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"Russia lived in him, he was - Russia"

On October 22, 1870, the writer and poet Ivan Bunin was born. The last pre-revolutionary Russian classic and the first Russian Nobel laureate in literature, he was distinguished by independence of judgment and, according to the apt expression of Georgy Adamovich, "he saw through people, unmistakably guessed what they would prefer to hide."

About Ivan Bunin

"I was born October 10, 1870(All dates in the quotation are in the old style. - Note ed.) in Voronezh. He spent his childhood and early youth in the countryside, and began writing and publishing early. Pretty soon the criticism drew attention to me. Then my books were awarded the highest award three times Russian Academy Sciences - the Pushkin Prize. However, I did not have more or less wide fame for a long time, because I did not belong to any literary school. In addition, I did not move much in the literary environment, lived a lot in the countryside, traveled a lot in Russia and outside Russia: in Italy, Turkey, Greece, Palestine, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, in the tropics.

My popularity began from the time when I published my "Village". This was the beginning of a whole series of my works, sharply depicting the Russian soul, its light and dark, often tragic foundations. In Russian criticism and among the Russian intelligentsia, where, due to ignorance of the people or political considerations, the people were almost always idealized, these "merciless" works of mine evoked passionate hostile responses. During these years, I felt how my literary powers were growing stronger every day. But then the war broke out, and then the revolution. I was not one of those who were taken by surprise by it, for whom its size and atrocities were a surprise, but nevertheless reality surpassed all my expectations: what the Russian revolution soon turned into, no one who has not seen it will understand. This spectacle was sheer horror for anyone who had not lost the image and likeness of God, and hundreds of thousands of people fled from Russia after the seizure of power by Lenin, who had the slightest opportunity to escape. I left Moscow on May 21, 1918, lived in the south of Russia, which was passing from hand to hand of whites and reds, and on January 26, 1920, having drunk the cup of inexpressible mental suffering, I 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 of the winter months.

In 1933 he received the Nobel Prize. In emigration, I wrote ten new books.

Ivan Bunin wrote about himself in his Autobiographical Notes.

When Bunin arrived in Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize, it turned out that all passers-by knew him by sight: photographs of the writer were published in every newspaper, in shop windows, on the cinema screen. Seeing the great Russian writer, the Swedes looked around, and Ivan Alekseevich pulled his lambskin cap over his eyes and grumbled: "What? The perfect success of the tenor ".

“For the first time since the establishment of the Nobel Prize, you have awarded it to an exile. For who am I? An exile enjoying the hospitality of France, to whom I too will forever remain grateful. Gentlemen of the Academy, let me, leaving aside myself and my works, tell you how beautiful your gesture is in itself. There must be areas of complete independence in the world. Undoubtedly, around this table are representatives of all kinds of opinions, all kinds of philosophical and religious beliefs. But there is something unshakable that unites us all: freedom of thought and conscience, something to which we owe civilization. For a writer, this freedom is especially necessary - for him it is a dogma, an axiom.

From Bunin's speech at the Nobel Prize ceremony

However, he had a great sense of the homeland and the Russian language, and he carried it through his whole life. “Russia, our Russian nature, we took with us, and wherever we are, we cannot but feel it”, - Ivan Alekseevich said about himself and about millions of the same forced emigrants who left their fatherland in the dashing revolutionary years.

"Bunin did not have to live in Russia to write about it: Russia lived in him, he was - Russia."

Writer's secretary Andrei Sedykh

In 1936, Bunin went on a trip to Germany. In Lindau, he first encountered fascist orders: he was arrested, subjected to an unceremonious and humiliating search. In October 1939, Bunin settled in Grasse at the Villa Jeannette, where he lived throughout the war. Here he wrote his "Dark Alleys". However, under the Germans he did not print anything, although he lived in great lack of money and hunger. He treated the conquerors with hatred, sincerely rejoiced at the victories of the Soviet and allied troops. In 1945 he permanently moved from Grasse to Paris. Last years hurt a lot.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin died in his sleep on the night of November 7-8, 1953 in Paris. He was buried in the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery.

“I was born too late. Had I been born earlier, these would not have been my writing memories. I wouldn't have to go through... 1905, then the First World War, followed by the 17th year and its continuation, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler... How not to envy our forefather Noah! Only one flood fell to his lot ... "

I.A. Bunin. Memories. Paris. 1950

“Start reading Bunin - whether it be “Dark Alleys”, “Easy Breath”, “Cup of Life”, “ Clean Monday», « Antonov apples”,“ Mitina’s Love ”,“ The Life of Arseniev ”, and you will immediately be taken over, enchanted by the unique Bunin Russia with all its charming features: ancient churches, monasteries, bell ringing, village graveyards, ruined "noble nests", with its rich colorful language, sayings, jokes, which you will not find either in Chekhov or Turgenev. But that's not all: no one has so convincingly, so psychologically accurately and at the same time laconicly described the main feeling of a person - love. Bunin was endowed with a very special property: vigilance of observation. With amazing accuracy, he could draw psychological picture any person seen, give a brilliant description of natural phenomena, changes in mood and changes in the lives of people, plants and animals. We can say that he wrote on the basis of keen vision, sensitive hearing and keen sense of smell. And nothing escaped him. His memory of a wanderer (he loved to travel!) absorbed everything: people, conversations, speech, coloring, noise, smells ”, - wrote literary critic Zinaida Partis in her article “Invitation to Bunin”.

