arrival at a new place - in any case, creativity and travel were inextricably linked and tightly.
Bunin. Confession
Bunin was presented to a surprising variety of awards in the field of literature, due to which at a certain period he was even subjected to direct condemnation and harsh criticism from others - many began to notice arrogance and inflated self-esteem behind the writer, however, in fact, Bunin's creativity and talent are quite consistent with his self-image. Bunin was even awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, but he spent the money far from himself - already living abroad in exile or getting rid of the culture of the Bolsheviks, the writer helped the same creative people, poets and writers, as well as people, in the same way like he's a runaway from the country.Bunin and his wife were distinguished by their kindness and open heart - it is known that during the war years they even hid fugitive Jews in their backyard, protecting them from repression and extermination. Today, there are even opinions that Bunin should be given high awards and titles for many of his actions related to humanity, kindness and humanism.
Almost all his conscious life after the Revolution, Ivan Alekseevich spoke rather sharply against the new government, thanks to which he ended up abroad - he could not endure everything that was happening in the country. Of course, after the war, his ardor cooled down a bit, but, nevertheless, until the very last days, the poet was worried about his country and knew that something was wrong in it.
The poet died calmly and quietly in his sleep in his own bed. They say that at the time of his death there was a volume of Leo Tolstoy's book next to him.
The memory of the great literary figure, poet and writer is immortalized not only in his famous works, which are passed on from generation to generation by school textbooks and a variety of literary publications. The memory of Bunin lives in the names of streets, intersections, alleys and in every monument erected in memory of a great personality who created real changes in all Russian literature and advanced it to a completely new, progressive and modern level.
Creativity of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
The work of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is that necessary component, without which today it is simply impossible to imagine not only domestic, but also the entire world literature. It was he who made his invariable contribution to the creation of works, a new, fresh look at the world and endless horizons, from which poets and writers around the world still take an example. Oddly enough, today the work of Ivan Bunin is much more revered abroad, for some reason he did not receive such wide recognition in his homeland, even though his works are quite actively studied in schools from the very youngest grades. In his works there is absolutely everything that a lover of an exquisite, beautiful style, unusual play on words, bright and pure images and new, fresh and still relevant ideas are looking for.
Bunin, with his inherent skill, describes his own feelings - here even the most sophisticated reader understands exactly what the author felt at the time of creating this or that work - the experiences are described so vividly and openly. For example, one of Bunin's poems tells about a difficult and painful parting with his beloved, after which all that remains is to make a true friend - a dog that will never betray, and succumb to reckless drunkenness, ruining himself without stopping.
Women's images in Bunin's works are described especially vividly - each heroine of his works is drawn in the mind of the reader in such detail that one gets the impression of a personal acquaintance with one or another woman.
The main distinguishing feature of all the work of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is the universality of his works. Representatives of the most diverse classes and interests can find something close and dear, and his works will capture both experienced readers and those who, for the first time in their lives, have taken up the study of Russian literature.
Bunin wrote about absolutely everything that surrounded him, and in most cases the themes of his works coincided with different periods of his life. Early works often described simple village life, native open spaces and the surrounding nature. During the Revolution, the writer, of course, described everything that was happening in his beloved country - this is what became a real legacy not only of Russian classical literature, but of the entire national history.
Ivan Alekseevich wrote about himself and his life, passionately and in detail described his own feelings, often plunged into the past and recalled pleasant and negative moments, trying to understand himself and at the same time convey to the reader a deep and truly great thought. There is a lot of tragedy in his lines, especially in love works - here the writer saw tragedy in love and death in it.
The main themes in Bunin's works were:
Revolution and life before and after it
Love and all its tragedy
The world around the writer
Of course, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin left a contribution of unimaginable proportions to Russian literature, which is why his legacy is alive today, and the number of his admirers never decreases, but, on the contrary, is actively progressing.
Bunin Ivan Alekseevich (1870-1953) - Russian poet and writer, his work belongs to the Silver Age of Russian art, in 1933 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Childhood
Ivan Alekseevich was born on October 23, 1870 in the city of Voronezh, where the family rented housing on Dvoryanskaya Street in the German estate. The Bunin family belonged to a noble landowner family, among their ancestors were the poets Vasily Zhukovsky and Anna Bunina. By the time Ivan was born, the family was impoverished.
Father, Bunin Alexey Nikolaevich, served as an officer in his youth, then became a landowner, but in a short time he squandered the estate. Mother, Bunina Lyudmila Alexandrovna, nee belonged to the Chubarov family. The family already had two older boys: Julius (13 years old) and Evgeny (12 years old).
