The life and work of Bunin I A. Bunin's biography is short

1. Childhood and youth. First publications.
2. Family life and work of Bunin.
3. Emigrant period. Nobel Prize.
4. The value of Bunin's work in literature.

How can we forget the Motherland?

Can a person forget his homeland?

She is in the soul. I am a very Russian person.

It doesn't disappear over the years.
I. A. Bunin

I. A. Bunin was born in Voronezh on October 10, 1870. Bunin's father Alexei Nikolaevich, a landowner in the Oryol and Tula provinces, a participant in the Crimean War, went bankrupt because of his love for cards. The impoverished nobles of the Bunins had such ancestors as the poetess A.P. Bunina and the father of V.A. Zhukovsky - A.I. Bunin. At the age of three, the boy was transferred to the estate on the Butyrki farm in the Yelets district of the Oryol province, his childhood memories are closely connected with him.

From 1881 to 1886, Bunin studied at the Yelets Gymnasium, from where he was expelled for failing to appear from the holidays. He did not finish the gymnasium, having received an education at home under the guidance of his brother Julius. Already at the age of seven he wrote poetry, imitating Pushkin and Lermontov. In 1887, his poem "Above Nadson's Grave" was first published in the Rodina newspaper, and his critical articles began to be published. Elder brother Julius became his best friend, mentor in study and life.

In 1889, Bunin moved to his brother in Kharkov, associated with the populist movement. Being carried away by this movement himself, Ivan soon departs from the populists and returns to Orel. He does not share the radical views of Julius. Works in the "Orlovsky Bulletin", lives in a civil marriage with V. V. Pashchenko. Bunin's first book of poems appeared in 1891. These were poems saturated with passion for Pashchenko - Bunin experienced his unhappy love. At first, Varvara's father forbade them to marry, then Bunin had to learn many disappointments in family life, to be convinced of the complete dissimilarity of their characters. Soon he settled in Poltava with Julius, in 1894 he parted with Pashchenko. There comes a period of creative maturity of the writer. Bunin's stories are published in leading magazines. He corresponds with A.P. Chekhov, is fond of the moral and religious preaching of L.N. Tolstoy, and even meets with the writer, trying to live according to his advice.

In 1896, a translation of the "Song of Hiawatha" by H. W. Longfellow was published, which was highly appreciated by contemporaries (Bunin received the Pushkin Prize of the first degree for it). Especially for this work, he independently studied English.

In 1898, Bunin again married a Greek woman, A.N. Tsakni, the daughter of a revolutionary emigrant. A year later, they divorced (the wife left Bunin, causing him suffering). Their only son died at the age of five from scarlet fever. His creative life is much richer than his family life - Bunin translates Tennyson's poem "Lady Godiva" and "Manfred" by Byron, Alfred de Musset and Francois Coppé. At the beginning of the 20th century, the most famous stories were published - "Antonov apples", "Pines", a prose poem "The Village", the story "Dry Valley". Thanks to the story "Antonov apples" Bunin became widely known. It so happened that for the topic close to Bunin, the ruin of noble nests, he was criticized by M. Gorky: “Antonov apples smell good, but they smell by no means democratic.” Bunin was a stranger to his raznochintsy contemporaries, who perceived his story as a poeticization of serfdom. In fact, the writer poetized his attitude to the passing past, to nature, to his native land.

In 1909, Bunin became an honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Much has also changed in his personal life - he met V. N. Muromtseva at the age of thirty-seven, finally creating a happy family. The Bunins travel through Syria, Egypt, Palestine, and Bunin writes the book "Shadow of a Bird" based on travel impressions. Then - a trip to Europe, again to Egypt and Ceylon. Bunin reflects on the teachings of the Buddha, which is close to him, but with many postulates of which he does not agree. The collections Sukhodol: Novels and Stories 1911-1912, John Rydalets: Stories and Poems 1912-1913, The Gentleman from San Francisco: Works 1915-1916, a six-volume collected works were published.

The First World War was for the writer the beginning of the collapse of Russia. He expected disaster from the victory of the Bolsheviks. He did not accept the October Revolution, all thoughts about the coup are reflected by the writer in his diary "Cursed Days" (he is depressed by what is happening). Not thinking of their existence in Bolshevik Russia, the Bunins leave Moscow for Odessa, and then emigrate to France - first to Paris, and then to Grasse. The uncommunicative Bunin had almost no contact with Russian emigrants, but this did not prevent his creative inspiration - ten books of prose became a fruitful result of his work in exile. They included: "The Rose of Jericho", "Sunstroke", "Mitina's Love" and other works. Like many books by emigrants, they were imbued with homesickness. In Bunin's books - nostalgia for pre-revolutionary Russia, another world that has remained forever in the past. Bunin also headed the Union of Russian Writers and Journalists in Paris, led his column in the Vozrozhdenie newspaper.