Bunin in quotes

“God gives each of us this or that talent along with life and imposes on us the sacred duty not to bury it in the ground. Why, why? We don't know. But we must know that everything in this world, which is incomprehensible to us, must certainly have some meaning, some high intention of God, aimed at ensuring that everything in this world "be good", and that the diligent fulfillment of this God's intention is always our merit to him, and therefore joy and pride ... "

The story "Bernard" (1952)

“Yes, year after year, day after day, you secretly expect only one thing - a happy love meeting, you live, in essence, only in the hope of this meeting - and all in vain ...”

The story "In Paris", the collection "Dark Alleys" (1943)

“And he felt such pain and such uselessness of all his later life without her, that he was seized with horror, despair.
“The number without her seemed somehow completely different than it was with her. He was still full of her - and empty. It was strange! She still smelled of good English cologne, her unfinished cup was still on the tray, but she was gone ... And the lieutenant's heart suddenly contracted with such tenderness that the lieutenant hurried to light a cigarette and several times walked up and down the room.

Story " Sunstroke» (1925)

“Life is, undoubtedly, love, kindness, and a decrease in love, kindness is always a decrease in life, there is already death.”

The story "Blind" (1924)

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 me to write myself. 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 to 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 open sky”, as well as Longfellow’s translation of The Song of Hiawatha, which received a very high rating 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 finished the autobiographical story "Sukhodol", which, being published in Vestnik Evropy in April 1912, was a huge success with readers and critics. On October 27-29 of the same year, the entire Russian public solemnly celebrated the 25th anniversary of literary activity I.A. Bunin, and in 1915 in the St. Petersburg publishing house A.F. Marx published his complete works in six volumes. In 1912-1914. Bunin took a close part in the work of the "Book Publishing House of Writers in Moscow", and collections of his works were published in this publishing house one after another - "John Rydalets: stories and poems 1912-1913." (1913), "The Cup of Life: Stories 1913-1914." (1915), "The Gentleman from San Francisco: Works 1915-1916." (1916).

First World War brought Bunin "great spiritual disappointment." But it was precisely during this senseless world slaughter that the poet and writer especially acutely felt the meaning of the word, not so much journalistic as poetic. In January 1916 alone, he wrote fifteen poems: "Svyatogor and Ilya", "Land without history", "Eve", "The day will come - I will disappear ...", etc. In them, the author fearfully expects the collapse of the great Russian state. Bunin reacted sharply negatively to the revolutions of 1917 (February and October). The pitiful figures of the leaders of the Provisional Government, as he believed Great master, were able to lead Russia only to the abyss. This period was devoted to his diary - a 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, the decree of the Soviet government of 1946 "On the restoration of the citizenship of the USSR subjects of the former Russian Empire... "called it a "generous measure." However, the Zhdanov decree on the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad (1946), which trampled A. Akhmatova and M. Zoshchenko, forever averted the writer from the intention to return to his homeland.

Although Bunin's work received wide international recognition, his life in a foreign land was not easy. Latest compilation short stories "Dark Alleys", written in the dark days of the Nazi occupation of France, went 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 charms ... 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 literary portrait Chekhov remained unfinished.

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

October 21, 2014, 14:47

Portrait of Ivan Bunin. Leonard Turzhansky. 1905

♦ Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born into an old noble family in the city of Voronezh, where he lived for the first few years of his life. Later, the family moved to the Ozerki estate (now the Lipetsk region). At the age of 11, he entered the Yelets district gymnasium, but at the age of 16 he was forced to stop studying. The reason for this was the ruin of the family. The fault of which, by the way, was the excessive squandering of his father, who managed to leave both himself and his wife penniless. As a result, Bunin continued his education on his own, however, his older brother Julius, who graduated from the university with flying colors, 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. He read a lot, studied foreign languages and already in early age showed talent as a writer. However, he was forced to work for several years as a proofreader at Orlovsky Vestnik in order to support his family.

♦ Ivan and his sister Masha spent a lot of time in their childhood with the shepherds, who taught them to eat different herbs. But one day they almost paid with their lives. One of the shepherds offered to try henbane. The nanny, having learned about this, hardly gave the children fresh milk to drink, which saved their lives.

♦ At the age of 17, Ivan Alekseevich wrote the first poems in which he imitated the work of Lermontov and Pushkin. They say that Pushkin was generally an idol for Bunin

♦ Anton Pavlovich Chekhov played a big role in Bunin's life and career. When they met, Chekhov was already an accomplished writer and managed to direct Bunin's creative ardor along the right path. They corresponded for many years and thanks to Chekhov, Bunin was able to meet and join the world of creative personalities - writers, artists, musicians.

♦ Bunin left no heir to the world. In 1900, Bunin and Tsakni had their first and only son, who, unfortunately, died at the age of 5 from meningitis.

♦ Bunin's favorite pastime in his youth and until his last years was - by the back of his head, legs and arms - to determine the face and the whole appearance of a person.

