Since 1910, the center of Bunin's work has become "the soul of a Russian person in a deep sense, images of the traits of the psyche of the Slavs." Trying to guess the future of Russia after the revolutionary upheavals of 1905-1907. Bunin did not share the hopes of M. Gorky and other representatives of proletarian literature.
I.A. Bunin has experienced a lot historical events(three Russian revolutions, wars, emigration), which influenced his personal life and work. In assessing these events, Bunin was sometimes contradictory. During the revolution of 1905 - 1907, the writer, on the one hand, paid tribute to the motives of the protest, continued to cooperate with the "Znanevites", who represented the democratic forces, on the other hand, Bunin went to travel to crucial moment history and admitted that he was happy because he was "3,000 miles from his homeland." The feeling of catastrophicity intensifies in the work of Bunin during the war human life, the vanity of the search for "eternal" happiness. The contradictions of social life are reflected in the sharp contrast of characters, sharpened oppositions of the "basic" principles of being - life.
In 1907 - 1911 I.A. Bunin wrote a cycle of works "The Shadow of a Bird", in which diary entries, impressions of cities, architectural monuments, paintings are intertwined with the legends of ancient peoples. In this cycle, Bunin for the first time looked at various events from the point of view of a "citizen of the world", noting that he decided in the course of his travels "to know the longing of all times."
From the mid-1910s, I.A. Bunin moved away from the Russian theme and the image of the Russian character, his hero became a person in general (the influence of Buddhist philosophy, which he met in India and Ceylon, affected), and the main theme is the suffering that occurs with any contact with life, the irrepressibility of human desires. Such are the stories "The Brothers", "Chang's Dreams", partly these ideas are heard in the stories "The Gentleman from San Francisco", "The Bowl of Time".
For Bunin, the feeling of love becomes an expression of unfulfilled hopes, the general tragedy of life, in which he sees, however, the only justification for being. The idea of love as the highest value of life will become the main pathos of the works of Bunin and the emigrant period. Love for Bunin's heroes is “the last, all-encompassing, it is a thirst to contain the whole visible and invisible world in your heart and give it back to someone” (“Brothers”). Eternal, “maximum” happiness cannot be, in Bunin it is always associated with a sense of catastrophe, death (“Grammar of Love”, “Chang’s Dreams”, “Brothers”, stories of the 30s and 40s). In the love of Bunin's heroes? something incomprehensible, fatal and unrealizable is concluded, just as the very happiness of life is unrealizable (“In Autumn”, etc.).
Journey through Europe and the East, acquaintance with the colonial countries, which began with the First World War exacerbated the writer's rejection of the inhumanity of the bourgeois world and the feeling of the general catastrophic reality. This attitude appeared in the story "The Gentleman from San Francisco" (1915).
The story "The Gentleman from San Francisco" was born in the writer's creative mind when he read the news of the death of a millionaire who had arrived in Capri and stayed in one of the hotels. The original title of the piece was "Death on Capri". Having changed the name, I.A. Bunin emphasized that the focus is on the figure of a fifty-eight-year-old anonymous millionaire who left San Francisco for a holiday in Italy. Having become "senile", "dry", unhealthy, he decided to spend time among his own kind. The American city of San Francisco was named after the Christian Saint Francis of Assisi, who preached extreme poverty, asceticism, and the rejection of any property. The writer skillfully selects the details (the episode with the cufflink) and uses the technique of contrast to oppose the outward respectability of the gentleman from San Francisco to his inner emptiness and squalor. With the death of a millionaire, a new reference point for time and events arises. Death, as it were, cuts the story into two parts. This determines the originality of the composition.
Bunin's story evokes feelings of hopelessness. The writer emphasizes: "We must live today, not postponing happiness for tomorrow."
Ivan Bunin was born in a poor noble family on October 10 (22), 1870. Then, in the biography of Bunin, there was a move to the estate of the Oryol province near the city of Yelets. Bunin's childhood passed in this place, among the natural beauty of the fields.
Primary education in Bunin's life was received at home. Then, in 1881, the young poet entered the Yelets Gymnasium. However, without finishing it, he returned home in 1886. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin received further education thanks to his older brother Julius, who graduated from the university with honors.
Literary activity
Bunin's poems were first published in 1888. The following year, Bunin moved to Orel, becoming a proofreader for a local newspaper. Bunin's poetry, collected in a collection called "Poems", became the first published book. Soon, Bunin's work gains fame. The following poems by Bunin were published in the collections Under the Open Air (1898), Falling Leaves (1901).
dating the greatest writers(Bitter, Tolstoy, Chekhov, etc.) leaves a significant imprint in the life and work of Bunin. Bunin's stories come out Antonov apples"," Pines.
The writer in 1909 becomes an honorary academician of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Bunin reacted rather sharply to the ideas of the revolution, and left Russia forever.
Life in exile and death
The biography of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin almost all consists of moving, traveling (Europe, Asia, Africa). In exile, Bunin actively continues to engage in literary activities, writes his best works: "Mitya's Love" (1924), " Sunstroke"(1925), as well as the main novel in the life of the writer -" The Life of Arseniev "(1927-1929, 1933), which brings Bunin the Nobel Prize in 1933. In 1944, Ivan Alekseevich wrote the story "Clean Monday".
Before his death, the writer was often ill, but at the same time he did not stop working and creating. In the last few months of his life, Bunin was busy working on a literary portrait of A.P. Chekhov, but the work remained unfinished
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin died on November 8, 1953. He was buried in the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery in Paris.
Chronological table
Other biography options
- Having only 4 classes of the gymnasium, Bunin regretted all his life that he had not received a systematic education. However, this did not prevent him from receiving the Pushkin Prize twice. The writer's older brother helped Ivan learn languages and sciences, going through the entire gymnasium course with him at home.
- Bunin wrote his first poems at the age of 17, imitating Pushkin and Lermontov, whose work he admired.
- Bunin was the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
- The writer had no luck with women. His first love Varvara never became Bunin's wife. Bunin's first marriage also did not bring him happiness. His chosen one Anna Tsakni did not respond to his love with deep feelings and was not at all interested in his life. The second wife, Vera, left because of infidelity, but later forgave Bunin and returned.