In emigration, Bunin was overtaken by an unexpected feeling - he met his last love, G. N. Kuznetsova. She lived for many years with the Bunin couple in Grasse, helping Ivan Alekseevich as a secretary. Vera Nikolaevna had to put up with this, she considered Kuznetsova to be something like an adopted daughter. Both women valued Bunin and agreed to voluntarily live on such terms. Also, a young writer L.F. Zurov lived with his family for about twenty years. Bunin had to support four.

In 1927, work began on the novel "The Life of Arseniev", Kuznetsova helped Ivan Alekseevich in rewriting. After seven years of living in Grasse, she left. The novel was completed in 1933. This is a fictional autobiography with many real and fictional characters. Memory, which travels the life-long path of the hero, is the main theme of the novel. “Stream of Consciousness” is a feature of this novel that makes the author related to M. J. Proust.

In 1933, Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize "for the rigorous skill with which he develops the traditions of Russian classical prose" and "for the truthful artistic talent with which he recreated a typically Russian character in artistic prose." It was the first prize for a Russian writer, especially an exiled writer. The emigration considered Bunin's success their own, the writer allocated 100 thousand francs in favor of Russian emigrant writers. But many were unhappy that they were given no more. Few people thought about the fact that Bunin himself lived in unbearable conditions, and when the telegram about the award was brought, he did not even have a tip for the postman, and the received award was only enough for two years. According to the wishes of readers, Bunin published an eleven-volume collected works in 1934-1936.

In Bunin's prose, a special place was occupied by the theme of love - an unexpected element of "sunstroke", which cannot be sustained. In 1943, a collection of love stories "Dark Alleys" was published. This is the pinnacle of the writer's work.

In 1887, Ivan Bunin's first poem ("Over Nadson's Grave") appeared in print.

Since 1889, his independent life began; he worked as a proofreader, statistician, librarian, newspaper reporter. Since the autumn of 1889, Bunin worked as an editor in the Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper, published his stories, poems, literary criticism and notes in the permanent section of the newspaper Literature and Printing.

In the editorial office, Bunin met Varvara Pashchenko, who worked as a proofreader, whom he married in 1891, but their marriage was not legalized (the bride's parents did not want to marry their daughter to a poor poet).

In the same year, Bunin's collection "Poems 1887-1891" was published in Orel.

At the end of August 1892, Bunin and Pashchenko moved to Poltava, where he began to serve as a statistician in the provincial zemstvo council, while simultaneously collaborating with the Poltavskiye Provincial Vedomosti newspaper, in which he published his articles, essays, and stories.

In 1892-1894, Bunin's poems and stories began to be published in the capital's publications: the newspaper "Kievlyanin", in "thick" magazines - "Bulletin of Europe", "World of God", "Russian wealth", etc.

In 1893 1894, Bunin visited the Tolstoyan colonies near Poltava, and in January 1894 he met Leo Tolstoy, a meeting with whom Bunin, as he wrote, "amazingly impressed."

In 1895, after Varvara Pashchenko left Bunin and married another, he left Poltava for St. Petersburg, and then to Moscow, where he met writers and poets Dmitry Grigorovich, Alexei Zhemchuzhnikov, Nikolai Mikhailovsky, Nikolai Zlatovratsky, symbolists Konstantin Balmont, Fyodor Sologub, Valery Bryusov, with Anton Chekhov, Vladimir Korolenko and others.

In 1897, Bunin's book "To the End of the World" and other stories was published, and a year later - a collection of poems "Under the open sky".

In June 1898, Bunin left for Odessa, where in September of the same year he married Anna Tsakni.

Bunin's family life again developed unsuccessfully, in early March 1900 the couple divorced, and in 1905 their son Kolya died.

In 1899, Ivan Bunin met the writer Maxim Gorky, who attracted him to cooperate with the Znanie publishing house.

In 1900, Bunin's story "Antonov apples" appeared in print, later included in all the readers of Russian prose, and in the same year the writer took a trip to Germany, France, and Switzerland.

At the beginning of 1901, a collection of poems "Leaf Fall" was published, which caused numerous reviews from critics.

Since 1902, Gorky's publishing house "Knowledge" began to publish Bunin's collected works in separate numbered volumes.