♦ Ivan Bunin collected a collection of pharmaceutical bottles and boxes that filled several suitcases to the brim.

♦ It is known that Bunin refused to sit down at the table if he turned out to be the thirteenth person in a row.

♦ Ivan Alekseevich admitted: “Do you have any unloved letters? I can't stand the "f". And they almost called me Philip."

♦ Bunin was always in good physical shape, had good plasticity: he was an excellent rider, he danced “solo” at parties, plunging his friends into amazement.

♦ Ivan Alekseevich had a rich facial expression and outstanding acting talent. Stanislavsky called him to art theater and offered him the role of Hamlet.

♦ A strict routine always reigned in Bunin's house. He was often sick, sometimes imaginary, but everything obeyed his moods.

♦ An interesting fact from the life of Bunin is the fact that he did not live most of his life in Russia. About October revolution Bunin wrote the following: “This spectacle was sheer horror for anyone who has not lost the image and likeness of God…”. This event forced him to emigrate to Paris. There Bunin led an active social and political life, gave lectures, collaborated with Russian political organizations. It was in Paris that such outstanding works were written as: "The Life of Arseniev", "Mitina's Love", "Sunstroke" and others. AT post-war years Bunin is more benevolent towards the Soviet Union, but he still cannot come to terms with the power of the Bolsheviks and, as a result, remains in exile.

♦ It must be admitted that in pre-revolutionary Russia, Bunin received the widest recognition from both critics and readers. He occupies a firm place on the writer's Olympus and may well indulge in what he has dreamed of all his life - travel. The writer traveled throughout his life to many countries in Europe and Asia.

♦ During the Second World War, Bunin refused any contact with the Nazis - in 1939 he moved to Grasse (these are the Maritime Alps), where he spent virtually the entire war. In 1945, he and his family returned to Paris, although he often said that he wanted to return to his homeland, but despite the fact that after the war the government of the USSR allowed people like him to return, the writer never returned.

♦ In the last years of his life, Bunin was ill a lot, but continued to work actively and be creative. He died in his sleep from 7 to 8 November 1953 in Paris, where he was buried. The last entry in I. Bunin's diary reads: “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!

♦ Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was the first émigré writer to be published in the USSR (already in the 1950s). Although some of his works, such as the diary "Cursed Days", came out only after perestroika.

Nobel Prize

♦ For the first time, Bunin was nominated for the Nobel Prize back in 1922 (Romain Rolland put forward his candidacy), but in 1923 he received the prize Irish poet Yeats. In subsequent years, Russian émigré writers repeatedly resumed their efforts to nominate Bunin for the prize, which was awarded to him in 1933.

♦ The official report of the Nobel Committee stated: “By the decision of the Swedish Academy of November 10, 1933, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Ivan Bunin for the strict artistic talent with which he recreated a typically Russian character in literary prose.” In his speech at the award ceremony, the representative of the Swedish Academy, Per Hallström, highly appreciating Bunin's poetic gift, dwelled in particular on his ability to expressively and accurately describe real life. In a response speech, Bunin noted the courage of the Swedish Academy, which honored the émigré writer. It is worth saying that during the presentation of prizes for 1933, the Academy hall was decorated, contrary to the rules, only with Swedish flags - because of Ivan Bunin - “stateless persons”. As the writer himself believed, he received the award for "The Life of Arseniev", his best work. World fame fell on him suddenly, just as suddenly he felt like an international celebrity. Photos of the writer were in every newspaper, in the windows of bookstores. Even casual passers-by, seeing the Russian writer, looked back at him, whispered. Somewhat bewildered by this fuss, Bunin grumbled: "How a famous tenor is greeted...". The Nobel Prize was a huge event for the writer. Recognition came, and with it material security. Bunin distributed a significant amount of the cash reward received to those in need. For this, a special commission for the distribution of funds was even created. Subsequently, Bunin recalled that after receiving the award, he received about 2,000 letters asking for help, in response to which he distributed about 120,000 francs.

♦ This award was not overlooked in Bolshevik Russia either. November 29, 1933 in “ Literary newspaper” there was a note “I. Bunin is a Nobel Laureate”: “According to the latest reports, the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1933 was awarded to the White Guard emigrant I. Bunin. The White Guard Olympus put forward and in every possible way defended the candidacy of Bunin, the seasoned wolf of the counter-revolution, whose work, especially of recent times, saturated with the motives of death, decay, doom in a catastrophic world crisis, obviously had to go to the court of the Swedish academic elders.

And Bunin himself liked to recall an episode that happened during the writer's visit to the Merezhkovskys immediately after Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize. The artist entered the room X, and, not noticing Bunin, exclaimed at the top of his voice: "We survived! Shame! Shame! They gave Bunin the Nobel Prize!" After that, he saw Bunin and, without changing his expression, cried out: "Ivan Alekseevich! Dear! Congratulations, congratulations from the bottom of my heart! Happy for you, for all of us! For Russia! Forgive me for not having time to personally come to testify ..."

