Bunin's full name. “Russia lived in him, he was Russia

Ivan Bunin was born into a poor noble family on October 10 (22), 1870. Then, in Bunin’s biography, he moved to an estate in the Oryol province near the city of Yelets. Bunin spent his childhood in this very place, among the natural beauty of the fields.

Bunin's primary education was received at home. Then, in 1881, the young poet entered the Yelets gymnasium. However, without finishing it, he returned home in 1886. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin received further education thanks to his older brother Yuli, who graduated from the university with honors.

Literary activity

Bunin's poems were first published in 1888. The following year, Bunin moved to Orel, starting to work as a proofreader in a local newspaper. Bunin's poetry, collected in a collection called "Poems", became the first book published. Soon Bunin's work gained fame. Bunin's following poems were published in the collections “Under the Open Air” (1898), “Leaf Fall” (1901).

Meeting the greatest writers (Gorky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, etc.) leaves a significant imprint on Bunin’s life and work. Bunin's stories "Antonov Apples" and "Pines" are published.

The writer in 1909 became an honorary academician of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Bunin reacted rather harshly to the ideas of the revolution, and left Russia forever.

Life in exile and death

The biography of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin almost entirely consists of moves and travels (Europe, Asia, Africa). In exile, Bunin actively continued to engage in literary activities, writing his best works: “Mitya’s Love” (1924), “Sunstroke” (1925), as well as the main novel in the writer’s life, “The Life of Arsenyev” (1927-1929, 1933), which brought Bunin the Nobel Prize in 1933. In 1944, Ivan Alekseevich wrote the story “Clean Monday”.

Before his death, the writer was often ill, but at the same time he did not stop working and creating. In the last few months of his life, Bunin was busy working on a literary portrait of A.P. Chekhov, but the work remained unfinished

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin died on November 8, 1953. He was buried in the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois cemetery in Paris.

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Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born on October 10 (22), 1870 in Voronezh into an old impoverished noble family. The future writer spent his childhood on the family estate - on the Butyrki farm in the Yelets district of the Oryol province, where the Bunins moved in 1874. In 1881 he was enrolled in the first class of the Yelets gymnasium, but did not complete the course, expelled in 1886 for failure to appear from vacation and non-payment of tuition. Return from Yelets I.A. Bunin had to move to a new place - to the Ozerki estate in the same Yeletsky district, where the whole family moved in the spring of 1883, fleeing ruin from the sale of land in Butyrki. He received further education at home under the guidance of his older brother Yuli Alekseevich Bunin (1857-1921), an exiled populist from the Black Revolution, who forever remained one of the closest to I.A. Bunin people.

At the end of 1886 - beginning of 1887. wrote the novel “Hobbies” - the first part of the poem “Peter Rogachev” (not published), but made his debut in print with the poem “Over the Grave of Nadson”, published in the newspaper “Rodina” on February 22, 1887. Within a year, in the same “Rodina” appeared and other poems by Bunin - “The Village Beggar” (May 17), etc., as well as the stories “Two Wanderers” (September 28) and “Nefedka” (December 20).

At the beginning of 1889, the young writer left his parents' home and began an independent life. At first, following his brother Julius, he went to Kharkov, but in the fall of the same year he accepted an offer to collaborate in the Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper and settled in Orel. In the “Bulletin” I.A. Bunin “was everything he had to be - a proofreader, an editorial writer, and a theater critic”; he lived exclusively by literary work, barely making ends meet. In 1891, Bunin’s first book, “Poems of 1887-1891,” was published as a supplement to the Orlovsky Messenger. The first strong and painful feeling dates back to the Oryol period - love for Varvara Vladimirovna Pashchenko, who agreed at the end of the summer of 1892 to move with I.A. Bunin to Poltava, where at that time Yuliy Bunin served in the zemstvo city government. The young couple also got a job in the government, and the newspaper Poltava Provincial Gazette published numerous essays by Bunin, written at the request of the zemstvo.