On October 19, 1903, Bunin was awarded the Pushkin Prize by the Russian Academy of Sciences for the poetry collection Falling Leaves (1901), as well as for the translation of the American romantic poet Longfellow's poem The Song of Hiawatha (1896).

In addition to his own literary work, Bunin did a lot of translation. Among his poetic translations are four fragments from Longfellow's Golden Legend, Byron's philosophical dramas Cain (1905), Manfred (1904), Heaven and Earth (1909), Tennyson's Godiva, and others.

In 1904 Ivan Bunin made a trip to France and Italy.

In 1906, Bunin met Vera Muromtseva in Moscow, with whom in April 1907 he went on a trip to Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. From this journey began their life together. The result of trips to the East was the cycle of essays "The Temple of the Sun" (1907-1911) and the cycle of stories "Shadow of the Bird" (1907-1911).

In 1909, the Academy of Sciences awarded Bunin the second Pushkin Prize for poetry and translations of Byron. In the same year, Bunin was elected an honorary academician.

The beginning of Bunin's enormous popularity was the story "The Village" published in 1910, which became an event in literary and social life.

In mid-December 1910, Bunin and his wife went to Egypt and further to the tropics - to Ceylon. The writer described this journey in the diary "Many Waters", the stories "Brothers", "The City of the King of Kings".

In 1911, Ivan Bunin was awarded the Golden Pushkin Medal.

In 1912, the collection "Dry Valley. Tales and Stories" was published, and later the collections "John Rydalets. Stories and Poems of 1912-1913" were published. (1913); "The Cup of Life. Stories 1913-1914." (1915); "The gentleman from San Francisco. Works 1915-1916." (1916).

From October 1917 to May 1918, the Bunins lived in Moscow. They left Moscow on May 21, 1918. From Moscow they went to Odessa, and then abroad, to France.

In his autobiography, Ivan Bunin writes: "... he lived in the south of Russia, passing from hand to hand" white "and" red ", and on January 26, 1920, having drunk the cup of inexpressible mental suffering, he emigrated first to the Balkans, then to France. In France, I lived for the first time in Paris, from the summer of 1923 I moved to the Alpes-Maritimes, returning to Paris only for some winter months.

Bunin met the October Revolution with hostility, the book of journalism "Cursed Days" (1918) became a diary of the events of the country's life and the writer's thoughts at that time.

The break with the Motherland, as it turned out later, forever, was painful for the writer. In exile, relations with prominent Russian emigrants were difficult for the Bunins.

The works of this period are permeated with the thought of Russia, the tragedy of Russian history in the twentieth century. In emigration, Bunin wrote ten new books, including collections of short stories "Mitina's Love" (1925), "The Case of Cornet Elagin" (1925), "Sunstroke" (1927), the autobiographical novel "Arsenyev's Life" (1927 1929, 1933 ), a collection of short stories "Dark Alleys" (1943).

In exile, the publishing house "Petropolis" published the book "Memoirs", the book "Selected Poems" and the book "Liberation of Tolstoy" (about his life and teachings). Short stories written in 1927-1930 - "Elephant", "Sky over the Wall" and many others - in a page, half a page, and sometimes in several lines, were included in the book "God's Tree".

In 1933, Ivan Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize "for the truthful artistic talent with which he recreated the typical Russian character in fiction." He became the first Russian writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize. The Soviet official press, commenting on this event, explained the decision of the Nobel Committee by the intrigues of imperialism.

By the end of the 1930s, Bunin increasingly felt the dramatic nature of the break with the Motherland, avoiding direct political statements about the USSR. Fascism in Germany and Italy is sharply condemned by him. He encountered the Nazis in 1936 while traveling to Germany, when he was arrested in the city of Lindau and subjected to an unceremonious and humiliating search.

In 1939, with 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, for some time under German occupation. The writer closely followed the events in Russia, refusing any form of cooperation with the Nazi occupation authorities. He experienced the defeat of the Red Army on the eastern front very painfully, and then sincerely rejoiced at its victories. I met the victory with great joy.

In May 1945, the Bunins returned to Paris. In recent years, the writer lived in great lack of money, starving. Living in poverty, being very ill, he nevertheless wrote in recent years the book "Memoirs" (Paris, 1950), worked on the book "About Chekhov", published posthumously in 1955 in New York.

The writer's works have been translated into all European languages ​​and some Eastern ones.

Bunin repeatedly expressed a desire to return to his homeland, calling the decree of the Soviet government of 1946 "On the restoration of citizenship of the USSR subjects of the former Russian Empire ..." called "a generous measure." However, the decree on the magazines "Zvezda" and "Leningrad" (1946), which trampled on Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Zoshchenko, forever turned the writer away from his intention to return to his homeland.

