Information about Ivan Alekseevich Bunin. Ivan short, childhood impressions

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin can rightfully be attributed to one of the largest writers and poets of Russia of the 20th century. He received worldwide recognition for his works, which became classics during his lifetime.

A short biography of Bunin will help you understand which life path passed this outstanding writer, and for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize.

This is all the more interesting because great people are motivated and inspire the reader to new achievements.

Short biography of Bunin

Conventionally, the life of our hero can be divided into two periods: before emigration, and after. After all, it was the Revolution of 1917 that drew a red line between the pre-revolutionary existence of the intelligentsia and the Soviet system that replaced it. But first things first.

Childhood, youth and education

Ivan Bunin was born in a simple noble family October 10, 1870 His father was a poorly educated landowner who graduated from only one class of the gymnasium. He was distinguished by a sharp disposition and extraordinary energy.

Ivan Bunin

The mother of the future writer, on the contrary, was a very meek and pious woman. Perhaps it was thanks to her that little Vanya was very impressionable and began to learn the spiritual world early.

Bunin spent most of his childhood in the Oryol province, which was surrounded by picturesque landscapes.

Ivan received his primary education at home. Studying biographies prominent personalities it is impossible not to notice the fact that the vast majority of them received their first education at home.

In 1881, Bunin managed to enter the Yelets Gymnasium, which he never graduated from. In 1886, he returned to his home again. The thirst for knowledge does not leave him, and thanks to his brother Julius, who graduated with honors from the university, he is actively working on self-education.

Personal life, family, children

In Bunin's biography, it is noteworthy that he was constantly unlucky with women. His first love was Barbara, but they never managed to marry, due to various circumstances.

The first official wife of the writer was 19-year-old Anna Tsakni. There was a rather cold relationship between the spouses, and this could be called a forced friendship rather than love. Their marriage lasted only 2 years, and Kolya's only son died of scarlet fever.

The second wife of the writer was 25-year-old Vera Muromtseva. However, this marriage was also unhappy. Upon learning that her husband was cheating on her, Vera left Bunin, although she later forgave everything and returned.

Literary activity

Ivan Bunin wrote his first poems in 1888 at the age of seventeen. A year later, he decides to move to Orel and gets a job as an editor of a local newspaper.

It was at this time that many poems began to appear in him, which would later form the basis of the book "Poems". After the publication of this work, he first received a certain literary fame.

But Bunin does not stop, and a few years later, collections of poems “Under open sky"and" Leaf fall. The popularity of Ivan Nikolaevich continues to grow and over time he manages to meet such outstanding and recognized masters of the word as Gorky, Tolstoy and Chekhov.

These meetings turned out to be significant in Bunin's biography, and left an indelible impression in his memory.

A little later, collections of short stories " Antonov apples"and" Pines. Of course short biography does not imply a complete list of Bunin's extensive works, so we will manage to mention key works.

In 1909, the writer was awarded the title of honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

Life in exile

Ivan Bunin was alien to the Bolshevik ideas of the 1917 revolution, which swallowed up all of Russia. As a result of this, he forever leaves his homeland, and his further biography consists of countless wanderings and travels around the world.

Being in a foreign land, he continues to work actively and writes some of his best works - Mitina's Love (1924) and Sunstroke (1925).

It was thanks to The Life of Arseniev that in 1933 Ivan became the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Naturally, this can be considered the peak of Bunin's creative biography.

The prize was presented to the writer by the Swedish king Gustav V. The laureate was also issued a check for 170,330 Swedish kronor. He gave part of his fee to needy people who found themselves in a difficult life situation.

Final years and death

By the end of his life, Ivan Alekseevich was often ill, but this did not stop him from working. He had a goal - to create a literary portrait of A.P. Chekhov. However, this idea remained unrealized due to the death of the writer.

Bunin died in Paris on November 8, 1953. An interesting fact is that until the end of his days he remained a stateless person, being, in fact, a Russian exile.

He never managed to fulfill the main dream of the second period of his life - a return to Russia.

If you liked Bunin's short biography, subscribe to. It's always interesting with us!

en.wikipedia.org

Biography

Ivan Bunin was born on October 10 (22), 1870 in Voronezh, where he lived for the first three years of his life. Subsequently, the family moved to the Ozerki estate near Yelets, (Oryol province, now the Lipetsk region). Father - Alexey Nikolaevich Bunin, mother - Lyudmila Alexandrovna Bunina (née Chubarova). Until the age of 11, he was brought up at home, in 1881 he entered the Yelets 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, in 1887 he made his debut in print. In 1889 he went to work as a proofreader in the local newspaper " Orlovsky messenger". By this time, he had a long relationship with Varvara Pashchenko, an employee of this newspaper, with whom they, contrary to the wishes of their relatives, moved to Poltava (1892).

Collections "Poems" (Eagle, 1891), "Under the open sky" (1898), "Leaf fall" (1901; Pushkin Prize).

1895 - personally met Chekhov, before that they corresponded.

In the 1890s, he traveled on the steamboat "Chaika" ("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 an essay "On 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 was short-lived, the only child died at the age of 5 (1905). In 1906, Bunin enters into a civil marriage (officially formalized in 1922) with Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, the niece of S. A. Muromtsev, the first chairman of the First State Duma.

In the lyrics, Bunin continued classical traditions(collection "Leaf fall", 1901).

He showed in stories and novels (sometimes with a nostalgic mood)
impoverishment noble estates("Antonov apples", 1900)
The cruel face of the village ("Village", 1910, "Dry Valley", 1911)
Deadly Oblivion moral foundations life ("The Gentleman from San Francisco", 1915).
Sharp rejection October revolution and the Bolshevik regime in the diary book Cursed Days (1918, published in 1925).
In the autobiographical novel "The Life of Arseniev" (1930) - a recreation of the past of Russia, childhood and youth of the writer.
The tragedy of human existence in the story ("Mitina's Love", 1925; the collection of short stories "Dark Alleys", 1943), as well as in other works, wonderful examples of Russian short prose.
Translated the "Song of Hiawatha" by the American poet G. Longfellow. It was first published in the Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper in 1896. At the end of the same year, the printing house of the newspaper published "The Song of Hiawatha" as a separate book.

Bunin was awarded the Pushkin Prize three times; in 1909 he was elected an 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 approaches the city in April 1919, he does not emigrate, but remains in Odessa and experiences a period of Bolshevik rule there. Hail the taking of the city Volunteer army in August 1919, personally thanks General A. I. Denikin, who arrived in the city on October 7, actively cooperates with the OSVAG (propaganda and information body) under the V. S. Yu. R .. In February 1920, with the approach of the Bolsheviks, he leaves 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 the famous manifesto about the tasks of the Russian Diaspora in relation to Russia and Bolshevism: "The Mission of the Russian Emigration".

In 1933 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He spent World War II in a rented villa in Grasse.

Many and fruitfully engaged in literary activities, becoming one of the main figures of the Russian Diaspora.

In exile, Bunin creates his best works: "Mitina's Love" (1924), "Sunstroke" (1925), "The Case of Cornet Elagin" (1925) and, finally, "The Life of Arseniev" (1927-1929, 1933). These works have become a new word in Bunin's work, and in Russian literature as a whole. And according to K. G. Paustovsky, "The Life of Arseniev" is not only the pinnacle work of Russian literature, but also "one of the most remarkable phenomena of world literature." 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: Loopy 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 Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery.

In 1929-1954, Bunin's works were not published in the USSR. Since 1955 - 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 with the beginning of perestroika.

Name immortalization

There is a street in Moscow Buninskaya alley, nearby is the metro station of the same name. Also on Povarskaya Street, not far from the house where the writer lived, a monument was erected to him.
In the city of Lipetsk there is Bunina street. In addition, streets with the same name are located in Yelets and Odessa.

In Voronezh, a monument to Bunin was erected in the center of the city. There is a memorial plaque on the house where the writer was born.
Bunin's museums are located in Orel and Yelets.
In Efremov there is a house-museum of Bunin, where he lived in 1909-1910.