The Bunins moved to Voronezh three cities before Ivan's birth to educate their eldest sons. Julius had an unusually amazing ability in languages and mathematics, he studied very well. Eugene was not at all interested in studying, due to his boyish age he liked to chase pigeons through the streets, he left the gymnasium, but in the future he became a gifted artist.
But about the younger Ivan, mother Lyudmila Alexandrovna said that he was special, from birth he was different from older children, “no one has such a soul as Vanechka.”
In 1874 the family moved from the city to the countryside. It was the Oryol province, and on the Butyrka farm of the Yelets district, the Bunins rented an estate. By this time, the eldest son Julius graduated from the gymnasium with a gold medal and in the fall he was going to go to Moscow to enter the university at the mathematical faculty.
According to the writer Ivan Alekseevich, all his childhood memories are peasant huts, their inhabitants and endless fields. His mother and servants often sang folk songs and told him stories. Vanya spent whole days from morning to evening with peasant children in the nearest villages, he was friends with many, grazed cattle with them, and traveled at night. He liked to eat with them radish and black bread, bumpy rough cucumbers. As he later wrote in his work “The Life of Arseniev”, “without realizing it, at such a meal the soul was attached to the earth.”
Already at an early age, it became noticeable that Vanya perceives life and the world around him artistically. He liked to show people and animals with facial expressions and gestures, and was also known in the village as a good storyteller. At the age of eight, Bunin wrote his first poem.
Studies
Until the age of 11, Vanya was brought up at home, and then he was sent to the Yelets gymnasium. Immediately the boy began to study well, the subjects were given to him easily, especially literature. If he liked a poem (even a very large one - a whole page), he could remember it from the first reading. He was very fond of books, as he himself said, “read anything at that time” and continued to write poetry, imitating his favorite poets ─ Pushkin and Lermontov.
But then the training began to decline, and already in the third grade the boy was left for the second year. As a result, he did not graduate from the gymnasium, after the winter holidays in 1886 he announced to his parents that he did not want to return to the educational institution. Julius, at that time a candidate of Moscow University, took up further education of his brother. As before, literature remained Vanya's main hobby, he re-read all the domestic and foreign classics, even then it became clear that he would devote his future life to creativity.
First creative steps
At the age of seventeen, the poet's poems were no longer youthful, but serious, and Bunin made his debut in print.
In 1889, he moved to the city of Oryol, where he got a job in the local publication "Orlovsky Vestnik" to work as a proofreader. Ivan Alekseevich was in great need at that time, since literary works did not yet bring good earnings, but he had nowhere to wait for help. The father completely went bankrupt, sold the estate, lost his estate and moved to live with his own sister in Kamenka. The mother of Ivan Alekseevich with his younger sister Masha went to relatives in Vasilyevskoye.
In 1891, the first poetry collection of Ivan Alekseevich, entitled "Poems", was published.
In 1892, Bunin and his common-law wife Varvara Pashchenko moved to live in Poltava, where his elder brother Julius worked as a statistician in the provincial zemstvo council. He helped Ivan Alekseevich and his civil wife get a job. In 1894, Bunin began to publish his works in the newspaper Poltavskiye Provincial Gazette. And also the zemstvo ordered him essays on grain and grass harvests, on the fight against pests.
literary path
While in Poltava, the poet began to collaborate with the Kievlyanin newspaper. In addition to poetry, Bunin began to write a lot of prose, which was increasingly published in quite popular publications:
- "Russian wealth";
- "Bulletin of Europe";
- "World of God".
The luminaries of literary criticism drew attention to the work of the young poet and prose writer. One of them spoke very well about the story "Tanka" (at first it was called "The Village Sketch") and said that "the author will make a great writer."
In 1893-1894, there was a period of special love for Bunin in Tolstoy, he traveled to the Sumy district, where he communicated with sectarians who, in their views, were close to the Tolstoyans, visited the Tolstoy colonies near Poltava, and even went to Moscow to meet the writer himself, which produced on Ivan Alekseevich made an indelible impression.
In the spring and summer of 1894, Bunin took a long trip around Ukraine, he sailed on the steamer "Chaika" along the Dnieper. The poet, in the literal sense of the word, was in love with the steppes and villages of Little Russia, longed to communicate with the people, listened to their melodic songs. He visited the grave of the poet Taras Shevchenko, whose work he loved very much. Subsequently, Bunin did a lot of translations of Kobzar's works.
