What year was ivan alekseevich bunin born? The life and work of Bunin, IA




Bunin Ivan Alekseevich (1870-1953) - Russian writer, poet. The first Russian literary figure was awarded the Nobel Prize (1933). He spent part of his life in exile.

Life and art

Ivan Bunin was born on October 22, 1870 in an impoverished family of a noble family in Voronezh, from where the family soon moved to the Oryol province. Bunin's education at the local Yelets gymnasium lasted only 4 years and was discontinued due to the family's inability to pay for their studies. Ivan's education was taken over by his older brother Julius Bunin, who received a university education.

The regular appearance of poetry and prose of young Ivan Bunin in periodicals began at the age of 16. Under the wing of his older brother, he worked in Kharkov and Orel as a proofreader, editor, and journalist for local printing houses. After an unsuccessful civil marriage with Varvara Pashchenko, Bunin leaves for St. Petersburg and then to Moscow.

Confession

In Moscow, Bunin is one of the famous writers of his time: L. Tolstoy, A. Chekhov, V. Bryusov, M. Gorky. The first recognition comes to a novice author after the publication of the story "Antonov Apples" (1900).

In 1901, Ivan Bunin was awarded the Pushkin Prize from the Russian Academy of Sciences for the published collection of poems "Leaf Fall" and the translation of the poem "Song of Hiawatha" by G. Longfellow. The second time, the Pushkin Prize was awarded to Bunin in 1909, together with the title of Honorary Academician of Fine Arts. Bunin's poems, which were in the mainstream of the classical Russian poetry of Pushkin, Tyutchev, Fet, are characterized by a special sensibility and the role of epithets.

As a translator, Bunin turned to the works of Shakespeare, Byron, Petrarch, Heine. The writer was fluent in English and studied Polish on his own.

Together with his third wife Vera Muromtseva, whose official marriage was concluded only in 1922 after a divorce from his second wife Anna Tsakni, Bunin travels a lot. From 1907 to 1914, the couple visited the countries of the East, Egypt, the island of Ceylon, Turkey, Romania, Italy.

Since 1905, after the suppression of the first Russian revolution, the theme of the historical fate of Russia appears in Bunin's prose, which is reflected in the story "Village". The story of the hard-hitting life of the Russian countryside was a bold and innovative step in Russian literature. At the same time, in Bunin's stories ("Light Breathing", "Klasha"), female images with passions hidden in them are formed.

In 1915-1916, Bunin's stories were published, including "The Lord from San Francisco", in which they find a place for discussions about the doomed fate of modern civilization.

Emigration

The revolutionary events of 1917 found the Bunins in Moscow. Ivan Bunin treated the revolution as the collapse of the country. This view, revealed in his diary entries from 1918-1920s. formed the basis of the book "Cursed Days".

In 1918 the Bunins left for Odessa, from there to the Balkans and Paris. In emigration, Bunin spent the second half of his life, dreaming of returning to his homeland, but not realizing his desire. In 1946, upon the issuance of a decree granting Soviet citizenship to the subjects of the Russian Empire, Bunin was eager to return to Russia, but criticism of the Soviet government of the same year against Akhmatova and Zoshchenko forced him to abandon this idea.

One of the first significant works completed abroad was the autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev (1930), dedicated to the world of the Russian nobility. For him in 1933, Ivan Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize, becoming the first Russian writer to receive such an honor. A significant sum of money received by Bunin as a bonus, for the most part, was distributed to them in need.

During the years of emigration, the theme of love and passion became the central theme in Bunin's work. She found expression in the works "Mitya's Love" (1925), "Sunstroke" (1927), in the famous cycle "Dark Alleys", which was published in 1943 in New York.

In the late 1920s, Bunin wrote a number of small stories - "The Elephant", "Roosters" and others, in which he perfected his literary language, trying to express the main idea of ​​the composition in the most laconic way.

In the period 1927-42. together with the Bunins lived Galina Kuznetsova, a young girl whom Bunin represented as his student and adopted daughter. She had a love relationship with the writer, which the writer himself and his wife Vera experienced quite painfully. Subsequently, both women left their memories of Bunin.

Bunin lived through the years of World War II on the outskirts of Paris and closely followed the events on the Russian front. He invariably rejected numerous offers from the Nazis, coming to him as a famous writer.

At the end of his life, Bunin published practically nothing due to a long and serious illness. His last works - "Memoirs" (1950) and the book "About Chekhov", which was not completed and was published after the death of the author in 1955.

Ivan Bunin died on November 8, 1953. Extensive obituaries in memory of the Russian writer were placed in all European and Soviet newspapers. He was buried in a Russian cemetery near Paris.

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

Brief biographies from early childhood

The future great writer was born in the distant 1870, on October 22. Voronezh became his homeland. The Bunin family was not rich: his father became an impoverished landowner, therefore, from early childhood, little Vanya experienced many material hardships.

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

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

A number of the beginning of Bunin's career

Ivan Bunin began writing his very first poems at the age of 17. It was then that his creative debut took place, which turned out to be very successful. It is not for nothing that printed publications published the works of the young author. But then their editors could hardly have guessed how stunning successes in the field of literature awaited Bunin in the future!

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

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

Important events from your personal life

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

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

Political views of the writer

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

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

Personal life tragedy

In 1905, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin suffered a grave grief: his son Nikolai died, whom Anna Tsakni gave birth to. This fact can be unambiguously attributed to the writer's personal life tragedy. However, as follows from his biography, Ivan Bunin stood firm, was able to endure the pain of loss and give, in spite of such a sad event, a lot of literary "pearls" to the whole world! What else is known about the life of the Russian classic?

Ivan Bunin: interesting facts from life

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

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

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

Now, few people know that in early childhood the writer Ivan Bunin was poisoned with bleached. Then his nanny saved him from certain death, who gave little Vanya a drink on time with milk.

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

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

These and other interesting facts characterize Bunin as an extraordinary personality, capable not only of realizing his talent in the field of literature, but also of taking an active part in many areas of activity.

Famous collections and works of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

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

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

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

Popular poems by Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

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

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

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

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize to Ivan Bunin was awarded for the novel The Life of Arseniev, written by him, which actually told about the life of the writer himself. Despite the fact that this book was published in 1930, in it Ivan Alekseevich tried to "pour out his soul" and his feelings about certain life situations.

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

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

Altogether, the Nobel Prize winners were entitled to 715,000 francs in cash. It would seem a very impressive amount. But it was quickly squandered by the writer Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, as he provided financial assistance to Russian emigrants, who peppered him with many different letters.

Death of a writer

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

Surely Bunin dreamed of living for a long time and one day dying in his native land, among his relatives and a large number of friends. But fate decreed a little differently, as a result of which the writer spent most of his life in exile. However, thanks to his unsurpassed creativity, he actually ensured immortality to his name. Many generations of people will remember the literary masterpieces written by Bunin. A creative person like him gains world fame and becomes a historical reflection of the era in which she worked!

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

The role of Bunin in world literature

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

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

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

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

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is a very extraordinary personality and in many ways turned the course of development of the entire literary world. Of course, many critics are skeptical about 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 related to the biography of Ivan Alekseevich himself, and his rich and multifaceted life has largely influenced both his immortal lines and all Russian literature in general.

Brief Biography of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

The future poet and writer, but for now just 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 a noble family of his family. Even in early childhood, the family decided to move from Voronezh to the Oryol province, where Ivan spent his early years, not 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 absolutely any pleasure - already in the fourth grade on vacation, he announced that he did not want to return to school, and he was much more pleasant to study at home. and more productive. He nevertheless returned to the gymnasium - perhaps this is due to the desire of his father-officer, perhaps a simple desire to gain knowledge and grow up in a team, but in 1886 Ivan nevertheless returned home, but did not quit his education - now his teacher, mentor and leader in the educational process, the elder brother Julius became, 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 then the poet realized that he needed to get 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 Oryol, 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, with whom he falls in love to the point of unconsciousness, together with her, he throws everything that was acquired by back-breaking labor, reread the opinion of his parents and those around him 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, as a result, 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.

Ivan Alekseevich was married for a rather short time to Anna Tsakni, with whom, unfortunately, his life did not work out at all - the only child did not live for several years, therefore the couple quickly disintegrated due to the grief experienced and the difference in views on the surrounding reality, but already in In 1906, his great and pure love, Vera Muromtseva, appeared in Bunin's life, and it was this romance that lasted for many years - at first the couple simply cohabited, without thinking about the official conclusion of marriage, but already in 1922 the marriage was nevertheless legalized.

A happy and measured family life did not at all prevent the poet and writer from traveling a lot, discovering new cities and countries, writing down their impressions on paper and sharing their emotions with their surroundings. The trips that took place during these years of the writer's life were largely reflected in his creative path - Bunin often created his works either on the road or at the moment of arriving at a new place - in any case, creativity and travel were inextricably linked and tightly.

Bunin. Confession

Bunin was nominated for a surprising multitude of various awards in the field of literature, due to which at a certain period he was even subjected to straightforward condemnation and harsh criticism from others - many began to notice arrogance and overestimated self-esteem behind the writer, however, in fact, Bunin's creativity and talent is quite corresponded to his ideas about himself. Bunin was even awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but the money he received was not spent on 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, exactly the same like he escaped the country.

Bunin and his wife were distinguished by their kindness and an open heart - it is known that during the war years they even hid fugitive Jews in their backyard, protecting them from repression and destruction. Today, there are even opinions that Bunin must be given high awards and titles for many of his actions related to humanity, kindness and humanism.

Almost all his adult life after the Revolution, Ivan Alekseevich spoke out rather sharply about the new government, thanks to which he ended up abroad - he could not tolerate everything that was happening in the country. Of course, after the war, his ardor cooled down a little, but, nevertheless, until the very last days, the poet 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, which are passed down from generation to generation by school textbooks and a variety of literary publications. The memory of Bunin lives on in the names of streets, crossroads, alleys and in every monument erected in memory of the great personality who created real changes in all Russian 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 also the entire world literature. It was he who made his constant 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, in his homeland for some reason he did not receive such wide recognition, even despite the fact that his works are quite actively studied in schools from the very junior grades. His works contain absolutely everything that a lover of an exquisite, beautiful syllable, an unusual play on words, bright and clean 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 moment of creating a particular work - his 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 make a faithful friend - a dog that will never betray, and succumb to reckless drunkenness, ruining himself without stopping.

Female images in Bunin's works are described especially vividly - each heroine of his works is drawn in the mind of the reader in such detail that it gives the impression of a personal acquaintance with a particular woman.

The main distinguishing feature of the entire work of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is the universality of his works. Representatives of various classes and interests can find something close and familiar, and his works will capture both experienced readers and those who, for the first time in their lives, took 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 rural simple life, native spaces and the surrounding nature. During the Revolution, the writer, naturally, described everything that happened in his beloved country - it was this that became the real legacy not only of Russian classical literature, but also of the entire Russian 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 with regard to love works - here the writer saw a 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 surrounding the writer himself

Of course, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin left a contribution of unimaginable proportions to Russian literature, precisely because his legacy is still alive today, and the number of his admirers never decreases, but, on the contrary, is actively progressing.