Bunin and his women

♦ Bunin was an ardent and passionate person. While working for a newspaper, he met Varvara Pashchenko ("I was struck, to my great misfortune, by a long love", as Bunin later wrote), with whom he began a stormy romance. True, the matter did not come to the wedding - the girl's parents did not want to pass her off as a poor writer. Therefore, the young lived unmarried. The relationship, which Ivan Bunin considered happy, collapsed when Varvara left him and married Arseny Bibikov, a friend of the writer. The theme of loneliness and betrayal is firmly fixed in the poet's work - 20 years later he will write:

I wanted to shout out:

"Come back, I'm related to you!"

But for a woman there is no past:

She fell out of love - and became a stranger to her.

Well! I will flood the fireplace, I will drink ...

It would be nice to buy a dog.

After the betrayal of Varvara, Bunin returned to Russia. Here he was expected to meet and get acquainted with many writers: Chekhov, Bryusov, Sologub, Balmont. In 1898, two important events: the writer marries a Greek woman Anne Tsakni (daughter of a famous populist revolutionary), as well as a collection of his poems “Under the open sky”.

You are pure and beautiful like the stars...

I catch the joy of life in everything -

AT starry sky, in flowers, in aromas…

But I love you more.

Only with you I am happy

And no one will replace you

You alone know and love me,

And one understand - for what!

However, this marriage did not become durable: after a year and a half, the couple divorced.

In 1906 Bunin met Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva - a faithful companion of the writer until the end of his life. Together, the couple travels around the world. Vera Nikolaevna did not stop repeating until the end of her days that when she saw Ivan Alekseevich, who was then always called Jan at home, she fell in love with him at first sight. His wife brought comfort to his unsettled life, surrounded him with the most tender care. And since 1920, when Bunin and Vera Nikolaevna sailed from Constantinople, their long emigration began in Paris and in the south of France in the town of Graas near Cannes. Bunin experienced severe financial difficulties, or rather, they were experienced by his wife, who took household matters into her own hands and sometimes complained that she did not even have ink for her husband. Meager royalties from publications in émigré magazines were barely enough for a more than modest life. By the way, having received the Nobel Prize, Bunin first of all bought new shoes for his wife, because he could no longer look at what his beloved woman was wearing and wearing.

However, Bunin's love stories do not end there either. I will dwell in more detail on his 4th great love - Galina Kuznetsova . The following is a full quote from the article. Outside in 1926. The Bunins have been living in Graas at the Belvedere villa for several years now. Ivan Alekseevich is a distinguished swimmer, he goes to the sea every day and makes great demonstration swims. His wife " water procedures He does not like and does not keep company with him. On the beach, Bunin is approached by his acquaintance and introduces a young girl, Galina Kuznetsova, a budding poetess. As happened more than once with Bunin, he instantly felt a keen attraction to a new acquaintance. Although at that moment he could hardly imagine what place she would take in his later life. Both later recalled that he immediately asked if she was married. It turned out that yes, and resting here with her husband. Now Ivan Alekseevich spent whole days with Galina. Bunin and Kuznetsova

A few days later, Galina had a sharp explanation with her husband, which meant an actual break, and he left for Paris. In what state Vera Nikolaevna was, it is not difficult to guess. “She went crazy and complained to everyone she knew about the betrayal of Ivan Alekseevich,” writes the poetess Odoevtseva. “But then I.A. managed to convince her that he and Galina only had a platonic relationship. She believed, and believed until her death ... ". Kuznetsova and Bunin with his wife

Vera Nikolaevna really did not pretend: she believed because she wanted to believe. Worshiping her genius, she did not let thoughts close to her that would force her to make difficult decisions, for example, to leave the writer. It ended with Galina being invited to live with the Bunins and become "a member of their family." Galina Kuznetsova (standing), Ivan and Vera Bunin. 1933

The participants in this triangle decided not to record the intimate details of the life of the three together for history. One can only guess what and how happened at the Belvedere villa, and also read in the minor comments of the guests of the house. According to individual testimonies, the atmosphere in the house, with outward decency, was sometimes very tense.

Galina accompanied Vera Nikolaevna Bunina to Stockholm for the Nobel Prize. On the way back, she caught a cold, and they decided that it would be better for her to stop for a while in Dresden, at the house of Bunin's old friend, the philosopher Fyodor Stepun, who often visited Grasse. When Kuznetsova returned to the writer's villa a week later, something subtly changed. Ivan Alekseevich discovered that Galina began to spend much less time with him, and more and more often he found her writing long letters to Stepun's sister Magda. In the end, Galina asked for an invitation for Magda from the Bunin couple to visit Graas, and Magda arrived. Bunin made fun of the "girlfriends": Galina and Magda almost never parted, went down to the table together, walked together, retired together in their "room", allocated at their request by Vera Nikolaevna. All this lasted until Bunin suddenly realized, as well as everyone around him, regarding the true relationship between Galina and Magda. And then he felt terribly disgusted, disgusting and hard. Not only did the beloved woman cheat on him, but to change with another woman - this unnatural situation simply infuriated Bunin. They loudly sorted things out with Kuznetsova, not embarrassed either by the completely bewildered Vera Nikolaevna or the arrogantly calm Magda. Remarkable in itself is the reaction of the writer's wife to what was happening in her house. At first, Vera Nikolaevna breathed a sigh of relief - well, this threesome life that tormented her will finally end, and Galina Kuznetsova will leave the hospitable Bunin house. But seeing how her adored husband was suffering, she rushed to persuade Galina to stay so that Bunin would not worry. However, neither Galina was going to change anything in her relationship with Magda, nor Bunin could no longer endure the phantasmagoric "adultery" that was happening before his eyes. Galina left the house and the writer's heart, leaving a spiritual wound in him, but not the first one.