Ivan Bunin died on the night of November 8, 1953 in the arms of his wife. He is buried in the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery near Paris.

Bunin's wife, who possessed outstanding literary abilities, left literary memoirs about her husband - Bunin's Life and Conversations with Memory.

The work of the memoir character "Grasse Diary" and the article "In Memory of Bunin" were written by Galina Kuznetsova, who lived next door to the Bunins in 1927-1942 and became a deep late affection of the writer.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources

In this article, we will briefly tell you about the biography of the great writer.

The famous Russian writer Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born on October 10, 1870 in Voronezh, where his parents moved three years before his birth.

The reason for the change of residence of the family was the study of older brothers, Yulia and Evgeny. But as soon as the capable and gifted Julius graduated from the gymnasium with a gold medal, and Yevgeny, who had difficulty in science, dropped out, the family immediately left for their estate on the Butyrki farm in the Yelets district.

In this wilderness passed the sad childhood of little Vanya. Soon he had two sisters: Masha and Alexandra. Sashenka died very young, and Ivan gazed into the night sky for a long time to guess which star her soul settled on. One of the summer days almost ended tragically for Ivan and his grown sister Masha: the children tasted poisonous henbane, but the nanny promptly gave them hot milk to drink.

Ivan's life in the village was mainly filled with games with village boys and studies under the guidance of his father's friend Nikolai Osipovich, who lived with them. Sometimes he was thrown from one extreme to another: either he began to deceive everyone intensely, then he studied the lives of the saints and prayed earnestly, then he killed a rook with a crippled wing with his father's dagger.

Bunin felt a poetic gift in himself at the age of eight, at the same time he wrote his first poem.

Gymnasium years

At the age of 11, Ivan Bunin entered the Yelets gymnasium, which was located 30 miles from his native Butyrki. The entrance exams amazed him with their ease: it was only necessary to talk about the Amiliki, recite a verse, correctly write "snow is white, but not tasty" and multiply two-digit numbers. The young schoolboy hoped that further studies would be just as easy.

By the beginning of the school year, a uniform was sewn and an apartment was found for living in the house of the tradesman Byakin, with a payment of 15 rubles a month. After the village freemen, it was hard to get used to the strict order prevailing in rented housing. The owner of the house kept his children in strictness, and the second tenant Yegor even tore his ears for any offense or poor study.

For all the years of study, the high school student Bunin had to live in several houses, and during this time his parents moved from Butyrki to more civilized Ozerki.

Paradoxically, but the future Nobel Prize winner did not work out with his studies. In the third grade of the gymnasium, he was left for the second year, and in the middle of the fourth grade he dropped out altogether. Subsequently, he greatly regretted this rash act. The role of the teacher had to be taken over by the brilliantly educated brother Julius, who taught foreign languages ​​and other sciences to Ivan, who had escaped from the gymnasium. My brother was in Ozerki under three years of house arrest as a member of the revolutionary movement.

In 1887, Ivan Bunin decided to send the fruits of his creativity to Rodina magazine. The first published poem was "Over the Grave of S.Ya. Nadson" (February 1887), the second - "The Village Beggar" (May 1887). The collection of poems "Poems" was published in 1891, followed by other collections, the award of the Pushkin Prizes and the title of honorary academician of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.

Independent life

In 1889, Ivan left his parental home and rushed towards a big and difficult fate. Escaped from the wilderness, he first went to his brother Julius in Kharkov, visited Yalta and Sevastopol, and in the autumn he began work in the Oryol Bulletin.

In 1891, Bunin, who did not study at the gymnasium and did not have any benefits, had to go to serve in the army. To avoid being drafted, the writer, on the advice of a friend, ate almost nothing and slept little for a month before the medical examination. As a result, he looked so haggard that he received a blue ticket.

In the Orlovsky Messenger, Ivan met a pretty and educated girl, Varvara Pashchenko, who acted as a proofreader and was his age. Since Varvara's father did not approve of their relationship, the young lovers left for a while to live in Poltava. The writer made an official proposal to his beloved girl, but the whole Pashenko family was against this marriage, as they considered the potential groom to be a beggar and a vagabond.

In 1894, Varvara suddenly left her common-law husband, leaving only a farewell note. All three Bunina brothers rushed after the fugitive to Yelets, but the girl's relatives refused to give her new address. This parting was so painful for Ivan that he was even going to commit suicide. Varvara Vladimirovna not only abandoned the novice writer, with whom she lived for three years in a civil marriage, but very soon she married his friend of her youth, Arseny Bibikov.