Biography

Russian writer: prose writer, poet, publicist. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born on October 22 (according to the old style - October 10), 1870 in Voronezh, in the family of an impoverished nobleman who belonged to an old noble family. The "Armorial Book of Noble Families" says that there are several ancient noble families of the Bunins, descending, according to legend, from Simeon Bunikevsky (Bunkovsky), who had a noble origin and left Poland in the 15th century to Grand Duke Vasily Vasilyevich. His great-grandson, Alexander Lavrentiev son Bunin, served in Vladimir, was killed in 1552 during the capture of Kazan. The poetess Anna Petrovna Bunina (1775-1828), the poet V.A. Zhukovsky (illegitimate son of A.I. Bunin). Ivan Bunin's father is Alexey Nikolaevich Bunin, mother is Lyudmila Alexandrovna Bunina, nee Chubarova. The Bunin family had nine children, but five died; older brothers - Julius and Eugene, younger sister - Maria. The noble family of the Chubarovs also had ancient roots. The grandfather and father of Lyudmila Alexandrovna had family estates in the Oryol and Trubchevsk districts. Ivan Bunin's paternal great-grandfather was also rich, his grandfather owned small plots of land in the Oryol, Tambov and Voronezh provinces, while his father was so wasteful that he went bankrupt, which was facilitated by the Crimean campaign and the Bunin family's move to Voronezh in 1870.

The first three years of Ivan Bunin's life were spent in Voronezh, then his father, who had a weakness for clubs, cards and wine (he became addicted to wine during the Crimean campaign), was forced to move with his family to his estate - to the Butyrki farm of the Yelets district of the Oryol province. The lifestyle of Aleksey Nikolaevich led to the fact that not only his own fortune was squandered or distributed, but also what belonged to his wife. Ivan Bunin's father was an unusually strong, healthy, cheerful, resolute, generous, quick-tempered, but quick-witted man. Alexey Nikolaevich did not like to study, which is why he did not study at the Oryol gymnasium for long, but he loved to read, reading everything that came to hand. Ivan Bunin's mother was kind, gentle, but with a strong character.

Ivan Bunin received his first education from his home tutor - the son of the leader of the nobility, who once studied at the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages, taught in several cities, but then broke all family ties and turned into a wanderer through villages and estates. Ivan Bunin's teacher spoke three languages, played the violin, painted with watercolors, wrote poetry; he taught his pupil Ivan to read according to Homer's Odyssey. Bunin wrote his first poem at the age of eight. In 1881 he entered the gymnasium in Yelets, but studied there for only five years, since younger son the family had no means. Further education took place at home: to fully master the program of the gymnasium, and then the university, Ivan Bunin was helped by his older brother Julius, who by that time had graduated from the university, spent a year in prison for political reasons and was sent home for three years. In adolescence, Bunin's work was of an imitative nature: "most of all he imitated M. Lermontov, partly A. Pushkin, whom he tried to imitate even in handwriting" (I.A. Bunin "Autobiographical note"). In May 1887, the work of Ivan Bunin appeared in print for the first time - the St. Petersburg weekly magazine Rodina published one of his poems. In September 1888, his poems appeared in the Books of the Week, where the works of L.N. Tolstoy, Shchedrin, Polonsky.

Independent life began in the spring of 1889: Ivan Bunin, following his brother Julius, moved to Kharkov. Soon he visited the Crimea, and in the fall he began working at the Oryol Bulletin. In 1891, Ivan Bunin's student book Poems. Then Ivan Bunin met Varvara Vladimirovna Pashchenko, who worked as a proofreader for the Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper. In 1891, she married Bunin, but since Varvara Vladimirovna's parents were against this marriage, the couple lived unmarried. In 1892 they moved to Poltava, where brother Julius was in charge of the statistical bureau of the provincial zemstvo. Ivan Bunin joined the service as a zemstvo council librarian, and then as a statistician in the provincial council. During his life in Poltava, Ivan Bunin met L.N. Tolstoy. At various times, Bunin worked as a proofreader, statistician, librarian, newspaper reporter. In April 1894, the first prose work Bunin - in "Russian wealth" the story "Village sketch" was printed (the name was chosen by the publisher).

In January 1895, after the betrayal of his wife, Ivan Bunin left the service and moved first to St. Petersburg, and then to Moscow. In 1898 (1896 is indicated in some sources), Bunin 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. In Moscow, the young writer met many famous artists and writers: with Balmont, in December 1895 - with A.P. Chekhov, in late 1895 - early 1896 - with V.Ya. Bryusov. After meeting D. Teleshov, Bunin became a member of the literary circle "Wednesday". In the spring of 1899, in Yalta, he met M. Gorky, who later invited Bunin to cooperate with the Znanie publishing house. Later, in his "Memoirs", Bunin wrote: "The beginning of that strange friendship that connected us with Gorky - strange because for almost two decades we were considered great friends with him, but in reality we were not - the beginning of this applies by 1899. And the end - by 1917. Then it happened that a man with whom for twenty whole years I had not had a single personal reason for hostility, suddenly turned out to be an enemy for me, for a long time aroused horror and indignation in me. In the spring of 1900, in the Crimea, Bunin met S.V. Rachmaninov and actors Art Theater, whose troupe toured in Yalta. Literary fame came to Ivan Bunin in 1900 after the publication of the story "Antonov apples". In 1901, the symbolist publishing house "Scorpion" published a collection of poems by Bunin "Falling Leaves". For this collection and for the translation of the poem by the American romantic poet G. Longfellow "The Song of Hiawatha" (1898, some sources indicate 1896), the Russian Academy of Sciences Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was awarded the Pushkin Prize. In 1902, the first volume of I.A. Bunin. In 1905, Bunin, who lived in the National Hotel, witnessed the December armed uprising.

In 1906, Bunin met in Moscow with Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva (1881-1961), who in 1907 became his wife and faithful companion until the end of his life. Later V.N. Muromtseva, gifted with literary abilities, wrote a series of memoirs about her husband ("The Life of Bunin" and "Conversations with Memory"). In 1907, the young couple went on a trip to the countries of the East - Syria, Egypt, Palestine. In 1909, the Russian Academy of Sciences elected Ivan Alekseevich Bunin an honorary academician in the category of fine literature. In 1910 Bunin went on a new journey - first to Europe, and then to Egypt and Ceylon. In 1912, in connection with the 25th anniversary of Bunin's creative activity, he was honored at Moscow University; in the same year he was elected an honorary member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature (in 1914-1915 he was the chairman of this society). In the autumn of 1912 - in the spring of 1913, Bunin again went abroad: to Trebizond, Constantinople, Bucharest, and spent three winters in 1913-1915 in Capri. In addition to the places listed in the period from 1907 to 1915, Bunin repeatedly visited Turkey, the countries of Asia Minor, Greece, Oran, Algeria, Tunisia and the outskirts of the Sahara, India, traveled almost all of Europe, especially Sicily and Italy, was in Romania and Serbia.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was extremely hostile to the February and October revolutions of 1917 and perceived them as a catastrophe. May 21, 1918 Bunin left Moscow for Odessa, and in February 1920 emigrated first to the Balkans and then to France. In France, the first time he lived in Paris; from the summer of 1923 he moved to the Alpes-Maritimes and came to Paris only for some winter months. In exile, relations with prominent Russian emigrants were difficult for the Bunins, especially since Bunin himself did not have a sociable character. In 1933, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, the first Russian writer, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The official Soviet press explained the decision Nobel committee machinations of imperialism. In 1939, after the outbreak of World War II, the Bunins settled in the south of France, in Grasse, at the Villa Jeannette, where they spent the entire war. Bunin refused any form of cooperation with the Nazi invaders and tried to constantly monitor events in Russia. In 1945 the Bunins returned to Paris. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin repeatedly expressed a desire to return to Russia, in 1946 he called the decree of the Soviet government "On the restoration of citizenship of the USSR subjects of the former Russian Empire ..." as a "generous measure", but Zhdanov's decree on the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad (1946) , which trampled on A. Akhmatova and M. Zoshchenko, led to the fact that Bunin forever abandoned his intention to return to his homeland. The last years of the writer were spent in poverty. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin died in Paris. On the night of November 7-8, 1953, two hours after midnight, Bunin died: he died quietly and calmly, in his sleep. On his bed lay a novel by L.N. Tolstoy "Resurrection". Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was buried at the Russian cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois, near Paris.

In 1927-1942, a friend of the Bunin family was Galina Nikolaevna Kuznetsova, who became a deep late affection for Ivan Alekseevich Bunin and wrote a number of memoirs ("Grasse Diary", article "In Memory of Bunin"). In the USSR, the first collected works of I.A. Bunin was published only after his death - in 1956 (five volumes in the Ogonyok Library).