Nevertheless, no novels (and Galina Kuznetsova, of course, was not the writer's only hobby) changed Bunin's attitude to his wife, without whom he could not imagine his life. Here is how a family friend G. Adamovich said about this: “... for her endless loyalty, he was infinitely grateful to her and valued her beyond measure ... Ivan Alekseevich was not an easy person in everyday communication and, of course, he himself was aware of this. But the deeper he felt everything he owed to his wife. I think that if in his presence someone had hurt or offended Vera Nikolaevna, he, with his great passion, would have killed this person - not only as his enemy, but also as a slanderer, as a moral monster, incapable of distinguishing good from evil, light from darkness."

Name: Ivan Bunin

Age: 83 years old

Place of Birth: Voronezh, Russia

A place of death: Paris, France

Activity: Russian writer and poet

Family status: was married to Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva

Ivan Bunin - biography

Bunin was born on October 22, 1870 in Voronezh. He belonged to an ancient but impoverished family that gave Russia Vasily Zhukovsky, the illegitimate son of the landowner Afanasy Bunin. Ivan Bunin's father, Alexei Nikolaevich, fought in the Crimea in his youth, then he lived on his estate in the usual, many times described landlord life - hunting, welcoming guests, drinking and cards. His carelessness eventually brought the family to the brink of ruin.

All household chores lay on the shoulders of the mother, Lyudmila Alexandrovna Chubarova, a quiet, devout woman, five of whose nine children died in infancy. The death of his beloved sister Sasha seemed to little Vanya a terrible injustice, and he forever ceased to believe in the good God, whom both his mother and the church spoke about.

Three years after Vanya's birth, the family moved to Butyrka's grandfather's estate in the Oryol province. “Here, in the deepest field silence,” the writer later recalled about the beginning of his biography, “my childhood passed, full of sad and peculiar poetry.” His childhood impressions were reflected in the autobiographical novel "The Life of Arseniev", which Bunin himself considered his main book.

He noted that he acquired amazing sensitivity early: “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 lily of the valley or old book". Parents paid little attention to their son, and his tutor was his brother Julius, who graduated from the university, managed to participate in the revolutionary circles of the Chernoperedel, for which he spent a year in prison and was expelled from Moscow for three years.

In 1881, Bunin entered the Yelets Gymnasium. He studied average, and from the sixth grade he was expelled for non-payment - the family's affairs became very bad. The estate in Butyrki was sold, and the family moved to neighboring Ozerki, where Ivan had to finish the gymnasium course as an external student, under the guidance of his older brother. “Not even a year has passed,” said Julius, “how he grew so mentally that I could already talk with him almost as an equal on many topics.” In addition to studying languages, philosophy, psychology, social and natural sciences, Ivan, thanks to his brother, a writer and journalist, was especially interested in literature.

At the age of 16, Ivan Bunin began to "write poetry with particular zeal" and "wrote a lot of paper" before he decided to send the poem to the Rodina magazine in the capital. To his surprise, it was printed. He will always remember the delight with which he came from the post office with a fresh issue of the magazine, constantly rereading his poems. They were dedicated to the memory of the fashionable poet Nadson, who died of consumption.

Weak, frankly imitative verses did not stand out among hundreds of their kind. Many years passed before Bunin's true talent manifested itself in poetry. Until the end of his life, he himself considered himself primarily a poet and was very angry when friends said that his works were exquisite, but old-fashioned - "now nobody writes like that." He really avoided any newfangled trends, remaining true to the tradition of the XIX century

Early, barely visible dawn, The heart of sixteen years.
The drowsy haze of the garden With lime light of warmth.
Quiet and mysterious house With the ultimate cherished window.
A curtain in the window, and behind it the Sun of my universe.

This is a memory of the very first youthful love for Emilia Fekhner (the prototype of Ankhen in The Life of Arseniev), a young governess of the daughters of O.K. Tubbe, distiller of the landowner Bakhtiyarov. Tubba's stepdaughter, Nastya, was married in 1885 by the writer's brother Eugene. Young Bunin was so carried away by Emilia that Tubbe considered it good to send her back home.

Soon from Ozerki, having received the consent of his parents, the young poet also went into adulthood. At parting, the mother blessed her son, whom she considered “special from all her children”, with a generic icon depicting the meal of the Three Wanderers with Abraham. It was, as Bunin wrote in one of his diaries, "a shrine that connects me with a tender and reverent connection with my family, with the world where my cradle, my childhood." From home The 18-year-old youth left already an almost fully formed person, “with a well-known life baggage - knowledge of the real people, and not fictional, with knowledge of small-town life, the village intelligentsia, with a very subtle sense of nature, almost a connoisseur of the Russian language, literature, with an open heart for love".

