The works of Ivan Bunin 9783111655444, 9783111271293

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SLAVISTIC PRINTINGS AND REPRINTINGS edited by C. H. V A N SCHOONEVELD Indiana

University

101

Pencil drawing of Bunin by Bakst. Reproduced here for the ¡first time with the kind permission of L. F. Zouroff, Bunin's lifetime friend and present custodian of his archives.

THE WORKS OF IVAN BUNIN by

SERGE KRYZYTSKI Oberlin College

1971

MOUTON THE H A G U E • PARIS

© Copyright 1971 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 70-135664

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., Printers, The Hague.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is now my pleasant task to thank a number of institutions and persons for their help. I am indebted to the Committee on Research and Development of Oberlin College for a Summer Grant-in-Aid. Thanks to this financial assistance, I was able to do additional research on Bunin in Paris, to work in Bunin's archives, and to meet people who had known Bunin. Further, I am thankful to the New York Public Library, the Yale Sterling Memorial Library, and the Moscow Lenin Library, all of which have supplied me with photostatic copies of hard-to-get materials. For sharing their wisdom with me I wish to thank Professor Victor Erlich and Professor Robert L. Jackson of Yale. I am grateful to Alexis Rannit, the Curator of the Slavic Division oi the Yale Library, for the permission to use Bunin's archives. Others who have given me the benefit of their knowledge include Nina N. Berberova, poetess, writer, and lecturer, and Andrey Sedych, journalist, writer, and personal secretary to Bunin during the latter's "Nobel Days". My sincere thanks go to Mrs. Carol Ganzel for her excellent work on my stylistic efforts and to Mrs. Henriette Berger for her thorough proofreading. My special debt is to my wife and my children who have always been highly cooperative in providing me with an undisturbed home atmosphere during my work on the book. I thank my wife for her unfailing literary taste, her keen observations and valuable remarks, and her constant youthful energy and optimism which kept up my spirits in moments of depression. Serge Kryzytski

PREFACE

Bunin is a great figure in Russian literature. Nevertheless, Bunin — the holder of a gold medal from the Russian Academy of Sciences, the recipient of several Puskin money prizes, the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize, the honorary member of the P. E. N. Club in London — is comparatively little-known to the non-Russian reader. Possibly, he would have been completely ignored in the western anthologies of Russian literature if he had not written his famous "The Gentleman from San Francisco", which has become indeed, almost synonymous with his name. Moreover the fact Bunin is a prose writer as well as a poet, one who never ceased writing poetry throughout his sixty-six year career, would surprise many readers outside Russia. The causes of Bunin's failure to secure the right and honorable place he deserves in the world of letters are many. Before the Revolution he was never what is termed a popular writer. He did not join any modern literary groups such as the Symbolists, the Acmeists, and the Futurists, nor was he a politically active writer such as Gor'kij, nor was he an iconoclastic innovator. Nor only did he stand all alone as a writer but also his approach to the majority of his contemporaries was, to put it mildly, not too benevolent. Under such circumstances his fame was not as widespread as it deserved to be. Bunin's noninvolvement in the political struggle, Bunin's aloofness from the modern and fashionable poets, and Bunin's pride of his gentry origin were not and could not have been favorably regarded by the mostly radically oriented Russian intelligentsia of the turbulent times at the beginning of the twentieth century. Bunin's thirty-three years in exile and his clearly expressed political credo — uncompromising hostility toward the Communist regime in Russia — added to his official unpopularity in his native land. For a long time Bunin's name was carefully avoided in the Soviet Union, and, even when his works were discussed, they were in most cases misinterpreted and distorted by the Marxian approach to literature. Bunin's

8

PREFACE

'revival' after his death in 1953 occurred simultaneously in the Soviet Union and in the West and coincided with the 'thaw' in the Soviet attitude toward literature and with the growing interest in Slavic studies outside the U.S.S.R. Still under the vigilant eyes of the Soviet censors, Bunin's collected works in five volumes appeared in 1956, followed by several one-volume editions of his selected works. A number of more or less unbiased articles and a few short monographs in book form have been written since the thaw. The recent nine-volume edition under Tvardovskij's auspices is the most complete ever published in the Soviet Union. The leitmotif of all critical essays, introductory chapters, and general commentaries on Bunin is that Bunin, despite his political 'shortsightedness', should be returned to Russian literature. Finally, the language barrier prevents the western reader from reaching for Bunin's books from the shelf. Not enough is known by the world at large of Bunin's works because of the lack of translations. Bunin is, in the opinion of such authoritative scholars as Professor G. Struve, simply untranslatable. Only an insignificant number of Bunin's works in English translation appeared after he received the Nobel Prize. At the present time, almost two decades after Bunin's death and one hundred since his birth, critical examination of his works in the West is still deplorably slight. Only one study in book form has been written in Russian outside the Soviet Union. This one, written by K. Zajcev in the 1930's (Berlin/Petropolis, n.d.) makes interesting reading, but Zajcev's emphasis upon Bunin's religious thinking at the expense of his artistic achievements is rather unfortunate. The total number of articles written in English, French, and German hardly exceeds one dozen, and only a few authors have tried to give an accurate picture of Bunin as a creative writer. The stress in this monograph is on Bunin's prose, for it is there, the author believes, that his importance lies. To write on Bunin in English presents many difficulties. His exquisite use of the Russian language and the subtleties of his style are lost in translation. Moreover, disregarding the language problems, the author of this monograph is also faced with the inaccessibility of Bunin's archives. Almost all important manuscripts are now in the Soviet Union, and their custodians are neither willing to publish them nor to give information about them to foreigners. Even those scarce documents which are in the possession of some libraries in the West or in the hands of private people are, in most cases, not available for publication except with special permission, which is not always easily obtained. Besides, these manuscripts are mostly of minor importance

PREFACE

9

because they concern Bunin's private affairs and have little reference to his works or literary criticism. Another serious obstacle is the absence of a complete edition of Bunin's works. Bunin, an exact stylist, was never satisfied with his 'final' versions. He reworked his stories and poems throughout his whole life, and as a result there is no criterion as to which version is to be used. Most quotations in this monograph were taken from the five-volume Soviet edition; some are from the Berlin/Petropolis 1934-1936 edition, e.g., The Cursed Days, which has no chance for new publication in the Soviet Union. Furthermore, there are some of Bunin's stories which were never included by the author himself in any of his books and can be found only in some literary journals, as, for instance, in the Paris edition of The Contemporary Notes. The author of this monograph takes responsibility for his arbitrary choice of the stories which he makes the subject of his critical evaluation. Bunin's literary heritage is rich and is still waiting for his future specialized researchers. The purpose of this monograph is to present only milestones in Bunin's creativity, to give the English reader an overall picture of this unduly neglected Russian writer, and to create an interest in Bunin — an interest which would stimulate others to translate Bunin into English, to write on his life and the time in which he lived, to analyze the style in which he wrote and the philosophy that he believed, and to determine the place he occupies in world literature. Oberlin, Ohio 1963/1968

Serge Kryzytski

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

5

Preface

7

Abbreviations

13

1. His Life and Work

15

2. The Literary Debut: 1892-1909 2.1 The Peasant Theme before Bunin 2.2 The Peasant in Bunin's Early Works 2.3 The Squires in Bunin's Early Works 2.4 Other Works 2.5 Travelogues

37 37 40 48 55 62

3. The Period of Gloom in Bunin's Literary Career: 1909-1912 . 3.1 The Village 3.2 Continuation of the Peasant Theme: "A Night Conversation" and Other Stories 3.3 Dry Valley