After that, Bunin left the service of an extra in Poltava and went to conquer St. Petersburg and Moscow. There he met the literary titans Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, struck up a friendship with the young Kuprin, reminiscent of a big child. After the drama he experienced, due to his internal unstable state, Bunin could not stay in one place for a long time, he moved from city to city all the time or visited his parents in Ozerki. In a fairly short period of time, he visited Kremenchug, Gurzuf, Yalta, Yekaterinoslav.

In 1898, a passionate travel lover found himself in Odessa, where he married the daughter of the editor of the Southern Review, the beautiful Greek Anna Tsakni. The spouses did not feel particularly deep feelings for each other, so they broke up two years later. In 1905 their little child died of scarlet fever.

In 1906, Ivan Bunin again visited Moscow. At a literary evening, the writer, gaining fame, met a very beautiful girl with magical crystal eyes. Vera Muromtseva was the niece of a member of the State Duma, she spoke several languages: French, English, Italian, German.

The joint life of the writer and Vera Nikolaevna, far from literature, began in the spring of 1907, and the wedding ceremony was performed only in 1922 in France. Together they traveled to many countries: Egypt, Italy, Turkey, Romania, Palestine, even visited the island of Ceylon.

Bunin's life in Grasse (France)

After the revolution of 1917, the couple emigrated to France, where they settled in the small resort town of Grasse at the Villa Belvedere.

Here, under the southern sun, such wonderful works as "The Life of Arseniev", "Dark Alleys", "Mitina's Love" came out from under the pen of Bunin. His literary works were highly appreciated by his contemporaries - in 1933 he was awarded the Nobel Prize, for which he went to Stockholm with his beloved women - his wife Vera Nikolaevna and beloved Galina Kuznetsova.

The aspiring writer Kuznetsova settled in the Villa Belvedere back in 1927, and Vera Nikolaevna favorably accepted her husband’s late love, turning a blind eye to the gossip that arose both in Grasse and beyond.

With each passing year, the situation escalated. The composition of the inhabitants of the villa was replenished with a young writer Leonid Zurov, who, in turn, felt sympathy for Vera Nikolaevna. To top it off, Galina became interested in the singer Margarita Stepun and in 1934 left the Bunin house. With her treacherous act, she struck a blow right in the heart of the writer. But be that as it may, the friends again lived with the Bunins in 1941-1942, and in 1949 they left for America.

Having crossed the eighty-year milestone, Bunin began to get sick often, but did not stop working. So he met his death hour - with a pen in his hand, devoting the last days of his life to creating a literary portrait of Anton Chekhov. The famous writer died on November 8, 1953 and found peace not in his native land, but in foreign confines.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born on October 22, 1870 in Voronezh into a noble family. His childhood and youth were spent in the impoverished estate of the Oryol province.

He spent his early childhood in a small family estate (the Butyrki farm in the Yelets district of the Oryol province). Ten years old he was sent to the Yelets gymnasium, where he studied for four and a half years, was expelled (for non-payment of tuition fees) and returned to the village. The future writer did not receive a systematic education, which he regretted all his life. True, the older brother Julius, who graduated with flying colors from the university, went through the entire gymnasium course with Vanya. They were engaged in languages, psychology, philosophy, social and natural sciences. It was Julius who had a great influence on the formation of Bunin's tastes and views.

An aristocrat in spirit, Bunin did not share his brother's passion for political radicalism. Julius, feeling the literary abilities of his younger brother, introduced him to Russian classical literature, advised him to write himself. Bunin enthusiastically read Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, and at the age of 16 he began to write poetry himself. In May 1887, Rodina magazine published the poem "The Beggar" by sixteen-year-old Vanya Bunin. Since that time, his more or less constant literary activity began, in which there was a place for both poetry and prose.

Since 1889, an independent life began - with a change of professions, with work both in provincial and metropolitan periodicals. Collaborating with the editorial office of the Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper, the young writer met the newspaper's proofreader Varvara Vladimirovna Pashchenko, who married him in 1891. The young spouses, who lived unmarried (Pashchenko's parents were against marriage), subsequently moved to Poltava (1892) and began to serve as statisticians in the provincial government. In 1891, Bunin's first collection of poems, still very imitative, was published.

1895 was a turning point in the life of the writer. After Pashchenko agreed with Bunin's friend A.I. Bibikov, the writer left the service and moved to Moscow, where he made literary acquaintances with L.N. Tolstoy, whose personality and philosophy had a strong influence on Bunin, with A.P. Chekhov, M. Gorky, N.D. Teleshov.