- Bunin long years spent in exile, but always dreamed of returning to Russia. Unfortunately, the writer did not succeed in doing this until his death.
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V.A. Meskin
The Central Russian zone, Orlovshchina, is the birthplace of many remarkable word artists. Tyutchev, Turgenev, Leskov, Fet, Andreev, Bunin - all of them were brought up by this region, which lies in the very heart of Russia.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin (1870-1953) was born and raised in a family that belonged to an old noble family. This is a significant fact of his biography: impoverished by the end of the 19th century. Noble Nest The Bunins lived with memories of past greatness. The cult of ancestors was maintained in the family, romantic legends about the history of the Bunin family were carefully kept. Is it not here that the nostalgic motifs of the writer's mature work on the "golden age" of Russia originate? Among Bunin's ancestors were prominent statesmen and artists, such as, for example, the poets Anna Bunina, Vasily Zhukovsky. Isn't it their creativity that engendered in the soul of the young man the desire to become the "second Pushkin"? He told about this desire in his declining years in the autobiographical novel "The Life of Arseniev" (1927-1933).
However, it did not take long for him to find his theme and that unique style that delighted Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, Simonov, Tvardovsky, Solzhenitsyn, and millions of grateful readers. First there were years of apprenticeship, fascination with fashionable social and political ideas, imitation of popular fiction writers. The young writer is attracted by the desire to speak out on topical issues. In such stories as "Tanka", "Katryuk" (1892), "To the End of the World" (1834), one can feel the influence of populist writers - the brothers Uspensky, Zlatovratsky, Levitov; the stories "At the Dacha" (1895), "In August" (1901) were created during the period of passion for the ethical teachings of Tolstoy. The journalistic beginning in them is clearly stronger than the artistic one.
Bunin made his debut as a poet, but even here he did not immediately find his theme and tone. It is difficult to assume that it is he, the future author of the collection "Leaf Fall" (1901), for which in 1903 the Academy of Sciences will award him the Pushkin Prize, in a poem created "under Nekrasov" - "The Village Beggar" (1886) wrote: " You will not see this in the capital: / Here, indeed, weary of need! Behind the iron bars in the dungeon / Such a sufferer is rarely seen. The young poet wrote both “under Nadson” and “under Lermontov”, as, for example, in the poem “Over the Grave of S. Ya. Nadson” (1887): his crown / And she carried him into the darkness of the grave.
It is important for the reader to be able to separate the writer's student things from the works that became classic during Bunin's lifetime. The writer himself in his autobiographical story "Lika" (1933) resolutely rejected what was only a test of the pen, a "false" note.
In 1900, Bunin wrote the story "Antonov apples", which overshadowed a lot, if not all, of what the writer had done in previous years. This story concentrates so much truly Bunin that it can serve as a kind of visiting card of the artist - a classic of the 20th century. It gives a completely different sound to the themes that have long been known in Russian literature.
For a long time, Bunin was considered among a number of social writers who, together with him, were part of the Sreda literary association, published the Knowledge collections, but his vision of life conflicts is decisively different from the vision of the masters of the word of this circle - Gorky, Kuprin, Serafimovich, Chirikov, Yushkevich and others. As a rule, these writers portray social problems and outline ways of solving them in the context of their time, pass judgments on all that they consider evil. Bunin can touch on the same problems, but at the same time, he more often covers them in the context of Russian or even world history, from Christian, or rather from universal, positions. He shows the ugly sides of current life, but very rarely takes the liberty of judging or blaming someone .
Bunin's lack of an active authorial position in depicting the forces of evil introduced a chill of alienation into relations with Gorky, who did not immediately agree to place the stories of the "indifferent" author in Knowledge. At the beginning of 1901, Gorky wrote to Bryusov: "I love Bunin, but I don't understand - how talented, handsome, like matte silver, he won't sharpen the knife, won't poke them in the right place?" In the same year, referring to the "Epitaph", a lyrical requiem for the outgoing nobility, Gorky wrote to K.P. Pyatnitsky: "Antonov apples smell good - yes! - but - they smell by no means democratically ..."
"Antonov apples" not only open a new stage in Bunin's work, but also mark the emergence of a new genre, which later won a large layer of Russian literature - lyrical prose. Prishvin, Paustovsky, Kazakov and many other writers worked in this genre.
In this story, as later in many others, Bunin abandons the classical type of plot, which, as a rule, is tied to the specific circumstances of a particular time. The function of the plot - the core around which the living tie of paintings unfolds - is performed by the author's mood - a nostalgic experience of the irretrievably gone. The writer turns back and in the past rediscovers the world of people who, in his opinion, lived differently, more worthy. And in this conviction he will remain all his creative path. Most of the artists - his contemporaries - peered into the future, believing that there was a victory for justice and beauty. Some of them (Zaitsev, Shmelev, Kuprin) after the catastrophic events of 1905 and 1917. turn back with sympathy.
Attention to eternal questions, the answers to which lie outside the current time - all this is typical for the author classic stories"Village" (1910), "Dry Valley" (1911) and many stories. The artist's arsenal includes poetic devices that allow him to touch entire epochs: this is either an essayistic style of presentation that gives space and retrospection ("Epitaph" (1900), "Pass" (1902), the aforementioned "Antonov apples"), or, when the need arises describe modernity, the technique of parallel-sequential development in the narrative of several storylines associated with different time periods (in many stories and in these stories), or a direct appeal in his work to eternal themes the mysteries of love, life, death, and then the questions of when and where this happened are of no fundamental importance ("The Brothers" (1914), the masterpiece "Chang's Dreams" created two years later), or, finally, the method of interspersing memories of the past into story about the present (cycle " Dark alleys"and many stories of later work).
