Bunin, from the countryside to the world (classic flowing fang)

The picture shows the "Selected Poems of Bunin". Profile picture

Ivan Bunin was the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Russian President Vladimir Putin once commented: "His works are full of profound reflections on the value of life, the difficult choices in everyone's life, and the fate of Russia at the turn of the 20th century and the tests endured by the Russian people." ”

Constantly strive to realize the literary dream

Bunin was born in 1870 into an aristocratic family. He spent his childhood in the countryside of central Russia, and the most typical Russian scenery: forests, lakes, meadows, is deeply imprinted in Bunin's memory. In just over 4 years of idyllic life, he will never forget.

Bunin's mother was an avid lover of Pushkin poetry and Russian folklore, and the whole family often read Pushkin's verses aloud. At an early age, he displayed an astonishing ability of observation, memory, and literary talent, and was fluent in reciting many of Pushkin's works. At the age of 8, he wrote his first poem.

At the age of 11, Bunin entered the Yelets Boys' Aristocratic Secondary School, and the stereotypical school education made him very miserable, because the family was poor and arrears in tuition, and the little Bunin was expelled from the school. Dropping out of school was a relief to him, and under the guidance of his eldest brother Yuri, who had graduated from college and was 13 years older than him, Bunin completed the secondary school curriculum. Yuri had a good literary attainment and later became a writer and educator. Under the cultivation of his brother, Bunin grew rapidly. He did not give up his literary practice, and at the age of 17 he made a breakthrough in poetry creation, publishing two poems in a row in the "Motherland Newspaper".

Bunin decided at the age of 18 to leave the dilapidated estate and enter the society of this university. At that time, he was lonely and unknown, and it was difficult for him to support himself by literary creation alone. To this end, he traveled to Oryol, Harikov, Poltava and other places, making a living as a statistician, librarian, and journalist, while insisting on his literary dreams. At the age of 20, he published his first collection of poems in Oryol and finally officially entered the literary world.

Young writers know they need a bigger stage. In 1895, Bunin came to St. Petersburg and entered the literary circle of the capital. He became acquainted with the literary giants Chekhov, Tolstoy, Bryusov and others, and began to engage in literary creation and translation full-time. Bunin was quite close to Chekhov, who was 10 years older, and became a regular visitor to his family, and Chekhov could be described as Bunin's Bole. Chekhov's friend and director Stanislavsky recalled: "No one can joke with Chekhov as freely as Bunin did. Chekhov was not very sociable, but he once said that the happiest thing he had every day was to meet Bunin and talk to him. ”

At the same time, Bunin's creation was also increasingly sophisticated, and with the successive publication of two collections of poems, "Under the Open Air" and "Falling Leaves", Bunin gradually established his unique position in the Russian literary world. Not only that, but he also strengthened his foreign language learning and taught himself English, French and Polish. In 1896, he translated the narrative poem "The Song of Haywar" by the American Romantic poet Longfellow, which was hailed as the best translation of the time to follow the Russian translation tradition.

In 1903, Chekhov wrote a letter of recommendation for Bunin's candidacy for the Pushkin Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences. With the poetry collection "Falling Leaves" and its translation masterpieces, Bunin won the Pushkin Prize, the highest award in the Russian literary world that year. In 1909, Bunin was again awarded the Pushkin Prize for his third volume of his anthology and his translation of Byron's poem Cain. Gorky once said of Bunin: "If there is no Bunin in Russian literature, it will be eclipsed, it will lose its rainbow-like brilliance, it will lose the brilliance of a lonely wandering soul." ”

Rooted in the motherland to carry out realist creation

Bunin's early works were in the classical style and were recognized as landscape poets. The idylls and natural scenery of central Russia such as Oryol, who was exposed to him since childhood, became the source of inspiration for his creations. As the famous Soviet poet Tvardowski put it, "This land was perceived and absorbed by Bunin, and the impressions left by childhood and adolescence influenced his whole life."

Bunin is famous for his poetry, whose poems are natural and lyrical, inheriting the style of Pushkin and Lermontov, with fresh and simple writing, vivid language, and poetic descriptions. "Falling Leaves" is the masterpiece of Bunin's first Pushkin Prize-winning poetry collection, depicting Russian nature aria autumn. The poem reads: "The forest is like a colored building, there are light purple, there is gold, there is red, colorful, joyful, standing on the empty grass ... In September, it swirls in the pine forest, where its top is lifted and the path is paved with pine needles; when a frost comes at night, and then melts, vientiane will lose its vitality..." The poem is flexible and delicate, changing the empty praise and tragic autumn tone of other poems at that time. Bunin's poetry not only has a unique and vivid depiction of Russia's natural beauty, but also inspires the reader to look at the world around them from another perspective. The Russian literary circles at that time fully affirmed his poetic creation, as Gorky praised: "What a good poem!" Novel, loud, with something as childlike purity as it is, and also a keen sense of smell for nature. ”

The novella "The Village" is an early masterpiece of Bunin, written between 1909 and 1910. Through the life experiences of the serf descendants Ji Hong and the Kuchma brothers, the novel shows the real situation of the decline and backwardness of the Russian countryside after the war. The two brothers used to work together as peddlers, but they parted ways because of their different ideals in life. In the end, the elder brother Ji Hong made a fortune to buy the dilapidated aristocratic manor, and the younger brother Kuchma returned to his hometown after his dream was shattered, helping his brother manage the manor. Through their observations and feelings, the novel shows the reality that after the abolition of serfdom, the patriarchal countryside was rapidly decaying under the impact of capitalist forces, and the vast number of peasants fell into deep suffering. After reading the book, Gorky commented that "no one has ever portrayed the Russian countryside so realistically."

Bunin continued to write in his native language during his time in France, and his work brought a breath of fresh air to the European literary scene after its publication in France. A French literary magazine commented that some of the stories in his work were "comparable to the expressiveness of Dostoevsky's work". Three years after arriving in France, in 1923, Bunin was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by the famous French literary artist Romain Rowland, and has since been nominated five times. In 1933, Bunin stood out from more than 20 candidates and successfully won the crown. During this period, his most important work was the long autobiographical novel "The Life of Arsenyev", which began in 1927 and completed in 1933. The novel reflects a turbulent era with the encounters of ordinary people, and the writing techniques and techniques are mature and successful. No matter where he is, Bunin's work is always rooted in his hometown and has the important significance of connecting Russian literature with diaspora literature.

In 2004, a number of Russian scholars and public figures established the Bunin Literary Prize, which aims to recognize authors who have made great contributions to Russian literature by creating in Russian. Last year, many exhibitions, creative evenings, recitation competitions, concerts and other forms of Bunin's 150th birthday commemoration activities were held. In September 2020, in Voronezh, the birthplace of Bunin, the Museum of the Bunin House, which has been preparing for more than 30 years, was completed and opened. The interior furnishings are carefully retouched according to the memories and accounts of his contemporaries, and many of the exhibits are originals collected from all over the world, including bunin correspondence with friends, private photographs, diaries, etc. The exhibition also uses modern means to let the audience fully understand the literary creation of the writer's life, such as the audience can view the original manuscript of Bunin's original published work, the record of overseas life, and the highlight moment of winning the Nobel Prize in Literature through the electronic touch screen. As Sesravinsky, then Director of the Russian Publishing and Mass Media Agency, said in his speech at the Bunin House Museum: "Ivan Bunin's name is extremely precious to Russian literature and culture... His personal fate and resume are like a drop of water reflecting the vicissitudes of the 20th century. ”

People's Daily (07/12/2021)