Since 1895 Bunin has been living in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Literary recognition came to the writer after the publication of such stories as “On the Farm”, “News from the Motherland” and “At the End of the World”, dedicated to the famine of 1891, the cholera epidemic of 1892, the resettlement of peasants in Siberia, and impoverishment and the decline of the petty nobility. Bunin called his first collection of short stories At the End of the World (1897). In 1898, Bunin published a poetry collection Under the Open Air, as well as a translation of Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha, which received a very high appraisal and was awarded the Pushkin Prize of the first degree.

In 1898 (some sources indicate 1896) he married Anna Nikolaevna Tsakni, a Greek woman, the daughter of a revolutionary and emigrant N.P. Click. Family life again turned out to be unsuccessful and in 1900 the couple divorced, and in 1905 their son Nikolai died.

On November 4, 1906, an event occurred in Bunin's personal life that had an important impact on his work. While in Moscow, he met Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, the niece of the same S.A. Muromtsev, who was chairman of the First State Duma. And in April 1907, the writer and Muromtseva went on their "first long journey" together, visiting Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. This journey not only marked the beginning of their life together, but also gave birth to a whole cycle of Bunin's stories "The Shadow of a Bird" (1907 - 1911), in which he wrote about the "light-bearing countries" of the East, their ancient history and amazing culture.

In December 1911, in Capri, the writer completed the autobiographical story "Sukhodol", which, being published in Vestnik Evropy in April 1912, was a huge success with readers and critics. On October 27-29 of the same year, the entire Russian public solemnly celebrated the 25th anniversary of I.A. Bunin, and in 1915 in the St. Petersburg publishing house A.F. Marx published his complete works in six volumes. In 1912-1914. Bunin took a close part in the work of the "Book Publishing House of Writers in Moscow", and collections of his works were published in this publishing house one after another - "John Rydalets: stories and poems 1912-1913." (1913), "The Cup of Life: Stories 1913-1914." (1915), "The Gentleman from San Francisco: Works 1915-1916." (1916).

The First World War brought Bunin "a great spiritual disappointment." But it was precisely during this senseless world slaughter that the poet and writer especially acutely felt the meaning of the word, not so much journalistic as poetic. In January 1916 alone, he wrote fifteen poems: "Svyatogor and Ilya", "Land without history", "Eve", "The day will come - I will disappear ...", etc. In them, the author fearfully expects the collapse of the great Russian state. Bunin reacted sharply negatively to the revolutions of 1917 (February and October). The pathetic figures of the leaders of the Provisional Government, as the great master believed, were only capable of leading Russia to the abyss. This period was devoted to his diary - the pamphlet "Cursed Days", first published in Berlin (Sobr. soch., 1935).

In 1920, Bunin and his wife emigrated, settling in Paris and then moving to Grasse, a small town in southern France. About this period of their life (until 1941) can be read in the talented book by Galina Kuznetsova "Grasse Diary". A young writer, a student of Bunin, she lived in their house from 1927 to 1942, becoming the last very strong hobby of Ivan Alekseevich. Infinitely devoted to him, Vera Nikolaevna made this, perhaps the biggest sacrifice in her life, understanding the emotional needs of the writer (“Being in love is even more important for a poet than traveling,” Gumilyov used to say).

In exile, Bunin creates his 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."
In 1933, Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize, as he believed, primarily for "The Life of Arseniev." When Bunin arrived in Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize, in Sweden he was already recognized by sight. Bunin's photographs could be seen in every newspaper, in shop windows, on the cinema screen.

With the outbreak of World War II, in 1939, the Bunins settled in the south of France, in Grasse, at the Villa Jeannette, where they spent the entire war. The writer closely followed the events in Russia, refusing any form of cooperation with the Nazi occupation authorities. He experienced the defeat of the Red Army on the eastern front very painfully, and then sincerely rejoiced at its victories.

In 1945, Bunin returned to Paris again. Bunin repeatedly expressed a desire to return to his homeland, calling the decree of the Soviet government of 1946 "On the restoration of citizenship of the USSR subjects of the former Russian Empire ..." called "a generous measure." However, the Zhdanov decree on the magazines "Zvezda" and "Leningrad" (1946), which trampled on A. Akhmatova and M. Zoshchenko, forever turned the writer away from the intention to return to his homeland.