Literary day labor oppressed the writer, whose poems and stories in 1892-1894. have already begun to appear on the pages of such reputable metropolitan magazines as “Russian Wealth”, “Northern Messenger”, “Bulletin of Europe”. At the beginning of 1895, after a break with V.V. Pashchenko, he leaves the service and leaves for St. Petersburg, and then to Moscow.

In 1896, Bunin’s translation into Russian of G. Longfellow’s poem “The Song of Hiawatha” was published as an appendix to the Orlovsky Messenger, which revealed the undoubted talent of the translator and has remained unsurpassed to this day in its fidelity to the original and the beauty of the verse. In 1897, the collection “To the End of the World and Other Stories” was published in St. Petersburg, and in 1898, a book of poems “Under the Open Air” was published in Moscow. In Bunin’s spiritual biography, the rapprochement during these years with the participants in the “environments” of the writer N.D. is important. Teleshov and especially the meeting at the end of 1895 and the beginning of friendship with A.P. Chekhov. Bunin carried his admiration for Chekhov’s personality and talent throughout his life, dedicating his last book to him (the unfinished manuscript “About Chekhov” was published in New York in 1955, after the author’s death).

At the beginning of 1901, the Moscow publishing house "Scorpion" published the poetry collection "Falling Leaves" - the result of Bunin's short collaboration with the Symbolists, which in 1903 brought the author, along with the translation of "The Song of Hiawatha", the Pushkin Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Acquaintance with Maxim Gorky in 1899 led I.A. Bunin in the early 1900s. to cooperation with the publishing house "Knowledge". His stories and poems were published in the “Collections of the Knowledge Partnership”, and in 1902-1909. The publishing house "Znanie" publishes the first collected works of I.A. in five separate unnumbered volumes. Bunin (volume six was published thanks to the publishing house “Public Benefit” in 1910).

The growth of literary fame brought I.A. Bunin and relative material security, which allowed him to fulfill his long-standing dream - to travel abroad. In 1900-1904. the writer visited Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy. Impressions from a trip to Constantinople in 1903 formed the basis of the story “Shadow of a Bird” (1908), with which in Bunin’s work begins a series of brilliant travel essays, later collected in the cycle of the same name (the collection “Shadow of a Bird” was published in Paris in 1931 G.).

In November 1906, in the Moscow house of B.K. Zaitseva Bunin met Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva (1881-1961), who became the writer’s companion until the end of his life, and in the spring of 1907 the lovers set off on their “first long journey” - to Egypt, Syria and Palestine.

In the fall of 1909, the Academy of Sciences awarded I.A. Bunin received the second Pushkin Prize and elected him an honorary academician, but it was the story “The Village,” published in 1910, that brought him genuine and widespread fame. Bunin and his wife still travel a lot, visiting France, Algeria and Capri, Egypt and Ceylon. In December 1911, in Capri, the writer completed the autobiographical story “Sukhodol”, which, being published in “Bulletin of Europe” in April 1912, was a huge success among readers and critics. On October 27-29 of the same year, the entire Russian public solemnly celebrated the 25th anniversary of I.A.’s literary activity. Bunin, and in 1915 in the St. Petersburg publishing house A.F. Marx published his complete works in six volumes. In 1912-1914. Bunin took an intimate part in the work of the “Book Publishing House of Writers in Moscow”, and collections of his works were published in this publishing house one after another - “John Rydalets: stories and poems of 1912-1913.” (1913), "The Cup of Life: Stories of 1913-1914." (1915), "Mr. from San Francisco: Works 1915-1916." (1916).

October Revolution of 1917 I.A. Bunin did not accept it decisively and categorically; in May 1918, he and his wife left Moscow for Odessa, and at the end of January 1920, the Bunins left Soviet Russia forever, sailing through Constantinople to Paris. A monument to the sentiments of I.A. Bunin's diary "Cursed Days", published in exile, remained from the revolutionary time.

