Out of the five Russian Nobel Prize winners so far – Бунин [Bunin], Шолохов [Sholokhov], Пастернак [Pasternak], Солженицын [Solzhenitsyn], Бродский [Brodsky] – the first of them, Иван Алексеевич Бунин [Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin], seems to have been almost forgotten after receiving the Prize in 1933. Everyone seems to be discussing Sholokhov and asking one of those ‘eternal’ questions – did he really write «Тихий Дон» ["And Quiet Flows the Don"] or did he steal the manuscript from someone else? And why is the first part so much richer in language than the following three parts? As goes for the other three brilliant Russian writers – Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky – they are more interesting to a culture clinging hard to a literature based on the legend worthiness of its writers, as their fates are all very tumultuous, whereas Bunin lacks – on the surface – such a turbulent fate. Or at least turbulent enough to be turned into legend. Bunin’s life was filled with struggle and hardship and is more than worth reading about in a biography about him, but that’s not what I intend on focusing in my post today. As the subject of our common passion is Russian language, I must remain true the one of the best ways to reach a general source filled with that passion: reading Russian literature. And Bunin is a «мастер» [master; craftsman; technician; foreman]. I am not the kind of person to use the word ‘master’ lightly, even less the word «мастерство» [skill; handicraft; trade], but when the topic is Bunin no other word seems to fit. I even believe that it would be most appropriate to use the expression «писательское мастерство» next to his name. If you want to read beautiful Russian prose written with such an exquisite and almost perfect language that it more resembles a painting than black print on white paper – then you should, no, must read Bunin.
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin was born «в Воронеже» [in Voronezh] in Russia in 1870 and died in 1953 in France. Bunin didn’t approve of either the two revolutions of 1917 – neither the one in February nor the one in October – and thus left the Soviet Union. He settled down in France and lived in Paris until his death, though he was forced to spend most of World War II in Nice. Because of the fact that he had left Russia he was not recognized as a ‘Russian writer’ by the Soviet Union when he received the Nobel Prize. During Stalin it was even a crime to consider Bunin a classic Russian writer – something which the splendid writer Варлам Тихонович Шаламов [Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov] had to pay for with ten more years on Kolyma for saying out loud in the 1940′s. Yet claiming that Bunin was a classic Russian writer – usually Антон Павлович Чехов [Anton Pavlovich Chekhov] is said to have been the last classic writer in Russian literature – working during the first half of 20th century Modernism is a highly correct point of view. Bunin combines both of the centuries in him; both Realism and Modernism can be found in his art, though there is undoubtebly more Realism to be found in his poetry than in his prose. And the reason for that may seem far too simple and naïve but nevertheless, it holds some truth – Bunin published his first poetry collection in 1891, whereas his first collection of short stories was published first in 1912. One thing one may state out loud without any risk of being naïve is that Symbolism had little to no influence on Bunin. Bunin took the best of 19th century Russian realism, used all the lessons he learned from the old Russian masters and mixed them with his own Modernism.
Even though Bunin never returned to Russia after he left the country, his native land – «сладкое слово Родина» – continued to play a huge part in his art. He wrote the autobiographical novel «Жизнь Арсеньева» [Life of Arsenev] about his youth in the Russian Empire half a century after it had happened – during the 1930′s – and received the Nobel Prize in literature for it. You might even say that Russia was always in the very center of his art, but it was never Soviet Russia, but always the Russia of his youth, the Russian Empire of late 19th and early 20th century. This is especially noticeable in his last collection of short stories – «Тёмные аллеи» ["The Dark Alleys"]. And it’s because of this short story collection that I’m writing this post today. This past week I’ve been reading some of the stories in this collection and I’ve found myself completely under the spell not only of his lovely language, but of his take on love. The collection it is split up in two parts and contains 40 short stories on one and the same subject: «любовь» [love]. Now you might think that reading forty variations on one and the same theme – to meet and to part – would be tiring and get boring after only a few pages. Well, that might have been true had the author been anyone else but Bunin. Bunin’s a master – and master won’t allow his readers to get tired and bored from reading his stories. Every story has its own voice, its own perspective, is told in its own special way, and even though the love is always the same in every story – not meant for marriage, but to be felt only once as a strong, burning, living flame of passion between a man and a woman – every story is a unique universe. It is the kind of book that it would be good to have lying around at home – by your bed, on your coffee table, or why not in the bathroom – just to take it up once in a while and read one of the stories.
Yesterday I read the short story «В одной знакомой улице» ["In One Familiar Street"] which is not even two whole pages long and I was surprised by the fullness of the story, by the thickness of the language created by Bunin by using the poem «Затворница» [The Female Hermit] by Я. П. Полонский [Ya. P. Polonsky] as intertext. The hero is walking the streets of Paris when he suddenly remembers this poem, and with it he recalls a girl he once knew and made love to one night a long time ago in Russia… And I was so moved by the following section, by the pure beauty of it, that I bowed down to Bunin and now fully understand that he is not only a master, but the master:
«Я бросал куда попало шинель, картуз и брал её к себе на колени, сев на кровать, чувствуя сквозь юбочку её тело, её косточки… Распущенной косы не было, была заплетённая, довольно бедная русая, было простонародное лицо, прозрачное от голода, глаза тоже прозрачные, крестьянские, губы той нежности, что бывают у слабых девушек…»
(I apologize for my poor translation in advance):
[I threw off my coat and my peaked cap, without caring where they landed, and took her close to me on my knees, after I had sat down on the bed, feeling her body, her bones through her skirt... She didn't have her rather thin light brown hair let out, but in a tight braid, her face looked like those of the common people, it was transparent from hunger, also her eyes were transparent, like those of peasants, and her lips were of that certain kind of tenderness, that usually belongs to weak girls...]
Especially the last eight words are lovely. And they are an excellent example of Bunin being after all more true to Modernism than Realism, as he here allows the reader to understand the phrase on his or her own…
I hope that you’ll at least try to read a little something of Bunin, if not in Russian than in your own language. I should try to come down from my blissful state after reading him and confess that reading Bunin in Russian is after all nothing you should do too soon. I tried reading “The Dark Allies” back in the summer of 2006, after having studied Russian for two years, but his language proved to difficult for me. Now, however, I can handle it. ‘Every day there’s a small happiness’, as it say’s in English on my Korean roommate’s red diary. By the way, which one the five Russian Nobel Prize winner is your own personal favorite? And why? Or are you like me and can never choose between them?