Bunin contrasts the doubtful, speculative future with an ideal that, in his opinion, follows from the spiritual and worldly experience of the past. At the same time, he is far from reckless idealization of the past. The artist only contrasts the two main trends of the past and the present. The dominant of the past years, in his opinion, was creation, the dominant of the present years was destruction. From contemporary writer thinkers very close to his position was in his later articles Vl. Solovyov. In The Secret of Progress, the philosopher defined the nature of the disease of his contemporary society as follows: Modern man in the hunt for fleeting momentary blessings and volatile fantasies, he lost the right path of life. The Thinker suggested turning back in order to lay the foundation of life from enduring spiritual values. The author of The Gentleman from San Francisco (1915) could hardly object to these thoughts of Solovyov, who, as is well known, was a constant opponent of his teacher, Tolstoy. Lev Nikolayevich was, in a certain sense, a "progressive", therefore, in the direction of the search for the ideal, Solovyov is closer to Bunin.
How come why man lost the "right way"? These questions worried Bunin, his narrator and his heroes all his life more than questions of where to go and what to do. The nostalgic motif associated with the realization of this loss will sound stronger and stronger in his work, starting with Antonov Apples. In the work of the 10s, in the emigrant period, he reaches a tragic sound. In the still bright, albeit sad narrative of the story, there is a mention of a beautiful and business-like elder, "important, like a Kholmogory cow." “The economic butterfly!” the tradesman says about her, shaking his head. in a few years, the narrator himself will scream with pain that the will to live is weakening, the strength of feeling is weakening in all classes: and noblemen ("Sukhodol", " last date"(1912), "Grammar of Love" (1915), and peasant ("Merry Yard", "Cricket" (both - 1911), "Zakhar Vorobyov" (1912), "Last Spring", "Last Autumn" (both - 1916) The main, according to Bunin, estates are shrinking - the once great Russia is becoming a thing of the past (“All Russia is a village,” says main character story "Village"). In many works of the writer, a person degrades as a person, perceives everything that happens as the end of life, as its last day. The story "The Last Day" (1913) is about how a worker, on the orders of a master who squandered the village, hangs a pack of greyhounds, the long-standing pride and glory of the owner, receiving "a quarter for each" hanged. The story is remarkable not only for its expressive content; the poetics of its title is meaningful in the context of many of the writer's works.
The premonition of a catastrophe is one of the constant motifs of Russian literature at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. The prophecy of Andreev, Bely, Sologub, and other writers, among whom was Bunin, may seem all the more surprising because at that time the country was gaining economic and political power. Russia mastered the pace of industrialization unprecedented in world history, fed a quarter of Europe with its bread. Patronage flourished, and the "Russian Seasons" in Paris and London largely determined the cultural life of Western countries.
Did Bunin in the terrible story "The Village" show "the whole of Russia", as it has been written about for a long time (referring to the words of one of its characters)? Most likely, it did not even cover the entire Russian village (as, on the other hand, Gorky did not cover it in the story "Summer" (1909), where the whole village lives in hope for socialist changes). Complicated life there lived a huge country, the possibility of taking off of which was balanced, due to contradictions, by the possibility of falling.
The potential for collapse was shrewdly predicted by Russian artists. And the "Village" is not a sketch from nature, but, above all, an image-warning of an impending catastrophe. It remains to be seen whether the writer listened to his inner voice or to a voice from above, or whether the knowledge of the village, the people simply helped.
As Turgenev's heroes are tested by love, so Bunin's ones are tested by freedom. Having finally received what the slave ancestors dreamed of (their author presents them as strong, courageous, beautiful, daring, even long-lived elders often bear the stamp of epic heroes), freedom - personal, political, economic - they can not stand it, they are lost. Bunin continued the theme of the dramatic collapse of what was once a single social organism, begun by Nekrasov in the poem "Who Lives Well in Rus'": At the same time, one writer looked at this process as a historical necessity, the other as a tragedy.
There are other people from the people in the artist's prose - bright, kind, but internally weak, confused in the maelstrom of current events, often suppressed by the bearers of evil. Such, for example, is Zakhar from the story "Zakhar Vorobyov" - a character especially beloved by the author himself. The constant search for the hero, where to apply his remarkable strength, ended in a wine shop, where he overtook his death, sent by an evil, envious, according to the hero, "petty people." Such is the Young from the "Village". With all the beatings and bullying, she kept her "soul alive", but an even more terrible future awaits her - she, in fact, was sold as a wife to Deniska Sery.
Zakhar, Young, old man Ivanushka from the same story, Anisya from The Merry Yard, the saddler Cricket from the story of the same name, Natalya from Sukhodol - all these Bunin heroes seem to have lost their way in history, were born a hundred years later than they would it should have been so strikingly different from the gray, mentally deaf mass. What the author-narrator said about Zakhar is not only about him: "... in the old days, they say, there were many such ... yes, this breed is translated."
You can believe in Buddha, Christ, Mohammed - any faith elevates a person, fills his life with a meaning higher than the search for warmth and bread. With the loss of this high meaning, a person loses a special position in the world of wildlife - this is one of the initial principles of Bunin's creativity. His "Epitaph" speaks of the decades of the golden era of "peasant happiness" under the shadow of the cross outside the outskirts with the icon of the Virgin. But now the time has come for noisy cars and the cross has fallen. This philosophical study ends with an alarming question: "The new people will somehow sanctify their new life?" In this work (a rare case), Bunin acts as a moralist: a person cannot remain a person if there is nothing sacred in his life.
Usually, he makes the reader himself come to this statement, unfolding in front of him pictures of the animal existence of a person, devoid of any faith and even a faint bright hope. At the end of the story "The Village" there is a terrible scene of the blessing of the young. In the atmosphere of a diabolical game, the imprisoned father suddenly feels that the icon seems to burn his hands, he thinks with horror: “Now I will throw the icon on the floor ...” with which the shawl was covered - the tablet turned out to be an icon ... A defeated cross, a defeated (in a dirty shawl!) face of a saint, and as a result - a defeated person. Bunin does not seem to have happy characters. Those who believed that with personal freedom, with material prosperity, happiness would come, he, having received both, experiences even greater disappointment. So, Tikhon Krasov, in the end, sees wealth itself as a "golden cage" ("Village"). The problem of a spiritual crisis, of a godless person, was of concern at that time not only to Bunin and not only to Russian literature.