The work of Ivan Bunin (1870-1953)

  1. The beginning of Bunin's work
  2. Bunin's love lyrics
  3. Peasant lyrics by Bunin
  4. Analysis of the story "Antonovskie apples"
  5. Bunin and the revolution
  6. Analysis of the story "Village"
  7. Analysis of the story "Sukhodol"
  8. Analysis of the story "The gentleman from San Francisco"
  9. Analysis of the story "Dreams of Chang"
  10. Analysis of the story "Light Breathing"
  11. Analysis of the book "Cursed Days"
  12. Emigration of Bunin
  13. Bunin's foreign prose
  14. Analysis of the story "Sunstroke"
  15. Analysis of the collection of stories "Dark Alleys"
  16. Analysis of the story "Clean Monday"
  17. Analysis of the novel "The Life of Arseniev"
  18. Bunin's life in France
  19. Bunin and the Great Patriotic War
  20. The loneliness of Bunin in exile
  21. Death of Bunin
  1. The beginning of Bunin's work

The creative path of the outstanding Russian prose writer and poet of the late 19th - first half of the 20th century, the recognized classic of Russian literature and its first Nobel laureate I.A. the fate of Russia and its people, the most acute conflicts and contradictions of the time.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born on October 10 (22), 1870 in Voronezh, into an impoverished noble family. He spent his childhood on the Butyrki farm in the Yeletsky district of the Oryol province.

Communication with peasants, with his first educator, home teacher N. Romashkov, who instilled in the boy a love of fine literature, painting and music, life in the middle of nature gave the future writer inexhaustible material for creativity, determined the theme of many of his works.

Studying at the Yeletsk gymnasium, where Bunin entered in 1881, was interrupted due to material need and illness.

He was finishing his gymnasium course of sciences at home, in the Yelets village of Ozerki, under the guidance of his brother Julius, a man of excellent education and distinguished by democratic views.

In the fall of 1889, Bunin began to collaborate in the newspaper "Orlovsky Vestnik", then for some time he lived in Poltava, where, by his own admission, "he corresponded a lot in newspapers, studied hard, wrote ...".

A special place in the life of young Bunin is occupied by a deep feeling for Varvara Pashchenko, the daughter of the Yelets doctor, whom he met in the summer of 1889.

The story of his love for this woman, complex and painful, which ended in a complete break in 1894, the writer will tell later in the story "Lika", which constituted the final part of his autobiographical novel "The Life of Arseniev".

Bunin began his literary career as a poet. In poems written in adolescence, he imitated Pushkin, Lermontov, as well as the idol of the then youth, the poet Nadson. In 1891 the first book of poetry was published in Orel, in 1897 - the first collection of stories "To the End of the World", and in 1901 - again the collection of poems "Leaf Fall".

The predominant motives of Bunin's poetry of the 90s - early 900s are the rich world of native nature and human feelings. The landscape poems express the life philosophy of the author.

The motive of the frailty of human existence, which resounds in a number of the poet's poems, is balanced by the opposite motive - the affirmation of the eternity and incorruptibility of nature.

My spring will pass and this day will pass

But it's fun to wander around and know that everything goes away,

While the happiness of living forever will not die, -

he exclaims in the poem "Forest Road".

In Bunin's poems, unlike the decadents, there is no pessimism, disbelief in life, striving for "other worlds." They sound the joy of being, a sense of the beauty and life-giving power of nature and the surrounding world, the colors and colors of which the poet seeks to reflect and capture.

In the poem "Falling Leaves" (1900), dedicated to Gorky, Bunin brightly and poetically painted the autumn landscape, conveyed the beauty of Russian nature.

Bunin's descriptions of nature are not dead, frozen wax casts, but dynamically developing paintings filled with various smells, noises and colors. But nature attracts Bunin not only with a variety of shades of flowers and smells.

In the world around him, the poet draws creative strength and vigor, sees the source of life. In the poems "The Thaw" he wrote:

No, it's not the landscape that attracts me

I'm not trying to notice colors,

And what shines in these colors -

Love and joy of being.

The feeling of beauty and greatness of life is due to the religious attitude of the author in Bunin's poems. They express gratitude to the Creator of this living, complex and diverse world:

Thank you for everything, Lord!

You, after a day of anxiety and sorrow,

Give me the evening dawn

The vastness of the fields and the gentleness of the blue distance.

A person, according to Bunin, should be happy already that the Lord has given him the opportunity to see this imperishable beauty dissolved in God's world:

And flowers, and bumblebees, and grass, and ears,

And the azure, and the midday heat - The time will come -

The Lord of the prodigal son will ask:

"Have you been happy in earthly life?"

And I will forget everything - I will only remember these

Field paths between ears and grasses -

And I won't have time to answer from sweet tears,

Leaning to the merciful knees.

("Both flowers and bumblebees" ")

Bunin's poetry is deeply national. The image of the Motherland is captured in it through discreet but vivid pictures of nature. He lovingly describes the vastness of central Russia, the freedom of his native fields and forests, where everything is filled with light and warmth.

In the "satin shine" of the birch forest, among the flower and mushroom smells, observing how in late autumn sometimes the cranes stretch to the south, the poet with special force feels the aching love for the Motherland:

Native steppes. Poor villages -

My homeland: I returned to her,

Tired of the lonely wanderings

And realized the beauty in her sorrow

And happiness lies in sad beauty.

("In the steppe")

Through the feeling of bitterness about the troubles and hardships endured by his homeland, Bunin's poems sound filial love and gratitude for her, as well as a stern rebuke to those who are indifferent to her fate:

They mock you

They, oh motherland, reproach

You by your simplicity

A wretched look of black huts.

So son, calm and impudent,

Ashamed of his mother -

Tired, timid and sad

Among his city friends.

Looks with a smile of compassion

To the one who wandered hundreds of miles

And for him, by the day of the date,

She took care of the last penny.

("Homeland")

  1. Bunin's love lyrics

Bunin's poems about love are just as clear, transparent and specific. Bunin's love lyrics are small in quantitative terms. But she is distinguished by a healthy sensuality, restraint, vivid images of lyrical heroes and heroines, far from beautiful-hearted and excessive enthusiasm, avoiding arrogance, phrases, postures.

These are the poems "I went to her at midnight hour ...", "Song" ("I am a simple girl on a bastan"), "We met by chance at the corner ...", "Loneliness" and some others.

Nevertheless, Bunin's lyrics, despite the outward restraint, reflect the diversity and fullness of human feelings, a rich gamut of moods. Here is the bitterness of separation and unrequited love, and the experience of a suffering, lonely person.

The poetry of the early 20th century is generally characterized by extreme subjectivity and increased expressiveness. Suffice it to recall the lyrics of Blok, Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam, Mayakovsky and other poets.

In contrast to them, Bunin the poet, on the contrary, is characterized by artistic secrecy, restraint in the manifestation of feelings and in the form of their expression.

An excellent example of such restraint is the poem "Loneliness" (1903), which tells about the fate of a man abandoned by his beloved.

... I wanted to shout after:

"Come back, I have become akin to you!"

But for a woman, there is no past:

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

Well! I'll flood the fireplace, I'll drink ...

It would be nice to buy a dog!

In this poem, attention is drawn primarily to the amazing simplicity of artistic means, the complete absence of tropes.

Stylistically neutral, deliberately prosaic vocabulary emphasizes the everydayness, routine of the situation - an empty cold dacha, a rainy autumn evening.

Bunin uses only one paint here - gray. The syntactic and rhythmic patterns are also simple. A clear alternation of three-syllable sizes, a calm narrative intonation, a lack of expression and inversion create an even and seemingly indifferent tone of the whole poem.

However, a whole range of techniques (sharpness, repetition of the word "one", the use of impersonal verb forms "I am dark", "I wanted to shout", "it would be nice to buy a dog").

Bunin emphasizes the acute mental pent-up pain of a person going through a drama. Thus, the main content of the poem went into subtext, hidden behind a deliberately calm tone.

The range of Bunin's lyrics is quite wide. He turns in his poems to Russian history ("Svyatogor", "Prince Vseslav", "Michael", "Medieval Archangel"), recreates the nature and life of other countries, mainly the East ("Ormuzd", "Aeschylus", "Jericho" , "Flight to Egypt", "Ceylon", "Off the coast of Asia Minor" and many others).

These lyrics are fundamentally philosophical. Peering into the human past, Bunin seeks to reflect the eternal laws of being.

Bunin did not abandon his poetic experiences all his life, but a wide circle of readers knows him “first of all as a prose writer, although the poetic“ vein ”definitely manifested itself in his prose works, where there is a lot of lyricism, emotionality, undoubtedly brought into them by the writer's poetic talent.

Already in his early prose, Bunin reflected his deep meditations on the meaning of life, on the fate of his native country. His stories of the 90s clearly indicate that the young prose writer was sensitive to many of the most important aspects of the then reality.

  1. Peasant lyrics by Bunin

The main themes of Bunin's early stories are the portrayal of the Russian peasantry and the ruining small-country nobility. There is a very close connection between these themes, due to the author's perception of the world.

He painted sad pictures of the resettlement of peasant families in the stories "On the Other Side" (1893) and "To the End of the World" (1894), the joyless life of peasant children is reflected in the stories "Tanka" (1892), "News from the Motherland". Peasant life is impoverished, but the fate of the local nobility ("New Road", "Pines") is no less hopeless.

All of them - both peasants and nobles - are threatened with death by the arrival of a new master of life in the village: a boorish, uncultured bourgeois who does not know pity for the weak of this world.

Not accepting either the methods or the consequences of such a capitalization of the Russian countryside, Bunin is looking for an ideal in that way of life when, according to the writer, there was a strong blood connection between a peasant and a landowner.

The desolation and degeneration of the noble nests arouses in Bunin a feeling of deepest sadness about the departed harmony of patriarchal life, the gradual disappearance of an entire estate that created the greatest national culture.

  1. Analysis of the story "Antonovskie apples"

The epitaph for a receding old village sounds especially vivid in a lyrical story "Antonovskie apples"(1900). This story is one of the artist's remarkable works of art.

After reading it, Gorky wrote to Bunin: “And thank you very much for Yabloki. This is good. Here Ivan Bunin, like a young God, sang. Beautiful, juicy, sincere. "

In "Antonovskiye Apples" the subtlest perception of nature and the ability to convey it in clear visual images are striking.

No matter how idealizes Bunin's old nobility life, this is not the most important thing in his story for the modern reader. The feeling of homeland, born of the feeling of its unique, peculiar, slightly sad autumn nature, invariably arises when you read Antonov Apples.

Such are the episodes of Antonov's apple picking, threshing, and especially masterfully written hunting scenes. These pictures are organically combined with the autumn landscape, in the descriptions of which Bunin's frightening signs of a new reality penetrate in the form of telegraph poles, which "alone constitute a contrast to everything that surrounded the old-world aunt's nest."

For the writer, the arrival of the predatory ruler of life is a cruel, irresistible force, bringing with it the death of the old, noble way of life. In the face of such a danger, this way of life becomes even more expensive for the writer, his critical attitude to the dark sides of the past is weakening, the idea of ​​the unity of peasants and landowners is strengthened, whose fates are equally, in Bunin's opinion, now under attack.

Bunin wrote a lot during these years about old people ("Kastryuk", "Meliton", etc.), and this interest in old age, the decline of human existence, is explained by the writer's increased attention to the eternal problems of life and death, which did not cease to excite him until the end of his days ...

Already in the early work of Bunin, his extraordinary psychological skill, the ability to build a plot and composition, is manifested, his own special way of portraying the world and spiritual movements of a person is formed.