The entire subsequent life of the writer is connected with France. The Bunins spent most of the year from 1922 to 1945 in Grasse, near Nice. In exile, only one actual poetry collection of Bunin was published - “Selected Poems” (Paris, 1929), but ten new books of prose were written, including “The Rose of Jericho” (published in Berlin in 1924), “Mitya’s Love” ( in Paris in 1925), “Sunstroke” (ibid. in 1927). In 1927-1933. Bunin worked on his largest work, the novel “The Life of Arsenyev” (first published in Paris in 1930; the first complete edition was published in New York in 1952). In 1933, the writer was awarded the Nobel Prize “for the truthful artistic talent with which he recreated the typical Russian character in artistic prose.”

The Bunins spent the years of World War II in Grasse, which was under German occupation for some time. Written in the 1940s. the stories formed the book Dark Alleys, first published in New York in 1943 (the first complete edition was published in Paris in 1946). Already at the end of the 1930s. attitude of I.A. Bunin became more tolerant of the Soviet country, and after the victory of the USSR over Nazi Germany, he became unconditionally friendly, but the writer was never able to return to his homeland.

In the last years of I.A.’s life. Bunin published his “Memoirs” (Paris, 1950), worked on the already mentioned book about Chekhov and constantly amended his already published works, mercilessly shortening them. In his “Literary Testament,” he asked from now on to publish his works only in the latest author’s edition, which formed the basis of his 12-volume collected works, published by the Berlin publishing house “Petropolis” in 1934-1939.

I.A. died Bunin was buried on November 8, 1953 in Paris at the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born on October 10, 1870 in Voronezh into the family of a small nobleman. The future writer spent his childhood on the Butyrki farm in Yelets district, Oryol province. He studied at the gymnasium of the city of Yelets. At the age of 15 he wrote his first poems. In May 1887, the first poem was published in St. Petersburg in the magazine “Rodina”. This is how Bunin began his journey into Russian literature, which lasted more than 55 years. He began his literary career as a poet, but in exile he wrote mostly prose.

In 1906, Bunin met V. Muromtseva, who would become his second wife. The couple lived together for 47 years of marriage, officially for 30. Bunin’s first wife A. Tsakni did not give him a divorce for a long time. He received it while already living in Paris in June 1922. In 1900, Bunin had a son, Nikolai, who died at the age of 4. A relative of Iraklidi’s wife told the writer about the circumstances of the course of the disease and its treatment: “A month and a half after scarlet fever, Kolya fell ill with measles. Like scarlet fever, measles was quite mild, but then became complicated by inflammation of the heart (endocarditis). Now his condition is serious, which I consider it my duty to inform you about. He is being treated by doctors: Khmelevsky, Kryzhanovsky, Burda and Professor Yanovsky. They all find Kolya’s condition not hopeless, but two infectious diseases and then such a complication cannot but be threatening for a four-year-old child.” He had no children from his second marriage.

In 1918, Bunin and Vera Muromtseva-Bunina left Moscow for Odessa. In 1920, they left their homeland on the ship “Sparta”. Their route led to France through Turkey and Bulgaria.

In 1927, the young poetess G. Kuznetsova came to the Belvedere villa. She was called Bunin's last love. She would live with the Bunins until 1942. Kuznetsova wrote poetry and stories, but remained in the history of Russian literature as the author of the book of memoirs “The Grasse Diary.” Bunin’s wife not only had to tolerate a young woman around her, but also had to find money to live on. The Bunins, like most Russian emigrants, were not rich. Even the Nobel Prize he received was quickly squandered. Many compatriots asked him for financial assistance after receiving it. The writer helped many people in need.

The Soviet authorities had plans to try to return Bunin to his homeland. Kuprin, Vertinsky, and Alexey Tolstoy returned to the USSR. After the Great Patriotic War, instructions were received from Moscow, and the writer was invited to the Soviet embassy in Paris, where he was received by Soviet Ambassador A. Bogomolov.

The ambassador asked Ivan Alekseevich if he wanted to return to the USSR? To this, Bunin diplomatically replied that he had great sympathy for the country that defeated Nazi Germany, and thanked him for the opportunity to come to the USSR; he would think about this proposal. He would like to study the country in such a way “that merging with Soviet themes and Soviet writers would be organic for him.”