He met love in Orel. 19-year-old Bunin settled there after long wanderings in the Crimea and southern Russia. Having settled down in the Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper, he became friends with the young daughter of a doctor, Varya Pashchenko - she worked as a proofreader in the same newspaper. With the money of their brother Julius, they rented an apartment in Poltava where they lived civil marriage-Vary's father was against the wedding. Three years later, Dr. Pashchenko, seeing Bunin's boundless passion, nevertheless gave his permission for marriage, but Varya hid her father's letter. She preferred the poor writer to his wealthy friend Arseny Bibikov. “Ah, to hell with them,” Bunin wrote to his brother, “here, obviously, 200 acres of the land played a role.”

Since 1895, Bunin left the service and, having moved to Moscow, devoted himself entirely to literature, earning money with poetry and short stories. His idol of those years was Leo Tolstoy, and he even went to the count to ask for advice on how to live. Gradually, he became familiar with the editorial offices of literary magazines, met with famous writers, even became friends with Chekhov and learned a lot from him. He was appreciated by both realists-populists and innovators-symbolists, but neither of them considered "their own".

He himself was more inclined towards realists and constantly visited the “environments” of the writer Teleshov, where Gorky, the Wanderer, Leonid Andreev visited. In summer - Yalta with Chekhov and Stanyukovich and Lustdorf near Odessa with writers Fedorov and Kuprin. “This beginning of my new life was the darkest spiritual time, internally the most dead time of all my youth, although outwardly I lived then in a very diverse, sociable, in public, so as not to be alone with myself.”

In Lustdorf, Bunin, unexpectedly for everyone, even for himself, married 19-year-old Anna Tsakni. She was the daughter of an Odessa Greek publisher, the owner of the Southern Review newspaper, with which Bunin collaborated. They got married after a few days of dating. “At the end of June, he went to Lustdorf to Fedorov. Kuprin, Kartashevs, then Tsakni, who lived in a dacha at the 7th station. Suddenly made an offer in the evening,” Bunin wrote in his diary in 1898.

He was fascinated by her large black eyes and enigmatic silence. After the wedding, it turned out that Anya was very talkative. Together with her mother, she mercilessly scolded her husband for lack of money and frequent absences. Less than a year later, they broke up with Anna, two years later this "vaudeville" marriage broke up. Their son Nicholas, who was born to them, died of scarlet fever at the age of five. Unlike Varvara Pashchenko, Anna Tsakni left no traces in Bunin's work. Barbara can also be recognized in Lika from The Life of Arseniev, and in many heroines of Dark Alleys.

First success in creative biography came to Bunin in 1903. For the collection of poems Falling Leaves, he received the Pushkin Prize, the highest award of the Academy of Sciences.

Recognized by critics and his prose. The story "Antonov apples" secured the title of "singer of noble nests" for the writer, although he portrayed the life of the Russian village by no means graciously and was not inferior in terms of the "bitter truth" himself. In 1906 on literary evening at the writer Zaitsev, where Bunin read his poems, he met Vera Muromtseva, the niece of the chairman of the first State Duma. "A quiet young lady with Leonard's eyes" immediately attracted Bunin. Here is how Vera Nikolaevna told about their meeting:

“I stopped in thought: should I go home? Bunin appeared at the door. "How did you get here?" - he asked. I was angry, but calmly replied: "Just like you." - "But who are you?" -"Human". - "What do you do?" - “Chemistry. I study at the natural faculty of the Higher Women's Courses. “But where else can I see you?” “Only at our house. We accept on Saturdays. The rest of the days I'm very busy." After listening to talk about the dissolute life of people of art,

Vera Nikolaevna was frankly afraid of the writer. Nevertheless, she could not resist his persistent courtship and in the same 1906 she became "Madam Bunina", although they were only able to officially register their marriage in July 1922 in France.

On their honeymoon, they went to the East for a long time - to Egypt, Palestine, Syria. In their wanderings they reached Ceylon itself. Travel routes were not planned in advance. Bunin was so happy with Vera Nikolaevna that he admitted that he would quit writing: “But my business is gone - I’m sure I won’t write anymore ... A poet should not be happy, he should live alone, and the better for him, the worse for scriptures. The better you are, the worse ... ”- he said to his wife. “In that case, I will try to be as bad as possible,” she joked.

Nevertheless, the next decade was the most fruitful in the writer's work. He was awarded another prize of the Academy of Sciences and was elected its honorary academician. “Just at the hour when a telegram arrived with congratulations to Ivan Alekseevich in connection with his election to the academician in the category of fine literature,” Vera Bunina said, “the Bibikovs dined with us. Bunin did not have a bad feeling for Arseny, they even, one might say, were friends. Bibikova got up from the table, was pale, but calm. A minute later, separately and dryly, she said: “Congratulations.”

After a "sharp foreign slap in the face," as he called his travels, Bunin was no longer afraid to "exaggerate." The First World War did not cause him a patriotic upsurge. He saw the weakness of the country, was afraid of its death. In 1916 he wrote many poems, including these:

Here the rye burns, the grain flows.
But who will reap, knit?
Here the smoke is burning, the alarm is buzzing.
But who dares to pour?
Here the demoniac army will rise, and like Mamai, all Russia will pass ...
But the world is empty - who will save? But there is no God - who should be punished?