66 66 85 99

4. The Widening Horizon: 1912-1920 4.1 The New Owners of Dry Valleys 4.2 The Mysteries of the "Russian Soul" 4.3 The Love Theme 4.4 "The Cup of Life" and Other Stories 4.5 Exotic and Urban Stories 4.6 Crime 4.7 Death

103 103 106 114 125 130 139 149

5. In Exile: 1920-1933 5.1 Revolutionary Years 5.2 All-Embracing Love: MitjcCs Love, The Elagin Affair and Other Stories 5.3 Old Themes in New Guises

162 162 168 185

12

TABLE OF CONTENTS

6. After the Nobel Prize 6.1 Non-fictional Works 6.2 Dark Alleys 6.3 The Life of Arsen'ev

197 197 204 214

7. Bunin's Poetry 7.1 General Tenor 7.2 Themes 7.3 Poetic Techniques

229 229 234 256

Conclusion

264

Appendix I. Copy of Pearl Buck's Letter

271

Appendix II. Copy of Andrei Sedych's Letter

272

(Translation of Andrei Sedych's Letter)

273

Bibliography

274

Index

280

ABBREVIATIONS

Page references from Bunin's works will be given in parentheses within the text. The following abbreviations will be used:

I. RUSSIAN Sobr. soc., Berlin Sobranie socinenij (Berlin, 1934-1936), 11 vols. O. T. Osvobozdenie Tolstogo (Paris, 1937). T. a. Temnye allei (Paris, 1946). Vosp. Vospominanija (Paris, 1950). V v I. Vesrtoj v ludee. Roza Ierixona (New York, 1953). Sobr. soc., 1956 Sobranie socinenij (Moscow, 1956), 5 vols.

II. ENGLISH GSFr., 1923 ML GSFr., 1933 WD DCh EA DA MP ShP

The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories, trans. D. H. Lawrence and others (New York, 1923). Mitya's Love, trans, from the French by Madelaine Boyd (New York, 1926). The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories, trans. Bernard Guilbert Guerney (New York, 1933). The Well of Days, trans. Gleb Struve and Hamish Miles (New York, 1933). Dreams of Chang and Other Stories, trans. Bernard Guilbert Guerney (New York, 1935). The Elaghin Affair and Other Stories, trans. Bernard Guilbert Guerney (New York, 1935). Dark Avenues and Other Stories, trans. Richard Hare (London, 1949). Memories and Portraits, trans. Vera Traill and Robert Chancellor (London, 1951). Shadow Paths, trans. Olga Shartse (Moscow, n.d.). This collection includes "Book Five" of The Life of Arsen'ev, entitled Leka.

1 HIS LIFE AND WORK

When the first chapters of ¿izrC Arsen'eva: Istoki dnej [The Life of Arsen'ev: The Well of Days]1 began to appear in a Russian émigré magazine Sovremennye zapiski [Contemporary Notes] in the late 1920's, the critics, reviewers, and readers argued as to whether this was a fictional or an autobiographical work. The author himself, Ivan Bunin, at that time the most influential Russian émigré writer, violently denied that his book was an autobiography. His widow, Vera Nikolaevna Muromceva-Bunina, is fully aware of his denial when she writes in the preface to her book : "I entitled it The Life of Bunin because some critics, to the great indignation of Ivan Alekseeviò, have called and are continuing to call his novel, The Life of Arsen'ev an autobiography".2 Some critics support her, perhaps respecting the author's own statement or perhaps believing sincerely that The Life of Arsen'ev is a work of fiction. One, for example, says that "this novel is of extreme importance to the student of Bunin, for it presents the reader with a clear and accurate picture not only of provincial Russia during the 70's and 80's of the last century but also of the early life and thoughts of the author himself. It is, none the less, not an autobiographical novel in the accepted sense of the term, nor is it a man's fond reminiscences of his youth that no longer exists".3 Bunin's first full-scale biographer, K. Zajcev, believes that "in The Life of Arsen'ev all the biographical facts have been transformed without 1 The four 'books' of this work, without Lika, is rendered in English as The Well of Days, very carefully and artistically, by Gleb Struve and Hamish Miles (New York, 1934). Hereafter all English quotations of this work will be taken from this translation. 2 V. Muromceva-Bunina, ¿izrC Bunina: 1870-1906 (Paris, 1958), p. 5. Bunina used rather incorrectly the term roman ('novel'). Bunin did not call The Life of Arsen'ev a novel in his last and final edition of 1952, he simply omitted its subtitle. Cf., for example, Bunin's careful choice of a classification for his The Village which he called apovest' ('long story'), and Dry Valley, to which he gave a Gogolian nuance by calling it a poèma ('big poem'). * C. H. Bedford, "The Fulfilment of Ivan Bunin", Canadian Slavonic Papers, 1 (1956), 31.

16

HIS LIFE AND WORK

residue by the heat of the creative process into malleable substance from which the poet molds and shapes his unforgettable high reliefs".4 However, one of the most prolific and successful writers on Bunin, F. Stepun, calls Arsen'ev Arsen'ev-Bunin and this identifies the author with his 'hero'. 5 Gleb Struve labels it a 'novelised autobiography', 6 and Andrew G. Colin, rejecting all modifiers such as 'artistic' or 'novelised', calls The Life of Arsen'ev an 'autobiography'. 7 Now, a careful juxtaposition of Muromceva's book and The Life of Arsen'ev reveals quite clearly the autobiographical character of the latter and supplies an enormous wealth of biographical material essential for a full understanding of Bunin. Although Muromceva points out some events which chronologically do not correspond with Bunin's life, she admits that in "The Life of Arsen'ev there are many autobiographical traits". 8 The author of the present study also sees clear autobiographical data not only in The Life of Arsen'ev but in many other works of Bunin (e.g., in The Village and Dry Valley). Bunin was, like some of his great predecessors, especially Lev Tolstoj, an extremely autobiographical writer. This fact in no way decreases the literary value of Bunin's works, for such skillful transformation of simple, everyday events into the works of art is undoubtedly the sign of a master. All his life Bunin was immensely proud of being born into the gentry9 and of belonging to the pleiad of the great Russian writers of the Silver Age. He was born on October 22, 1870 in Voronez, the seventh child of Aleksej Nikolaevic Bunin and Ljudmila Aleksandrovna, née Cubarova, who was distantly related to her husband. Since four of their children died in infancy Ivan was their third living son. Julij was thirteen years older than Ivan ; Evgenij was between them. Of two younger sisters one also died as a child. Like Arsen'ev's, the origins of Bunin's family are "lost in the mists of time" (WD, p. 4). In his letter to S. A. Vengerov (Sobr. soc., Berlin, p. 13) Bunin mentioned that some of his forefathers lost their lives under the walls of Kazan' in 1552, that some perished in the massacre of the strel'cy, 4

K. Zajcev, I. A. Bunin: ¿izri i tvorcestvo (Berlin, n.d.), p. 224. F. Stepun, "Iv. Bunin", Sovremennye zapiski, 54 (1934), 209. • G. Struve, "The Art of Ivan Bunin", The Slavonic and East European Review, 32 (1933), 429. ' A. Colin, "Ivan Bunin in Retrospect", The Slavonic and East European Review, 34 (1955), 163. 8 Muromceva, op. cit., p. 5. 9 See MP, p. 11. Also WD: "I know that our family is 'noble though impoverished' and that all my life I was aware of that nobility, feeling proud and glad that I am not of those who have neither kith nor kin" (p. 4). 6