At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. Europe was going through a period that Nietzsche described as "the twilight of the gods." The man doubted that somewhere there is He, the absolute principle, strict and just, punishing and merciful, and most importantly, filling this life full of suffering with meaning and dictating the ethical norms of the community. The rejection of God was fraught with tragedy, and it broke out. In the work of Bunin, who captured the dramatic events of Russian social and privacy beginning of the 20th century, the tragedy of the European man of this time was refracted. The depth of Bunin's problems is more significant than it seems at first glance: the social issues that agitated the writer in his works on the theme of Russia are inseparable from religious and philosophical issues.
In Europe, the recognition of the greatness of man - the bearer of progress has been on the rise since the Renaissance. People found confirmation of this greatness in scientific achievements, in the transformations of nature, in the works of artists. The works of Schopenhauer, and then Nietzsche, were logical milestones on the path of human thought in this direction. And yet the cry of the "superman" singer: "God is dead" gave rise to confusion and fear. Of course, not everyone was afraid. The "human worshiper" Gorky, who believed in the triumph of the now absolutely free man, wrote to I.E. Repin: "He (man. - V. M.) is everything. He even created God. ... Man is capable of infinite perfection..." (that is, himself, without reference to the Absolute Beginning) 4 . However, this optimism was shared by very few artists and thinkers.
Teachings about the life of a number of major European thinkers of the late XIX - early XX century. called the "philosophy of sunset". They denied movement in history, no matter how the direction of this movement was explained: they denied progress both according to Hegel and according to Marx. Many thinkers of the turn of the century generally denied the ability of human thinking to cognize the causality of the phenomena of the world (after doubts arose about the divine root cause). God was leaving a person's life, and the moral imperative that commanded this person to realize himself as a particle of the human world was also leaving. It was then that the philosophy of personalism arises, denying the importance of uniting people. Its representatives (Renouvier, Royce, James) explained the world as a system of individuals freely asserting their independence. Everything ideal, according to their forerunner Nietzsche, is born in a person and dies with him, the meaning of things, life is the fruit of the individual imagination of the person himself, and nothing more. The existentialist Sartre concludes that, abandoned by God, man has lost direction: it is not known from anywhere that there is goodness, that one must be honest... A terrible conclusion. The modern philosopher claims that at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. "not overcoming fear, but fear has become ... one of the big topics that go beyond the narrow boundaries of philosophical interpretation" 5 . Fear of hopelessness, loneliness oppresses Bunin's characters in everyday life.
A contemporary of Bunin, the singer of the outgoing nobility and the former greatness of Russia, was the "philosopher of sunset" Spengler. Idealizing the era of Western European feudalism, he argued that eternal progress, eternal goals exist only in the minds of philistines. Spengler's work "The Decline of Europe", created during the years when Bunin was working on the Calrian cycle of stories ("Saints", "Spring Evening", "Brothers", later - the short story "Mr. Din from San Francisco"), had a strong resonance. Similar problems of European spiritual life occupy both contemporaries. Spengler, a supporter of the biological philosophy of history, sees in it only the neighborhood and alternation of different cultures. Culture is an organism in which the laws of biology operate; it is going through a period of youth, growth, flourishing, aging and decay. In his opinion, no influence from outside or from within can stop this process. Bunin represents world history very similarly.
The author of the most interesting book about Bunin, N. Kucherovsky, shows that the writer considers Russia as a link in the chain of Asian civilizations ("Asia, Asia! - such a cry of anguish, despair ends the story of 1913" Dust"), inscribed in the biblical "circle of being", and a person is not able to change anything in the fateful movement of history.Indeed, the Sukhodolsk nobles are trying in vain to prevent ruin and degradation, the peasant Yegor Minaev ("Merry Yard") cannot resist some kind of mystical force that has been pushing him out of the rut all his life normal life and, finally, forcing him to throw himself, as if unexpectedly for himself, under the train. "In the past there was a great biblical East with its great peoples and civilizations, in the present all this has become a "dead sea" of life, frozen in anticipation of the future destined for it. In the past there was great Russia with its noble culture and agricultural people, in the present this Asian the country ... is doomed ... ("He had a mysterious attraction to Asia ..." - said Bunin's friend, the writer Zaitsev.) Consistent liberation of the peasants from the landowner, the landowner from the peasants, the whole people from God, from moral responsibility - this, according to Bunin, the causes of the disastrous fall of the country, but the causes themselves are caused by the rotation of the "circle of being", i.e., they are the consequences of the meta-law. Thus, the German philosopher and the Russian artist simultaneously come to close views on history.
Bunin had common moments in the direction of thinking with Toynbee, another well-known contemporary of his, a follower of Spengler. The philosophical and historical works of this English scientist became famous in the late 20s - in the 30s. His theory of "local civilizations" (dramas playing out in a new way each time) proceeds from the fact that each culture relies on a "creative elite", its heyday and decline are determined as internal state the very top of society, and the ability of the "inert masses" to imitate, to follow the elitist driving force. The ideas that agitated Toynbee clearly have points of contact with the view of history expressed a decade earlier by the author of Dry Valley and many stories about the rise and fall of noble culture. These examples already show that Bunin sensitively reacted not only to the mentality of his people (his researchers have said a lot about this), but also to the mentality of the European peoples.
As the writer's talent develops, more and more topics are in the center of attention - man and history, man and freedom. Freedom, according to Bunin, is first of all responsibility, it is a test. The well-known contemporary of Bunin, the philosopher N. Berdyaev, understood it in the same way (for the passion with which he wrote about the significance of freedom in the life of the individual, the thinker was called, not without irony, "a prisoner of freedom"). However, they drew different conclusions from the same premise. In his book The Philosophy of Freedom (1910), Berdyaev argues that a person must pass the test of freedom, that, being free, he acts as a co-creator... actual problem freedom, says the fact that such famous German philosophers as R. Steiner, A. Wenzel published their polemical works a little earlier under the same title. Bunin's ideological position seems to be very complex and contradictory. The artist himself, it seems, nowhere clearly formulated it and did not describe it. He showed the diversity of the world, where there is always a place for mystery. Perhaps that is why, no matter how much they write about his works, researchers one way or another talk about the mysteries of his problematics and artistic skill (this was first pointed out by Paustovsky).