On June 21, 1946, a special issue of the “Union of Soviet Patriots” was published in Paris. It published a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated June 14, 1946 on the restoration of USSR citizenship to subjects of the former Russian Empire, as well as persons who had lost Soviet citizenship living in France. On June 30, 1946, A. Bogomolov spoke to the emigrants. Bunin was not present at this meeting. Soviet passports were distributed to emigrants. K. Simonov and his wife, actress V. Serova, came from Moscow to persuade Bunin to return to the USSR. But he chose to stay in France.

At the beginning of 1947, the writer fell ill with the flu and needed funds to travel to the Cote d'Azur to improve his health. Vera Nikolaevna wrote in a letter to M. Tsetlin: “Ian (Bunin’s nickname - A.V.) has been sick for almost a month... There were three doctors: Serov, Zernov, Verbov. Everyone is calming me down, but his condition is starting to scare me. Especially the night cough, which is why I have to spend nights in his room - sometimes I need to run to the kitchen and heat something up. There is no fever. But he was very weak from loss of blood. She hasn't stopped for almost six weeks. In addition, his liver is not in order, and he is on a strict diet, which he dutifully endures.”

On February 19, 1947, Bunin’s wife wrote: “After a blood test, Yan turned out to have only 3,000,000 red balls, but men need four and a half million or even five of them! You can imagine the situation we are in. The fact is that he had been bleeding for more than two months, and he bled to death, just as he had twenty-six years ago. Now we all have one task: to persuade him to take injections. Doctors assure that they are painless and safe. And everyone is inclined to believe that his rather serious condition (heart, general weakness) depends precisely on very severe anemia, which will have to be fought very energetically so that irreparable things do not happen. He is still in bed and so weak that walking across the room is quite a task. A big omission was made that the analysis was carried out so late. All the doctors and us were confused by his cough, which still continues and has a whooping cough character; there is an opinion that the cough also depends on the weakening of the whole organism. At one time they thought that the problem was in the heart, since the pulse is sometimes very weak and frequent, after analysis the doctors say that this is also due to severe anemia. And the heart, fortunately (this is the only consolation), is in good condition. And, if he agrees to the injections, his strength will be restored quite quickly. But enhanced nutrition is necessary.”

At the end of the summer of 1950, Bunin was admitted to a clinic, where he underwent surgery on the prostate gland, for which Vera Nikolaevna borrowed 30 thousand francs. He treated the blood transfusion procedure and other interventions with distrust, and for a long time did not give consent to the operation. He had to be persistently persuaded. On September 20, 1950, Bunin was discharged from the clinic; he was very weak.

V. Muromtseva-Bunina, in a letter to the writer A. Sedykh dated November 13, 1953, wrote: “In mid-October he fell ill with inflammation of the left lung. Of course, penicillin and everything else, and the temperature soon became normal, but after that he still could not get better - he was very weak and did not leave his bed at all. Doctor Zernov traveled every other day, and during illness every day. At the end of October there was a consultation with Dr. Benso-dom, I.A. he was afraid of cancer, he calmed him down, and for the last time Ian went into the dining room. Afterwards, a blood test was done by Dr. Bolotov, which scared me very much - 50 percent hemoglobin and 2,600,000 red balls. He categorically refused a blood transfusion: “I don’t want someone else’s blood...” They began to vigorously treat him. But here again there is trouble: he does not take medicine and eats very little. Doctor Zernov visited every day, injected epatroll and camphor, persuaded them to eat and take medicine. And for the last week he more or less took them, but ate little, although everything was prepared, which he loved. His head was the same."

Bunin was dying. More and more often one could hear from his lips: “I’m suffocating,” “There’s no pulse,” “Give me salt-kaffir,” “I’m very unwell.” He often coughed up blood.

Bunin died in his sleep at 2 hours after midnight from November 7 to 8, 1953. The will stated that his face should be covered, “no one should see my mortal ugliness,” he forbade taking photographs of his deceased, removing masks from his hands and faces.