Although Bunin's work received wide international recognition, his life in a foreign land was not easy. Written in the dark days of the Nazi occupation of France, Dark Alleys, the latest collection of short stories, has gone unnoticed. Until the end of his life, he had to defend his favorite book from the "Pharisees". In 1952, he wrote to F. A. Stepun, the author of one of the reviews of Bunin’s works: “It’s a pity that you wrote that in Dark Alleys there is a certain excess of looking at female seductions ... What an “excess” there! I gave only a thousandth how men of all tribes and peoples "consider" everywhere, always women from their ten years of age until they are 90 years old.

At the end of his life, Bunin wrote a number of more stories, as well as the extremely caustic Memoirs (1950), in which Soviet culture is sharply criticized. A year after the appearance of this book, Bunin was elected the first honorary member of the Pen Club. representing writers in exile. In recent years, Bunin also began work on memoirs about Chekhov, which he was going to write back in 1904, immediately after the death of a friend. However, the literary portrait of Chekhov remained unfinished.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin died on the night of November 8, 1953 in the arms of his wife in dire poverty. In his memoirs, Bunin wrote: “I was born too late. If I had been born earlier, my writing memories would not have been like that. , Stalin, Hitler ... How not to envy our forefather Noah! Only one flood fell to his lot ... "Bunin was buried in the cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois near Paris, in a crypt, in a zinc coffin.

Name immortalization

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Screen adaptations

Name immortalization

(October 10 (22), 1870, Voronezh - November 8, 1953, Paris) - Russian writer, poet, honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1909), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933.

Biography

Ivan Bunin was born on October 10 (22), 1870 in an old impoverished noble family 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 Aleksandrovna 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. He was engaged in self-education a lot, being fond of reading world and domestic literary classics. At the age of 17 he began to write poetry, in 1887 he made his debut in print. In 1889 he moved to Oryol and 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 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 steamer "Seagull" (" 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, she married Anna Nikolaevna Tsakni, daughter of the revolutionary populist N. P. Tsakni. 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, niece of S. A. Muromtsev, chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Empire of the 1st convocation.

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

He showed in stories and novels (sometimes with a nostalgic mood)

Bunin was awarded the Pushkin Prize three times. On November 1, 1909, he was elected an honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in the category of fine literature.

In the summer of 1918, Bunin moved from Bolshevik Moscow to Odessa, occupied by German troops. With the approach in April 1919 to the city of the Red Army, he does not emigrate, but remains in Odessa. Welcomes the capture of the city by the Volunteer Army in August 1919, personally thanks General A. I. Denikin, who arrived in the city on October 7, actively cooperates with OSVAG (propaganda and information body) under V. S. Yu. R. In February 1920, when the Bolsheviks approach, he leaves Russia. Emigrates to France. During these years, he kept the diary "Cursed Days", partially lost, which struck contemporaries with the accuracy of the language and passionate hatred for the Bolsheviks. 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". Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933.

He spent the Second World War (from October 1939 to 1945) at the Jeannette villa in Grasse (Alpes-Maritimes department).

Bunin refused any form of cooperation with the Nazi occupiers and tried to constantly follow the events in Russia. In 1945 the Bunins returned to Paris. 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 ...” a “generous measure”, but Zhdanov’s decree on the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad (1946), which trampled A. Akhmatova and M. Zoshchenko, led to the fact that Bunin forever abandoned the intention to return to his homeland.

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

In exile, Bunin wrote his best works, such as Mitina's Love (1924), Sunstroke (1925), The Case of Cornet Elagin (1925), and, finally, Arseniev's Life (1927-1929, 1933 ) and the cycle of stories "Dark Alleys" (1938-40). These works have become a new word in Bunin's work, and in Russian literature as a whole. According to K. G. Paustovsky, "The Life of Arseniev" is not only the pinnacle work of Russian literature, but also "one of the most remarkable phenomena of world literature." In the last years of his life he wrote extremely subjective "Memoirs".

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. According to eyewitnesses, a volume of Leo Tolstoy's novel "Resurrection" lay on the writer's bed. He was buried in the cemetery in Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois, France.