HIS LIFE AND WORK

17

and others received large land grants for their services for the tsars. What is perhaps more interesting in Bunin's family background is the fact that he was not the first to become known in the field ol literature. Anna Bunina (born in 1774) was a talented poetess, a gifted translator of German, English, and French poetry, and the original author of an essay "On the Rules of Poetry, as well as on Russian Prosody for the Benefit of Young Ladies". Vasilij A. Zukovskij, the natural son of a country squire named Bunin and a Turkish captive woman, was another relation of Ivan Bunin. Of that part of Russia where Bunin was born he said: "wherever the eye turns, stretch the spiked fields of rye and oats and wheat" (WD, p. 8); there the black soil is deep and fertile, though famines are frequent; there "the richest of all Russian dialects were formed" (MP, p. 12), and from there "almost all our great writers came, beginning with Turgenev and Leo Tolstoy" (MP, p. 12). The list of writers who worked south and south-east of Moscow can be extended by a few more famous names: Leskov, GonSarov, Aleksej A. Tolstoj, Polonskij, and Cexov. Kol'cov and Nikitin were born in Voronez. While still a child, Bunin showed a dual disposition. It is said of Goethe that he inherited his mother's 'froh Natur und Lust zu fabulieren'. Bunin, however, took from his father "liveliness, gaiety, and artistic perception of life".10 When sober, Bunin's father was an excellent narrator and actor in mimes, and Ivan also could act. From his mother he inherited his love for poetry and his inclination to nostalgia, pensiveness, and sensitiveness. A few events in the first decade of Bunin's life made a deep impression upon him; for example the death of a peasant boy, Sen'ka, who fell from a horse. Young Ivan was horrified by the mysterious words 'dead body'. 11 This sad exposure to death was intensified by the sudden death of Bunin's sister Sasa — Nadja in The Life of Arsen'ev. Here is how Bunin-Arsen'ev writes about this: "For a long time Nadya's death, the first which I saw with my own eyes, deprived me of the sense of life — life which I had just come to realise!" (WD, p. 66). In his earliest childhood Bunin saw the impoverishment of the gentry, including his family, which inevitably led to its complete ruin. Whatever the causes may have been, the history of this process may be traced to its logical end in Bunin's family. Aleksej Bunin reminds us of the hospitable but impractical old Count Rostov from War and Peace. Like Tolstoj's Rostov, Bunin's father mismanaged his own and his wife's 10

11

Muromceva, op. tit., p. 10.

Ibid., p. 10.

18

HIS LIFE AND WORK

patrimony and he felt guilty about it. In The Life of Arsen'ev there is a beautiful passage in which Arsen'ev's father gives his son as a present the last valuable object he still possesses: his double-barreled shot gun. "Do you imagine that I see nothing, that I don't think about you? More than anyone! I feel guilty towards you all; I ruined you all" (WD, p. 250). A comfortable life on the estate, imaginative games with his contemporaries — the serf boys of yesterday from whom Bunin learned all the subtleties of the Russian dialect — and little joys and deep sorrows were the components of young Bunin's life. "Days went by, shaping themselves into weeks, and then months; autumn followed summer, and winter autumn, and spring winter..." (WD, p. 41). The first stage of Ivan's education came to an end when Nikolaj Osipovic Romaskov (Baskakov in The Life of Arsen'ev) appeared one day on the Bunins's estate. He was a young, dissipated nobleman, a kind of Rudin in his last days. On Ivan's mother's request he consented to teach the boy the three R's, and he accomplished this in his own peculiar way. He taught Ivan to read and write with the aid of a Russian translation of the Odyssey and Don Quixote and evoked in the boy an interest for wandering, chivalry, reveries, and literature. Thus Ivan's inborn impressionability was magnified by this most unusual tutor. The entrance examination to the Elec Gymnasium was easy for Ivan. Secretly, he wished he would fail it. He was asked "to multiply fifty-five by thirty, to tell who the Amalekites had been, to write a tricky sentence in a fair legible hand, and to recite a verse of Pushkin" (WD, p. 75). In general, Bunin apparently shared Tolstoj's views on history and formal education, for he ends the chapter with a question: "What the devil does he need those Amalekites for?" (WD, p. 77). While in Elec, Ivan boarded with a burgher family, the Bjakins (the Rostovcevs in The Life of Arsen'ev). Needless to say, Ivan, a typical 'enfant de la nature', enjoyed vacationing at home much more than staying with the Bjakins in Elec. In 1884 after four years at Elec, Ivan left school, went home, and resumed his education under the guidance of his older and extremely well educated brother, Julij, who had just been allowed to return home from political exile and who had to remain there under police surveillance. At that time Bunin showed his profound attachment to literature and distaste for science. He showed his adoration for Puskin, Lermontov, and Gogol' by devouring all their books that were available to him. Soon he experienced his first love; she was a German girl from the Baltic provinces, femilija Yasil'evna Fexner, or Annchen in The Life of

HIS LIFE AND WORK

19

Arsen'ev. In connection with Emilija and his feelings toward her, young Ivan even began to write poetry, or rather as Puskin said "the Muse began to visit" him. IlpoHecyTCH rofla. 3a6jiecTHT CeflHHa Ha mohx Bonocax,

Ho 06 3thx 6jia%eHHbix nacax

IlaMaTb cepflue Moe coxpaHHT ,..12

(The years will pass. The grey hair will shine on my head. But my heart will always remember these blissful hours.) The Muse was certainly still immature! This short-lived happiness with Emilija soon came to an end when she departed for Revel. Curiously, after a half century Bunin met her again in Estonia in 1937. Upon Julij's urging, Bunin sent to the magazine Rodina [Native Land] a poem, "Derevenskij nisfiij" [A Country Beggar], which was printed in the May issue of 1887.13 Thus Bunin began his long literary career which lasted sixty-six years. Encouraged by his first literary success, he continued to write poetry; his short poems began in 1888 to appear in Gajdeburov's Knizki nedeli [Books of the Week], where from time to time the works of Lev Tolstoj, Gleb Uspenskij, and §5edrin were published. Bunin's first short stories, "Nefedka" (a male name) and "Dva strannika" [Two Wanderers], as well as an article "Ob iskusstve" [On Art] appeared in Rodina and were soon followed by "Melkopomestnye" [Small Landowners], "Boz'i ljudi" [God's People], and "Den' za den'" [Day for Day]. Apparently Bunin realized how poor was the literary quality of these first experiments: "It seems to me", he wrote, "there was no writer who had begun so poorly as I did!" 14 The year of 1889 was crucial in Bunin's life. He felt that the time had come for him to leave his 'nest of gentlefolk' and try his luck in the 'wide world'. He went into this 'wide world' carrying with him a certain stock of life experience: he thoroughly knew the Russian rural and smalltown people; he was acutely sensitive to nature; and he had mastered Russian language and literature and educated himself in English and 11

Ibid., p. 29. See: Sobr. soc., Berlin, I, 19. This poem has not been included in this edition. It can be found in Sobr. soc., 1965, p. 54 with a subtitle "First Printed Poem". The subtitle is not correct: Bunin's poem "Over S. Ja. Nadson's Grave" was published in the same journal (No. 8, 1887) before "A Country Beggar" (No. 20, 1887). 14 Quoted by L. Nikulin, Cexov, Bunin, and Kuprin (Moscow, 1960), p. 182. 13