The writer, as a rule, avoids sharp plot moves, the action in his stories develops smoothly, calmly, even slowly. But this slowness is only external. As in life itself, passions boil in Bunin's works, different characters collide, conflicts are tied up.

A master of extremely detailed vision of the world, Bunin makes the reader perceive the environment with literally all the senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch, giving free rein to a whole stream of associations.

"A slight chill of dawn" smells like "sweet, forest, flowers, herbs", the city on a frosty day "all creaks and squeals from the steps of passers-by, from the runners of the peasant sledge", the pond glistens "hot and boring", the flowers smell with "feminine luxury ", the leaves" babble in a quiet pouring rain outside the open windows ", etc.

Bunin's text is full of complex associations and figurative connections. An especially important role in this method of depiction is played by an artistic detail that reveals the author's view of the world, the psychological state of the character, the beauty and complexity of the world.

  1. Bunin and the revolution

Bunin did not accept the 1905 revolution. She horrified the writer with her cruelty both from one side and the other, the anarchic willfulness of some part of the peasants, the manifestation of savagery and bloody anger.

The myth of the unity of peasants and landowners was shaken, the idea of ​​the peasant as a meek, humble creature collapsed.

All this sharpened Bunin's interest in Russian history and in the problems of the Russian national character, in which Bunin now saw the complexity and "variegation", the interweaving of positive and negative features.

In 1919, after the October Revolution, he wrote in his diary: “There are two types among the people. In one, Russia predominates, "in the other - Chud, Merya. But in both there is a terrible change in moods, looks, "precariousness", as they used to say in the old days.

The people themselves said to themselves: "From us, as from a tree, - both a club and an icon," - depending on the circumstances, on who works this tree: Sergius of Radonezh or Emelyan Pugachev. "

It is these "two types among the people" that Bunin will deeply explore in the 1910s in his works "Village", "Sukhodol", "Ancient Man", "Night Talk", "Merry Dvor", "Ignat", "Zakhar Vorobyov "," John the Rydalets "," I keep silent "," Prince in princes "," Skinny grass "and many others, in which, according to the author, he was occupied with" the soul of a Russian person in a deep sense, the image of the traits of the psyche of a Slav " ...

  1. Analysis of the story "Village"

The first in a series of such works was the story "Village" (1910), which caused a flurry of controversy and readers and critics.

Gorky very accurately assessed the meaning and significance of Bunin's work: "The village," he wrote, "was an impetus that made the broken and shattered Russian society seriously think not about the peasant, not about the people, but about the strict question - to be or not to be Russia ?

We have not yet thought of Russia as a whole, this work has shown us the need to think about the whole country, to think historically ... So deeply, so historically, no one took the village ... ”. Bunin's "village" is a dramatic reflection on Russia, its past, present and future, on the properties of a historically formed national character.

The new approach of the writer to the traditional peasant theme for him determined his search for new means of artistic expression. The heartfelt lyrics, characteristic of Bunin's previous stories about the peasantry, were replaced in Derevnya by a stern, sober narration, succinct, laconic, but at the same time economically saturated with the depiction of everyday trifles of village life.

The author's desire to reflect in the story a large period in the life of the village of Durnovka, symbolizing, in Bunin's view, the Russian village in general, and more broadly, the whole of Russia (“Yes, she’s the whole village,” says one of the characters in the story about Russia), demanded of him and new principles of building a work.

In the center of the narrative is the depiction of the life of the Krasov brothers: the landowner and innkeeper Tikhon, who had escaped from the poor, and the wandering self-taught poet Kuzma.

Through the eyes of these people, all the main events of the time are shown: the Russian-Japanese war, the 1905 revolution, the post-revolutionary period. There is no single continuously developing plot in the work; the story is a series of pictures of village and, in part, county life, which the Krasovs have been observing for many years.

The main plot line of the story is the life story of the Krasov brothers, grandsons of a serf. It is interrupted by many inserted short stories and episodes telling about the life of Durnovka.

The image of Kuzma Krasov plays an important role in understanding the ideological meaning of the work. He is not only one of the main characters of the work, but also the main exponent of the author's point of view.

Kuzma is a loser. He "dreamed all his life to study and write," but his fate was such that he always had to do an alien and unpleasant business. In his youth, he was a peddler merchant, traveled around Russia, wrote articles to newspapers, then served in a candle shop, was a clerk and, in the end, moved in with his brother, with whom he had once had a violent quarrel.

Heavy oppression falls on the soul of Kuzma and the consciousness of a life spent aimlessly, and the bleak pictures of the surrounding reality. All this prompts him to reflect on who is guilty of such a structure of life.

A look at the Russian people and its historical past was first expressed in the story by Kuzma's teacher, the bourgeoisie Balashkin. Balashkin utters words that bring to mind Herzen's famous “martyrolog”: “Merciful God! Pushkin was killed, Lermontov was killed, Pisarev was drowned ... Ryleyev was strangled, Polezhaev became a soldier, Shevchenko was caulked for 10 years ... Dostoevsky was dragged to execution, Gogol was mad ... And Koltsov, Reshetnikov, Nikitin, Pomyalovsky, Levitov? "

The list of the best representatives of the nation, who died untimely, was selected extremely convincingly, and the reader has every reason to share Balashkin's indignation against this state of affairs.

But the end of the tirade unexpectedly rethinks everything said: "Oh, is there still such a country in the world, such a people, be it cursed three times?" Kuzma ardently objects to this: “Such a people! The greatest people, and not “such”, let me tell you ... After all, these writers are the children of this very people ”.

But Balashkin in his own way defines the concept of "people", placing next to Platon Karataev and Razuvaev with Kolupaev, and Saltychikha, and Karamazov with Oblomov, and Khlestakov, and Nozdrev. Subsequently, editing the story for a foreign publication, Bunin introduced the following characteristic words into the first remark of Balashkin: “You say - the government is to blame? Why, he is a servant and a gentleman, and a hat for Senka. " This view of the people later becomes defining for Kuzma as well. The author himself is inclined to share it.

The image of Tikhon Krasov is of no less importance in the story. The son of a serf peasant, Tikhon became rich in trade, opened a tavern, and then bought the estate Durnovka from an impoverished descendant of his former masters.

From the former beggar, the orphan turned out to be the owner, the thunderstorm of the whole district. Strict, tough in dealing with servants and peasants, he stubbornly goes to his goal, gets rich. "Lut! On the other hand, he is also the owner, ”the Durnovites say about Tikhon. The feeling of the owner is indeed the main thing in Tikhon.

Any slacker evokes in him an acute feeling of hostility: "I wish this slacker to be a worker!" However, the all-consuming passion of accumulation overshadowed the diversity of life from him, distorted his feelings.

“We live, we don’t shake it, if you get caught, we’ll turn it back,” is his favorite saying, which has become a guide to action. But over time, he begins to feel the futility of his efforts and his entire life.

With sorrow in his soul, he confesses to Kuzma: “My life is gone, brother! I had, you know, a dumb cook, I gave her, the fool, a foreign handkerchief, and she took it and pulled it inside out ... Do you understand? From stupidity and from greed. It’s a pity to wear it on weekdays - the holiday, they say, I’ll wait, - but the holiday has come - only rags were left ... So here I am ... with my life ”.

This worn-out topsy-turvy headscarf is a symbol of the aimlessly lived life of not only Tikhon. It extends to his brother, the loser Kuzma, and to the dark existence of many of the peasants depicted in the story.

We will find here many gloomy pages, which show the darkness, downtroddenness, ignorance of the peasants. Such is the Gray, perhaps the poorest man in the village, who never got out of poverty, having lived his entire life in a small chicken hut, rather like a den.

Such are the episodic, but vivid images of the guards from the manor house, suffering from diseases from eternal malnutrition and a miserable existence.

But who is to blame for this? This is a question over which both the author and his central characters are struggling. “From whom to collect something? - asks Kuzma. - Unhappy people, first of all - unhappy! .. ". But this statement is immediately refuted by the opposite train of thought: “Yes, but who is to blame for this? The people themselves! "

Tikhon Krasov reproaches his brother for contradictions: “Well, you already do not know the measure of anything. You gouge yourself: unfortunate people, unfortunate people! And now - an animal. " Kuzma is really confused: “I don’t understand anything: either unfortunate or not ...”, but nevertheless inclined (as him and the author) to the conclusion about “guilt”.

Take the same Gray again. Having three tithes of land, he cannot and does not want to cultivate it and prefers to live in poverty, indulging in idle thoughts that, perhaps, wealth itself will float into his hands.

Bunin especially does not accept the hopes of the Durnovites at the mercy of the revolution, which, according to them, will give them the opportunity "not to plow, not to mow - the girls will wear little girls."

Who, in the Bunin understanding, is the "driving force of the revolution"? One of them is the son of the peasant Gray, the rebel Denisk. This young slacker was beckoned to the city. But he did not take root there, and after a while he returns back to his beggar father with an empty knapsack and his pockets full of books.

But what kind of books are these: the songbook "Marusya", "The Wife-Depraved", "An Innocent Girl in Chains of Violence" and next to them - "The Role of the Proletariat (" Proletariat ", as Deniska says) in Russia.

Extremely ridiculous and caricatured are Deniska's own written exercises, which he leaves to Tikhon, prompting him to reply: "Well, you fool, forgive me, Lord." Deniska is not only stupid, but also cruel.

He beats his father with "mortal combat" only for the fact that he tore off the ceiling in cigarettes, which Deniska pasted over with newspapers and pictures.

However, there are also bright folk characters in the story, drawn by the author with obvious sympathy. For example, the image of the peasant woman Odnodvorka is not devoid of attractiveness.

In the scene when Kuzma sees Odnodvorka at night, taking away the shields that she uses for fuel from the railway, this dexterous and arguing peasant woman is somewhat reminiscent of the brave and freedom-loving women from the people in Gorky's early stories.

With deep sympathy and sympathy, Bunin also drew the image of the widow of the Bottle, who comes to Kuzma to dictate letters to her forgotten son Misha. The writer achieves considerable strength and expressiveness in his portrayal of the peasant Ivanushka.

This deep old man, firmly resolved not to succumb to death and retreating before her only when he learns that a coffin has already been prepared for him, who is seriously ill, is a truly epic figure.

The depiction of these characters clearly shows the sympathy of both the author himself and one of the main characters of the story - Kuzma Krasov.

But these sympathies are especially fully expressed in relation to the character, who runs through the entire story and is of primary interest for understanding the author's positive ideals.

This is a peasant woman nicknamed Young. She stands out from the mass of Durnov women, first of all, for her beauty, which Bunin speaks of more than once in the story. But the beauty of the Young appears under the pen of the author as a beauty trampled upon.

The young woman, we learn, “daily and nightly” is beaten by Rodka's husband, Tikhon Krasov beats her, she is tied naked to a tree, she is finally given in marriage to the ugly Deniska. The image of the Young is an image-symbol.

Young for Bunin is the embodiment of desecrated beauty, kindness, diligence, she is a generalization of the bright and kind beginnings of peasant life, a symbol of young Russia (this generalization is already reflected in her very nickname - Young). Bunin's “village” is also a warning story. It is no coincidence that it ends with the wedding of Deniska and Molodoy. In Bunin's image, this wedding resembles a funeral.

The ending of the story is disheartening: a blizzard is raging on the street, and the wedding troika is flying into the unknown where, "into the dark dregs." The image of a blizzard is also a symbol that signifies the end of that bright Russia, which is personified by Young.