One of the mysteries of his work is the coexistence of the tragic and the bright, life-affirming beginnings in his prose. This coexistence is manifested either in different works of the same period, or even in one work. In the 1910s he also creates the stories "Merry Yard", "Spear of the Lord", "Klasha"; in 1925 - the delightful "Sunstroke", and in the 30s - the cycle "Dark Alleys". In general, Bunin's books give rise to the reader's desire to live, to reflect on the possibility of other relationships between people. The element of fatalism is present in a number of the artist's works, but does not dominate in his work.
Many of Bunin's works end in the collapse of the heroes' hopes, murder or suicide. But nowhere does the artist reject life as such. Even death appears to him as a natural imperative of being. In the story "Thin Grass" (1913), the dying person realizes the solemnity of the moment of departure; suffering relieves the feeling of a fulfilled, difficult duty on earth - a worker, a father, a breadwinner. The mourning imagined before death is a welcome reward for all ordeals. "Thin grass out of the field" - the law of nature, this proverb serves as an epigraph to the story.
The author of the "Hunter's Notes" had a man rather against the background of the landscape, then the famous Kalinich, who knew how to "read" nature, was her grateful reader. Bunin focuses on the internal connection between man and nature, in which "there is no ugliness." She is the key to immortality. Man, civilization are dying, but nature is in perpetual motion and renewal, and therefore humanity is immortal, which means that new civilizations will arise. And the East did not die, but only "froze in anticipation of the predetermined ... future." The writer sees the prerequisites for the tragedy of the peasantry in the fact that it breaks away from nature, from the land-breadwinner. The rare worker Anisya ("Merry Yard") sees the world like God's grace, but Yegor, Akim, Gray are blind, indifferent to him. The hope of Russia, according to Bunin, is in the peasants, who regard labor on the land as the main business of life, as creativity. He gave an example of such an attitude in the stories Kastryuk (1892), Mowers (1921). However, he believes not only rural residents with a connection with nature or its absence.
Bunin's story "Light Breath" (1916) has been the subject of hundreds of studies. What is the secret of his deepest influence on the reader, the secret of universal love for this girl-girl who paid with her life for her carelessness and frivolity? “And if I could,” Paustovsky wrote in The Golden Rose, “I would cover this grave with all the flowers that only bloom on earth.” Of course, Olya Meshcherskaya, "a rich and happy girl," was not a victim of "bourgeois debauchery." But what? Probably the most difficult of all the questions that arise will be the following: why, despite the dramatic denouement of the plot, does this story leave such a bright feeling? Is it because "the life of nature is heard there"?
What is the story about? About the murder of a pretty schoolgirl by a "plebeian-looking" officer? Yes, but the author devoted only a paragraph to their "novel", while the fourth part of the short story was given to the description of the life of a classy lady in the epilogue. About the immoral act of an elderly gentleman? Yes, but let's note that the "victim" herself, who poured out her indignation on the pages of the diary, after all that had happened, "fell fast asleep." All these collisions are components of that hidden, but determining the development of the narrative, the confrontation between the heroine and the world of the people around her.
Among all the people surrounding the young heroine, the author did not see a single living soul capable of understanding Olya Meshcherskaya; only twice it is mentioned that she was loved, first-graders were drawn to her, that is, creatures not dressed in the uniform of internal and external secular conventions. In the story exposition we are talking about Olya's next call to the boss for non-compliance with etiquette, uniforms, hairstyles. The cool lady herself is the complete opposite of the pupil. As follows from the narrative, she is always "in black kid gloves, with an ebony umbrella" (the author evokes a very definite and meaningful association with this description). Having dressed in mourning after Olya's death, she is "in the depths of her soul ... happy": the ritual relieves the anxieties of life, fills her voids. The world of conventions can be violated only if you are sure that no one will know about it. Of course, it is no coincidence that the author "makes" Mr. Malyutin not an acquaintance, but the closest relative of the boss.
The conflict of the heroine with this world is predetermined by the whole structure of her character - living, natural, unpredictable, like nature itself. She rejects conventions not because she wants to, but because she cannot do otherwise, she is a living shoot, swelling asphalt. Meshcherskaya is simply not capable of hiding something, acting. She will be confused by all the prescriptions of etiquette (nature does not know them), even "old" books, about which it is customary to speak with trepidation, she calls "ridiculous." After a strong hurricane, nature restores itself and still rejoices. Olya returned to her past and after everything that had happened to her. She dies from a shot by a Cossack officer.
Dies ... Somehow this verb does not fit with the image created by Bunin. Note that the author does not use it in the narrative. The verb "shot" seems to be lost in a long complex sentence describing the killer in detail; figuratively speaking, the shot sounded almost inaudibly. Even the sensible cool lady mystically doubted the death of the girl: "This wreath, this mound, an oak cross! Is it possible that under it is the one whose eyes shine so immortally from this convex porcelain medallion ..?" The word “again” that seems to be suddenly inserted into the final phrase says a lot: “Now this light breath has again scattered in the world, in this cloudy sky, in this cold spring wind.” Bunin poetically endows his beloved heroine with the possibility of reincarnation, the opportunity to come into this world as a herald of beauty, perfection and leave it. "Nature in Bunin's work," the well-known researcher correctly noted, "is not a background, ... but an active, effective principle that powerfully invades a person's being, determining his views on life, his actions and deeds."
Bunin entered the history of Russian and world literature as a talented prose writer, while he himself tried all his life to draw the attention of readers to his lyrics, claiming that he was "mainly a poet." The artist also spoke about the connection between what he created in prose and poetry. Many of his stories seem to grow out of lyrical works. "Antonov's Apples", "Dry Valley" - from "Desolation" (1903), "Wasteland" (1907), "Light Breath" - from "Portrait" (1903), etc. However, more important than the external thematic connection is the internal connection. Constantly emphasizing the significance of his poetry, Bunin, in our opinion, prompted the reader that it was in it that the key to understanding his work as a whole.