Soon this prophecy was fulfilled. After the start of the revolution, Bunin and his family left the Oryol estate for Moscow, from where he watched with bitterness the death of everything that was dear to him. These observations were reflected in a diary published later under the title "Cursed Days". Bunin considered the culprits of the revolution not only the “possessed” Bolsheviks, but also the beautiful-hearted intelligentsia. “It was not the people who started the revolution, but you. The people did not care at all about everything we wanted, what we were unhappy with ...

Even helping the starving was somehow literary in our country, only out of a thirst to once again kick the government, to bring an extra dig under it. It is terrible to say, but it is true: if there were no national disasters, thousands of intellectuals would be downright miserable people: how then to sit, protest, what to shout and write about?

In May 1918, Bunin and his wife with difficulty got out of hungry Moscow to Odessa, where they experienced a change of many authorities. In January 1920 they fled to Constantinople. In Russia, Bunin was no longer holding - his parents died, his brother Julius was dying, former friends became enemies or left the country even earlier. Leaving his homeland on the ship Sparta overloaded with refugees, Bunin felt like the last inhabitant of the sunken Atlantis.

In the autumn of 1920, Bunin arrived in Paris and immediately set to work. Ahead were 33 years of emigration, during which he created ten books of prose. old friend Bunin Zaitsev wrote: “The exile even benefited him. It sharpened the sense of Russia, of irrevocable, and thickened the previously strong juice of his poetry.

Europeans also learned about the phenomenon of new talent.

In 1921, a collection of short stories by Bunin, The Gentleman from San Francisco, was published in French. The Paris press was filled with responses: “a real Russian talent”, “bleeding, uneven, but courageous and truthful”, “one of the greatest Russian writers”. Thomas Mann and Romain Rolland, who in 1922 first nominated Bunin as a candidate for the Nobel Prize, were delighted with the stories. However, the tone in the culture of that time was set by the avant-garde, with which the writer did not want to have anything in common.

He never became a world celebrity, but the emigration read him avidly. Yes, and how could one not burst into nostalgic tears from such lines: “And a minute later, glasses and wine glasses appeared before us, bottles of multi-colored vodkas, pink salmon, swarthy-skinned balyk, blue with shells opened on ice fragments, an orange chester square, black shiny a lump of pressed caviar, a tub of champagne white and sweaty from the cold ... We started with peppercorns ... "

Past feasts seemed even more abundant in comparison with the poverty of the emigrants. Bunin published a lot, but his existence was far from idyllic. Reminiscent of his age, the Parisian winter dampness caused bouts of rheumatism. He and his wife decided to go south for the winter and in 1922 they rented a villa in the town of Grasse with the magnificent name "Belvedere". There, their guests were the leading emigration writers - Merezhkovsky, Gippius, Zaitsev, Khodasevich and Nina Berberova.

Mark Aldanov and Bunin's secretary, writer Andrei Tsvibak (Sedykh) lived here for a long time. Bunin willingly helped needy fellow countrymen from his poor means. In 1926, a young writer Galina Kuznetsova came to visit him from Paris. Soon a romance began between them. Thin, delicate, understanding everything, Vera Nikolaevna wanted to think that love experiences were necessary for her "Yan" for a new creative upsurge.

Soon the triangle in the Belvedere turned into a quadrangle - this happened when the writer Leonid Zurov, who settled in the Bunin house, began to look after Vera Nikolaevna. The complex ups and downs of their relationship became the subject of emigrant gossip, got into the pages of memoirs. Endless quarrels and reconciliations spoiled a lot of blood for all four, and Zurov was completely driven to madness. However, this "autumn romance", which lasted for 15 years, inspired all of Bunin's later work, including the novel "The Life of Arseniev" and the collection of love stories "Dark Alleys".

This would not have happened if Galina Kuznetsova had been an empty-headed beauty - she also became a real assistant for the writer. In her Grasse Diary, one can read: “I am happy that each chapter of his novel was previously, as it were, experienced by both of us in long conversations.” The novel ended unexpectedly - in 1942, Galina became interested in opera singer Marga Stepun. Bunin could not find a place for himself, exclaiming: “How she poisoned my life - she still poisons me!”

In the midst of the novel, news came that Bunin had been awarded the Nobel Prize. The entire Russian emigration took it as their triumph. In Stockholm, Bunin was met by the king and queen, descendants of Alfred Nobel, dressed up society ladies. And he looked only at the deep white snow, which he had not seen since his departure from Russia, and dreamed of running through it like a boy ... At the ceremony, he said that for the first time in history, the prize was awarded to an exile who did not stand behind his country. The country, through the mouths of its diplomats, persistently protested against the presentation of the award to the "White Guard".

The prize of that year was 150 thousand francs, but Bunin very quickly distributed them to the petitioners. During the war years, he hid in Grasse, where the Germans did not reach, several Jewish writers who were threatened with death. About that time he wrote: “We live badly, very badly. Well, we eat frozen potatoes. Or some water with something vile floating in it, some kind of carrot. It's called soup... We live in a commune. Six persons. And no one has a penny for the soul. Despite the hardships, Bunin rejected all the offers of the Germans to go to their service. Hatred of the Soviet regime was temporarily forgotten - like other emigrants, he closely followed the events at the front, moving the flags on the map of Europe that hung in his office.