Among the works of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin are a novel, short stories, short stories, essays, poems, memoirs, translations of works by the classics of world poetry: "Poems" (1891; collection), "To the End of the World" (January 1897; collection of stories), "Under open air" (1898; collection of poems), "Antonov apples" (1900; story), "Pines" (1901; story), "New Road" (1901; story), "Falling Leaves" (1901; collection of poems; Pushkin Prize ), "Chernozem" (1904; story), "Temple of the Sun" (1907-1911; a series of essays about a trip to the countries of the East), "Village" (1910; story), "Dry Valley" (1911; story), "Brothers" (1914), The Cup of Life (1915; collection of short stories), The Gentleman from San Francisco (1915; short story), Cursed Days (1918, published 1925; diary entries about the events of the October Revolution and its consequences), "Mitina's Love" (1925; collection of stories), "The Case of Cornet Elagin" (1927), "Sunstroke" (1927; collection of stories), "Arseniev's Life" (1927-1929, 1933 ; autobiographical novel; a separate edition was published in 1930 in Paris); "Dark Alleys" (1943; a cycle of short stories; published in New York), "The Liberation of Tolstoy" (1937, a philosophical and literary treatise on L.N. Tolstoy, published in Paris), "Memoirs" (1950; printed in Paris ), "About Chekhov" (published posthumously in 1955, New York), translations - "Song of Hiawatha" by G. Longfellow (1898, in some sources - 1896; Pushkin Prize).

Biography

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. 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.

Bunin began to write early. He wrote essays, sketches, poems. 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.

Outwardly, Bunin's poems looked traditional both in form and in subject matter: nature, joy of life, love, loneliness, sadness of loss and a new rebirth. And yet, despite the imitativeness, there was some special intonation in Bunin's verses. This became more noticeable with the release in 1901 of the poetry collection Falling Leaves, which was enthusiastically received by both readers and critics.

Bunin wrote poetry until the end of his life, loving poetry with all his heart, admiring its musical structure and harmony. But already at the beginning of his creative path, a prose writer was more and more clearly manifested in him, and so strong and deep that Bunin's first stories immediately earned the recognition of the eminent writers of that time Chekhov, Gorky, Andreev, Kuprin.

In 1898, Bunin married a Greek woman, Anna Tsakni, having experienced a strong love and subsequent strong disappointment with Varvara Pashchenko. However, by his own admission, Ivan Alekseevich, he never loved Tsakni.

In the 1910s, Bunin traveled a lot, going abroad. He visits Leo Tolstoy, gets acquainted with Chekhov, actively cooperates with the Gorky publishing house "Knowledge", gets acquainted with the niece of the chairman of the first Duma AS Muromtsev Vera Muromtseva. And although in fact Vera Nikolaevna became "Madam Bunina" already in 1906, they were able to officially register their marriage only in July 1922 in France. Only by this time Bunin managed to achieve a divorce from Anna Tsakni.

Vera Nikolaevna was devoted to Ivan Alekseevich until the end of his life, becoming his faithful assistant in all matters. Possessing great spiritual strength, helping to endure all the hardships and hardships of emigration, Vera Nikolaevna also had a great gift of patience and forgiveness, which was important when dealing with such a difficult and unpredictable person as Bunin was.

After the resounding success of his stories, the story "The Village", which became immediately famous, appeared in print - Bunin's first major work. This is a bitter and very bold work, in which the reader is presented with half-mad Russian reality with all its contrasts, precariousness, and broken destinies. Bunin, perhaps one of the few Russian writers of that time, was not afraid to tell the hard-hitting truth about the Russian village and the downtroddenness of the Russian peasant.

"The Village" and the "Sukhodol" that followed it determined Bunin's attitude towards his heroes - the weak, the destitute and the restless. But hence the sympathy for them, pity, the desire to understand what is happening in the suffering Russian soul.

In parallel with the rural theme, the writer developed in his stories the lyric, which had previously been outlined in poetry. Female characters appeared, although barely outlined - the charming, airy Olya Meshcherskaya (story " Easy breath"), the ingenuous Klasha Smirnova (the story "Klasha"). Later female types with all the lyrical passion they will appear in Bunin's emigrant stories and stories - "Ida", "Mitya's Love", "The Case of Cornet Elagin" and, of course, in his famous cycle "Dark Alleys".

In pre-revolutionary Russia, Bunin, as they say, "rested on his laurels" - he was awarded the Pushkin Prize three times; in 1909 he was elected an academician in the category of fine literature, becoming the youngest academician of the Russian Academy.

In 1920, Bunin and Vera Nikolaevna, who did not accept either the revolution or the Bolshevik government, emigrated from Russia, "having drunk the inexpressible cup of mental suffering," as Bunin later wrote in his biography. On March 28 they arrived in Paris.

TO literary creativity Ivan Alekseevich returned slowly. Longing for Russia, uncertainty about the future oppressed him. Therefore, the first collection of short stories "The Scream", published abroad, consisted only of stories written in the happiest time for Bunin - in 1911-1912.

And yet the writer gradually overcame the feeling of oppression. In the story "The Rose of Jericho" there are such heartfelt words: "There are no separations and losses, as long as my soul, my Love, Memory is alive! living water hearts, in the pure moisture of love, sadness and tenderness, I immerse the roots and stems of my past ... "

In the mid-1920s, the Bunins moved to the small resort town of Grasse in southern France, where they settled in the Belvedere villa, and later settled in the Janet villa. Here they were destined to live most of their lives, to survive the Second World War. In 1927, in Grasse, Bunin met the Russian poetess Galina Kuznetsova, who was vacationing there with her husband. Bunin was fascinated by the young woman, she, in turn, was delighted with him (and Bunin knew how to charm women!). Their romance received wide publicity. The offended husband left, Vera Nikolaevna suffered from jealousy. And here the incredible happened - Ivan Alekseevich managed to convince Vera Nikolaevna that his relationship with Galina is purely platonic, and they have nothing but the relationship of a teacher and a student. Vera Nikolaevna, as it may seem incredible, believed. She believed because she could not imagine her life without Jan. As a result, Galina was invited to live with the Bunins and become a "family member".

For almost fifteen years, Kuznetsova shared a common home with Bunin, playing the role adopted daughter and experiencing with them all the joys, troubles and hardships.

This love of Ivan Alekseevich was both happy and painfully difficult. It also turned out to be extremely dramatic. In 1942, Kuznetsova left Bunin, carried away opera singer Margo Stepun.

Ivan Alekseevich was shocked, he was oppressed not only by the betrayal of his beloved woman, but also with whom she cheated! "How she (G.) poisoned my life - she still poisons me! 15 years! Weakness, lack of will ...", he wrote in his diary on April 18, 1942. This friendship between Galina and Margo for Bunin was like a bleeding wound until the end of his life.

But despite all the hardships, endless hardships, Bunin's prose gained new heights. The books "Rose of Jericho", "Mitina's Love", collections of stories "Sunstroke" and "God's Tree" were published in a foreign land. And in 1930, the autobiographical novel "The Life of Arseniev" was published - a fusion of memoirs, memoirs and lyric-philosophical prose.

On November 10, 1933, newspapers in Paris came out with huge headlines "Bunin - Nobel Laureate." For the first time during the existence of this award, the award in literature was presented to a Russian writer. Bunin's all-Russian fame grew into worldwide fame.

Every Russian in Paris, even those who have not read a single line of Bunin, took it as a personal holiday. The Russian people experienced the sweetest of feelings - the noble feeling of national pride.

The award of the Nobel Prize was a huge event for the writer himself. Recognition came, and with it (albeit for a very short period, the Bunins were extremely impractical) material security.

In 1937, Bunin completed the book "The Liberation of Tolstoy", which, according to experts, became one of the best books in all literature about Leo Nikolayevich. And in 1943, "Dark Alleys" was published in New York - the pinnacle of the writer's lyrical prose, a true encyclopedia of love. In "Dark Alleys" you can find everything - both sublime experiences, and conflicting feelings, and violent passions. But Bunin was closest to love, pure, bright, like the harmony of the earth with the sky. In "Dark Alleys" she, as a rule, is short, and sometimes instantaneous, but her light illuminates the whole life of the hero.

