Ivan Bunin: "My day burnt out, but my trace is in the world"

October 22, 2016 marks 146 years since the birth of the writer Ivan Bunin (1870-1953) - writer, poet, translator, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1933; his work for many years has been withdrawn from the literary treatment at homeland because of his French exile. Bunin for several decades was forgotten by his country, his books were banned under secret. The writer, soldier Grigory Baklanov wrote: "The interest in Bunin, when he was not published, for most readers was just pointless. And so before the war did not read Bunin, because in Voronezh, where I was living then, books by Bunin were impossible to get". 

But when at last the long-awaited meeting of writer’s works with the Russian-speaking reader took place, Bunin has taken his rightful place among the pillars of the national literature. His books were in large editions. Researchers intensified in his literary heritage that confirms the thesis through the electronic collection of Presidential Library, which reflected the contribution of the writer to the national treasury of culture. For example, in an electronic copy of the abstract of the dissertation of T. Skripnikova is considered "Spiritual and religious problems and its artistic expression in the "peasant prose of I. A. "Bunin". T. Zimin-Dyrda explores the theme of "The Poetics of color and light in prose of I. A. Bunin, P. A. Nilus and A. M. Fedorov". Subject is associated with the image of the costume as a pillar of Bunin's art laboratory, revealed in the electronic copy of the abstract of the dissertation by Y. Popova "Clothing Language" in the works of I. A. Bunin: characterological and plot functions".  

Of particular interest is the electronic catalog-album "I. A. Bunin in the press (1897-2011)", published in Voronezh - a city where the future writer was born.

Ivan Bunin was born in an old noble family. Father, received a small inheritance, completely bankrupted, so the three-year child from Voronezh was taken on a dull farm in the province of Orel. "There, in the deepest silence of the field, in the summer among the bread, approaching the most our doorsteps, and in winter among the snowdrifts all my childhood passed, full of poetry, sad and kind", - wrote Bunin in 1915 in the "Autobiographical Notes". Only in this unity with his native land could be born story "Antonovsky apples" associated with it receding into the past a whole historical period in the life of Russia.

Also, however in the story "Marmots. From everyday life of men", which can be found in the Presidential Library collection:" It's getting dark, and the night raised a real storm… Tomorrow is Christmas, a great fun holiday, and even sadder seem twilight, endless blind road and a deserted field, immersed in the mist drifting snow…"

It is sad in the ruined nest even on the eve of the Orthodox feast of light. Before a rich manor converted into a miserable village that is lost in the snows of winter and it seems to be extinct. Manor is dilapidated, the master is in prostration, believing that all good things of life took to the abolition of serfdom. But Bunin artistically convincingly, without mentoring, makes it clear that the fault is not the reforms, but landowners themselves - loafers and idlers, who could not save the economy, helpless in the home, not able to work on the ground.

The image of the village, going into the unknown noble nests, passes through all the creativity of Bunin, filling it with poignant nostalgia for the past, which cannot be returned, and the emigre homesickness.

What is particularly valuable is that the Presidential Library presents on the portal early Bunin's poems and short stories published in the pages of pre-revolutionary journals, such as "new word", "modern world" and others. In the seventh issue of the "Annals" in 1916 is published his famous poem "Hellas": "Behind the island, in the hot brilliance / For radiant rose god / And Hellene in the old, dirty fez / I slept soundly at our feet". More recently, inaccessible to a wide audience of users collection "1914" with the early poems of Bunin, where each stanza flickers writing skills, you can open at the Presidential Library website.

Being a brilliant master of words in poetry and in prose, Ivan Bunin, summing up, modestly wrote about himself: "The day my burnt out, but my trace is in the world".