Bunin was buried in the cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois. Eight years later, in 1961, his wife was buried next to him.

In the last years of his life, he wrote a book about Chekhov, intending to finish it in 1954, on the 50th anniversary of Chekhov's death. Did not have time.

The poem “Night Walk” is dated 1947. In the next world, a lady and a knight who died from the plague met (Bunin’s cause of death is “black infection”).

“I’m from the tenth century,” I decide
Just to be curious: what are you from?”

And she answers, grinning: “Oh, how young you are!
I'm from number six."

Bunin's archive is still located abroad, despite the fact that in Russia it is considered a national treasure. Among those writers to whom Bunin provided financial assistance was the aspiring writer Leonid Zurov. After the death of the patron and his wife, the archive was at the disposal of Zurov, who called himself the adopted son of the writer (in 1929 he settled “forever” in the Bunin family). Zurov was an unbalanced person, suffered from mental disorders, abandoned literature, and lived at the expense of the Bunins. According to Zurov's will, the Parisian archive came to England, where for more than 30 years it has been stored at the University of Leeds - inaccessible to everyone, without publishing the inventory.

Andrey VUKOLOV, historian.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin- outstanding Russian writer, poet, honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1909), laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933.

Born in Voronezh, where he lived the first three years of his life. Later the family moved to an estate near Yelets. Father - Alexey Nikolaevich Bunin, mother - Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Bunina (nee Chubarova). Until the age of 11, he was raised at home, in 1881 he entered the Yeletsk district gymnasium, in 1885 he returned home and continued his education under the guidance of his older brother Julius. At the age of 17 he began to write poetry, and in 1887 he made his debut in print. In 1889 he went to work as a proofreader for the local newspaper Orlovsky Vestnik. By this time, he had a long relationship with an employee of this newspaper, Varvara Pashchenko, with whom, against the wishes of his relatives, he moved to Poltava (1892).

Collections “Poems” (Eagle, 1891), “Under the Open Air” (1898), “Falling Leaves” (1901; Pushkin Prize).

1895 - personally met Chekhov, before that they corresponded.

In the 1890s, he traveled on the steamship “Chaika” (“a bark with firewood”) along the Dnieper and visited the grave of Taras Shevchenko, whom he loved and later translated a lot. A few years later, he wrote the essay “At the Seagull,” which was published in the children’s illustrated magazine “Vskhody” (1898, No. 21, November 1).

In 1899 he married Anna Nikolaevna Tsakni (Kakni), the daughter of a Greek revolutionary. The marriage did not last long, the only child died at the age of 5 (1905). In 1906, Bunin entered into a civil marriage (officially registered in 1922) with Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, the niece of S. A. Muromtsev, the first chairman of the First State Duma.

In his lyrics, Bunin continued the classical traditions (collection “Falling Leaves,” 1901).

In stories and stories he showed (sometimes with a nostalgic mood)

* Impoverishment of noble estates (“Antonov apples”, 1900)
* The cruel face of the village (“Village”, 1910, “Sukhodol”, 1911)
* Disastrous oblivion of the moral foundations of life (“Mr. from San Francisco”, 1915).
* Sharp rejection of the October Revolution and the Bolshevik regime in the diary book “Cursed Days” (1918, published in 1925).
* In the autobiographical novel “The Life of Arsenyev” (1930) there is a recreation of the past of Russia, the writer’s childhood and youth.
* The tragedy of human existence in short stories about love (“Mitya’s Love”, 1925; collection of stories “Dark Alleys”, 1943).
* Translated “The Song of Hiawatha” by the American poet G. Longfellow. It was first published in the newspaper “Orlovsky Vestnik” in 1896. At the end of the same year, the newspaper’s printing house published “The Song of Hiawatha” as a separate book.

Bunin was awarded the Pushkin Prize three times; in 1909 he was elected academician in the category of fine literature, becoming the youngest academician of the Russian Academy.