Thus, with a number of symbolic episodes and paintings, Bunin warns of what might happen to Russia if it "becomes engaged" to rebels like Deniska the Gray.

Later, Bunin wrote to his friend, the artist P. Nilus, that he predicted the tragedy that happened to Russia as a result of the February and October coups in his story "Village".

The story "Village" was followed by a series of stories by Bunin about the peasantry, continuing and developing ideas about the "diversity" of the national character, depicting "the Russian soul, its peculiar interweaving."

With sympathy, the writer draws people who are kind and generous in heart, hardworking and caring. The bearers of anarchic, rebellious principles, self-willed, cruel, lazy people evoke in him constant antipathy.

Sometimes the plots of Bunin's works are based on the collision of these two principles: good and evil. One of the most characteristic works in this regard is the story "The Merry Court", where two characters are depicted in contrast: the humble, hardworking peasant Anisya, who lived a bitter life, and her spiritually callous, unlucky son, "empty bolt" Yegor.

Forbearance, kindness, on the one hand, and cruelty, anarchism, unpredictability, self-will, on the other, are two principles, two categorical imperatives of the Russian national character, as Bunin understood it.

Positive folk characters are most important in Bunin's art. Along with the depiction of stupid obedience (the stories "Lichard", "I keep silent" and others) in the works of 1911-1913 there are characters who have a different kind of humility, Christian.

These people are meek, long-suffering and at the same time attractive for their kindness; warmth, beauty of the inner appearance. In a nondescript, belittled, at first glance, man is found courage, moral staunchness ("Cricket").

The deep inertia is opposed by deep spirituality, intelligence, outstanding creative talent ("Lirnik Rodion", "Good Bloods"). Significant in this regard is the story "Zakhar Vorobyov" (1912), about which the author informed the writer ND Teleshov: "He will protect me."

His hero is a peasant hero, the owner of huge, but undetected opportunities: thirst for achievement, longing for the extraordinary, gigantic strength, spiritual nobility.

Bunin frankly admires his character: his beautiful, soulful face, open eyes, article, strength, kindness. But this hero, a man of a noble soul, burning with the desire to do something good to people, never finds use for his powers and dies absurdly and senselessly, having drunk a quarter of vodka for a bet.

True, Zakhar is unique among the "small people". “There is another like me,” he said at times, “but that one is far away, near Zadonsk.” But "in the old man, they say, there were many like him, but this breed is translated."

In the image of Zakhar, inexhaustible forces are symbolized that are lurking in the people, but have not yet really come into the right movement. The controversy about Russia, waged by Zakhar and his occasional drinking companions, is noteworthy.

Zakhara was sunk in this dispute with the words "we have a very large oak ...", in which he sensed a wonderful hint of the possibilities of Russia.

One of the most remarkable stories in this regard by Bunin is "The Skinny Grass" (1913). The spiritual world of the farm laborer Averky is revealed here with heartfelt humanity.

Having become seriously ill after 30 years of hard work, Averky gradually dies, but perceives death as a person who fulfilled his mission in this world, having lived his life honestly and with dignity.

The writer shows in detail the parting of his character with life, his detachment from everything earthly and vain and his ascent to the great and bright truth of Christ. Averky is dear to Bunin in that, having lived a long life, he did not become a slave to money-grubbing and profit, did not become embittered, was not tempted by self-interest.

By his honesty, gentleness, kindness, Averky is closest to Bunin's idea of ​​the type of Russian common man, which was especially widespread in Ancient Russia.

It is no coincidence that Bunin chose the words of Ivan Aksakov “Ancient Russia has not yet passed” as an epigraph to the collection “John the Weptalets”, which includes the story “The Thin Grass”. But both this story and the entire collection are directed not to the past, but to the present.

  1. Analysis of the story "Sukhodol"

In 1911, the writer creates one of his largest works of the pre-October period - the story "Sukhodol", which Gorky called a "requiem" for the noble class, a memorial service, which Bunin "despite his anger, contempt for the powerless deceased, served nevertheless with a great heart pity for them. "

Like Antonov Apples, the Sukhodol story is written in the first person. In terms of his spiritual appearance, the Bunin narrator from "Sukhodol" is still the same person, yearning for the former greatness of the landowners' estates.

But unlike "Antonov apples" Bunin in "Sukhodol" not only regrets the dying nests of the nobility, but also recreates Sukhodol contrasts, the lack of rights of courtyards and tyranny of landowners.

In the center of the narration is the history of the Khrushchev noble family, the history of its gradual degradation.

In Sukhodol, Bunin writes, terrible things were happening. The old master Pyotr Kirillych was killed by his illegitimate son Geraska, his daughter Antonina went crazy with unrequited love.

The last representatives of the Khrushchev family also bear the stamp of degeneration. They are portrayed as people who have lost not only ties with the outside world, but also family ties.

Pictures of Sukhodolsk life are given in the story through the perception of the former serf Natalya. Poisoned by the philosophy of obedience and humility, Natalya does not rise not only to protest against the master's arbitrariness, but even to a simple condemnation of the actions of her masters. But her whole fate is an indictment against the owners of Sukhodol.

When she was still a child, her father was consigned to the soldier for offenses, and her mother died of a broken heart, fearing punishment for the fact that the turkeys she grazed were interrupted by hail. Left an orphan, Natalya becomes a toy in the hands of the masters.

As a girl, she fell in love with the young owner Pyotr Petrovich for the rest of her life. But not only did he whip her with an arapnik when she “once fell under his feet,” but he also sent her in disgrace to a remote village, accusing him of stealing a mirror.

In terms of its artistic features, "Sukhodol" is more than any other work of Bunin the prose writer of these years close to Bunin's poetry. The harsh and harsh manner of storytelling, characteristic of The Village, is replaced in Sukhodol by the soft lyrics of memoirs.

To a large extent, the lyrical sound of the work is facilitated by the fact that the narration includes the voice of the author, who comments and supplements Natalia's stories with his observations.

The years 1914-1916 are an extremely important stage in Bunin's creative evolution. This is the time for the finalization of his style and worldview.

His prose becomes capacious and refined in its artistic perfection, philosophical in meaning and significance. The man in Bunin's stories of these years, without losing his everyday connections with the world around him, is simultaneously included by the writer in the Cosmos.

Bunin would later clearly formulate this philosophical idea in his book "The Liberation of Tolstoy": "A person should be aware of his personality in himself not as something opposite to the world, but as a small part of the world, huge and eternally living."

This circumstance, according to Bunin, puts a person in a difficult situation: on the one hand, he is a part of infinite and eternal life, on the other, human happiness is fragile and illusory in front of incomprehensible cosmic forces.

This dialectical unity of two opposite aspects of the perception of the world determines the main content of Bunin's work of this time, which narrates both the greatest happiness to live and the eternal tragedy of being.

Bunin significantly expands the range of his creativity, referring to the image of countries and peoples far from Russia. These works were the result of numerous travels of the writer to the countries of the Middle East.

But it was not the tempting exotic that attracted the writer. Depicting the nature and life of distant lands with great skill, Bunin is primarily interested in the problem of "man and the world." In the 1909 poem "Dog" he confessed:

I am human: like God I am doomed

To know the longing of all countries and all times.

These sentiments were clearly expressed in Bunin's masterpieces of the 1910s - the stories "The Brothers" (1914) and "The Lord from San Francisco" (1915), united by a common concept of life.

The author formulated the idea of ​​these works with the epigraph to "To the gentleman from San Francisco": "Woe to you, Babylon, the mighty city" - these terrible words of the Apocalypse persistently sounded in my soul when I wrote "Brothers" and conceived "Lord from San Francisco," a few months before the war, "the writer confessed.

The acute sense of the catastrophic nature of the world, cosmic evil, which possessed Bunin during these years, reaches its apogee here. But at the same time, the writer's rejection of social evil deepens.

Bunin subordinates the entire figurative system of works, which is characterized by a pronounced two-planarity, to the dialectical depiction of these two evils prevailing over a person.

The landscape in the stories is not only a background and a place of action. It is at the same time a concrete embodiment of that cosmic life to which human destiny is fatally subordinated.

The symbols of cosmic life in them are the images of the forest, in which "everything chased each other, rejoiced in a short joy, destroying each other," and especially the ocean - "bottomless depth", "shaky abyss", "about which the Bible speaks so terribly."

The writer simultaneously sees the source of disorder, catastrophe, and fragility of life in social evil, which is personified in his stories in the images of an English colonialist and an American businessman.

The tragedy of the situation depicted in the story "Brothers" is already emphasized by the epigraph to this work, taken from the Buddhist book "Sutta Nipata":

Look at the brothers beating each other.

I want to talk about sadness.

He also determines the tonality of the story, inlaid with intricate oriental ligature. The story of one day in the life of a young Ceylon rickshaw who committed suicide because rich Europeans took his beloved away from him sounds in the story "The Brothers" as a sentence of harshness and selfishness.

With hostility, the writer draws one of them, an Englishman, who is characterized by ruthlessness, cold cruelty. “In Africa,” he cynically admits, “I killed people, in India, which was being robbed by England, which means, partly by me, I saw thousands of people dying of hunger, in Japan I bought girls as monthly wives, in China I beat defenseless ape-like old men with a stick. , in Java and in Ceylon he drove rickshaws to the death rattle ... ".

Bitter sarcasm is heard in the title of the story, in which one “brother” at the top of the social ladder drives and pushes to death the other, huddled at its foot, to commit suicide.

But the life of an English colonizer, being deprived of a high inner goal, appears in the work as meaningless, and therefore also fatally doomed. And only at the end of his life, an epiphany comes to him.

In a painfully agitated state, he denounces the spiritual emptiness of his civilized contemporaries, speaks of the pitiful impotence of the human person in that world, “where everyone is either a murderer or a murdered one”: “We raise our Personality above heaven, we want to concentrate the whole world in they didn’t talk about the coming world brotherhood and equality, - and only in the ocean ... you feel how a person melts, dissolves in this blackness, sounds, smells, in this terrible All-One, only there we understand, in a weak measure, what this personality of ours means ” ...

In this monologue Bunin undoubtedly invested his perception of modern life, torn apart by tragic contradictions. It is in this sense that the words of the writer's wife VN Muromtseva-Bunina should be understood: "What he (Bunin - A. Ch.) Felt by the Englishman in" Brothers "is autobiographical."

The impending doom of the world, in which "for centuries the winner has a strong heel on the throat of the vanquished," in which the moral laws of human brotherhood are ruthlessly trampled upon, symbolically foreshadows in the finale of the story is the ancient oriental legend about a raven who greedily pounced on the carcass of a dead elephant and died, being carried together with her far out to sea.

  1. Analysis of the story "The gentleman from San Francisco"

The writer's humanistic thought about the depravity and sinfulness of modern civilization is even more sharply expressed in the story "The Lord from San Francisco".

The poetics of the title of the work is already remarkable. The hero of the story is not a human being, but a “master”. But he's a gentleman from San Francisco. With the exact designation of the character's nationality, Bunin expressed his attitude towards American businessmen, who were already for him a synonym for anti-humanism and lack of spirituality.

The Lord of San Francisco is a parable about life and death. And at the same time, the story of who, even while living, was already spiritually dead.

The hero of the story is deliberately not endowed with a name by the author. There is nothing personal, spiritual in this person, who devoted his whole life to augmenting his condition and turned by the age of fifty-eight into a kind of golden idol: “Dry, short, improperly cut, but tightly sewn ... His large teeth glittered with gold fillings, his old ivory was strong bald head".