Some critics of that time accused Bunin's "Dark Alleys" either of pornography or of senile voluptuousness. This offended Ivan Alekseevich: “I consider “Dark Alleys” to be the best thing I have written, and they, idiots, believe that I have dishonored my gray hairs with them ... Pharisees do not understand that this is a new word, new approach to life," he complained to I. Odoevtseva.

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 considering female charms ... What an “excess” there! I only gave thousandth part of how men of all tribes and peoples "consider" everywhere, always women from their ten years of age to 90 years of age.

The last years of his life the writer devoted to work on a book about Chekhov. Unfortunately, this work remained unfinished.

Ivan Alekseevich made his last diary entry on May 2, 1953. "It's still amazing to the point of tetanus! After some, a very short time, I will not be - and the deeds and fates of everything, everything will be unknown to me!"

At two o'clock in the morning from November 7 to 8, 1953, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin died quietly. The funeral service was solemn - in the Russian church on the Rue Daru in Paris with a large gathering of people. All newspapers - both Russian and French - placed extensive obituaries.

And the funeral itself took place much later, on January 30, 1954 (before that, the ashes were in a temporary crypt). Ivan Alekseevich was buried in the Russian cemetery of Saint-Genevieve de Bois near Paris. Next to Bunin, after seven and a half years, the faithful and selfless companion of his life, Vera Nikolaevna Bunina, found her peace.

Literature.

Elena Vasilyeva, Yuri Pernatiev. "100 famous writers"," Folio "(Kharkov), 2001.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin. Biography

"No, it's not the landscape that draws me,
Not paint I strive to notice,
And what shines in these colors -
Love and joy of being."
I. Bunin

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born on October 23, 1870 (October 10, old style) in Voronezh, on Dvoryanskaya Street. The impoverished landowners Bunins belonged to a noble family, among their ancestors - V.A. Zhukovsky and poetess Anna Bunina.

In Voronezh, the Bunins appeared three years before the birth of Vanya, to teach their eldest sons: Yulia (13 years old) and Evgeny (12 years old). Julius, who was extremely capable of languages ​​and mathematics, studied brilliantly, Eugene studied poorly, or rather, did not study at all, he left the gymnasium early; he was a gifted artist, but in those years he was not interested in painting, he chased pigeons more. As for the youngest, his mother, Lyudmila Alexandrovna, always said that "Vanya was different from the rest of the children from birth," that she always knew that he was "special", "no one has such a soul as his" .

In 1874, the Bunins decided to move from the city to the village to the Butyrki farm, in the Yelets district of the Oryol province, to the last estate of the family. That spring Julius graduated from the gymnasium with a gold medal and in the fall had to leave for Moscow to enter the university's mathematics department.

In the village, little Vanya "heard enough" of songs and fairy tales from his mother and yards. Memories of childhood - from the age of seven, as Bunin wrote - are connected with him "with the field, with peasant huts" and their inhabitants. He disappeared for days on end in the nearest villages, grazed cattle together with peasant children, traveled at night, and made friends with some of them.

Imitating the shepherd, he and his sister Masha ate black bread, radish, "rough and bumpy cucumbers," and at this meal, "without realizing it, they shared the earth itself, all that sensual, material, from which the world was created," wrote Bunin in the autobiographical novel "The Life of Arseniev". Even then, with a rare power of perception, he felt, by his own admission, "the divine splendor of the world" - the main motive of his work. It was at this age that an artistic perception of life was revealed in him, which, in particular, was expressed in the ability to depict people with facial expressions and gestures; he was already a talented storyteller. About eight years Bunin wrote the first poem.

In the eleventh year he entered the Yelets gymnasium. At first he studied well, everything was easy; could memorize a whole page of poetry from one reading, if it interested him. But from year to year, studies went worse, in the third grade he remained for the second year. Most of the teachers were gray and insignificant people. In the gymnasium, he wrote poetry, imitating Lermontov, Pushkin. He was not attracted by what is usually read at this age, but read, as he said, "anything."

He did not graduate from the gymnasium, later he studied independently under the guidance of his elder brother Yuly Alekseevich, a candidate of the university. In the autumn of 1889, he began working in the editorial office of the Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper, often he was the actual editor; published in it his stories, poems, literary-critical articles, and notes in the permanent section "Literature and Printing". He lived by literary work and was in great need. His father went bankrupt, in 1890 he sold his estate in Ozerki without a manor, and having lost his manor, in 1893 he moved to Kmenka to his sister., Mother and Masha - to Vasilyevsky to Bunin's cousin Sofya Nikolaevna Pusheshnikova. There was nowhere for the young poet to wait for help.

In the editorial office, Bunin met Varvara Vladimirovna Pashchenko, the daughter of a Yelets doctor who worked as a proofreader. His passionate love for her was marred at times by quarrels. In 1891, she got married, but their marriage was not legalized, they lived without getting married, the father and mother did not want to marry their daughter to a poor poet. Bunin's youthful novel formed the plot basis of the fifth book of Arseniev's Life, which was published separately under the title Lika.

Many imagine Bunin dry and cold. V. N. Muromtseva-Bunina says: "True, sometimes he wanted to appear like that - he was a first-class actor," but "he who did not know him to the end cannot even imagine what kind of tenderness his soul was capable of." He was one of those who did not reveal himself to everyone. He was distinguished by the great strangeness of his nature. It is hardly possible to name another Russian writer who, with such self-forgetfulness, so impetuously expressed his feeling of love, as he did in his letters to Varvara Pashchenko, combining in his dreams the image with everything beautiful that he found in nature, in poetry and music. With this side of his life - restraint in passion and the search for an ideal in love - he resembles Goethe, who, by his own admission, in "Werther" much is autobiographical.

At the end of August 1892, Bunin and Pashchenko moved to Poltava, where Julius Alekseevich worked as a statistician in the provincial zemstvo administration. He took both Pashchenko and his younger brother into his administration. In the Poltava zemstvo, the intelligentsia was grouped, involved in the populist movement of the 70-80s. The Bunin brothers were part of the editorial board of the Poltava Provincial Gazette, which since 1894 has been under the influence of the progressive intelligentsia. Bunin placed his works in this newspaper. By order of the Zemstvo, he also wrote essays "about the fight against harmful insects, about the harvest of bread and herbs." As he believed, so many of them were printed that they could make up three or four volumes.

He also collaborated with the Kievlyanin newspaper. Now Bunin's poems and prose began to appear more often in "thick" magazines - "Vestnik Evropy", "The World of God", "Russian Wealth" - and attracted the attention of luminaries of literary criticism. N. K. Mikhailovsky spoke well of the story "The Village Sketch" (later entitled "Tanka") and wrote about the author that he would become a "great writer." At this time, Bunin's lyrics acquired a more objective character; autobiographical motifs characteristic of the first collection of poems (it was published in Orel as an appendix to the Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper in 1891), by definition of the author himself, excessively intimate, gradually disappeared from his work, which now received more complete forms.

In 1893-1894, Bunin, in his words, "because of falling in love with Tolstoy as an artist", was a Tolstoyan and "adapted to the bondar trade." He visited the Tolstoyan colonies near Poltava and traveled to the Sumy district to the sectarians. Pavlovka - to the "Malevants", in their views close to the Tolstoyans. At the very end of 1893, he visited the Tolstoyan farm Khilkovo, which belonged to Prince. YES. Khilkov. From there he went to Moscow to see Tolstoy and visited him on one of the days between January 4 and 8, 1894. The meeting made on Bunin, as he wrote, "an amazing impression." Tolstoy and dissuaded him from "giving up to the end."

In the spring and summer of 1894 Bunin traveled around Ukraine. “In those years,” he recalled, “I was in love with Little Russia, in its villages and steppes, eagerly sought rapprochement with its people, eagerly listened to songs, their soul.” The year 1895 was a turning point in Bunin's life: after the "flight" of Pashchenko, who left Bunin and married his friend Arseniy Bibikov, in January he left the service in Poltava and left for St. Petersburg, and then to Moscow. Now he was entering the literary milieu. Great success at the literary evening, held on November 21 in the hall of the Credit Society in St. Petersburg, encouraged him. There he made a reading of the story "To the End of the World".