In 1895, after breaking up with Varvara Pashchenko, Bunin left Poltava for Moscow, then for St. Petersburg. There he soon entered the literary environment, where in the autumn the first public performance of the writer took place in the hall of the Credit Society. At a literary evening with great success, he read the story "To the End of the World."
In 1898, Bunin moved to Odessa, where he married Anna Tsakni. In the same year, his second collection of poetry, Under the Open Air, was released.
In 1899, Ivan Alekseevich traveled to Yalta, where he met Chekhov and Gorky. Subsequently, Bunin visited Chekhov in the Crimea more than once, stayed for a long time and became "their own person" for them. Anton Pavlovich praised Bunin's works and was able to discern in him the future great writer.
In Moscow, Bunin became a regular member of literary circles, where he read his works.
In 1907, Ivan Alekseevich made a trip to the eastern countries, visited Egypt, Syria, Palestine. Returning to Russia, he published a collection of short stories "The Shadow of a Bird", where he shared his impressions of a long journey.
In 1909, Bunin received the second Pushkin Prize for his work and was elected to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in the category of fine literature.
Revolution and emigration
Bunin did not accept the revolution. When the Bolsheviks occupied Moscow, he left with his wife for Odessa and lived there for two years, until the Red Army came there too.
In early 1920, the couple emigrated on the ship "Sparta" from Odessa, first to Constantinople, and from there to France. The whole further life of the writer passed in this country, the Bunins settled in the south of France not far from Nice.
Bunin passionately hated the Bolsheviks, all this was reflected in his diary called "Cursed Days", which he kept for many years. He called "Bolshevism the basest, despotic, evil and deceitful activity in the history of mankind."
He suffered greatly for Russia, he wanted to go home, he called his entire life in exile an existence at the junction station.
In 1933, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He spent 120,000 francs from the money he received to help emigrants and writers.
During World War II, Bunin and his wife hid Jews in their rented villa, for which in 2015 the writer was posthumously nominated for a prize and the title Righteous Among the Nations.
Personal life
Ivan Alekseevich's first love happened at a fairly early age. He was 19 years old when at work he met Varvara Pashchenko, an employee of the Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper, where the poet himself worked at that time. Varvara Vladimirovna was more experienced and older than Bunin, from an intelligent family (she is the daughter of a famous Yelets doctor), she also worked as a proofreader, like Ivan.
Her parents were categorically against such a passion for their daughter, they did not want her to marry a poor poet. Varvara was afraid to disobey them, so when Bunin suggested that she get married, she refused to get married, but they began to live together in a civil marriage. Their relationship could be called "from one extreme to the other" - sometimes passionate love, sometimes painful quarrels.
Later it turned out that Varvara was unfaithful to Ivan Alekseevich. Living with him, she secretly met with the wealthy landowner Arseny Bibikov, whom she later married. And this despite the fact that Varvara's father, in the end, gave his blessing to the marriage of his daughter with Bunin. The poet suffered and was disappointed, his youthful tragic love was later reflected in the novel "The Life of Arseniev". But all the same, relations with Varvara Pashchenko remained pleasant memories in the soul of the poet: "First love is a great happiness, even if it is unrequited".
In 1896, Bunin met with Anna Tsakni. A stunningly beautiful, artistic and wealthy woman of Greek origin, men spoiled her with their attention and admired her. Her father, Nikolai Petrovich Tsakni, a rich Odessan, was a populist revolutionary.
In the autumn of 1898, Bunin and Tsakni got married, a year later they had a son, but in 1905 the baby died. The couple lived together very little, in 1900 they parted, ceased to understand each other, their outlook on life was different, alienation occurred. And again Bunin experienced this painfully, in a letter to his brother he said that he did not know if he could continue to live.
Calmness came to the writer only in 1906 in the person of Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, whom he met in Moscow.
Her father was a member of the Moscow City Council, and her uncle presided over the First State Duma. Vera was of noble origin and grew up in an intelligent family of professors. At first glance, she seemed a little cold and always calm, but it was this woman who was able to become Bunin's patient and caring wife and be with him until the end of his days.
In 1953, in Paris, Ivan Alekseevich died in his sleep on the night of November 7-8, next to the body on the bed lay Leo Tolstoy's novel "Sunday". Bunin was buried in the French cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois.
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 picture "Non-Urgent Spring" based on the story of the same name by Bunin was released.
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 autumn"
- "Numbers"
- "Clean Monday"
- "The Case of Cornet Yelagin"