Deprived of any human feelings, the American businessman himself is alien to everything around him. Even the nature of Italy, where he goes to rest and enjoy the "love of young Neapolitan women - even if not entirely disinterested", greets him coldly and unfriendly.

Everything that surrounds him is deathly and disastrous, to everything he brings death and decay. In an effort to give a particular case a great social generalization, to show the power of gold that depersonalizes a person, the writer deprives his character of individual characteristics, turning him into a symbol of lack of spirituality, bargaining and practicality.

Confident in the correct choice of life's path, a gentleman from San Francisco, who has never been visited by the thought of death, suddenly dies in an expensive Capri hotel.

This clearly demonstrates the collapse of his ideals and principles. The strength and power of the dollar, which the American worshiped all his life and which he turned into an end in itself, turned out to be ghostly in the face of death.

The ship itself is also symbolic, on which the businessman went to have fun in Italy and which carries him, already dead, in a soda box, back to the New World.

A steamer sailing among the endless ocean is a micro-model of the world where everything is built on corruption and falsehood (which is, for example, a beautiful young couple hired to portray lovers), where ordinary working people languish from hard work and humiliation and spend time in luxury and fun the mighty of this world: “... in mortal anguish the siren stifled by the fog was groaning, the watchmen on their watchtower were freezing from the cold and pranced from the unbearable tension of attention, the gloomy and sultry depths of the underworld, its last, ninth circle was like the underwater womb of a steamer ... and here, in the bar , carelessly threw their feet on the arms of the chairs, sipped cognac and liqueurs, swam in waves of spicy smoke, in the dance hall everything shone and poured out light, warmth and joy, couples were spinning in waltzes, then curving into tango - and the music persistently, in some then she prayed to sweetly shameless sorrow all about one thing, all about the same ... ”.

In this capacious and meaningful period, the author's attitude to the life of those who inhabit this Noah's ark is perfectly conveyed.

The plastic clarity of the depicted, the variety of colors and visual impressions - this is what is constantly inherent in the artistic style of Bunin, but in the named stories it acquires special expressiveness.

Particularly great in "The Lord from San Francisco" is the role of detail, in which general laws shine through through the particular, concrete, everyday life, and contains a great generalization.

Thus, the scene of a gentleman from San Francisco changing clothes for dinner is very specific and at the same time has the character of a symbolic foreshadowing.

The writer paints in detail how the hero of the story cramps himself into a suit that constrains his "strong senile body", buttons up the "tight collar that squeezed his throat", painfully catches the cufflink, "firmly biting the flabby skin in the depression under the Adam's apple."

In a few minutes the master will die of suffocation. The costume in which the character is dressed is an ominous attribute of a false existence, just like the ship "Atlantis", like this whole "civilized world", the imaginary values ​​of which the writer does not accept.

The story "Master from San Francisco" ends with the same picture with which it began: the gigantic "Atlantis" makes its return journey across the ocean of cosmic life. But this circular composition does not mean that the writer agrees with the idea of ​​the eternal and unchanging cycle of history.

With a whole system of images and symbols, Bunin asserts just the opposite - the inevitable death of the world, mired in selfishness, venality and lack of spirituality. This is evidenced by the epigraph to the story, drawing a parallel between modern life and the sad outcome of ancient Babylon, and the name of the ship.

Giving the ship the symbolic name "Atlantis", the author guided the reader towards a direct comparison of the steamer - this world in miniature - with the ancient continent, which disappeared without a trace in the abyss of waters. This picture is completed by the image of the Devil, who watches from the rocks of Gibraltar for the ship leaving into the night: Satan "rules the ball" on the ship of human life.

The story "Master from San Francisco" was written during the First World War. And he quite clearly characterizes the mood of the writer of this time.

The war forced Bunin to look even more closely into the depths of human nature, into a thousand-year history marked by despotism, violence, cruelty. On September 15, 1915, Bunin wrote to P. Nilus: “I don’t remember such stupidity and mental depression in which I have been for a long time ...

War torments and torments and worries. And much more, too. " Actually, Bunin has almost no works about the First World War, except for the stories "The Last Spring" and "The Last Autumn", where this topic finds some coverage.

Bunin wrote not so much about the war as, in the words of Mayakovsky, “wrote about the war,” exposing the tragedy and even catastrophic nature of life in his pre-revolutionary work.

  1. Analysis of the story "Dreams of Chang"

Bunin's story of 1916 is also characteristic in this regard. Chang's Dreams. Chang the dog was chosen by the writer as the central character not at all out of a desire to evoke kind and tender feelings for animals, which was usually guided by realist writers of the 19th century.

Bunin from the first lines of his work translates the story into a plan of philosophical reflections on the secrets of life, on the meaning of earthly existence.

And although the author accurately indicates the place of action - Odessa, he describes in detail the attic in which Chang lives with his owner - a drunken retired captain, on an equal footing with these paintings, memories, Chang's dreams, are included in the story, giving the work a philosophical aspect.

The contrast between the pictures of Chang's past happy life with his owner and their present miserable 'vegetation' is a concrete expression of the dispute between two life truths, the existence of which we learn about at the beginning of the story.

“There were once two truths in the world, constantly replacing each other,” writes Bunin, “the first is that life is unspeakably beautiful, and the other is that life is conceivable only for madmen. Now the captain claims that there is, was and forever will be only one truth, the last ... ". What is this truth?

The captain tells his friend the artist about her: “My friend, I have seen the whole globe - life is like that everywhere! All this is a lie and nonsense, which is how people seem to live: they have no God, no conscience, no rational purpose of existence, no love, no friendship, no honesty - there is not even simple pity.

Life is a boring winter day in a dirty pub, no more ... ”. Chang is essentially leaning towards the captain's conclusions.

At the end of the story, a drunken captain dies, an orphaned Chang gets to a new owner - an artist. But his thoughts are directed to the last Master - God.

“There should be only one truth in this world, - the third, - the author writes, - and what it is - the last one knows about it. The owner, to whom Chang must return soon. " This conclusion concludes the story.

He leaves no hope for the possibility of reorganizing earthly life in accordance with the laws of the first, bright truth and trusts in the third, higher, unearthly truth.

The whole story is permeated with a sense of the tragedy of life. The sudden change in the life of the captain, which led to his death, was due to the betrayal of his wife, whom he dearly loved.

But the wife, in essence, is not to blame, she is not even bad at all, on the contrary, she is beautiful, the whole point is that it is so predetermined by fate, and you cannot get away from this.

One of the most controversial issues in Bunin studies is the question of the positive aspirations of the writer in the pre-revolutionary years. What does Bunin oppose - and does he contrast - with the universal tragedy of being, the catastrophic nature of life?

Bunin's concept of life finds expression in the formula about two truths from "Chang's Dreams": "life is unspeakably beautiful" and at the same time "life is conceivable only for madmen."

This unity of opposites - a bright and fatally gloomy view of the world - coexist in many of Bunin's works of the 10s, defining a kind of "tragic major" of their ideological content.

Condemning the inhumanity of the spiritless egoistic world, Bunin opposes it with the morality of ordinary people who live a difficult, but morally healthy, working life. Such is the old rickshaw man from the story "Brothers", "moved by love not for himself, but for his family, for his son he wanted the happiness that was not destined, was not given to him himself."

The gloomy coloring of the narrative in the story "Master from San Francisco" gives way to the enlightened one when it comes to the common people of Italy:

about the old boatman Lorenzo, "a carefree reveler and handsome" famous throughout Italy, about the corridor of the Capri hotel Luigi and especially about two Abruzzian highlanders who give "humbly joyful praises to the Virgin Mary": "they walked - and the whole country, joyful, beautiful , sunny, stretched over them. "

And in the character of an ordinary Russian person, Bunin persistently seeks a positive beginning in these years, without departing from the image of his "variegation". On the one hand, with the merciless sobriety of a realist, he continues to show the "dimness of village life."

On the other hand, it depicts the healthy that makes its way in the Russian peasant through the thickness of ignorance and darkness. In the story "A Spring Evening" (1915), an ignorant and intoxicated man kills an old beggar for money.

And this is an act of despair of a person, when "even die of hunger." Having committed a crime, he realizes the horror of what he had done and throws an amulet with money.

The poetic image of a young peasant girl Parasha, whose romantic love was rudely trampled by the predatory and cruel tradesman Nikanor, is created by Bunin in his story "On the road"(1913).

The researchers are right when they emphasize the poetic, folklore basis of the image of Parasha, who personifies the bright sides of the Russian folk character.

A large role in identifying life-affirming principles of life belongs to nature in Bunin's stories. She is a moral catalyst for bright, optimistic traits of life.

In the story "Master from San Francisco," nature is renewed and cleansed after the death of an American. When the ship with the body of a rich Yankee left Capri, "on the island, the author emphasizes, peace and quiet reigned."

Finally, the pessimistic forecast for the future is overcome in the writer's stories by the apotheosis of love.

Bunin perceived the world in the indissoluble unity of its contrasts, in its dialectical complexity and inconsistency. Life is both happiness and tragedy.

The highest, mysterious and sublime manifestation of this life is love for Bunin. But Bunin's love is passion, and in this passion, which is the peak manifestation of life, a person burns out. In torment, the writer claims, there is bliss, and happiness is so piercing that it is akin to suffering.

  1. Analysis of the story "Light Breathing"

The Bunin novella of 1916 is indicative in this regard. "Easy breath". This is a story full of lofty lyricism about how the flourishing life of a young heroine - schoolgirl Olya Meshcherskaya - was unexpectedly interrupted by a terrible and, at first glance, inexplicable catastrophe.

But this surprise - the death of the heroine - had its own fatal pattern. In order to reveal and reveal the philosophical basis of tragedy, his understanding of love as the greatest happiness and at the same time the greatest tragedy, Bunin constructs his work in a peculiar way.

The beginning of the story bears the news of the tragic denouement of the plot: "In the cemetery, over a fresh clay mound, there is a new oak cross, strong, heavy, smooth ...".

It is "embedded ... a convex porcelain medallion, and in the medallion is a photographic portrait of a schoolgirl with joyful, amazingly lively eyes."

Then a smooth retrospective narration begins, full of jubilant joy of life, which the author slows down, restrains with epic details: as a girl, Olya Meshcherskaya “did not stand out in the crowd of brown gymnasium dresses ... Then she began to blossom ... by leaps and bounds. ... Nobody danced at balls like Olya Meshcherskaya, nobody ran on skates like she did, nobody at balls was looked after as much as she was.

During her last winter, Olya Meshcherskaya went completely crazy with fun, as they said in the gymnasium ... ". And then one day, at a big break, when she ran like a whirlwind through the school hall from the first-graders who were enthusiastically chasing after her, she was unexpectedly called to the headmaster of the gymnasium. The headmistress reprimands her for not having a gymnasium, but a woman's hairstyle, that she wears expensive shoes and combs.

"You are no longer a girl ... but also not a woman," the boss says irritably to Olya, "... you completely lose sight of the fact that you are still only a schoolgirl ...". And then a sharp plot change begins.

In response, Olya Meshcherskaya says significant words: “Excuse me, madam, you are mistaken: I am a woman. And you know who is to blame for this? Dad's friend and neighbor, and your brother is Alexei Mikhailovich Malyutin. It happened last summer in the village. "

At this moment of supreme reader interest, the storyline ends abruptly. And without filling the pause with anything, the author strikes us with a new stunning surprise, outwardly in no way connected with the first - the words that Olya was shot by a Cossack officer.