In 1929-1954. Bunin's works were not published in the USSR. Since 1955 - the most published writer in the USSR of the first wave of Russian emigration (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

• In Moscow there is Buninskaya alley street, the metro station of the same name is located nearby.
• In the city of Moscow on Povarskaya Street, not far from the house where the writer lived, a monument was erected to him.
• In Orel, on October 17, 1992, a monument to I. A. Bunin was unveiled. Sculptor O. A. Uvarov. Around the same time, the Krupskaya Central Library was renamed the Bunin Library (abbreviated as “buninka” by the locals).
• One of the streets in the center of Odessa is named after the great writer and poet I.A. Bunin

Artworks

• On the "Seagull"
• 1900 - "Antonov apples"
• 1910 - "Village"
• 1911 - "Sukhodol"
• 1915 - "The Gentleman from San Francisco"
• 1916 - "Light Breath"
• 1918 - Cursed Days (published 1925)
• 1924 - Mitina's Love
• 1925 - "Sunstroke"
• 1925 - "The Case of Cornet Elagin"
• 1930 - "The Life of Arseniev"
• "Mothers"
• 1896 - "The Song of Hiawatha" (translated from English into Russian)
• "Lapti"
• 1938 - "Dark Alleys"
• 1937 - "Caucasus"

Screen adaptations

• "Summer of Love" - ​​a melodrama based on the story "Natalie", directed by Felix Falk, Poland-Belarus, 1994
• "Grammar of Love" - ​​a film-performance based on the stories "Tanya", "In Paris", "Grammar of Love", "Cold Autumn" from the cycle "Dark Alleys", directed by Lev Tsutsulkovsky, Lentelefilm, 1988

Name immortalization

• There is Buninskaya Alley in Moscow, the metro station of the same name is located nearby.
• In Lipetsk there is Bunina street. In addition, streets with the same name are located in Yelets and Odessa.
• A monument to Bunin was erected in Voronezh; Library No. 22 is named after him; There is a memorial plaque on the house where the writer was born.
• In the village of Ozerki in the Stanovlyansky district of the Lipetsk region, where Bunin spent his childhood and adolescence on the estate of his parents, in the 90s a manor house was recreated on a genuine foundation; on the site of the non-preserved Butyrka farm, 4 km from Ozyorki, where Bunin lived with his grandmother in his childhood, a cross and a memorial stele were erected.
• In 1957, in the city of Orel, in the Museum of Orel Writers of the Oryol United Literary Museum of I. S. Turgenev, a hall dedicated to the life and work of Bunin was opened. In the following decades, a unique, largest Bunin collection in Russia was assembled in Orel, numbering more than six thousand items of original materials: iconography, manuscripts, letters, documents, books, personal belongings of the writer. The predominant part of this collection consists of materials from the pre-revolutionary archive of Bunin, transferred to the Oryol Literary Museum by the widow of the writer's nephew K. P. Pusheshnikova. Authentic personal belongings of Bunin - photographs, autographs, books - associated with the emigrant period of his work, were received by the museum from V. N. Muromtseva-Bunina, L. F. Zurov, A. Ya. Polonsky, T. D. Muravyova, M Green. Furniture from Bunin's Parisian office was kept for a long time in the family of the writer N.V. Kodryanskaya, who sent it in 1973 to Oryol from Paris through the Soviet embassy in France. December 10, 1991 in Orel in Georgievsky Lane in a noble mansion of the XIX century, the museum of I. A. Bunin was opened.
• In Efremov in the house in which in 1909-1910. Bunin lived, his museum was opened.
• In Moscow, on Povarskaya Street, not far from the house where the writer lived, on October 22, 2007, a monument to Bunin was erected. The author is the sculptor A. N. Burganov. The writer is presented standing in full growth, thinking, a cloak is thrown over his arm. In his stately figure, calm gesture of folded hands, proudly raised head and penetrating gaze, aristocracy and grandeur are emphasized.
• In Orel, on October 17, 1992, a monument to I. A. Bunin was unveiled. The author is the famous sculptor V. M. Klykov. At about the same time, the Krupskaya Central Library was renamed the Bunin Library (abbreviated as "buninka" by the locals).
• In Voronezh, on October 13, 1995, a monument to I. A. Bunin was unveiled. The author is the Moscow sculptor A. N. Burganov. The opening of the monument was timed to coincide with the 125th anniversary of the writer's birth. Bunin is depicted sitting on a fallen tree with a dog at his feet. According to the sculptor himself, the writer is depicted at the time of parting with Russia, experiencing anxiety and at the same time hope, and the dog clinging to his feet is a symbol of the outgoing nobility, a symbol of loneliness.

• In 2000, the film "The Diary of His Wife" dedicated to Bunin was shot.
• In the city of Efremov, in front of the railway station, on October 22, 2010, a monument to Bunin was opened to mark the 140th anniversary of the writer. The monument is a repetition of the statue (this time only to the waist), previously installed in Moscow (sculptor A. N. Burganov).
• One of the streets in the center of Odessa is named after the great writer and poet I. A. Bunin
• In 2006, the Rossiya TV channel released the author's film by Alexei Denisov “Cursed Days. Ivan Bunin", based on the writer's diary "Cursed Days".