20

HIS LIFE AND WORK

French. Although to his great surprise, Orlovskij Vestnik [The Orel Messenger] offered him the position of assistant editor, he did not accept it at that time (he did a few months later) but continued to his place of destination, Kharkov. He could not find a suitable occupation for himself there, but he had the opportunity to get acquainted, through his brother Julij, with liberal circles. He disliked them from the very beginning, for he sensed insincerity, falsity, and artificiality in their political activity and even in their songs. He hated, for instance, "Sten'ka Razin".15 The passion for travel developed in Bunin to such a degree at this time that, despite his deplorable financial situation, he visited Sebastopol, about which he had heard so much from his father, and the Ukraine, for which he felt from then on a never-ceasing love. This period when Bunin worked for Orlovskij Vestnik is faithfully depicted in the "Fifth Book" of The Life of Arsen'ev,16 Muromceva has discovered a note by her husband in which he declared: "The whole Lika has been concocted".17 However, Andrew Colin's statement makes us doubt the sincerity of Bunin's note: "I know", he writes, "from Bunin himself (he made no secret of it) that the girl's real name was Varvara Pashchenko. He fell in love with her and followed her everywhere".18 Their liaison began in Orel. Glikerija's father (Lika is the nickname for Glikerija), a country doctor in Elec, was broad-minded enough to close his eyes to this intimacy between his daughter and the young journalist-writer, but at the same time he categorically refused to give his consent to her marrying the penniless Bunin. Bunin's formal talk with doctor PasCenko ended in fiasco: "Good-bye! I'll do everything possible I can to prevent this marriage".19 Lika refused to go against her father's will. These 'Liebes Leiden' made Bunin restless and strengthened his urge for travel — as in Puskin's Evgenij (Chapter Eight, XIII): 16

Muromceva, op. tit., p. 55. It was first published as a continuation of the ronton The Life of Arsen'ev, in 1939 (I. A. Bunin, The Life of Arsen'ev: Lika, Brussels). It appeared again with some insignificant changes in the "Fifth Book" of The Life of Arsen'ev (New York, 1952). Here Bunin eliminated the subtitle Lika. 17 Muromceva, op. cit., p. 5. The only English translation of Lika can be found in the collection of Bunin's stories edited by the Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow under the puzzling title Shadowed Paths, in which only two stories from Temnye allei, "Lika" (the translator spells it "Leka"), "The Gentleman from San Francisco", and "Sukhodol" are included. See bibliography. Olga Shartse took for her translation Bunin's final version of 1952. 18 Colin, op. tit., p. 160. A. Colin visited Bunin in Paris after the Second World War. 19 Muromceva, op. cit., p. 77. 16

HIS LIFE AND WORK

Mm oBJiafleJio

21

6ecn0K0iiCTB0,

OxoTa k nepeMeHe mcct (BecbMa MyHHTenbHoe cboActbo, HeMHornx fl06p0B0JibHBiii KpecT).

A restlessness took hold of him, the inclination to a change of places (a most excruciating property, a cross that few deliberately bear).80 For no apparent reason at all he took a train one day to Smolensk, Vitebsk, and St. Petersburg. Shortly afterwards Lika and he settled down in Poltava, in "the town, lush with gardens, with a cathedral on a cliff, which looked down from its mountain-top to East and South" (ShP, p. 368). Julij, who lived at that time in Poltava, managed to find an employment for his brother in the statistics office; Lika too began to work in the same office. While Bunin lived in the Ukraine he formed his passion for 'Tolstojanism' which, fortunately, resolved itself in later years into merely respectful admiration for Tolstoj's art. The reflection of this admiration in Bunin's works will be discussed later in this monograph. As a child, Bunin had already heard about Tolstoj from his father, who had met the writer during the Crimean War and had even played cards with him. Fascinated by Tolstoj's art and obsessed by the idea that the great writer lived only a little more than a hundred versts away from him, Ivan Bunin galloped one day to Jasnaja Poljana, but his courage failed him and he returned home without having seen the great man.21 This dream to see Tolstoj 'in the flesh' was to be realized later through the group of Tolstojans in Poltava who had a considerable influence on Bunin. Somewhat like Cexov and Gor'kij, though to a greater degree, Bunin was affected by Tolstojan ideas of moral perfection, by his advocacy of manual work (Bunin did some coopering and made hoops), and by his notion of nonresistance to evil. He even 'suffered' for 'the cause'.22 He was arrested for the illegal sale (without a license) of books published by the Tolstojan firm, Posrednik [The Mediator] and sentenced to three months in jail, but he was pardoned by a general amnesty of Nicholas II, issued upon the new Tsar's succession to the throne. (In contrast to the Tolstojans, the local young men's revolutionary circle [kruzok] was not able to 20

A. Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, trans. Vladimir Nabokov, (New York, 1964), I, 297. Muromceva, op. cit., p. 45. Also MP, p. 19. 22 O. Mixajlov, "Bunin i Tolstoj", L. N. Tolstoj: Sbornik statej o tvoriestve (Moscow, 1959), p. 205. 21

22

HIS LIFE AND WORK

interest Bunin. He attended two meetings, listened to comments and explanations of the first chapters of Marx's Capital, and then fell to his knees and begged: "Let me, the sinner, go in peace!")83 One of the Tolstojans, Doctor Wolkenstein, invited Bunin in January, 1894, to go with him to visit Tolstoj in Moscow. The journey, the 'brethren', and their leader Doctor Wolkenstein were revived in Memories with a sense of humor, a quality rather lacking in Bunin. Indeed, a sense of humor and of exaggeration are those qualities, on the whole, most noticeably absent in Bunin.24 This pilgrimage to Mecca produced two benefits: Bunin was cured of Tolstojanism, and his readers were given a beautiful verbal portrait of Tolstoj. As a matter of fact it was Tolstoj himself who advised Bunin not to take too seriously the oproscenie ('plain living', 'simplification'), saying, that one can lead the 'right life' without being a Tolstojan: "You wish to lead a simple life and work on the land? That's a very good thing, but don't force yourself, don't make a uniform of it; one can be a good man in any kind of life..." (MP, p. 26). A year later Bunin wrote a short story "Na da£e" [In the Summer House] in which he depicted an ideological duel between an ardent Tolstojan, Kamenskij, and a group of summer vacationers, the city intelligentsia. Kamenskij's passionate defense of Tolstoj's tenets is defeated by the ignorance, mockery, and irony of his opponents. The failure of Tolstoj's Utopian ideas was again demonstrated fourteen years later in The Village. Bunin's attitude toward Tolstojanism in no way decreased his esteem for Tolstoj — the artist. It is true that Tolstoj ceased to be for Bunin a 'teacher of life', but he always remained for him the greatest master in Russian literature, a man of astute mind and personal charm. Tolstoj's death depressed and overwhelmed Bunin. In his letter to Gor'kij he wrote: "Next day I wanted to answer you, but this morning Professor Gusakov came and said [about Tolstoj]: 'it is the end.' And I passed a few days in a painful dream. When I took a newspaper in my hands I saw nothing. Even now I cannot think of it all quietly".25 To continue with Bunin's life: on November 4, 1894, on returning home, Bunin found a short note from Varvara Vladimirovna: "I am going away, Vanja, don't think badly of me..." 26 Perhaps Lika's father was right when in his intimate talk with young Arsen'ev-Bunin he said: !s

Muromceva, op. cit., p. 79. N. Strelsky, "Bunin: Eclectic of the Future", The South Atlantic Quarterly, 35 (1936), 283. 86 Quoted by Mixajlov, op. cit., p. 205. 86 Muromceva, op. cit., p. 86. M