His impressions from more and more new meetings with writers were varied and sharp. D.V. Grigorovich and A.M. Zhemchuzhnikov, one of the creators of Kozma Prutkov, who continued the classical 19th century; populists N.K. Mikhailovsky and N.N. Zlatovpatsky; symbolists and decadents K.D. Balmont and F.K. Solgub. In December, in Moscow, Bunin met the leader of the Symbolists, V.Ya. Bryusov, December 12 at the "Big Moscow" hotel - with Chekhov. I was very interested in the talent of Bunin V.G. Korolenko - Bunin met him on December 7, 1896 in St. Petersburg on the anniversary of K.M. Stanyukovich; in the summer of 1897 - with Kuprin in Lustdorf, near Odessa.

In June 1898 Bunin left for Odessa. Here he became close with the members of the "Association of South Russian Artists", who gathered for "Thursdays", made friends with the artists E.I. Bukovetsky, V.P. Kurovsky (about her in Bunin's poems "In Memory of a Friend") and P.A. Nilus (from him Bunin took something for the stories "Galya Ganskaya" and "Chang's Dreams").

In Odessa, Bunin married Anna Nikolaevna Tsakni (1879-1963) on September 23, 1898. Family life did not go well, Bunin and Anna Nikolaevna separated in early March 1900. Their son Kolya died on January 16, 1905.

In early April 1899, Bunin visited Yalta, met with Chekhov, and met Gorky. During his visits to Moscow, Bunin visited "Wednesdays" by N.D. Teleshov, who united prominent realist writers, willingly read his unpublished works; the atmosphere in this circle was friendly, no one was offended by frank, sometimes destroying criticism. On April 12, 1900, Bunin arrived in Yalta, where the Art Theater staged Chekhov's "The Seagull", "Uncle Vanya" and other performances for Chekhov. Bunin met Stanislavsky, Knipper, S.V. Rachmaninov, with whom he forever established friendship.

The 1900s were a new frontier in Bunin's life. Repeated trips to the countries of Europe and to the East widened the world before his eyes, so eager for new impressions. And in the literature of the beginning decade, with the release of new books, he won recognition as one of best writers of his time. He spoke mainly with poetry.

On September 11, 1900, he went with Kurovsky to Berlin, Paris, and Switzerland. In the Alps, they climbed to great heights. On his return from abroad, Bunin ended up in Yalta, lived in Chekhov's house, spent "an amazing week" with Chekhov, who arrived from Italy a little later. In the Chekhov family, Bunin became, in his words, "one of his own"; with his sister Maria Pavlovna, he was in "almost brotherly relations." Chekhov was invariably "gentle, friendly, cared for him like an elder." Since 1899, Bunin met with Chekhov every year, in Yalta and in Moscow, during the four years of their friendly communication, until Anton Pavlovich's departure abroad in 1904, where he died. Chekhov predicted that Bunin would become a "great writer"; he wrote in the story "The Pines" as "very new, very fresh and very good." "Magnificent", in his opinion, "Dreams" and "Gold Bottom" - "there are places just surprising."

At the beginning of 1901, a collection of poems "Leaf Fall" was published, which caused numerous reviews of critics. Kuprin wrote about the "rare artistic subtlety" in conveying the mood. Blok for "Falling Leaves" and other poems recognized Bunin's right to "one of the main places" among modern Russian poetry. "Falling Leaves" and Longfellow's translation of "The Song of Hiawatha" were awarded the Pushkin Prize Russian Academy Sciences, awarded to Bunin on October 19, 1903. Since 1902, Bunin's collected works began to appear in separate numbered volumes in Gorky's publishing house "Knowledge". And again travel - to Constantinople, to France and Italy, across the Caucasus, and so all his life he was attracted by various cities and countries.

Photo of Vera Muromtseva with Bunin's inscription on the back: V.N. Bunin, early 1927, Paris

On November 4, 1906, Bunin met in Moscow, in the house of B.K. Zaitseva, with Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, daughter of a member of the Moscow City Council and niece of the Chairman of the First State Duma S.A. Muromtsev. On April 10, 1907, Bunin and Vera Nikolaevna set off from Moscow to the countries of the East - Egypt, Syria, Palestine. On May 12, having made their "first long journey", they went ashore in Odessa. From this journey began their living together. About this journey - a cycle of stories "The Shadow of a Bird" (1907-1911). They combine diary entries - descriptions of cities, ancient ruins, monuments of art, pyramids, tombs - and legends of ancient peoples, excursions into the history of their culture and the death of kingdoms. On the depiction of the East by Bunin Yu.I. Aikhenwald wrote: “He is captivated by the East, the “light-bearing countries”, about which he now recalls with an unusual beauty of a lyric word ... For the East, biblical and modern, Bunin knows how to find the appropriate style, solemn and sometimes as if flooded with sultry waves of the sun, decorated precious inlays and arabesques of figurativeness; and when it comes to the gray-haired antiquity, lost in the distances of religion and mothology, then you experience the impression that some majestic chariot of humanity is moving before us.

Bunin's prose and verses now acquired new colors. An excellent colorist, he, according to P.A. Nilus, "principles of painting" resolutely instilled in literature. The previous prose, as Bunin himself noted, was such that "it forced some critics to interpret" him, for example, "as a melancholic lyricist or a singer of noble estates, a singer of idylls", and his literary activity was revealed "more vividly and more diversely only from 1908, 190 9 years". These new features inspired Bunin's prose stories "Shadow of a Bird". The Academy of Sciences awarded Bunin in 1909 the second Pushkin Prize for poetry and translations of Byron; third - also for poetry. In the same year, Bunin was elected an honorary academician.

The story "The Village", published in 1910, caused great controversy and was the beginning of Bunin's enormous popularity. "The Village", the first major work, was followed by other novels and stories, as Bunin wrote, "sharply painting the Russian soul, its light and dark, often tragic foundations", and his "merciless" works caused "passionate hostile responses." During these years, I felt how my literary forces were growing stronger every day. " Gorky wrote to Bunin that "no one took the village so deeply, so historically." Bunin widely captured the life of the Russian people, touched on historical, national problems and what was the topic of the day - wars and revolutions - depicts, in his opinion, "in the footsteps of Radishchev," a contemporary village without any beauty. it became impossible to depict the peasants in the tone of Nardnicheskoy idealization.

A look at the Russian countryside was developed by Bunin partly under the influence of travel, "after a sharp slap in the face abroad." The village is depicted as not immobile, new trends penetrate it, new people appear, and Tikhon Ilyich himself thinks about his existence as a shopkeeper and tavern keeper. The story "The Village", (which Bunin also called a novel), like his work as a whole, affirmed the realistic traditions of Russian classical literature in an age when they were attacked and denied by modernists and decadents. It captures the richness of observations and colors, the strength and beauty of the language, the harmony of the drawing, the sincerity of tone and truthfulness. But "Village" is not traditional. People appeared in it, mostly new in Russian literature: the Krasov brothers, Tikhon's wife, Rodka, Young, Nikolka Gray and his son Deniska, girls and women at the wedding of Young and Deniska. Bunin himself noted this.

In mid-December 1910, Bunin and Vera Nikolaevna went to Egypt and further to the tropics - to Ceylon, where they stayed for half a month. They returned to Odessa in the middle of April 1911. The diary of their voyage is "Many Waters". About this journey - also the stories "Brothers", "City of the King of Kings". What the Englishman felt in The Brothers is autobiographical. According to Bunin, travel in his life played a "great role"; regarding his wanderings, he even developed, as he said, "a certain philosophy." The diary of 1911 "Many Waters", published almost unchanged in 1925-1926, is a high example of a new lyric prose both for Bunin and for Russian literature.

He wrote that "this is something like Maupassant." Close to this prose are the stories immediately preceding the diary - "The Shadow of a Bird" - poems in prose, as the author himself determined their genre. From their diary - the transition to "Dry Valley", in which the experience of the author of "Village" in creating everyday prose and lyric prose was synthesized. "Dry Valley" and the short stories written soon after marked Bunin's new creative rise after "The Village" - in the sense of great psychological depth and complexity of images, as well as the novelty of the genre. In "Dry Valley" in the foreground is not historical Russia with its way of life, as in "Village", but "the soul of a Russian person in the deepest sense of the word, an image of the traits of the psyche of a Slav," said Bunin.