The lyrical hero of Bunin, unlike the lyrical hero, for example, Fet, not only admires the beauty of the earth, he is overwhelmed by the desire, as it were, to dissolve in this beauty: "Open your arms to me, nature, / So that I merge with your beauty!" (“Open your chest wider to accept “Sand is like silk ... I cling to a clumsy pine ...” (“Childhood”); “I see, I hear, I’m happy. Everything is in me” (“Evening”). Wanting to strengthen the dialogic relations between man and nature, the poet often turns to the method of personification: "How mysterious you are, thunderstorm! / How I love your silence, / Your sudden brilliance, / Your crazy eyes!" ("It smells like fields - fresh herbs ...") ; "But the waves, foaming and swaying, / They go, run towards me / - And someone with blue eyes / Looks in a flickering wave" ("On the open sea"); "Carries - and does not want to know for himself, / What is there, under a pool in the forest, / Crazy Water rumbles, / Headlong flying along the wheel ... "(" River ").
Nature - that's where, according to Bunin, the law of beauty operates, and while it exists, so wise, majestic, charming, there is hope for the healing of sick humanity.
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The contact of different genres in Bunin's work has been talked about for a long time. Already contemporaries noted that to a large extent he acts as a prose writer in poetry and as a poet in prose. The lyrical subjective beginning is very expressive in his artistic and philosophical miniatures, which can be called prose poems without exaggeration. Dressing the thought in an exquisite verbal form, the author here also seeks to raise eternal questions.
Most often, he is tempted to touch the mysterious border where existence and non-existence converge - life and death, time and eternity. However, even in his "plot" works, Bunin showed such attention to this boundary, which, perhaps, no other Russian writer showed. And in everyday life, everything connected with death aroused in him a genuine interest. The writer's wife recalls that Ivan Alekseevich always visited the cemeteries of cities and villages, where he happened to be, looked at the tombstones for a long time, read the inscriptions. Bunin's lyrical and philosophical sketches on the theme of life and death say that the artist looked at the inevitability of the end of all life with a bit of distrust, surprise and inner protest.
Probably the best that Bunin created in this genre is "The Rose of Jericho", a work that the author himself used as an introduction, as an epigraph to his stories. Contrary to custom, he never dated the writing of this piece. The thorny shrub, which, according to Eastern tradition, was buried along with the deceased, which for years can lie somewhere dry, without signs of life, but is able to turn green, give tender leaves as soon as it touches moisture, Bunin perceives as a sign of all-conquering life, as a symbol of faith in resurrection : "There is no death in the world, there is no death to what was, what once lived!"
Let's get a grasp of a small miniature created by the writer in his declining years. Bunin describes the contrasts of life and death in a childish way, with alarm and surprise. The mystery, somewhere in the subtext states the artist, completing his earthly journey, remains a mystery.
L-ra: Russian literature. - 1993. - No. 4. - S. 16-24.
The feelings and experiences expressed in Bunin's early work are complex and often contradictory. In his sensations of the material world, nature, the joy of being and longing are intricately intertwined, longing for unknown beauty, truth, for goodness, which is so little on earth. Not finding beauty in people, he looks for it in nature. With an inexhaustible variety of poetically original and always accurate drawings, Bunin creates innumerable pictures of nature in prose and verse. In a sort of poetic declaration, he states:
No, it's not the landscape that attracts me,
Not the colors I seek to notice,
And what shines in these colors -
Love and joy of being.
She's spilled everywhere
In the azure sky, in bird songs,
In the snows and in the spring breeze, -
She is wherever there is beauty.
Citing this poem, the pre-revolutionary critic Batyushkov noted that the declaration contained in it is far from always consistent with the poetic practice of the writer: thirst to live”), Bunin breaks through the motives of loneliness, which, however, at first is drawn to the poet without any attributes of severe asceticism.
Batyushkov, as it were, separates Bunin's poetry from his prose, depriving the poem of social content. “Bunin,” he claims, “lives by the sensations of nature and, in general, does not belong to the category of poet-thinkers, for whom images serve only as a form of expression.”
Indeed, in Bunin's poetry, pictures of nature are given a dominant place. But does this mean that they are created only to capture fleeting sensations and impressions? Certainly not!
Bunin's deeply personal, intimate experiences express in a peculiar way his worldview, his perception of reality. In the last stanza of the poem "Solitude" he bitterly declares:
But for women there is no past:
She fell out of love - and became a stranger to her.
Well! I'll light the fireplace, I'll drink...
It would be nice to buy a dog.
Here the feeling of loneliness is expressed, which the poet cannot escape. Sadness about life, as if it had already completely passed, prematurely fills many of Bunin's early works. He seems to foresee that life will not reveal its riches to him. Although old age is still far away, the writer is besieged by thoughts about how “it will be lonely in the world! How sad at the end of days! Feelings of loneliness and sadness wander from story to story, from poem to poem. The main reason for such state of mind he clearly expressed in the poem "Crossroads".
I'm long in the twilight
Went alone into the sunset.
But the darkness grew - and from the crossroads
I quietly turned back.
A little half-light dawned.
But after the light as dead
How majestic and gloomy
Night light blue!
And pale, pale are the stars in the sky...
And for a long time I will be in the dark,
As long as they're warmer and brighter
Do not shine in height.
The lyrical hero is going somewhere, but where he does not know. He is forced to return, because there are many roads in life, but which one should he follow? And along with this ignorance of the path, hope does not leave him. In beauty, he sees the guarantee of the renewal of life. In nature, he sees everywhere the beauty that delights him. But is it not because his hopes and dreams are so abstract that he does not find effective forces of good capable of transforming a person's life? The etude "Silence" contains a small but much explaining declaration. Traveling along Lake Geneva, the writer "discovers" the promised land of goodness: "Life has remained somewhere there, behind these mountains, and we are entering the blessed land of that silence, which has no name in our language." And further: “Somewhere in the mountains,” I thought, “a small bell tower sheltered and alone glorifies with its sonorous voice the peace and silence of Sunday morning ... It seems to me that someday I will merge with this eternal silence, at the threshold of which we standing, and that happiness is only in her. Under the powerful influence of the feelings that gripped him, he asks the companion who is with him in the boat: “Do you hear it, this silence of the mountains?” (Emphasized by Bunin) Bunin's silence is not only and not always a blessed feeling. The writer sometimes tries to get away from the contradictions of life that are insoluble for him into the silence of the majestic and beautiful nature. But he rarely succeeds. It happens that silence brings him not peace, but a premonition of an unknown danger. In the poem "Epiphany Night" there are such stanzas:
Silence - even the branch does not crackle!