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"She is carried away with something one day, and the next it's another infatuation — and of course it's not Tolstoj's cell in the dell she's dreaming of..." (ShP, p. 272). Bunin tried in vain to discover her whereabouts. He became nervously overwrought, and his brothers, Julij and Evgenij, persuaded him to accompany them to Ognevka (Evgenij's estate — Durnovka in The Village). In response to the ever-present optimism of his father who believed that everything is transistory in this earthly life and that nothing is worthy of tears, Bunin gradually recuperated from this unhappy love affair. Finally, at the end of 1894, Bunin received a cryptic letter from Varvara PasSenko in which she tried to explain to her former lover her reasons for breaking off their relations. Now, if we compare the real letter of PasCenko (Sobr. soc., 1956, IV, p. 464) with a letter of Lika, which is more tender and romantic (ShP, p. 419), we can, in some way, better understand Bunin's statement that Lika was entirely the product of a poet's imagination. Yet his statement requires a slight correction: Lika did exist, but she is idealized as we meet her in the book. The critic was right who said: "Did Lika exist? As she is portrayed in the novel — never. But while living his life anew, the poet saw her exactly in such a way and when he created her again he fell in love with this picture newly created by him. He fell in love so deeply that he again experienced felicity and the suffering of love and jealousy". 27 The Life of Arseiiev ends with Lika's early death, but in reality she soon married A. N. Bibikov (1873-1927), a minor writer and journalist. The Bunins were on friendly terms with the Bibikovs and saw each other in Moscow. Varvara Bibikov died of tuberculosis on May 1, 1918 and her husband died nine years later. Muromceva found in Bunin's archive a scrap of paper on which is handwritten: "Arsenij Nikolaevic Bibikov died of consumption (in Moscow — when? in 1923?). Thus there disappeared from this world the man who took V. away from me. What ever happened to his Vorgol [an estate], where she and I found love together in that distant summer night?"28 Bunin wrote that "until 1894 he did not see a single real writer" (Sobr. soc., Berlin, I, 38). But in 1895 (at the age of twenty-five) he went to St. Petersburg and met there such coryphaei of the literary world as Zemcuznikov and Mixajlovskij. Bunin's name had already appeared in 'thick magazines', and his stories reflected the socioeconomic and political 27

Zajcev, op. cit., p. 224. Muromceva, op. cit., p. 90. Vorgol is a name of a village or estate where they met for the first time. In "The News from Home" Bunin wrote about soldat vorgol'sky [a Vorgol soldier]. See: Sobr. soc., 1956,1, 62. M

24

HIS LIFE AND WORK

events in Russia at that time: the famine in 1891, Asiatic cholera in 1892, the beginning of peasant migration to Siberia. Finally the death of the autocratic Tsar Alexander III raised some hopes for relaxation of his severe policy and made people dream of a constitution and of democratic reforms. In these years Bunin wrote a number of short stories which received favorable critical evaluations. Among them were "Tan'ka", which won a flattering appraisal from Mixajlovskij, who predicted that Bunin would become a 'great writer' (Sobr. soc., Berlin, I, 20), "Kastrjuk" (the name of an old peasant), "Na xutore" [On the Farm], "Vesti s rodiny" [The News from Home], "Na ôuzoj storone" [Away from Home], and "Na kraj sveta" [To the Edge of the World]. The main themes of these stories are hunger, 'impoverishment of the gentry', abject destitution among the peasants, and the peasant migration to virgin lands in Siberia. Bunin's visit to St. Petersburg and soon after that to Moscow threw him into the whirlpool of Russian men of letters. In Petersburg and Moscow he met such people as Zlatovratskij, Èrtel', Cexov, Bal'mont, Brjusov, Dobroljubov, Loxvickaja, and many others. He saw 'alive' D. Grigorovic, the legendary author of Anton Goremyka. It is interesting to read Bunin's own classification of the literary trends of the time: "I saw at one time the four literary epochs : on one side GrigoroviC, 2emcuznikov, Tolstoj ; on the other — the editorial staff of Russkoe bogatstvo [Russian Wealth], Zlatovratskij; on the third — Èrtel', Cexov; on the fourth — those who according to Merezkovskij 'had already fringed all the laws, transgressed all the limits.'" {Sobr. soc., Berlin, I, p. 39). From the time of his first visit to both capitals until his emigration Bunin led the life of a typical littérateur of the time. His time was divided between writing, editing, frequenting various literary circles, lecturing, etc. It would be beyond the scope of this monograph to trace all of Bunin's literary affiliations — the reader can find many interesting pages in his Memories and Autobiographical Notes. Yet some of his acquaintances with the prominent writers of the time are of paramount importance for the understanding of Bunin's place in Russian literature. The first literary circle Bunin was introduced to was the Sreda or Sereda [Wednesday] — the day on which its members and guests gathered. The Sreda emerged as an enlarged extension of a small, intimate group, Parnass. The latter united a few business men — littérateurs whose common love for literature and devotion to it brought them together and gave them a chance to discuss their literary experiences. N. D. Telesov, the writer of fiction, I. A. Belousov, a tailor, poet, and

HIS LIFE AND WORK

25

translator of Sevcenko, and S. D. Razumovskij, an actor, were the pioneers of the Parnass. The group grew to a large, influential circle and was renamed Sreda. It would be no exaggeration to say that the élite of the intellectual and artistic world met at the Telesov's Wednesdays. To mention just a few: Julij and Ivan Bunin, Gor'kij, SerafìmoviS, L. Andreev, Veresaev, Garin-Mixajlovskij, Boris Zajcev, Skitalec, Cexov, Kuprin, and Saljapin. In Telesov's Zapiski pisatelja [Notes of a Writer] we have a nicely drawn portrait of Ivan Bunin : Bunin was one of the interesting figures at a Wednesday gathering. Tall, slender, with a delicate, intelligent face, always well-dressed, his clothing severe, loving the company of cultured people and good literature, well-read, very observant and capable in all that he undertook, grasping easily the essence of any matter, persistent in his work and sharp-tongued, he polished his innate gift with the precision of a fine lapidary. Literary circles and groups with their varying views and tastes unanimously acknowledged Bunin's great talent, which continued to grow and strengthen with the passing years, and when he was elected an honorary academician no one was surprised. Even those who disliked or envied him limited their criticism to the grumbling remark that he was 'too young for an academician'. Bunin never missed our gatherings. He enlivened them greatly with his reading as well as with his humor and friendly witticisms.29 During one of his travels in the South in 1898 Bunin met, in the summer house of one of his friends, Anna Nikolaevna Cakni, the daughter of a famous Greek revolutionary, N. P. Cakni. The extraordinary beauty of the twenty-year-old Greek girl struck him. She was, as Bunin put it, "my pagan passion". 30 After a few days Bunin proposed to her and was accepted, and on September 23, 1898, she became his wife. He settled down with his wife in Odessa and consented to live in the house with his parents-in-law. This hasty marriage proved to be a grave mistake on Bunin's part, similar in some ways to Puskin's marriage. Anna Nikolaevna loved balls, receptions, and the beau monde. She and Bunin had no common interests. Like Puskin, Bunin felt jealous when he saw his beautiful wife dancing with a handsome officer: Everyone looked on with delight when she danced with Turchaninov, that unnaturally tall officer with black sideburns, long dark face and motionless dark eyes. She was rather tall, but he was couple of heads taller, and as he held her close, whirling her gracefully and endlessly in a waltz, he looked down at her with something like insistence, and in her upraised face there was both happiness and misery, something beautiful and at the same time infinitely hateful to me {ShP, p. 283). 29 30