In the summer of 1918, Bunin moved from Bolshevik Moscow to Odessa, occupied by German troops. As the Red Army approached the city in April 1919, he did not emigrate, but remained in Odessa. He welcomes the occupation of Odessa by the Volunteer Army in August 1919, personally thanks Denikin, who arrived in the city on October 7, and actively cooperates with OSVAG (propaganda and information body) under the All-Russian Socialist Republic. In February 1920, when the Bolsheviks approached, he left Russia. Emigrates to France.

In exile, he was active in social and political activities: he gave lectures, collaborated with Russian political parties and organizations (conservative and nationalist), and regularly published journalistic articles. He delivered a famous manifesto on the tasks of the Russian Abroad regarding Russia and Bolshevism: The Mission of the Russian Emigration.

He was engaged in literary activities extensively and fruitfully, already in emigration confirming the title of a great Russian writer and becoming one of the main figures of the Russian Abroad.

Bunin creates his best works: “Mitya’s Love” (1924), “Sunstroke” (1925), “The Case of Cornet Elagin” (1925) and, finally, “The Life of Arsenyev” (1927-1929, 1933). These works became a new word both in Bunin’s work and in Russian literature in general. And according to K. G. Paustovsky, “The Life of Arsenyev” is not only the pinnacle work of Russian literature, but also “one of the most remarkable phenomena of world literature.” Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933.

According to the Chekhov publishing house, in the last months of his life Bunin worked on a literary portrait of A.P. Chekhov, the work remained unfinished (in the book: “Looping Ears and Other Stories”, New York, 1953). He died in his sleep at two o'clock in the morning from November 7 to 8, 1953 in Paris. He was buried in the cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois. In 1929-1954. Bunin's works were not published in the USSR. Since 1955, he has been the most published writer of the “first wave” in the USSR (several collected works, many one-volume books). Some works (“Cursed Days”, etc.) were published in the USSR only during perestroika.

Many readers know when Bunin was born and died. How many people remember that he was a great Russian poet and novelist who wrote about the collapse of the Russian nobility? And probably few people know that Ivan Alekseevich became the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize in 1833. And in order to understand how he achieved such results, you need to familiarize yourself a little with his biography.

Childhood years of the future laureate

In 1870, in Voronezh, on the estate of his parents, the future writer Ivan Bunin was born. Ivan Alekseevich’s grandfather was a fairly wealthy landowner. But after the death of his wife, he began to waste his fortune senselessly. And the little that was left after him, Bunin’s father drank and lost at the card table. At the turn of the century, the family's fortune was practically exhausted. The future writer Bunin witnessed the growing impoverishment of his family from early childhood.

Ivan Alekseevich spent most of his childhood years on the family estate, where he became acquainted with the life of peasants. In 1881 he entered the public school in Yelets, but after five years of study he was expelled due to family financial difficulties and was forced to return home.

Debut in creativity, or New acquaintances

At the age of seventeen, Ivan Alekseevich made his debut as a poet. His poem appeared in the St. Petersburg magazine "Rodina". In 1889, Ivan Bunin followed his older brother, who had enormous influence on him, to Kharkov. There he first holds the position of an official, then he is hired as an assistant editor at the local newspaper Orlovsky Vestnik.

Ivan Alekseevich continues to write, and many of his stories have been published in some newspapers and magazines. His long-term relationship with an employee of the newspaper where he worked, Varvara Pashchenko, also dates back to this period. After some time, they moved together to Poltava. Bunin begins to actively correspond with Anton Chekhov, and over time they become very close friends. And in 1894, Ivan Alekseevich met Leo Tolstoy. He admired the works of Lev Nikolaevich, but their social and moral views were very different.

Huge popularity and public recognition

When Bunin was born and died, of course, it is necessary to know, but it is also interesting to know when his first book was published. And it was published in 1891 in Orel. The book consisted of poems written between 1887 and 1891. Moreover, some of the articles, essays and stories of Ivan Alekseevich, which were previously published in local newspapers and magazines, began to appear in periodicals in St. Petersburg.

By the time Ivan published more than a hundred poems, they became quite popular among a wide range of readers. During the same period, the translation of the work “The Song of Hiawatha” was awarded the Pushkin Prize, as well as the gold medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Many critics and colleagues appreciated the rarity of his talent, sophistication and clarity of thought.