And, perhaps, behind this ravine
The wolf makes his way through the snowdrifts
Cautious and insinuating step.
Silence - and, perhaps, he is close ...
And I stand, filled with anxiety,
And I look tensely at the thickets,
On footprints and bushes along the road.
In the story “Gold Bottom”, the narrator, answering his sister, who complains about bad things in the estate, says: “But what a silence!” True, this remark evokes new words about the silence of the student's nephew, which the author does not refute and leaves unanswered. “There is more than enough of this! .. Indeed, silence, and filthy, damn it, silence! Like a drying pond! From a distance - at least write a picture. And come up - it will carry mustiness, because the water is an inch in it, and mud - two fathoms, and crucian carp are all dead ... ".
There is no doubt that elegiac, sad pictures of nature predominate in Bunin's early work, that an atmosphere of special, purely Bunin's silence prevails in them.
The theme of abandoned estates, deserted gardens, endless fields where you occasionally see a person, dense, uninhabited forests seemed to require silence. But even the most deserted landscape is full of sounds. Even the sea, depending on the weather, speaks in different voices, and how endlessly diverse are the sounds of forests and fields inhabited by birds, animals, and insects! Bunin, by the very nature of his poetic temperament, by his uniquely original, and at the same time extraordinarily accurate transmission of all the components that create a picture of nature, could not, of course, do without "sound design", without the voices of nature. Bunin's nature is far from anemic, and the writer should not be taken literally when he says: "It is getting dark - and a terrible silence reigns in the village," or: "And only the stars and mounds listened to dead silence."
The very word "silence" in Bunin is filled with a different content than in everyday life. Bunin's silence is full of sounds, and paradoxically, these sounds do not break the silence. In this, the writer truly achieved artistic perfection.
One of the main techniques used by Bunin to create this "sound silence" is the usual nature of sounds for a given landscape, in their rhythmic continuity, that they are no longer perceived by the ear as breaking the silence. "Not ceasing for a minute, the malevolent laughter of frogs rushed from the nearby swamp and, like any continuous sound, did not break the silence." And here is another example: “The stars in the sky shine so modestly and mysteriously; grasshoppers crackle dryly, and this whisper-crackle lulls and excites.
And further: “... Grasshoppers crackled in the quiet evening air, and from the garden there was a smell of burdocks, a pale, high “dawn” and nettles.” But the sound design of the landscape does not end there. “... The frogs made drowsy, slightly ringing music in the ponds, which goes so towards early spring ... By the clock, he watched every light that flickered and disappeared in the cloudy-milky fog of distant hollows; if the cry of a heron sometimes flew from there from a forgotten pond - this cry seemed mysterious and the darkness in the alleys mysteriously stood ... ".
The crackling of grasshoppers does not break the silence, for it is continuous, ceases to be audible, becomes an integral part of the silence. But in the above passage, silence is achieved not only by the continuity of sound, but also by the way the writer conveys the lighting, color, smell of the picture of nature. And along with this, it seems to soften the tone of a continuous sound: “grasshoppers dryly crackle”, “this whisper-crackle”. The cry of the heron seems "mysterious", it does not, so to speak, detonate in silence. And this feeling of silence is enhanced by the frozen lighting. "... It was mysteriously dark." The word "stood" creates the impression of immobility, makes silence seem to be visible.
The croaking of frogs is like “drowsy” or “slightly ringing” music, and these sounds are very suitable for the picture of early spring, do not break its silence. The state of drowsy peace is created here by a combination of lighting design with enveloping and soporific smells. The lights flicker, appearing and disappearing in the "cloudy milky" fog, the gardens are softly fragrant with bird cherry.
In some of Bunin's stories, silence becomes the theme of reflection following some sad event. This is characteristic, in particular, of the story "To the End of the World". He belongs to the number of works in which the writer with great dramatic power, using new facts from the life of the Russian peasantry, talks about his tragic fate. From this story, in fact, the fame of Bunin the prose writer begins.
The story "To the End of the World" is clearly divided into two parts, each of which consists of two chapters. The first two chapters describe the seeing off of peasant families to the distant Ussuri region, creating a general mournful picture. The last chapters are two panoramas: a depopulated village and an overnight stay in the steppe of those who have left. These panoramas are united not only by the motives of human grief, separation, fear of the unknown, but also by the artistic structure.
The influence of Bunin's poetry on his prose emerges very clearly in these chapters. The beginning and melodic melodiousness in the development of the theme of silence, as an expression of human grief, resemble the intonations inherent in Bunin's poetry. “They feel that sudden emptiness in their hearts and an incomprehensible silence around them, which always covers a person after an alarm of wires, when returning to an empty house.” And further: “In the warm and stuffy darkness of the hut, a cricket is tricking expectantly from behind the stove ... as if listening ... The old man, bent over, sits in darkness and silence ... Deep silence. Southern night sky with large pearl stars. The dark silhouette of a motionless poplar is drawn against the background of the night sky... From a distant farmstead, a rooster's cry was barely audible... And only the stars and mounds listened to the dead silence...”.
Silence here is no longer grace, not a balm for the soul, waiting for peace from silent loneliness. Silence is called here "strange", "incomprehensible", "dead". However, as elsewhere with Bunin, silence is “sounding silence”, “sound silence”. Surrendering to the power of silence, the writer invites us to listen to the sounds that fill and do not break the silence. Gardens and mounds listen to silence. As if listening to the silence of the hut, the cricket is tricking.