N. Telesov, Zapiski pisatelja (Moscow, 1952), p. 40. Muromceva, op. cit., p. 109.

26

HIS LIFE AND WORK

This is not a picture of Lika, since Lika was not as pretty as Bunin's wife and the scene is not Odessa but Orel. The last book of The Life of Arsen'ev is not accurate autobiography, though the quoted scene from the book is similar to a real event which took place in Odessa. Muromceva remembers her husband told her about it and often repeated: "Yes, they both were handsome, indeed."31 The marriage, as one could have expected, lasted only briefly. In 1900 Bunin's only son, Nicholas, was born (he died at the age of five of scarlet fever). The birth of their son did not improve relations between Bunin and his wife, which as a matter of fact grew even worse and led to their break and separation. While in Odessa, Bunin came into contact with a group of painters. Two of them, Nilus and Kurovskij, became his close friends. In the fall of 1900, Kurovskij, then an employee of Odessa City Hall and curator of the museum, knowing Bunin's depressed state of mind, invited his friend to accompany him on a business trip to Western Europe. Thus at the age of thirty Bunin for the first time went abroad and visited Berlin, Switzerland, Munich, and Vienna. During the period of 1895-1909 Bunin continued writing prose and poetry. His first collection of stories, To the Edge of the World, appeared in 1897. His poems, Under the Open Sky, published in Brjusov's Scorpion, followed in 1898. In 1898 he also published a translation of Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha. It was warmly received by both the reading public and critics, and the translator was awarded a money prize and a gold medal by the Academy of Sciences in 1903. In later years he was honored two more times with this Puskin prize. To this period belong a number of stories which appeared in print in various magazines of quite contrary political tendencies and literary trends. This fact can only emphasize Bunin's indifference to politics from which he stood aloof, in pre-revolutionary Russia at least. Some of the early stories of Bunin should be mentioned here. Most important are: "U5itel"' [The Teacher], "Na Donee" [On the Donee], "Vel'ga", "Pozdnej no5'ju" [Deep in the Night], "Antonovskie jabloki" [Antonov Apples], "Epitafija" [Epitaph], "Bez rodu-plemeni" [Without Kith or Kin], "Nad gorodom" [Over the City], "Novaja doroga" [The New Railroad], "Sosny" [The Pines], "Meliton" (a male name), "Tuman" [The Fog], "Koster" [The Bonfire], "V avguste" [In August], "Osen'ju" [In Autumn], "Novyj god" [The New Year], "Tisina" [Silence], "Sny" [The Dreams], "Zolotoe dno" [The Golden Bottom], "Zarja vsju no£"' "

Ibid., p. 112.

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27

[The Dawn throughout the Whole Night], "Dalekoe" [The Distant Past], "Cifry" [The Numbers], "U istoka dnej" [The Well of Days], "Belaja losad'" [A White Horse], "Malen'kij roman" [A Little Romance], and "Pticy nebesnye" [Celestial Birds].32 The general tone of these stories is somewhat different from that of the earlier ones. The variety of themes increased and, though the peasant theme still dominated, Bunin began to express his thoughts about the gradual but inexorable dying out of the landowning class and about the vanity and transience of life and the inevitability of approaching death. His description of nature gained in strength, precision, and expression. Reminiscences of the past, especially his childhood and youth, formed a cornerstone for his later works. Fear of growing industrialization, of the invasion by city people of the villages, and, vice versa, the migration of country people to cities stirred Bunin's mind. His travels found some reflection in his works, and the weak sound of a love theme was present in a few stories. By 1909 Bunin had published thirty-six short stories. He was more prolific as a poet: by 1911 he had written 225 poems among which the "Listopad" [Falling Leaves], dedicated to Gor'kij, is not only the longest (about four pages), but, perhaps, the most popular. Besides Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, the four fragments from his Golden Legend, and "A Psalm of Life", Bunin rendered from English into Russian Tennyson's Lady Godiva and Byron's Cain, Manfred, and Heaven and Earth. His French translations include work of Musset ("Otryvok" [A Fragment]); of Leconte de Lisle ("Zolotoj disk" [The Golden Disc], "Usopsemu poetu" [To a Deceased Poet], and "V temnuju no£', v stil', pod ekvatorom" [On a Dark Night, during a Calm, near the Equator]); and of Coppee ("Smert' ptic" [The Death of Birds]). He also translated the Polish authors Asnyk ("Lilii" [The Lilies]) and Mickiewicz ("Akkermanskie stepi" [The Akkerman Steppes], "Catyrdag", and "Alusta noS'ju" [Alusta in the Night]); and the Ukrainian SevSenko ("ZavesCanie" [Testament], and "Vo zelenoj temnoj rosce" [In a Green Dark Growth]). In the fall of 1906 Bunin met Vera Nikolaevna Muromceva in the house of Boris K. Zajcev (they had already seen each other a couple of times before). In April 1907 they went abroad to Palestine, and in 1922 they legalized their common-law marriage. V. N. Muromceva, an alumna •2 Some of these stories were not chosen by Bunin for his Berlin edition. He published them in his earlier edition Nacal'naja ljubov' (Prague, 1921). They are included in

Sobr. soi., 1956, vol. I.

28

HIS LIFE AND WORK

of a Women's Gymnasium, then graduated in natural sciences from Ger'e Kursy (a Moscow school of higher learning for women), and thereafter shared her life with Bunin for forty-six years. Between 1907 and 1917 Bunin began a series of travels to the Far East (Ceylon and India), the Near East, North Africa, Turkey, Greece, France, and Italy, where he visited Gor'kij on the island of Capri. He did exactly as his favorite Persian poet, Sadi of Shiraz, preached: "For it is better to walk barefoot, than to wear narrow shoes; it is better to suffer all the inconveniences of travel, than to stay at home" (Sobr. soc., Berlin, I, p. 62). Many reminiscences of these journeys are echoed in Bunin's poems and prose works which he sent from abroad to the popular 'writers' co-operative' Znanie [Knowledge] and other publishing houses. In 1909 the Russian Academy elected Bunin "to be one of the Twelve Honorary Academicians, who corresponded in rank to the 'Immortals' of the French Academy, and who included Leo Tolstoy among their number" {MP, p. 3). The wording of this quoted sentence throws some additional light on Bunin's personality and character. His mentioning Tolstoj's name and alluding to French Academicians instead of making a simple statement about belonging to the Russian Academy reveals Bunin's haughtiness, excessive pride, and even vanity. It would be hard to imagine, for instance, Cexov writing such a sentence about himself. People who knew Bunin and met him in later years in exile, even at informal parties, noticed, more than once, these rather unpleasant traits of his.33 Along with Tolstoj, the names of Cexov and Gor'kij are closely associated with Bunin's literary career. An attempt will be made to evaluate their influence on Bunin and to compare their approaches to various problems. For undoubtedly Cexov and Gor'kij played a certain role in Bunin's literary career, in spite of the latter's statement that "there was decidedly nothing in me either of Cexov or Turgenev" {Sobr. soc., Berlin, I, p. 22), and that the Znanie group (Gor'kij's organ) was "quite alien" {Sobr. soc., Berlin, I, p. 22) to Bunin's Weltanschauung. In January, 1891, Bunin wrote to Cexov asking for an evaluation and 'unbiased opinion' 34 of the former's writing. They became acquainted in M

Nina N. Berberova, a poetess, writer, and critic, has told the author of this monograph that Bunin was eager to show his superiority on many occasions. Even at family dinners, with a few guests present, special food was served for him, and he seldom paid any attention to any of his guests except those of his choice. About Berberova see: G. Struve, Russian Literature in Exile (New York, 1956), pp. 290-292. 31 Literaturnoe nasledstvo (Moscow, 1960), p. 407.