Everything that led to the murder, which should seem to constitute the plot of the story, is set out in one paragraph, without details and without any emotional coloring - in the language of the court protocol: “The officer told the investigating magistrate that Meshcherskaya had lured him, was close to him , swore to be his wife, and at the station, on the day of the murder, escorting him to Novocherkassk, she suddenly told him that she never thought of ever loving him ... ”.

The author does not provide any psychological motivation for this story. Moreover, at the moment when the reader's attention is directed along this - the main plot channel (Olya's connection with the officer and her murder), the author cuts it off and deprives the expected retrospective presentation.

The story of the heroine's earthly journey is over - and at this moment the light melody of Olya, a girl filled with happiness and expectation of love, bursts into the narrative.

The class lady Oli, an overripe maiden who goes every holiday to the grave of her student, recalls how one day she unwittingly overheard Oli's conversation with her friend. “I’m in one of my father’s books,” says Olya, and read what beauty a woman should have.

Black eyes boiling with resin, black as night, eyelashes, a softly playing blush, a thin waist, longer than an ordinary arm ... a small leg, sloping shoulders ... but the main thing, you know what? - Easy breath! But I have it, - you listen to how I sigh, - is it true, is it? "

So convulsively, with sharp breaks, the plot is presented, in which much remains unclear. For what purpose does Bunin deliberately disregard the time sequence of events, and most importantly, violates the causal relationship between them?

To emphasize the main philosophical idea: Olya Meshcherskaya did not die because life pushed her first against the “old ladies' man, and then with a rude officer. Therefore, the plot development of these two love meetings is not given, because the reasons could receive a very specific, everyday explanation and lead the reader away from the main thing.

The tragic fate of Olya Meshcherskaya is in herself, in her charm, in her organic fusion with life, in complete submission to her spontaneous impulses - blissful and catastrophic at the same time.

Olya was aspiring to life with such a fierce passion that any encounter with her was bound to lead to disaster. The overstrained expectation of the ultimate fullness of life, love as a whirlwind, as self-giving, as "light breathing" led to a catastrophe.

Olya burned out like a moth, frantically rushing towards the incinerating fire of love. Not everyone is given that feeling. Only those who have easy breathing - a frantic expectation of life, happiness.

"Now this light breath," Bunin concludes his narration, "has scattered again in the world, in this cloudy sky, in this cold spring wind."

  1. Analysis of the book "Cursed Days"

Bunin did not accept the February and then the October Revolution. On May 21, 1918, he and his wife left Moscow for the south and for almost two years lived first in Kiev and then in Odessa.

Both of these cities were the scene of a fierce civil war and more than once passed from hand to hand. In Odessa, during the stormy and formidable months of 1919, Bunin wrote his diary - a kind of book he called "Cursed Days".

Bunin saw and repelled the civil war only from one side - from the side of the red terror. But we know enough about the White Terror. Unfortunately, the Red Terror was as much a reality as the White Terror.

In these conditions, the slogans of freedom, brotherhood, equality were perceived by Bunin as a "mocking sign", because they were stained with the blood of many hundreds and thousands of often innocent people.

Here are some of Bunin's notes: “D. came and fled from Simferopol. There, he says, an indescribable horror, soldiers and workers walk right up to their knees in blood.

Some old colonel was roasted alive in a locomotive furnace ... they rob, rape, do dirty tricks in churches, cut belts out of officers' backs, marry priests with mares ... In Kiev ... several professors were killed, among them the famous diagnostician Yanovsky. " “Yesterday there was an“ emergency ”meeting of the executive committee.

Feldman suggested "using the bourgeoisie instead of horses to transport heavy loads." Etc. The Bunin diary is replete with entries of this kind. Much here, unfortunately, is not fiction.

Evidence of this is not one diary of Bunin, but also Korolenko's letters to Lunacharsky and Gorky's "Untimely Thoughts", Sholokhov's "Quiet Don", I. Shmelev's epic "The Sun of the Dead" and many other works and documents of the time.

In his book, Bunin characterizes the revolution as the unleashing of the most base and savage instincts, as a bloody prologue to the inexhaustible disasters that await the intelligentsia, the people of Russia, the country as a whole.

“Our children and grandchildren,” writes Bunin, “will not even be able to imagine that Russia ... truly fabulously rich and prosperous with fabulous speed, in which we once (that is, yesterday) lived, which we did not value, did not understood - all this power, complexity, wealth, happiness ... ".

The same feelings, thoughts and moods are imbued with journalistic and literary-critical articles, notes and notebooks of the writer, only recently first published in our country (collection "Great Datura", M., 1997).

  1. Emigration of Bunin

In Odessa, Bunin faced the inevitable question: what to do? Escape from Russia or, in spite of everything, stay. The question is painful, and these torments of choice were also reflected in the pages of his diary.

The impending terrible events lead Bunin at the end of 1919 to an irrevocable decision to go abroad. On January 25, 1920, on the Greek steamer Patras, he left Russia for good.

Bunin left his homeland not as an emigrant, but as a refugee. Because he took Russia, her image with him. In The Cursed Days, he writes: “If I didn’t love this“ icon ”, this Russia, I didn’t see why I would have gone so crazy all these years, because of what I suffered so continuously, so fiercely? "10.

Living in Paris and in the seaside town of Grasse, Bunin until the end of his days felt a sharp, nagging pain in Russia. Longing for his homeland permeated his first poems, created after an almost two-year hiatus.

His 1922 poem "The bird has a nest" is filled with special bitterness of the loss of his homeland:

The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole.

How bitter was the young heart,

When I left my father's yard,

Say forgive me to my home!

The beast has a hole, the bird has a nest.

How the heart beats, sad and loud

When I enter, crossing myself, into a strange, rented house

With his already ramshackle knapsack!

A sharp nostalgic pain for his homeland forces Bunin to create works that are addressed to old Russia.

The theme of pre-revolutionary Russia becomes the main content of his work for three whole decades, until his death.

In this regard, Bunin shared the fate of many Russian émigré writers: Kuprin, Chirikov, Shmelev, B. Zaitsev, Gusev-Orenburgsky, Grebenshchikov and others, who devoted their entire work to the image of old Russia, often idealized, purged of everything contradictory.

Bunin turns to his homeland, to his memories of it already in one of the first stories written abroad - "Mowers".

Narrating about the beauty of the Russian folk song, which Ryazan mows sing while working in a young birch forest, the writer reveals the origins of that wonderful spiritual and poetic power that is contained in this song: “The beauty was that we were all children of our homeland and that's all we were together and we all felt good, calm and loving, without a clear understanding of our feelings, because they do not need to be understood when they are. "

  1. Bunin's foreign prose

I. Bunin's foreign prose develops primarily as lyrical, that is, prose of clear and precise expressions of the author's feelings, which was largely determined by the writer's acute longing for his abandoned homeland.

These works, mainly stories, are characterized by a weakened plot, the ability of their author to subtly and expressively convey feelings and moods, a deep penetration into the inner world of the characters, a combination of lyricism and musicality, and linguistic refinement.

In emigration, Bunin continued the artistic development of one of the main themes of his work - the theme of love. The story "Mitya's Love" is dedicated to her,

"The case of the cornet Elagin", the stories "Sunstroke", "Ida", "Mordovian Sarafan" and especially a cycle of small stories under the general title "Dark Alleys".

Bunin is deeply original in his coverage of this eternal theme for art. Among the classics of the 19th century - I.S.Turgenev, L.N. Tolstoy and others - love is usually given in an ideal aspect, in its spiritual, moral, even intellectual essence (for the heroines of Turgenev's novels, love is not only a school of feeling, but also a school of thought ). As for the physiological side of love, the classics practically did not touch it.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a number of works of Russian literature showed another extreme: an unchaste depiction of love relationships, savoring naturalistic details. The peculiarity of Bunin is that the spiritual and the physical are fused in an indissoluble unity.

Love is portrayed by the writer as a fatal force, which is akin to the primordial natural element, which, having endowed a person with dazzling happiness, then inflicts a cruel, often fatal blow on him. Still, the main thing in Bunin's concept of love is not the pathos of tragedy, but the apotheosis of human feeling.

Moments of love are the pinnacle of the life of the Bunin heroes, when they cognize the highest value of being, harmony of body and spirit, the fullness of earthly happiness.

  1. Analysis of the story "Sunstroke"

The story is dedicated to the depiction of love as passion, as a spontaneous manifestation of cosmic forces. "Sunstroke"(1925). A young officer, having met a young married woman on the Volga steamer, invites her to get off at the pier of the town, past which they are sailing.

Young people stay in a hotel and their closeness happens here. In the morning the woman leaves without even giving her name. “I give you my word of honor,” she says, saying goodbye, “that I am not at all what you might think of me.

There has never been anything even similar to what happened to me, and there never will be any more. I was definitely eclipsed ... Or rather, we both got something like a sunstroke. " “Indeed, it’s like some kind of sunstroke,” the lieutenant, left alone, reflects, overwhelmed by the happiness of the past night.

A fleeting meeting of two simple, unremarkable people ("And what is so special about her?" ".

It is not so important how these people lived and how they will live after their fleeting meeting, it is important that a huge all-consuming feeling suddenly entered their life - it means that this life has taken place, because they have learned something that not everyone can learn.

  1. Analysis of the collection of stories "Dark Alleys"

The collection of stories by Bunin is devoted to the philosophical and psychological understanding of the theme of love "Dark alleys"(1937-1945). “I think this is the best and most original thing that I have written in my life,” the author said about these works.

Each story in the collection is completely independent, with its own characters, plots, and a range of problems. But there is an internal connection between them, which allows us to talk about the problematic and thematic unity of the cycle.

This unity is defined by Bunin's concept of love as a "sunstroke" that leaves an imprint on the entire future life of a person.

Heroes of "Dark Alley" without fear and without looking back rush into a hurricane of passion. In this brief moment, they were given to comprehend life in all its fullness, after which some burn out without a trace ("Galya Ganskaya", "Steamer" Saratov "," Henry "), others drag out an everyday existence, remembering how the most precious thing in life that visited them once great love ("Rusya", "Cold Autumn").

Love in the understanding of Bunin requires from a person the maximum exertion of all his spiritual and physical strength. Therefore, it cannot be long-lasting: often in this love, as already mentioned, one of the heroes dies.

Here is the story "Heinrich". The writer Glebov met a remarkable in intelligence and beauty, a delicate and charming woman-translator Heinrich, but soon after they experienced the greatest happiness of mutual love, she was unexpectedly and absurdly killed out of jealousy by another writer - an Austrian.

The hero of another story - "Natalie" - fell in love with a charming girl, and when she, after a series of twists and turns, became his actual wife, and he, it would seem, achieved the desired happiness, she was overtaken by sudden death from childbirth.

There are two in the story "In Paris". lonely Russians - a woman who worked in an émigré restaurant and a former colonel - met by chance and found happiness in each other, but soon after their rapprochement, the colonel suddenly dies in a subway car.

And yet, despite the tragic outcome, love is revealed in them as the greatest happiness of life, incomparable with any other earthly joys. As an epigraph to such works, one can take the words of Natalie from the story of the same name: "Is there unhappy love, does not the most mournful music give happiness?"