Bunin went his own way, did not join any fashionable literary trends or groupings, as he put it, "did not throw out any banners" and did not proclaim any slogans. Criticism noted the powerful language of Bunin, his art of raising "everyday phenomena of life" into the world of poetry. There were no "low" topics unworthy of the poet's attention for him. There is a great sense of history in his poems. The reviewer of the journal "Vestnik Evropy" wrote: "His historical style is unparalleled in our poetry... Prosaism, accuracy, beauty of language are brought to the limit. There is hardly another poet whose style would be so unadorned, everyday, as here; dozens of pages you will not find a single epithet, not a general comparison, not a single metaphor ... such a simplification of the poetic language without prejudice to poetry is only possible for true talent ... With regard to pictorial accuracy, Mr. Bunin has no rivals among Russian poets " .

The Cup of Life (1915) touches on deep issues human being. The French writer, poet and literary critic Rene Gil wrote to Bunin in 1921 about the French-made "Cup of Life": "How complicated everything is psychologically! And at the same time - this is your genius, everything is born from simplicity and exact observation of reality: an atmosphere is created where one breathes something strange and disturbing, emanating from the very act of life!This kind of suggestion, the suggestion of that secret that surrounds the action, we know in Dostoevsky too; but with him it comes from the abnormality of imbalance actors, because of his nervous passion, which hovers like some kind of exciting aura around some cases of insanity. You have the opposite: everything is a radiation of life, full of strength, and disturbs precisely by its own forces, by primitive forces, where under the visible unity lies complexity, something inescapable, violating the unfamiliar into a clear norm.

Bunin worked out his ethical ideal under the influence of Socrates, whose views are set forth in the writings of his students Xenophon and Plato. More than once he read the semi-philosophical, semi-poetic work of the "divine Plato" (Pushkin) in the form of a dialogue - "Phidon". After reading the dialogues, he wrote in his diary on August 21, 1917: "How much Socrates said, in Indian, in Jewish philosophy!" " Last minutes Socrates,” he notes in his diary the next day the next day, “as always, they worried me very much.”

Bunin was fascinated by his doctrine of the value of the human person. And he saw in each of the people to a certain extent "concentration ... of high powers", to the knowledge of which, Bunin wrote in the story "Returning to Rome", called Socrates. In his enthusiasm for Socrates, he followed Tolstoy, who, as V. Ivanov said, followed "the paths of Socrates in search of the norm of good." Tolstoy was also close to Bunin because for him goodness and beauty, ethics and aesthetics are indistinguishable. "Beauty is like a crown of goodness," Tolstoy wrote. Bunin affirmed in his work eternal values ​​- goodness and beauty. This gave him a sense of connection, fusion with the past, the historical continuity of being. "Brothers", "Lord from San Francisco", "Loopy Ears", based on the real facts of modern life, are not only accusatory, but deeply philosophical. "Brothers" is a particularly illustrative example. This is a story for eternal themes love, life and death, and not just the dependent existence of colonial peoples. The embodiment of the idea of ​​this story is equally based on the impressions of a trip to Ceylon and on the myth of Mar - a legend about the god of life-death. Mara is an evil demon of Buddhists - at the same time - the personification of being. Bunin took a lot for prose and poetry from Russian and world folklore, Buddhist and Muslim legends, Syrian legends, Chaldean, Egyptian myths and myths of the idolaters of the Ancient East, the legends of the Arabs attracted his attention.

He had a great sense of homeland, language, history. Bunin said: "All these sublime words, wondrous beauty of songs, cathedrals - all this is necessary, all this has been created for centuries ...". One of the sources of his creativity was folk speech. Poet and literary critic G.V. Adamovich, who knew Bunin well and communicated closely with him in France, wrote to the author of this article on December 19, 1969: Bunin, of course, "knew, loved, appreciated folk art, but was exceptionally clear about fakes according to it and to ostentatious style russe. Cruel - and correct - his review of Gorodetsky's poems is an example of this. Even Blok's "Kulikovo Field" is, in my opinion, a wonderful thing, it annoyed him precisely because of his "too Russian" outfit ... He said - "this is Vasnetsov" , that is, a masquerade and an opera. But he treated something that was not a "masquerade" differently: I remember, for example, something about "The Tale of Igor's Campaign." The meaning of his words was approximately the same as in Pushkin's words: all the poets gathered together cannot compose such a miracle! But the translations of "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" revolted him, in particular, the translation of Balmont. Because of the forgery of an exaggerated Russian style or size, he despised Shmelev, although he recognized his talent. Bunin in general there was a rare ear for falsehood, for the "pedal": as soon as he heard falsehood, he fell into a rage. Because of this, he loved Tolstoy so much and, as I remember, once said: "Tolstoy, who nowhere has a single exaggerated word ..."

In May 1917, Bunin arrived in the village of Glotovo, in the estate of Vasilyevsky, Oryol province, lived here all summer and autumn. On October 23, my wife and I left for Moscow, on October 26 we arrived in Moscow, lived on Povarskaya (now Vorovsky Street), in Baskakov's house No. 26, apt. 2, with the parents of Vera Nikolaevna, the Muromtsevs. The time was alarming, battles were going on, "past their windows, wrote Gruzinsky A.E. on November 7 to A.B. Derman, - a gun rattled along Povarskaya". Bunin spent the winter of 1917-1918 in Moscow. In the lobby of the house where the Murmtsevs had an apartment, a watch was established; the doors were locked, the gates were blocked with logs. On duty and Bunin.

A house in the Vasilyevsky estate (the village of Glotovo, Oryol province), where, according to Bunin, the story "Light Breath" was written

Bunin joined the literary life, which, in spite of everything, with all the swiftness of social, political and military events, with devastation and famine, still did not stop. He visited the "Book Publishing House of Writers", participated in its work, in the literary circle "Sreda" and in the Art circle.

On May 21, 1918, Bunin and Vera Nikolaevna left Moscow - through Orsha and Minsk to Kyiv, then to Odessa; January 26 old style In 1920 they sailed to Constantinople, then through Sofia and Belgrade they arrived in Paris on March 28, 1920. started long years emigration - in Paris and in the south of France, in Grasse, near Cannes. Bunin said to Vera Nikolaevna that "he cannot live in the new world, that he belongs to the old world, to the world of Goncharov, Tolstoy, Moscow, Petersburg; that poetry is only there, and in the new world he does not catch it."

Bunin as an artist grew up all the time. "Mitina's Love" (1924), "Sunstroke" (1925), "The Case of Cornet Elagin" (1925), and then "The Life of Arseniev" (1927-1929,1933) and many other works marked new achievements in Russian prose. Bunin himself spoke of the "poignant lyricism" of Mitya's Love. This is most captivating in his novels and short stories of the last three decades. They also - one might say in the words of their author - a kind of "modpnost", poetry. In the prose of these years, the sensual perception of life is excitingly conveyed. Contemporaries noted the great philosophical meaning such works as "Mitina's Love" or "The Life of Arseniev". In them, Bunin broke through "to a deep metaphysical feeling of the tragic nature of man." K.G. Paustovsky wrote that "The Life of Arseniev" is "one of the most remarkable phenomena of world literature."

In 1927-1930, Bunin wrote short stories ("Elephant", "Sky over the Wall" and many others) - a page, half a page, and sometimes several lines, they were included in the book "God's Tree". What Bunin wrote in this genre was the result of a bold search for new forms of extremely concise writing, the beginning of which was laid not by Tergenev, as some of his contemporaries claimed, but by Tolstoy and Chekhov. Professor of Sofia University P. Bitsilli wrote: “It seems to me that the collection “God’s Tree” is the most perfect of all Bunin’s works and the most revealing. no other, therefore, contains so much data for studying his method, for understanding what lies at its basis and on what it, in essence, is exhausted. and a valuable quality that Bunin has in common with the most truthful Russian writers, with Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov: honesty, hatred of any falsehood ... ".

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. On the street, the Swedes, seeing a Russian writer, looked around. Bunin pulled his lambskin hat over his eyes and grumbled: - What is it? The perfect success of the tenor.

