Ivan Bunin

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin lived from 1870 until 8 November 1953 and was a Russian writer. In 1933 he became the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Critics praised the strict artistry with which he upheld classical Russian traditions in both his prose and poetry. The rich texture of his poems and stories, often called "Bunin brocade," ranks among the most elaborate in the Russian language.

Bunin is best known for the short novels The Village (1910) and Dry Valley (1912), the autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev (1933, 1939), the short story collection Dark Avenues (1946), and the diary Cursed Days (1926), which covers 1917–1918. Among white emigres, European critics, and many fellow writers, he was a revered figure. They saw him as the true heir to the realist tradition in Russian literature established by Tolstoy and Chekhov.

Early life

Bunin was born on his family's estate in Voronezh province. He was the third and youngest son of Aleksey Nikolayevich Bunin (1827–1906) and Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Bunina, whose maiden name was Chubarova (1835–1910). He had two younger sisters, Masha (Maria Bunina-Laskarzhevskaya, 1873–1930) and Nadya, who died very young, and two older brothers, Yuly and Yevgeny. Bunin came from a long line of Russian nobility and took particular pride in the fact that the poets Anna Bunina (1774–1829) and Vasily Zhukovsky (1783–1852) were among his ancestors.

In his 1952 autobiography, he wrote that the Bunins descended from Simeon Bunkovsky, a Polish nobleman who came to the court of Great Prince Vasily Vasilyevich, quoting the Russian gentry's Armorial Book. He noted that his mother's family, the Chubarovs, knew little about themselves except that their ancestors were landowners in Kostromskaya, Moskovskaya, Orlovskya, and Tambovskaya Guberniyas. He added that from early childhood he was such a libertine that he was totally indifferent both to his own high blood and to the loss of anything connected to it.

Bunin's early childhood was spent at Butyrky Khutor and later in Ozerky, in Yelets county, Lipetskaya Oblast. It was a happy time, surrounded by intelligent and loving people. His father, Alexei Nikolayevich, was described by Bunin as very strong physically and mentally, quick-tempered, addicted to gambling, impulsive, generous, eloquent in a theatrical way, and totally illogical. Before the Crimean War he had never tasted wine, but on his return he became a heavy drinker, though never a typical alcoholic.

Bunin's mother, Lyudmila Alexandrovna, had a much more subtle and tender character, which Bunin attributed to her father having spent years in Warsaw, where he acquired European tastes that set him apart from other local landowners. She introduced her son to Russian folklore. According to her, older brothers Yuly and Yevgeny showed great interest in mathematics and painting respectively, but Vanya was different from the moment of birth; none of the others had a soul like his.

Young Bunin had extraordinary susceptibility and keenness for the nuances of nature. He remembered that his vision was so sharp he could see all seven stars of the Pleiades, hear a marmot's whistle from a verst away, and get drunk from the smells of a lily of the valley or an old book. His experiences of rural life deeply influenced his writing. He later wrote that amid the deep silence of vast fields, among cornfields or huge winter snowdrifts that came up to their doorsteps, he spent a childhood full of melancholic poetry.

Bunin's first home tutor was an ex-student named Romashkov, whom he later described as a positively bizarre character, a wanderer full of fascinating stories that were always thought-provoking even if not entirely comprehensible. Later, his brother Yuly, who had been deported home for being a Narodnik activist and had a university education, taught Ivan psychology, philosophy, and the social sciences as part of his private domestic education.

Yuly encouraged Ivan to read the Russian classics and to write. Until 1920, Yuly, who once described Ivan as undeveloped yet gifted and capable of original independent thought, remained his closest friend and mentor. Bunin wrote that he had a passion for painting, which he thought showed in his writings, and that he wrote both poetry and prose fairly early, with his works being published from an early date.

By the end of the 1870s, the Bunins had lost most of their wealth because of the father's gambling habits. In 1881 Ivan was sent to a public school in Yelets, but he never finished the course. He was expelled in March 1886 for failing to return after the Christmas holidays, due to the family's financial difficulties.

Literary career

In May 1887 Bunin published his first poem, "Village Paupers," in the Saint Petersburg literary magazine Rodina. In 1891 his first short story, "Country Sketch," appeared in the journal Russkoye Bogatstvo, edited by Nikolay Mikhaylovsky. In spring 1889 he followed his brother to Kharkiv, where he worked as a government clerk, then as an assistant editor of a local paper, a librarian, and a court statistician.

In January 1889 he moved to Oryol to work on the local newspaper Orlovsky Vestnik, first as an editorial assistant and later as de facto editor, which allowed him to publish his short stories, poems, and reviews in the paper's literary section. There he met Varvara Pashchenko and fell passionately in love. In August 1892 the couple moved to Poltava and settled in the home of Yuly Bunin, who helped the younger brother.