Many stories of the cycle ("Muse", "Russia", "Late Hour", "Wolves", "Cold Autumn", etc.) are characterized by such a technique as recollection, the appeal of their heroes to the past. And the most significant in their former life, most often in their youth, they consider the time when they loved, brightly, ardently and without a trace.

The old retired military man from the story "Dark Alleys", who still retained traces of its former beauty, having met by chance with the hostess of the inn, recognizes in her the one whom he loved dearly thirty years ago, when she was an eighteen-year-old girl.

Looking back at his past, he comes to the conclusion that the minutes of intimacy with her were "the best ... truly magical minutes", incomparable with his entire subsequent life.

In the story "Cold Autumn", a woman who tells about her life lost a beloved person at the beginning of the First World War. Remembering many years later the last meeting with him, she comes to the conclusion: "And this is all that was in my life - the rest is an unnecessary dream."

With the greatest interest and skill, Bunin portrays first love, the inception of love passion. This is especially true for young heroines. In similar situations, he reveals completely different, unique female characters.

These are Muse, Rusya, Natalie, Galya Ganskaya, Styopa, Tanya and other heroines from the stories of the same name. Thirty-eight short stories in this collection present us with a magnificent variety of unforgettable female types.

Next to this inflorescence, male characters are less developed, sometimes only outlined and, as a rule, static. They are characterized rather reflectively, in connection with the physical and mental appearance of the woman they love.

Even when in the story basically only “he” acts, for example, the enamored officer from the story “Steamer“ Saratov ”, - all the same,“ she ”remains in the memory of the reader -“ long, wavy ”, and her“ bare knee in section hood ".

In the stories of the cycle "Dark Alleys" Bunin writes a little about Russia itself. The main place in them is occupied by the theme of love - "sunstroke", passion, which gives a person a feeling of supreme bliss, but incinerates him, which is associated with Bunin's idea of ​​eros as a powerful elemental force and the main form of manifestation of cosmic life.

An exception in this regard is the story "Clean Monday", where Bunin's deep reflections on Russia, its past and possible paths of development shine through through the external love story.

Quite often the Bunin story contains, as it were, two levels - one plot, upper, the other - deep, subtext. They can be compared to icebergs: with their visible and main, underwater, parts.

We see this in "Light Breath", and to some extent, in "Brothers", "Lord from San Francisco", "Chang's Dreams". The same is the story "Clean Monday", created by Bunin on May 12, 1944.

The writer himself considered this work the best of everything that he wrote. “Thank God,” he said, “that he gave me the opportunity to write Clean Monday.

  1. Analysis of the story "Clean Monday"

The external event outline of the story is not very complex and fits well into the theme of the Dark Alleys cycle. The action takes place in 1913.

Young people, he and she (Bunin does not name their names anywhere), once met at a lecture in a literary and artistic circle and fell in love with each other.

He is wide open in his feeling, she restrains attraction to him. Their closeness nevertheless occurs, but after spending only one night together, the lovers part forever, for the heroine on Clean Monday, that is, on the first day of the pre-Easter fast of 1913, makes the final decision to go to a monastery, parting with her past.

However, the writer inscribes his thoughts and predictions about Russia into this plot with the help of associations, meaningful details and subtext.

Bunin views Russia as a country with a special path of development and a kind of mentality, where European features are intertwined with features of the East and Asia.

This idea runs like a red thread through the entire work, which is based on a historical concept that reveals the most essential aspects of Russian history and national character for a writer.

With the help of everyday and psychological details that abound in the story, Bunin emphasizes the complexity of the way of Russian life, where western and eastern features are intertwined.

In the heroine's apartment there is a "wide Turkish sofa", next to it - "an expensive piano", and above the sofa, the author emphasizes, - "for some reason hung a portrait of barefoot Tolstoy."

A Turkish sofa and an expensive piano are the East and West (symbols of the Eastern and Western way of life), and barefoot Tolstoy is Russia, Russia in its unusual, peculiar appearance that does not fit into any framework.

On the evening of Forgiveness Sunday, on the Yegorov's tavern, which was famous for its pancakes and actually existed in Moscow at the beginning of the century, the girl says, pointing to the icon of the Three-Ruched Mother of God hanging in the corner: “Good! Downstairs there are wild men, and here are pancakes with champagne and the Three-handed Virgin Mary. Three hands! This is India! "

The same duality is emphasized here by Bunin - "wild men" on the one hand (Asian), and on the other - "pancakes with champagne" - a combination of the national with the European. And above all this - Russia, symbolized in the image of the Mother of God, but again unusual: the Christian Mother of God with three arms resembles the Buddhist Shiva (again, a kind of combination of Russia, West and East).

Of the characters in the story, the heroine most significantly embodies a combination of Western and Eastern features. Her father - "an enlightened man of a noble merchant family, lived in retirement in Tver," writes Bunin.

At home, the heroine wears arkhaluk - oriental clothing, a kind of short caftan, trimmed with sable (Siberia). “The legacy of my Astrakhan grandmother,” she explains the origin of these clothes.

So, my father is a Tver merchant from central Russia, a grandmother from Astrakhan, where the Tatars originally lived. Russian and Tatar blood merged into one in this girl.

Looking at her lips, at the “dark fluff above them,” at her waist, at the garnet velvet of her dress, smelling some spicy smell of her hair, the hero of the story thinks: “Moscow, Persia, Turkey. She had some kind of Indian, Persian beauty, ”the hero concludes.

When they once arrived at the Moscow Art Theater skit, the famous actor Kachalov approached her with a glass of wine and said: "Tsar Maiden, Queen of Shamakhan, your health!" In the mouth of Kachalov, Bunin put his point of view on the appearance and character of the heroine: she is both the "Tsar Maiden" (as in Russian fairy tales), and at the same time, "The Shamakhan Queen" (like the eastern heroine of Pushkin's "The Tale of the Golden Cockerel") ... What is the spiritual world of this "Shamakhan queen" filled with?

In the evenings she reads Schnitzler, Hoffmann-stal, Przybyshevsky, plays Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, that is, she is closely related to Western European culture. At the same time, she is attracted to everything that is primordially Russian, primarily Old Russian.

The hero of the story, on whose behalf the story is told, never ceases to be amazed that his beloved visits cemeteries and Kremlin cathedrals, is well versed in Orthodox and schismatic Christian rituals, loves and is ready to endlessly quote ancient Russian chronicles, immediately commenting on them.

Some kind of inner intense work is constantly being done in the soul of the girl and surprises, sometimes discourages her lover. “She was mysterious, incomprehensible to me,” the hero of the story notes more than once.

To the question of her beloved, how does she know so much about Ancient Russia, the heroine replies: "It is you who do not know me." The result of all this work of the soul was the departure of the heroine to the monastery.

In the image of the heroine, in her spiritual quest, Bunin's search for an answer to the question of the ways of salvation and development of Russia is concentrated. Turning to the creation of a work in 1944, where the action takes place in 1913 - the starting year for Russia, Bunin offers his own way of saving the country.

Finding itself between the West and the East, at the point of intersection of somewhat opposing historical trends and cultural structures, Russia has retained the specific features of its national life, embodied in the annals and in Orthodoxy.

This third side of the spiritual image is dominant in the behavior and inner world of his heroine. Combining Western and Eastern features in her appearance, she chooses service to God, that is, humility, moral purity, conscientiousness, and deep love for Ancient Russia as the result of life.

This is exactly the way Russia could have gone, in which, as in the heroine of the story, three forces also united: Asian spontaneity and passion; European culture and restraint and primordial national humility, conscientiousness, patriarchy in the best sense of the word and, of course, the Orthodox worldview.

Russia, unfortunately, did not follow Bunin, mainly the first path, which led to a revolution in which the writer saw the embodiment of chaos, explosion, general destruction.

By the act of his heroine (leaving the monastery), the writer proposed a different and quite real way out of the current situation - the path of spiritual humility and enlightenment, curbing the elements, evolutionary development, strengthening religious and moral self-awareness.

It was on this path that he saw the salvation of Russia, its assertion of its place among other states and peoples. According to Bunin, this is a truly original, unaffected by foreign influences, and therefore a promising, salutary path that would strengthen the national specifics and mentality of Russia and its people.

In such a peculiar way, subtly in Bunin's way, the writer told us in his work not only about love, but, most importantly, about his national-historical views and forecasts.

  1. Analysis of the novel "The Life of Arseniev"

The most significant work of Bunin, created in a foreign land, was the novel "Life of Arseniev", on which he worked for over 11 years, from 1927 to 1938.

The novel "The Life of Arseniev" is autobiographical. It reproduces many of the facts of childhood and youth of Bunin himself. At the same time, this is a book about the childhood and adolescence of a native of a landowner's family in general. In this sense, "Life of Arseniev" adjoins such autobiographical works of Russian literature as "Childhood. Adolescence. Youth". L. N. Tolstoy and "The childhood years of Bagrov the grandson" by S. T. Aksakov.

Bunin was destined to create the last autobiographical book in the history of Russian literature by a hereditary noble writer.

What topics excite Bunin in this work? Love, death, power over the soul of a person, memories of childhood and adolescence, native nature, duty and vocation of the writer, his attitude to the people and homeland, the attitude of a person to religion - this is the main circle of topics that are covered by Bunin in the Life of Arseniev.

The book tells about the twenty-four years of the life of the autobiographical hero, a young man Alexei Arsenyev: from birth to the break with his first deep love - Lika, the prototype of which was Bunin's first love, Varvara Pashenko.

However, in essence, the time frame of the work is much wider: they are pushed apart by excursions into the prehistory of the Arseniev family and individual attempts by the author to stretch a thread from the distant past to the present.

One of the features of the book is its monologue and sparsely populated characters, in contrast to the autobiographical books of L. Tolstoy, Shmelev, Gorky and others, where we see a whole gallery of various characters.

In Bunin's book, the hero tells mainly about himself: his feelings, sensations, impressions. This is the confession of a man who has lived an interesting life in his own way.

Another characteristic feature of the novel is the presence in it of stable images that pass through the entire work - leitmotifs. They connect the heterogeneous pictures of life with a single philosophical concept - the reflections not so much of the hero as of the author himself about happiness and, at the same time, the tragedy of life, its short duration and transience.

What are these motives? One of them is the motive of death, which runs through the entire work. For example, the perception by Arseniev in early childhood of the image of the mother is combined with the subsequent recollection of her death.

The second book of the novel also ends with the theme of death - the sudden death and burial of Arseniev's relative, Pisarev. The fifth, the most extensive part of the novel, which was originally published as a separate work under the title "Lika", tells the story of Arseniev's love for a woman who played a significant role in his life. The chapter ends with the death of Lika.

The theme of death is associated in the novel, as in all later works of Bunin, the theme of love. This is the second theme of the book. These two motives are connected at the end of the novel by the message about Lika's death shortly after she left Arsenyev, exhausted from the torment of love and jealousy.

It is important to note that death in Bunin's work does not suppress or subjugate love. On the contrary, it is love as the highest feeling that triumphs in the author's mind. In his novel, Bunin again and again acts as a singer of healthy, fresh youthful love, leaving a grateful memory in the soul of a person for life.

The love interests of Alexei Arsenyev pass through in the novel, as it were, three stages, corresponding in general to the stages of the formation and formation of a youthful character.

His first crush on the German girl Ankhen is just a hint of a feeling, an initial manifestation of a thirst for love. Alexei's brief, suddenly interrupted carnal connection with Tonka, his brother's maid, is devoid of a spiritual principle and is perceived by him as a necessary phenomenon, "when you are already 17 years old." And, finally, love for the Face is that all-consuming feeling, in which both the spiritual and the sensual beginnings indissolubly merge.