The remarkable Russian writer Boris Zaitsev spoke about Bunin's Nobel days: "... You see, we were some last people there, emigrants, and suddenly an emigrant writer was awarded an international prize! To a Russian writer!.. And they were awarded not for some political writings, but still for fiction... At that time I wrote in the Vozrozhdenie newspaper... So I was urgently instructed to write an editorial about receiving the Nobel Prize. It was very late, I remember that it was ten in the evening when I was told this. For the first time in my life, I went to the printing house and wrote at night ... I remember that I came out in such an excited state (from the printing house), went out to place d "Italie and there, you know, went around all the bistros and drank a glass in each bistro cognac for the health of Ivan Bunin!.. I arrived home in such a cheerful mood.. at three o'clock in the morning, at four, maybe..."

In 1936, Bunin went on a trip to Germany and other countries, as well as to meet with publishers and translators. In the German city of Lindau, for the first time, he encountered fascist locks; he was arrested, subjected to an unceremonious and humiliating search. In October 1939, Bunin settled in Grasse at the villa "Jannette", lived here throughout the war. Here he wrote the book "Dark Alleys" - stories about love, as he himself said, "about her "dark" and most often very gloomy and cruel alleys." This book, according to Bunin, "talks about the tragic and about many things tender and beautiful - I think that this is the best and most original thing that I have written in my life."

Under the Germans, Bunin did not print anything, although he lived in great lack of money and hunger. He treated the conquerors with hatred, rejoiced at the victories of the Soviet and allied troops. In 1945, he said goodbye to Grasse forever and on the first of May returned to Paris. He has been sick a lot in recent years. Nevertheless, he wrote a book of memoirs and worked on the book "About Chekhov", which he did not manage to finish. In total, Bunin wrote ten new books in exile.

In letters and diaries, Bunin speaks of his desire to return to Moscow. But in old age and in illness, it was not easy to take such a step. Most importantly, there was no certainty whether the hopes for a quiet life and for the publication of books would come true. Bunin hesitated. The "case" of Akhmatova and Zoshchenko, the noise in the press around these names finally determined his decision. He wrote to M.A. Aldanov on September 15, 1947: “Today I wrote a letter from Teleshov on the evening of September 7 ... “What a pity that you did not experience the time when your big book was typed, when you were so expected here, when you could have been full up to his neck, and rich and in such high esteem! “After reading this, I tore my hair for an hour. And then I immediately calmed down, remembering what could have been for me instead of satiety, wealth and honor from Zhdanov and Fadeev ...”

Bunin is now read in all European languages ​​and in some Eastern languages. We publish it in millions of copies. On his 80th birthday, in 1950, François Mauriac wrote to him about his admiration for his work, about the sympathy that his personality inspired and his cruel fate. Andre Gide, in a letter published in the Le Figaro newspaper, says that on the threshold of his 80th birthday, he turns to Bunin and greets him "on behalf of France", calls him a great artist and writes: "I do not know writers ... who have sensations would be more precise and at the same time unexpected. They admired the work of Bunin R. Rolland, who called him " brilliant artist", Henri de Regnier, T. Mann, R.-M. Rilke, Jerome Jerome, Yaroslav Ivashkevich. The reviews of the German, French, English, etc. press from the beginning of the 1920s and later were mostly enthusiastic, As early as 1922, the English magazine "The Nation and Athenaeum" wrote about the books "The Gentleman from San Francisco" and "The Village" as extremely significant; sky!!.", "Apocalyptic power...". At the end: "Bunin won his place in world literature." Bunin's prose was equated with the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, while saying that he in form and content. " In the realism of the last century, he brought new features and new colors, which brought him closer to the impressionists.

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. , Lenin, 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.

You are a thought, you are a dream. Through the smoky blizzard
Crosses are running - outstretched hands.
I listen to the pensive spruce -
A melodious ringing... Everything is just a thought and sounds!
What lies in the grave, are you?
Parting, sadness was marked
Your hard way. Now they are gone. Crosses
They keep only ashes. Now you are a thought. You are eternal.

The name of the writer Ivan Bunin is well known not only in Russia, but also far beyond its borders. Thanks to his own works, the first Russian laureate in the field of literature deserved world fame while still alive! To better understand what this person was guided by when creating his unique masterpieces, you should study the biography of Ivan Bunin and his view of many things in life.

Brief biographical sketches from early childhood

The future great writer was born back in 1870, on October 22. Voronezh became his homeland. Bunin's family was not rich: his father became an impoverished landowner, so from early childhood, little Vanya experienced many material deprivations.

The biography of Ivan Bunin is very unusual, and this manifested itself from the earliest period of his life. Even in childhood, he was very proud of the fact that he was born into a noble family. At the same time, Vanya tried not to focus on material difficulties.

As evidenced by the biography of Ivan Bunin, in 1881 he entered the first class. Ivan Alekseevich began his schooling at the Yelets Gymnasium. However, due to the difficult financial situation of his parents, he was forced to leave school already in 1886 and continue to learn the basics of science at home. It is thanks to studying at home that young Vanya gets acquainted with the work of such famous writers as A. V. Koltsov and I. S. Nikitin.

A number of the beginning of Bunin's career

Ivan Bunin began writing his very first poems at the age of 17. It was then that he made his creative debut, which turned out to be very successful. No wonder the print media published the works of the young author. But then their editors could hardly have imagined how stunning successes in the field of literature awaited Bunin in the future!

At the age of 19, Ivan Alekseevich moved to Orel and got a job in a newspaper with the eloquent name "Orlovsky Vestnik".

In 1903 and 1909, Ivan Bunin, whose biography is presented to the reader's attention in the article, is awarded the Pushkin Prize. And on November 1, 1909, he was elected an honorary academician to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, which specialized in refined literature.

Important events from personal life

The personal life of Ivan Bunin is replete with many interesting moments to which you should pay attention. In the life of a great writer, there were 4 women for whom he had tender feelings. And each of them played a certain role in his fate! Let's pay attention to each of them:

1. Varvara Pashchenko - Bunin Ivan Alekseevich met her at the age of 19. This happened in the building of the editorial office of the Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper. But with Varvara, who was one year older than him, Ivan Alekseevich lived in a civil marriage. Difficulties in their relationship began due to the fact that Bunin simply could not provide her with the material standard of living that she aspired to. As a result, Varvara Pashchenko cheated on him with a wealthy landowner.
2. Anna Tsakni in 1898 became the legal wife of a famous Russian writer. He met her in Odessa during the holidays and was simply struck by her natural beauty. However family life quickly cracked due to the fact that Anna Tsakni always dreamed of returning to her native city - Odessa. Therefore, the whole Moscow life was a burden for her, and she accused her husband of indifference to her and callousness.
3. Vera Muromtseva is the beloved woman of Bunin Ivan Alekseevich, with whom he lived the longest - 46 years. They formalized their relationship only in 1922 - 16 years after they met. And Ivan Alekseevich met his future wife in 1906, during a literary evening. After the wedding, the writer and his wife moved to live in the southern part of France.
4. Galina Kuznetsova lived next to the writer's wife - Vera Muromtseva - and was not at all embarrassed by this fact, however, like Ivan Alekseevich's wife herself. In total, she lived for 10 years in a French villa.

Political views of the writer

The political views of many people had a significant impact on public opinion. Therefore, certain newspaper publications devoted a lot of time to them.

Even though in more Ivan Alekseevich had to engage in his own creativity outside of Russia, he always loved his homeland and understood the meaning of the word "patriot". However, Bunin was alien to belonging to any particular party. But in one of his interviews, the writer once mentioned that the idea of ​​a social democratic system is closer to him in spirit.

Personal life tragedy

In 1905, Bunin Ivan Alekseevich experienced a heavy grief: his son Nikolai, whom Anna Tsakni bore to him, died. This fact can definitely be attributed to the personal life tragedy of the writer. However, as follows from the biography, Ivan Bunin held firm, was able to endure the pain of loss and give, despite such a sad event, many literary "pearls" to the whole world! What else is known about the life of the Russian classic?

Ivan Bunin: interesting facts from life

Bunin very much regretted that he graduated from only 4 classes of the gymnasium and could not receive a systematic education. But this fact did not at all prevent him from leaving a considerable mark in the world's literary work.

For a long period of time, Ivan Alekseevich had to stay in exile. And all this time he dreamed of returning to his homeland. Bunin actually cherished this dream until his death, but it remained unrealizable.

At the age of 17, when he wrote his first poem, Ivan Bunin tried to imitate his great predecessors - Pushkin and Lermontov. Perhaps their work had a great influence on the young writer and became an incentive to create his own works.