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29

1895 and met again in 1899. From that time on their friendship lasted until Cexov's premature death in 1904. On his own deathbed forty-nine years later, Bunin, who worked on a book about Cexov, thought to his last minute about his friend. In Muromceva's letter to Sedyx we read: "By ten o'clock we were left alone. He asked me to read from Cexov's letters. We read them for the second time and he told me what it was necessary to underline..." 36 Two hours later Bunin died. Bunin and Gor'kij made their literary debuts at about the same time. Although they met in early 1899, they began corresponding at an even earlier date. While we can say without exaggeration that Bunin's relations with Cexov were unblemished, Bunin's eighteen-year acquaintance with Gor'kij was of quite a different character. Their friendship, the sincerity of which is doubtful, had its peak about the time Bunin wrote his The Village in 1909-1910 and ended seven years later in complete estrangement if not enmity; Bunin wrote later, Gor'kij "ceased to exist" (MP, p. 71) for him. How different is Bunin's letter to Gor'kij of August 20, 1910: In our relations, during our meeting we felt... that genuineness [to nastojaScee] that men live for which gives an unforgettable joy. I embrace all of you and kiss you sincerely — with a kiss of fidelity, friendship, and gratitude, which will always remain in me. I beg you earnestly to believe that these badly expressed words are true!38 In 1952 Bunin wrote that his popularity "began from the time he published his Derevnja" (V. v /., p. 8). It was written in 1909 and appeared in Sovremennyj mir [Contemporary World] in 1910, and it was followed by a number of stories among which were the famous "Suxodol" [Dry Valley], "Krik" [The Scream], "Sneznyj byk" [A Snow Bull], "Drevnij Celovek" [An Old Man], "Sila" [Strength], "Xorosaja zizn'" [A Good Life], "SverSok" [The Cricket], "Nocnoj razgovor" [A Night Conversation], "Veselyj dvor" [A Gay Farmhouse], "Ignat", and "Zaxar Vorob'ev". These stories of 1909-1912 belong to the period about which Bunin said: "I felt that my literary craft was growing every day" (V. v /., p. 8). The themes of these stories are entirely concerned with life among peasants and landowning classes; the way Bunin presented the Russian muzik ('peasant') and pomescik ('landowner') won him the reputation 35

A. Sedyx, Dalekie, blizkie (New York, 1962), p. 224. S. Kastorskij, "Gor'kij i Bunin", Zvezda, III (1956), 147. For collection of Bunin's letters to Gor'kij see M. Gor'kij, Materialy i issledovanija (Moscow-Leningrad, 1936), II, 408-460. 36

30

HIS LIFE AND WORK

of a "cruel", "merciless" writer.37 In literary criticism this period is often called Bunin's "darkest" and "gloomiest".38 Bunin spent three winters preceding the First World War on Capri; then the outbreak of war found him in Russia. The prewar, war, and revolution years, 1912-1918, embrace the third and last period of Bunin's activity in Russia. (In the transitional years 1918-20 his literary output was nil.) One thing must be noted: he was more prolific in prose than in verse; he wrote 100 short poems between 1912 and 1916 and thirty-eight stories of various lengths between 1912 and 1918. A severe critic not only of others but also of himself, Bunin included all the stories of this period in his Berlin/Petropolis edition, while the works of the earliest period are almost not represented. The range of themes widened. The Russian peasant, though he did not disappear entirely from the scene, was no longer Bunin's sole 'hero'. Love stories gained in number (e.g., "Poslednee svidanie" [The Last Rendezvous], "Legkoe dyxanie" [The Light Breathing]); death was treated psychologically and philosophically (e.g., "Xudaja trava" [The Weed], "Gospodin iz San Francisko" [The Gentleman from San Francisco], "Isxod" [The End]); attention was given to the problem of suicide ("Syn" [The Son]), to crime ("Petlistye usi" [Thieves' Ears], "Ermil"), to traditional 'little people' ("Arxivnoe delo" [The Archives]), to jurodivye ['holy fools'] ("Ja vse molfiu" [I Say Nothing], "Ioann Rydalec" [Ioann the Weeper]). The Far Eastern setting k la Joseph Conrad was portrayed in "Brat'ja" [Brethren] and "Soote£estvennik" [A Compatriot]; burghers and clergy were introduced in "Casa zizni" [The Cup of Life]; the war found only feeble reflection in "Poslednjaja vesna" [Last Spring] and "Poslednjaja osen'" [Last Autumn]; and, finally, the world seen through the eyes of a dog was shown in "Sny Canga" [The Dreams of Chang]. The Revolution did not surprise Bunin. He knew Russian people as well as anyone else and he knew the mood of the Russian peasant. He intuitively felt the oncoming catastrophe, the end of "historic Russia". But, nonetheless, he admitted that "reality surpassed all my expectations" (Sobr. soc., Berlin, I, p. 11). Shortly before the Revolution Bunin was taken by a passion for seeing all the Russian historic relics: almost every day he toured the Kremlin and went to Troickaja Lavra. The outbreak of the Revolution made it impossible for Bunin to continue visiting "

Nikulin, op. cit., p. 202. Cf., Edward Wasiolek, "The Fiction of Ivan Bunin: a Critical Study", Harvard PhD dissertation (1954), pp. 131 and ff. 38

HIS LIFE AND WORK

31

Russia's 'holy places', but his poetical imagination helped him to recreate the pictures of Russia's historical past so that his reminiscences about these pilgrimages (Bunin's expression) recurred in various literary forms, mostly in epistolary writing, at different times. Bunin left Moscow in May 1918 and followed the thousands of other refugees to southern Russia, which was then still independent of the Soviets but which soon became a battlefield, changing hands several times between the Whites and Reds. Bunin's participation in the Volunteer Army was limited to editing a local newspaper in Odessa, Nase slovo [Our Word]. Before the final occupation of the city by the Reds after the collapse of the White Army, Bunin and his wife decided to emigrate. It was a tiny, shabby, old French ship, Patras, upon which they embarked in Odessa on January 26, 1920. Overcrowded with refugees, she sailed for Constantinople. In 1921 Bunin wrote about this tragic event in his life in the story "Konec" [The End]: "I am on the Black Sea, on a foreign ship, for some unknown reason I am going to Constantinople, it is the end of Russia, of everything, of all my former life..." (V. v /., p. 8). In a kind of a diary Bunin wrote about these post-revolutionary days — the days which he named "cursed" (Sobr. soc., Berlin, X, pp. 35207). Thus, having drunk "the cup of indescribable suffering and vain hope to the very dregs" {MP, p. 16) Bunin began the last period of his literary career far away from his beloved "fields, fields, a boundless ocean of cornfields" (WD, p. 19), to which he was destined never to return. Before the Bunins settled for good in France they had to endure — in Constantinople, Sofia, Belgrade, and Czechoslovakia — various vexations to which stateless Russian émigrés were exposed. They finally moved to Grasse, near Cannes, and visited the capital only occasionally during some winter months. "The revolution", as K. Zajcev wrote, "interrupted for a long period of time Bunin's creative development."39 However, Bunin soon proved that the generally accepted theory, that a writer "torn from his native land" is a sterile one, is false. In the early twenties Bunin returned to literature and soon produced masterpieces which, in the almost unanimous opinion of critics, surpassed his pre-revolutionary works.40 Thus in the 1920's Bunin published collections of stories entitled a