The love of Arsenyev and Lika is shown in the novel comprehensively, in a complex unity and at the same time discord. Lika and Alexey love each other, but the hero more and more often feels that they are very different people in their spiritual makeup. Arseniev often looks at his beloved, like a master at a slave.

Union with a woman seems to him as an act in which all rights are defined for him, but there are almost no obligations. Love, he believes, does not tolerate rest, habits, it needs constant renewal, which presupposes a sensual attraction to other women.

In turn, Lika is far from the world in which Arsenyev lives. She does not share his love for nature, sorrow for the outgoing old-nobility manor life, deaf to poetry, etc.

The spiritual incompatibility of the characters leads to the fact that they begin to get tired of each other. All this ends with a breakup of lovers.

However, Lika's death sharpens the hero's perception of failed love and is perceived by him as an irreparable loss. The concluding lines of the work, telling about what Arseniev experienced when he saw Lika in a dream, many years after breaking up with her, are very revealing: “I saw her vaguely, but with such a force of love, joy, with such physical and mental closeness never experienced for anyone. "

The poetic affirmation of love as a feeling over which even death has no control is one of the novel's most remarkable features.

Psychologized pictures of nature are also beautiful in the work. They combine the brightness and richness of colors with the feelings and thoughts of the hero and the author that penetrate them.

The landscape is philosophical: it deepens and reveals the author's concept of life, the cosmic principles of being and the spiritual essence of man, for whom nature is an integral part of existence. It enriches and develops a person, heals his mental wounds.

The theme of culture and art, perceived by the mind of young Arseniev, is also of significant importance in the novel. The hero enthusiastically tells about the library of one of the neighboring landowners, which contained many "wonderful volumes in thick bindings of dark golden leather": works by Sumarokov, Anna Bunina, Derzhavin, Zhukovsky, Venevitinov, Yazykov, Baratynsky.

With admiration and reverence, the hero recalls the first works of Pushkin and Gogol that he read in childhood.

The writer pays attention in his work to the role of religion in strengthening the spiritual principles of the human person. While not at all calling for religious asceticism, Bunin nevertheless points to the striving for religious and moral self-improvement that heals the human soul.

The novel contains many scenes and episodes related to religious holidays, and they are all imbued with poetry, written out carefully and spiritually. Bunin writes about the "storm of delight" that invariably arose in Arseniev's soul every time he attended church, about "the explosion of our highest love both for God and for our neighbor."

Appears on the pages of the work and the theme of the people. But as before, Bunin poeticizes the humble peasants, good in heart and soul. But as soon as Arsenyev starts talking about the people of the protesters, all the more sympathetic to the revolution, tenderness is replaced by irritation.

Here the political views of the writer himself, who never accepted the path of revolutionary struggle, and especially violence against the individual, were reflected.

In a word, the entire book "Life of Arseniev" is a kind of chronicle of the hero's inner life, from infancy to the final formation of character.

The main thing that determines the originality of the novel, its genre, artistic structure is the desire to show how, in contact with heterogeneous life phenomena - natural, everyday, cultural, socio-historical - there is an identification, development and enrichment of emotional and intellectual personality traits.

This is a kind of thought and conversation about life, which contains many facts, phenomena and mental movements. In the novel "The Life of Arseniev" through the thoughts, feelings, moods of the protagonist, that poetic feeling of the homeland, which has always been inherent in the best works of Bunin, sounds.

  1. Bunin's life in France

How does Bunin's personal life develop during his years in France?

Having settled in Paris since 1923, Bunin spends most of his time, summer and autumn, with his wife and a narrow circle of friends in the Alpes-Maritimes, in the town of Grasse, having bought a dilapidated villa "Jeannette" there.

In 1933, an unexpected event invades the meager existence of the Bunins - he was awarded the Nobel Prize - the first of Russian writers.

This somewhat strengthened Bunin's financial position, and also attracted wide attention not only to emigrants, but also to the French public. But this did not last long. A significant portion of the prize was given to compatriot émigrés in distress, and the interest of French critics in the Nobel laureate was short-lived.

Homesickness did not let Bunin go. On May 8, 1941, he wrote to Moscow to his old friend the writer ND Teleshov: “I am gray, dry, but still poisonous. I really want to go home. " He writes about the same to A.N. Tolstoy.

Alexei Tolstoy made an attempt to help Bunin return to his homeland: he sent a detailed letter to Stalin. Giving a detailed description of Bunin's talent, Tolstoy asked Stalin about the possibility of returning the writer to his homeland.

The letter was handed over to the Kremlin expedition on June 18, 1941, and four days later a war broke out, pushing away everything that had nothing to do with it.

  1. Bunin and the Great Patriotic War

During the Great Patriotic War, Bunin took a patriotic position without hesitation. From radio reports, he eagerly followed the course of the great battle that unfolded in the vastness of Russia. His diaries of these years are full of messages from Russia, because of which Bunin turns from despair to hope.

The writer does not hide his hatred of fascism. “The brutalized people continue their devilish work - the murder and destruction of everything, everything! And it began by the will of one person - the destruction of the entire globe - or rather, the one who embodied the will of his people, who should not be forgiven until the 77th tribe, ”he writes in his diary on March 4, 1942. “Only a crazy cretin can think that he will reign over Russia,” Bunin is convinced.

In the fall of 1942, he met with Soviet prisoners of war, whom the Nazis used to work in France. In the future, they repeatedly visited the Bunins, secretly listening with the owners of Soviet military radio reports.

In one of his letters, Bunin notes about his new acquaintances: “Some ... were so adorable that every day we kissed them as if they were relatives ... They danced a lot, sang -“ Moscow, beloved, invincible ”.

These meetings sharpened Bunin's long-standing dream of returning to his homeland. “I often think about returning home. Will I live? " - he wrote in his diary on April 2, 1943.

In November 1942, the Nazis occupied France. Taking advantage of Bunin's difficult financial situation, the pro-fascist newspapers vied with each other to offer him cooperation, promising mountains of gold. But all their attempts were in vain. Bunin fainted from hunger, but did not want to make any compromises.

The victorious end of the Patriotic War by the Soviet Union was greeted by them with great joy. Bunin looked closely at Soviet literature.

Known for his high ratings of Tvardovsky's poem "Vasily Terkin", stories by K. Paustovsky. By this time, he met in Paris with the journalist Y. Zhukov, the writer K. Simonov. He visits the USSR Ambassador to France Bogomolov. He was issued a passport of a citizen of the USSR.

  1. The loneliness of Bunin in exile

These steps caused a sharply negative attitude towards Bunin in anti-Soviet emigre circles. On the other hand, the return of the writer to the Soviet Union turned out to be impossible, especially after the repressive party decree in the field of literature in 1946 and Zhdanov's report.

Lonely, sick, half-impoverished, Bunin found himself between two fires: many emigrants turned away from him, while the Soviet side, irritated and disappointed that Bunin did not beg to be sent home, remained deeply silent.

This bitterness of resentment and loneliness was reinforced by thoughts of the inexorable approach of death. The motives of farewell to life sound in the poem "Two Wreaths" and in the last prose works of Bunin, the philosophical meditations "Mistral", "In the Alps", "Legend" with their characteristic details and images: the grave chamber, grave crosses, a dead face that looks like mask, etc.

In some of these works, the writer, as it were, sums up his own earthly labors and days. In a short story "Bernard" (1952), he tells the story of a simple French sailor who worked tirelessly and died with a sense of honestly fulfilled his duty.

His last words were: "I think I was a good sailor." “And what did he want to express with these words? The joy of knowing that, while living on earth, he benefited his neighbor, being a good sailor? " - the author asks.

And he answers: “No: what God gives each of us, along with life, this or that talent and imposes on us the sacred duty not to bury it in the ground. Why why? We don't know that. But we must know that everything in this world, incomprehensible to us, must certainly have some meaning, some kind of high God's intention, aimed at ensuring that everything in this world "was good" and that the diligent fulfillment of this God's intention is all our merit before Him, and therefore our joy, pride.

And Bernard knew and felt it. All his life he diligently, with dignity, faithfully performed the modest duty entrusted to him by God, served Him not for fear, but for conscience. And how could he not say what he said at the last minute? "

“It seems to me,” Bunin concludes his story, “that I, as an artist, have earned the right to say about myself, in my last days, something similar to what Bernard said when he was dying”.

  1. Death of Bunin

On November 8, 1953, at the age of 83, Bunin dies. The outstanding artist of the word, the wonderful master of prose and poetry has passed away. “Bunin is in time the last of the classics of Russian literature, whose experience we have no right to forget,” wrote A. Tvardovsky.

Bunin's work is not only filigree skill, the amazing power of the plastic image. This is love for the native land, for Russian culture, for the Russian language. In 1914, Bunin wrote a wonderful poem in which he emphasized the enduring significance of the Word in the life of every person and humanity as a whole:

5 / 5. 1

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

Brief biographies from early childhood

The future great writer was born in the distant 1870, on October 22. Voronezh became his homeland. The Bunin family was not rich: his father became an impoverished landowner, therefore, from early childhood, little Vanya experienced many material hardships.

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

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

A number of interesting and entertaining facts about the beginning of Bunin's career

Ivan Bunin began writing his very first poems at the age of 17. It was then that his creative debut took place, which turned out to be very successful. It is not for nothing that printed publications published the works of the young author. But then their editors could hardly have guessed how stunning successes in the field of literature awaited Bunin in the future!

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

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

Important events from your personal life

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

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

Political views of the writer

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

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

Personal life tragedy

In 1905, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin suffered a grave grief: his son Nikolai died, whom Anna Tsakni gave birth to. This fact can be unambiguously attributed to the writer's personal life tragedy. However, as follows from his biography, Ivan Bunin stood firm, was able to endure the pain of loss and give, in spite of such a sad event, a lot of literary "pearls" to the whole world! What else is known about the life of the Russian classic?


Ivan Bunin: interesting facts from life

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

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

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

Now, few people know that in early childhood the writer Ivan Bunin was poisoned with bleached. Then his nanny saved him from certain death, who gave little Vanya a drink on time with milk.

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

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

These and other interesting facts characterize Bunin as an extraordinary personality, capable not only of realizing his talent in the field of literature, but also of taking an active part in many areas of activity.


Famous collections and works of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

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

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

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

Popular poems by Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

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

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

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


Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize to Ivan Bunin was awarded for the novel The Life of Arseniev, written by him, which actually told about the life of the writer himself. Despite the fact that this book was published in 1930, in it Ivan Alekseevich tried to "pour out his soul" and his feelings about certain life situations.

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

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

Altogether, the Nobel Prize winners were entitled to 715,000 francs in cash. It would seem a very impressive amount. But it was quickly squandered by the writer Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, as he provided financial assistance to Russian emigrants, who peppered him with many different letters.


Death of a writer

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

Surely Bunin dreamed of living for a long time and one day dying in his native land, among his relatives and a large number of friends. But fate decreed a little differently, as a result of which the writer spent most of his life in exile. However, thanks to his unsurpassed creativity, he actually ensured immortality to his name. Many generations of people will remember the literary masterpieces written by Bunin. A creative person like him gains world fame and becomes a historical reflection of the era in which she worked!

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


The role of Bunin in world literature

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

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

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

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