Few people now know that early childhood writer Ivan Bunin poisoned himself with henbane. Then his nanny saved him from certain death, who gave little Vanya milk to drink in time.

The writer tried to determine the appearance of a person by the limbs, as well as the back of the head.

Bunin Ivan Alekseevich was passionate about collecting various boxes, as well as bottles. At the same time, he fiercely guarded all his “exhibits” for many years!

These and other interesting facts characterize Bunin as an extraordinary person, able not only to realize his talent in the field of literature, but also to take an active part in many fields of activity.

Famous collections and works of Bunin Ivan Alekseevich

The largest works that Ivan Bunin managed to write in his life are the stories "Mitina Lyubov", "Village", "Sukhodol", as well as the novel "Arseniev's Life". It was for the novel that Ivan Alekseevich was awarded the Nobel Prize.

The collection of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin "Dark Alleys" is very interesting for the reader. It contains stories that touch on the theme of love. The writer worked on them in the period from 1937 to 1945, that is, exactly when he was in exile.

Also highly appreciated are the samples of Ivan Bunin's work, which were included in the collection "Cursed Days". It describes the revolutionary events of 1917 and the whole historical aspect that they carried in themselves.

Popular poems by Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

In each of his poems, Bunin clearly expressed certain thoughts. For example, in famous work"Childhood" the reader gets acquainted with the thoughts of the child with regards to the world around him. A ten-year-old boy reflects on how majestic nature is around and how small and insignificant he is in this universe.

In the verse “Night and Day,” the poet masterfully describes the different times of the day and emphasizes that everything is gradually changing in human life, and only God remains eternal.

The nature in the work “Rafts” is interestingly described, as well as the hard work of those who ferry people to the opposite bank of the river every day.

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize was awarded to Ivan Bunin for his novel "The Life of Arseniev", which actually told about the life of the writer himself. Although this book came out in 1930, in it Ivan Alekseevich tried to “pour out his soul” and his feelings about certain life situations.

Officially, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Bunin on December 10, 1933 - that is, 3 years after his release. famous novel. He received this honorary award from the hands of the Swedish king Gustav V himself.

It is noteworthy that for the first time in history, the Nobel Prize was awarded to a person who is officially in exile. Until that moment, not a single genius who became its owner was in exile. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin just became this "pioneer", who was noted by the world literary community with such valuable encouragement.

In total, the Nobel Prize winners were supposed to receive 715,000 francs in cash. It would seem that a very impressive amount. But the writer Ivan Alekseevich Bunin quickly squandered it, as he provided financial assistance Russian emigrants, who bombarded him with many different letters.

Writer's death

Death came to Ivan Bunin rather unexpectedly. His heart stopped during sleep, and this sad event happened on November 8, 1953. It was on this day that Ivan Alekseevich was in Paris and could not even imagine his imminent death.

Surely Bunin dreamed of living long and one day dying on native land, among his relatives and a large number of friends. But fate decreed a little differently, as a result of which the writer spent most of his life in exile. However, thanks to its unrivaled creativity he actually secured immortality for his name. The literary masterpieces written by Bunin will be remembered for many more generations of people. Creative person, like him, gains world fame and becomes a historical reflection of the era in which she worked!

Ivan Bunin was buried in one of the cemeteries in France (Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois). Here is such a rich and interesting biography of Ivan Bunin. What is its role in world literature?

The role of Bunin in world literature

We can safely say that Ivan Bunin (1870-1953) left a noticeable mark on world literature. Thanks to such virtues as ingenuity and verbal sensitivity, which the poet possessed, he was excellent at creating the most suitable literary images in his works.

By his nature, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was a realist, but, despite this, he skillfully supplemented his stories with something fascinating and unusual. The uniqueness of Ivan Alekseevich lay in the fact that he did not consider himself to be a member of any well-known literary group and a "trend" that was fundamental in its view.

All of Bunin's best stories were devoted to Russia and told about everything that connected the writer with it. Perhaps it was thanks to these facts that the stories of Ivan Alekseevich were very popular among Russian readers.

Unfortunately, Bunin's work has not been fully explored by our contemporaries. Scientific research into the language and style of the writer is yet to come. His influence on Russian literature of the 20th century has not yet been revealed, perhaps because, like Pushkin, Ivan Alekseevich is unique. There is a way out of this situation: turning again and again to Bunin's texts, to documents, archives, and contemporaries' memories of him.

Bunin Ivan Alekseevich (1870-1953) - Russian writer, honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1909).

Born in 1870 in a poor noble family. He spent his childhood and youth in the countryside. He received his primary education at home. In 1881-86. studied at the gymnasium in Yelets. Then he began to write poetry. Since 1888, Bunin's name began to appear in the books of the Week, where the works of Leo Tolstoy and Shchedrin were often published. In 1891 published in Orel the first book of poems. Since 1895 publishes prose. Bunin followed common tradition Russian classics. He did not participate in public and political life. Received recognition for the translation of "The Song of Hiawatha" (1896) and the poetry collection "Falling Leaves" (1901). The story "The Village" (1910) brought wide popularity. At the beginning of 1905, Bunin settled in Moscow, became close to A.M. Gorky, A.P. Chekhov and other prominent writers. He travels extensively in Europe and Asia. Bunin did not accept the revolution of 1917, and in 1920 he emigrated to France. In Paris, he heads the Union of Russian Writers and Journalists, engages in political propaganda in the periodical press directed against the Soviet regime. The largest literary work in 1920-30 was the novel "The Life of Arseniev" (1930). In emigration, Bunin's artistic talent was greatly developed. The European community recognized him as the best Russian contemporary writer. At the beginning of World War II, Bunin softened his attitude towards the Soviet Union, and even intended to return to his homeland, but the political atmosphere in the USSR after the war prevented this.

During his long creative life, Bunin created many masterpieces. Life on the farm, communication with peasants, with the people were reflected in the best works of Bunin. In his stories about the village, the accuracy and authenticity of peasant speech are striking. The development of his literary gift was influenced not only by the nature surrounding him, but also by the environment and close people. Bunin remarkably revealed the "eternal themes": love, death, nature. Bunin's literary fate developed happily. Criticism in general praised his works, he was called "the singer of autumn, sadness and noble nests", they paid tribute to his beautiful language. In 1903, Bunin was awarded the Pushkin Prize for poetry by the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1933 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1870-1953 famous Russian writer and poet. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. For many years he lived in exile, becoming a writer of the Russian diaspora.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin belonged to an old noble family. Bunin himself noted that his family gave Russia "many prominent figures both in the field of state and in the field of art, where two poets of the last century are especially famous: Anna Bunina and Vasily Zhukovsky, one of the luminaries of Russian literature, the son of Afanasy Bunin ...".

The future writer 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 (due to non-payment of tuition fees) and returned to the village. He received an education at home, which was based primarily on passionate reading. Already in childhood, Bunin's extraordinary impressionability and susceptibility manifested itself, qualities that formed the basis of his artistic personality and caused an image of the world around us hitherto unseen in Russian literature in terms of sharpness and brightness, as well as the richness of shades. Bunin recalled: “My vision was such that I saw all seven stars in the Pleiades, heard the whistle of a marmot in the evening field a mile away, got drunk, smelling the smell of a lily of the valley or an old book.”

Bunin's poems were first published in 1888. Then Bunin moved to Orel, becoming a proofreader in a local newspaper. In 1891 his first book of poetry was published. 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). In the last years of his life, Bunin created wonderful books of memoirs.

Acquaintance with the greatest writers (Gorky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, etc.) leaves a significant imprint on Bunin's life and work. Bunin's stories "Antonov apples", "Pines" are published. Bunin's prose was published in " the full assembly works "(1915).

The writer in 1909 becomes an honorary academician of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.

Bunin does not accept the revolution and leaves Russia forever.

In exile, Bunin travels around Europe, Asia, Africa and engages in literary activities, writes works: "Mitya's Love" (1924), "Sunstroke" (1925), as well as the main novel in the life of the writer - "The Life of Arseniev" (1927-1929 , 1933), which brings Bunin the Nobel Prize in 1933. In 1944, Ivan Alekseevich wrote the story "Clean Monday".

By decision of the Swedish Academy on November 9, 1933, the Nobel Prize in Literature for that year was awarded to Ivan Bunin for the rigorous artistic talent with which he recreated a typical Russian character in literary prose.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin brief information.