In the autumn of 1944, France was liberated, and Bunin and his wife returned to Paris. On a wave of euphoria, he visited the Soviet embassy and said there that he was proud of his country's victory. The news spread that he drank to Stalin's health. Many Russian Parisians recoiled from him. But the visits to him began Soviet writers through which proposals to return to the USSR were transmitted. He was promised royal conditions, better than those that Alexei Tolstoy had. The writer answered one of the tempters: “I have nowhere to return. There are no more places or people that I knew.

The flirtation of the Soviet authorities with the writer ended after the release of his book "Dark Alleys" in New York. They saw almost pornography. He complained to Irina Odoevtseva: “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 ... The Pharisees do not understand that this is a new word, a new approach to life. Life has put the dots - detractors have long been forgotten, and "Dark Alleys" remains one of the most lyrical books in Russian literature, a true encyclopedia of love.

In November 1952, Bunin wrote the last poem, and in May of the following year he made the last entry in his diary: “It is 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 in a rented apartment in Paris in the presence of his wife and his last secretary Alexei Bakhrakh.

He worked up to last days- the manuscript of a book about Chekhov remained on the table. All major newspapers placed obituaries, and even in the Soviet Pravda appeared short message: "Emigrant writer Ivan Bunin died in Paris." He was buried in the Russian cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois, and seven years later Vera Nikolaevna found her last shelter next to him. By that time, Bunin's works, after 40 years of oblivion, began to be published again in their homeland. His dream came true - compatriots were able to see and recognize the Russia he saved, which has long sunk into history.

Bunin Ivan Alekseevich (1870-1953), prose writer, poet, translator.

Born October 22, 1870 in Voronezh in a well-born, but impoverished noble family. Bunin spent his childhood partly in Voronezh, partly on the hereditary estate near Yelets (now in the Lipetsk region).

Absorbing from his parents, from yard legends and songs, he early discovered artistic abilities and a rare impressionability. Having entered the Yelets gymnasium in 1881, Bunin was forced to leave it in 1886: there was not enough money to pay for education. The course of the gymnasium, and partly of the university, was held at home under the guidance of his elder brother, Yuli, a Narodnaya Volya member.

Bunin published his first collection of poems in 1891, and five years later he published a translation of the poem by the American romantic poet G. Longfellow "The Song of Hiawatha", which, together with the later poetry collection "Falling Leaves" (1901), brought him to 1903 Pushkin Prize of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

In 1909, Bunin received the second Pushkin Prize and was elected an honorary academician. At the end of the XIX century. he increasingly speaks with stories that at first look like picturesque sketches. Gradually, Bunin becomes more and more noticeable both as a poet and as a prose writer.

Wide recognition came to him with the publication of the story "The Village" (1910), which shows modern writer rural life. The destruction of the patriarchal way of life and ancient foundations is depicted in the work with a rare hardness for those times. The end of the story, where the wedding is described as a funeral, takes on a symbolic sound. Following the "Village", on the basis of family legends, the story "Dry Valley" (1911) was written. Here, with majestic gloominess, the degeneration of the Russian nobility is depicted.

The writer himself lived with a premonition of an impending catastrophe. He felt the inevitability of a new historical break. This feeling is noticeable in the stories of the 10s. "John Rydalets" (1913), "Grammar of Love", "The Gentleman from San Francisco" (both 1915), "Light Breath" (1916), "Chang's Dreams" (1918).

Bunin met the revolutionary events with extreme rejection, capturing the "bloody madness" in his diary, later published in exile under the title "Cursed Days" (1918, published in 1925).

In January 1920, together with his wife Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, the writer sailed from Odessa to Constantinople. Since then, Bunin lived in France, mainly in Paris and Grasse. In exile they spoke of him as the first among contemporary Russian writers.

The story "Mitina's Love" (1925), the books of stories "Sunstroke" (1927) and "God's Tree" (1931) were perceived by contemporaries as living classics. In the 30s. short stories began to appear, where Bunin showed an exceptional ability to compress huge material into one or two pages, or even several lines.

In 1930, a novel with an obvious autobiographical “lining” was published in Paris - “The Life of Arseniev”. In 1933, Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize. This is an event behind which, in essence, was the fact of recognition of the literature of emigration.

During the Second World War, Bunin lived in Grasse, eagerly followed military events, lived in poverty, hid Jews from the Gestapo in his house, rejoiced at the victories of the Soviet troops. At this time, he wrote stories about love (included in the book " Dark alleys”, 1943), which he himself considered the best of everything he created.

The post-war "warming" of the writer to the Soviet regime was short-lived, but it managed to quarrel him with many old friends. Bunin spent his last years in poverty, working on a book about his literary teacher A.P. Chekhov.

In October 1953, Ivan Alekseevich's health deteriorated sharply, and on November 8 the writer died. The cause of death, according to Dr. V. Zernov, who observed the patient in recent weeks, was cardiac asthma and pulmonary sclerosis. Bunin was buried in the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery. The monument on the grave was made according to the drawing of the artist Alexandre Benois.