The impression of motionless, frozen silence is enhanced by the contrasts of colors.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is a very extraordinary person who in many ways turned the course of development of the entire literary world. Of course, many critics, with their characteristic skepticism, treat the achievements of the great author, but it is simply impossible to deny his significance in all Russian literature. Like any poet or writer, the secrets of creating great and memorable works are closely connected with the biography of Ivan Alekseevich himself, and his rich and multifaceted life largely influenced both his immortal lines and all Russian literature as a whole.Brief Biography of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
The future poet and writer, but for now just a young Vanya Bunin, was lucky to be born into a fairly decent and wealthy family of a noble noble family, which had the honor of living in a luxurious noble estate, which fully corresponded to the status of the noble family of his family. Also in early childhood the family decided to move from Voronezh to the Oryol province, where Ivan spent his early years without attending any educational institutions until the age of eleven - the boy successfully studied at home, read books and improved his knowledge, delving into good, high-quality and informative literature. In 1881, at the request of his parents, Ivan nevertheless entered a decent gymnasium, however, studying at an educational institution did not bring the boy any pleasure at all - already in the fourth grade on vacation, he announced that he did not want to return to school, and it was much more pleasant for him to study at home and more productive. He nevertheless returned to the gymnasium - perhaps the reason for this was the desire of his father, an officer, perhaps a simple desire to gain knowledge and be brought up in a team, but already in 1886 Ivan nevertheless returned home, but did not quit his education - now his teacher, mentor and leader in the educational process was the elder brother Julius, who followed the success of the future famous Nobel laureate.
Ivan began to write poetry at a very early age, but then he himself, being well-read and educated, understood that such creativity was not serious. At the age of seventeen, his work moved to a new level, and that's when the poet realized that he needed to break out into people, and not put his works of art on the table.
Already in 1887, Ivan Alekseevich published his works for the first time, and, pleased with himself, the poet moved to Orel, where he successfully got a job as a proofreader in a local newspaper, gaining access to interesting and sometimes classified information and ample opportunities for development. It is here that he meets Varvara Pashchenko, whom he falls in love with unconsciously, with her throws everything that was acquired by overwork, contradicts the opinion of his parents and others and moves to Poltava.
The poet meets and communicates with many famous personalities - for example, for quite a long time he was with Anton Chekhov, already famous at that time, with whom, in the end, in 1895, Ivan Alekseevich was lucky to meet personally. In addition to a personal acquaintance with an old pen pal, Ivan Bunin makes acquaintance and finds common interests and points of contact with Balmont, Bryusov and many other talented minds of his time.
A happy and measured family life did not at all prevent the poet and writer from traveling a lot, getting to know new cities and countries, writing down his impressions on paper and sharing his emotions with his surroundings. The trips that took place during these years of the writer's life were largely reflected in his creative way- Bunin often created his works either on the road, or at the time of arrival at a new place - in any case, creativity and travel were inextricably and tightly connected.
Bunin. Confession
Bunin was presented to a surprising variety of awards in the field of literature, due to which at a certain period he was even subjected to direct condemnation and harsh criticism from others - many began to notice arrogance and inflated self-esteem behind the writer, however, in fact, Bunin's creativity and talent are quite consistent with his self-image. Bunin was even awarded Nobel Prize in the field of literature, but he spent the money far from himself - already living abroad in exile or getting rid of the culture of the Bolsheviks, the writer helped the same creative people, poets and writers, as well as people, just like he fled the country .Bunin and his wife were distinguished by their kindness and open heart- it is known that during the war years they even hid fugitive Jews on their personal plot, protecting them from repressions and extermination. Today, there are even opinions that Bunin should be given high awards and titles for many of his actions related to humanity, kindness and humanism.
Almost all his conscious life after the Revolution, Ivan Alekseevich spoke rather sharply against the new government, thanks to which he ended up abroad - he could not endure everything that was happening in the country. Of course, after the war, his ardor cooled down a bit, but, nevertheless, until the very last days, the poet was worried about his country and knew that something was wrong in it.
The poet died calmly and quietly in his sleep in his own bed. They say that at the time of his death there was a volume of Leo Tolstoy's book next to him.
The memory of the great literary figure, poet and writer is immortalized not only in his famous works who pass on school textbooks and a variety of literary publications from generation to generation. The memory of Bunin lives in the names of streets, intersections, alleys and in every monument erected in memory of the great personality who created real changes in the whole domestic literature and pushed it to a completely new, progressive and modern level.
Creativity of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
The work of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is that necessary component, without which today it is simply impossible to imagine not only domestic, but the whole world literature. It was he who made his invariable contribution to the creation of works, a new, fresh look at the world and endless horizons, from which poets and writers around the world still take an example. Oddly enough, today the work of Ivan Bunin is much more revered abroad, for some reason he did not receive such wide recognition in his homeland, even though his works are quite actively studied in schools from the very youngest grades. In his works there is absolutely everything that a lover of an exquisite, beautiful style, unusual play on words, bright and pure images and new, fresh and still relevant ideas are looking for.
Bunin, with his inherent skill, describes his own feelings - here even the most sophisticated reader understands exactly what the author felt at the time of creating this or that work - the experiences are described so vividly and openly. For example, one of Bunin's poems tells about a difficult and painful parting with his beloved, after which all that remains is to start true friend- a dog that will never betray, and succumb to reckless drinking, ruining himself without stopping.
Women's images in Bunin's works they are described especially vividly - each heroine of his works is drawn in the mind of the reader in such detail that it seems like a personal acquaintance with this or that woman.
The main distinguishing feature of all the work of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is the universality of his works. Representatives of the most diverse classes and interests can find something close and dear, and his works will capture both experienced readers and those who, for the first time in their lives, have taken up the study of Russian literature.
Bunin wrote about absolutely everything that surrounded him, and in most cases the themes of his works coincided with different periods of his life. Early works often described the simple village life, native open spaces and the surrounding nature. During the Revolution, the writer, of course, described everything that was happening in his beloved country - this is what became the real legacy of not only Russian classical literature, but also throughout national history.
Ivan Alekseevich wrote about himself and his life, passionately and in detail described his own feelings, often plunged into the past and recalled pleasant and negative moments, trying to understand himself and at the same time convey to the reader a deep and truly great thought. There is a lot of tragedy in his lines, especially in love works - here the writer saw tragedy in love and death in it.
The main themes in Bunin's works were:
Revolution and life before and after it
Love and all its tragedy
The world around the writer
Of course, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin left a contribution of unimaginable proportions to Russian literature, which is why his legacy is alive today, and the number of his admirers never decreases, but, on the contrary, is actively progressing.