In 1899, Bunin married Anna Nikolaevna Tsakni. She was the daughter of a wealthy Greek from Odessa. Unfortunately, the marriage was short, and the only child died at the age of five. And already in 1906, Ivan Alekseevich lived in a civil marriage with Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva. Not only the facts about when Bunin was born and died are interesting in their significance, but also information about his personal life and creative path are of great value for those who study the personality of Ivan Bunin.

The transition from poetry to prose

At the turn of the century, Ivan Alekseevich made a big transition from poetry to prose, which began to change in form and texture, and became richer lexically. In 1900, the story “Antonov Apples” was published, which was later even included in literature textbooks and was considered as Bunin’s first real masterpiece.

Contemporaries commented on the work ambiguously. Some emphasized the exceptional precision of the language, subtle description of nature and detailed psychological analysis, while others saw in this work a kind of nostalgia for the past of the Russian nobility. Nevertheless, Bunin's prose is becoming very popular.

Famous works, or the story of one's own family

In 1910, Ivan Alekseevich was elected one of twelve full members of the Russian Academy of Sciences. And the very next year he published his first full-length novel, “The Village,” where he describes the gloomy life in the country, which he portrays as complete stupidity, cruelty and violence. And in 1911, his second novel, “Sukhodol,” was published.

Here he outlines the deplorable state of the Russian rural community. There is also a nostalgic depiction of the decaying Russian nobility, based on the true story of his own family. And again Bunin’s prose divided literary critics in expressing their opinions. Social Democrats noted his absolute honesty in his works, but many others were very shocked by the author's negativity.

The beginning of the war, or Fear for the future of the state

Bunin and Muromtseva then spent three winters from 1912 to 1914 with Maxim Gorky. There he met Fyodor Chaliapin and Leonid Andreev. Ivan Alekseevich divided his time between being in Moscow and the family estate. He was constantly haunted by anxiety about the future of Russia. Does Ivan Bunin continue to write at this time? Poetry or prose? And how did the revolution affect his work?

Ivan Alekseevich continues to work hard. In the winter of 1914, he completed a new volume of poetry and prose entitled "The Cup of Life." And already at the beginning of the next year it was published and also received wide recognition. In the same year, "Mr. from San Francisco" was published. Perhaps the most famous of the stories that Bunin wrote. The years of life spent in Russia were coming to an end. A revolution was approaching, which would force the great writer to leave his homeland.

Revolution and Ivan Alekseevich

Ivan Alekseevich witnessed the terror and destruction caused by the communists during the Russian Year. In April of that year, he broke all ties with Gorky, which he would never restore, and on May 21, 1918, Ivan Bunin and Muromtseva received official permission to leave Moscow. They moved to Odessa. Here Ivan Alekseevich lived for two years in the hope that the Whites would be able to restore order. But soon revolutionary chaos spread throughout the state.

In February 1920, Bunin emigrated aboard the last French ship leaving Odessa with other anti-communist Russians, finally settling in Grasse, in the south of France. Slowly and painfully overcoming psychological stress, Ivan Alekseevich returns to his writing. Ivan Bunin cannot live without pen and paper.

The years of his life that he spent abroad are also marked by his numerous publications and new literary masterpieces. He publishes his pre-revolutionary works, stories, and regularly contributes to the Russian emigration press. And yet, he had a very hard time getting used to the new world and believed that his muse was lost forever.

When was Bunin born and died?

Ivan Alekseevich became the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize in 1933. He received congratulations from countless intellectuals around the world, but not a word from Soviet Russia, where his name and books were banned. During his emigration, Bunin wrote many famous works, among them the quite popular “Cursed Days,” where the writer describes Soviet power in detail.

Born in 1870, Ivan Alekseevich traveled a long path in life. He survived the First World War, the bloody Russian Revolution, the years of the Great Patriotic War and died on November 8, 1953 in his apartment in Paris. He never returned to his homeland.