® Zajcev, op. cit., p. 150. For example: "Can one speak of Bunin's creative growth, when we compare his stories written fifteen years ago with those of today? In my opinion — yes, one can". G. Adamovic, "Poslednee svidanie", Sovremennye zapiski, 32 (1927), p. 456. — "More than once I have had occasion to point out rare quality in Bunin's creative achievement, his unceasing literary growth". M. Aldanov, "Ivan Bunin: Zf'z/i' Arsen'eva", Sovremennye zapiski, 62 (1930), p. 523. 40

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Roza Ierixona [Jericho Rose] (1924), Mitina ljubov' [Mitja's Love] (1925), Solnecnyj udar [A Sunstroke] (1927), and Boz'e drevo [God's Tree] (1931). The first chapters of The Life of Arsen'ev were printed in Sovremennye zapiski as early as 1928. On November 9, 1933, while watching a daytime movie, Bunin was found by his friend Leonid Zurov and told that a telegram from the Swedish Academy had arrived: Bunin had been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. There was a great deal of discussion at the time as to whether the Swedish Academy's choice of Bunin for the award was justified. There were other serious candidates, among them Gor'kij and Merezkovskij. The first was rejected because "his reputation had already been impaired by his affiliation with the Soviet rulers and by his apologia of Communist tyranny", 41 but Merezkovskij was considered a serious competitor to Bunin. He was at that time a well-known author whose works had been translated into many languages, Swedish included. In comparison with Merezkovskij, Bunin "had never been what is called 'a popular writer' ",42 and the Swedes could have judged the quality of Bunin's writing only from a few French translations. However, it is no secret that Bunin received very strong support from the nephew of Alfred Nobel, Emmanuel, and it is also known, as A. Sedyx reports, "what an enormous role in supporting Bunin in Stockholm two other members of the family played: Gustav Ludvigovid and Marta Ludvigovna NobelOlejnikovy".43 The requirement for the Nobel Prize for literature is that an author shall have written 'distinguished work of an idealistic tendency'. This echoes Puskin's well-known description of the task of a poet to awaken or to appeal to the nobler feelings in men: "Cto cuvstva dobrye ja liroj probuzdal". One critic says that it was the "Western quality of his writing"44 that won Bunin the Nobel Prize, but there is no agreement about specific works that influenced the judges to decide in his favor. Some critics say the prize was awarded for Mitja's Love;45 others believe it was a belated recognition of "The Gentleman from San Francisco",46 and the author of one of the newest surveys of Soviet literature, V. 41 A. Sedyx, "Kak Bunin polucil Nobelevskuju premiju", Novoye russkoye slovo, (May 12, 1963, New York). Sedyx became a temporary secretary to Bunin during the Nobel Days (Bunin's expression). " Strelsky, op. cit., p. 276. 43 Sedyx, op. cit. 44 R. Poggioli, The Poets of Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), p. 114. 46 Colin, op. cit., p. 165. 46 H. Twarowski, "Jeszcze o Buninie", Tworczosc, 9 (1962), p. 140.

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33

Aleksandrova, makes a striking, though unfounded, statement that it was The Life of Arsert'ev which won Bunin these literary laurels.47 Bunin himself was inclined to think the award had been given his work as a whole (MP, p. 209). The author of this study shares Bunin's opinion but believes that the Western quality of his works, exemplified by "The Gentleman from San Francisco" was a prime consideration with the Swedish Academicians. In the years before the Second World War Bunin collected, selected, and corrected his works for the edition put out by the Petropolis Publishing House in Berlin in 1934-1936. It was not an easy task either for the editor or for Bunin, who was extremely particular about everything which concerned his printed word. M. V. Visnjak, the editor of Sovremennye zapiski, reports Bunin's extraordinary scrupulosity concerning word order, punctuation, etc. "For God's sake", Visnjak quotes Bunin saying, "don't rush me in sending my manuscript. The longer it remains in my possession the better it will be for all : for the printing house, for me, for posterity, for the glory of emigration".48 In 1937 he published a book on Tolstoj, Osvobozdenie Tolstogo [The Liberation of Tolstoj], a vivid account of Tolstoj's famous uxod ['going away', 'withdrawal from life']. The continuation of The Life of Arsen'ev appeared in 1939 under the title Lika. It won very high praise among Russian émigré men of letters especially from Aldanov, who used a variety of honorific adjectives, in superlative form, while reviewing the book. Among other things he said : "It is simply impossible to write better than that". 49 During the Second World War Bunin continued to live in the Maritime Alps in Grasse. Like many others he endured moral and physical privations which were inseparable concomitants of the war, with the result that in 1942 he "became lean and looked even more like a Roman patrician".50 Despite hunger and cold he never degraded himself by any 47

Vera Alexandrova, A History of Soviet Literature, trans. Mirra Ginsburg, (Garden City, New York), p. 13. 48 M. ViSnjak, Sovremennye zapiski: vospominanija redaktora (Indiana University Publications, 1957), p. 128. 48 M. Aldanov, "I. A. Bunin: Lika", Sovremennye zapiski, 69 (1939), p. 386. Extreme caution must be taken in reading the articles on Bunin written by his émigré friends or enemies. N. Berberova rightly observed in a conversation with the author of this study that many critics and reviewers among Bunin's contemporaries, knowing his intolerance toward any criticism of his works and considering his high literary status as holder of the Nobel Prize, were ever ready to flatter him (kadit' — as she put it — 'to surround with incense'). The opposite is true of the critics who were hostile to Bunin (e.g., Z. Gippius). 60 Sedyx, Dalekie, blizkie, p. 209.

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kind of collaboration with the Nazis, whom he hated as much as he hated the Bolsheviks. In 1942 Bunin came to Nice to see off Sedyx, who was about to leave for the United States. During the 'royal' lunch of herring and diluted pharmaceutical alcohol Bunin remarked sadly : Last year I wrote Shadowed Paths — a book about love. It lies on my table. What should I do with it? Take it with you to America, — perhaps you can publish it there. There are a few candid pages in it. Why, God be with them, if it is necessary — cross them out... And on the whole, my dear, here is my farewell message: the world is perishing. There is no need for writing and there is no one who is interested in my writing. Last year I still could write, and now I no longer have the strength. Cold, mortal anguish, potato soup and potatoes which have been prepared in soup (Xolod, toska smertnaja, sup iz kartoski i kartoska iz supa).bl There is a spirit of resignation and pessimism in these words and they sound very unlike Bunin's, indeed. To what a degree of depression must Bunin have been reduced if he said 'cross them out'! From about 1947 on his health started to deteriorate; he suffered from severe attacks of respiratory disease. The postwar inflationary prices, lack of income, large bills for doctors and medicine, and hardships of everyday life led Bunin to write the following letter to Sedyx : And here is what I'm finally reduced to saying: I became very weak, and outof-breath from emphysema of the lungs, almost died in the summer (literally) of pneumonia, for two months lay in bed, have suffered ruin paying for doctors' bills and for the useless treatment of emphysema (with inhalation), which cost me twenty thousand, and so forth. On January 2 I must again go with V. N. to Juan les Pins for the winter so that I'll not again be bed-ridden by illness in the Parisian climate and the cold of the apartment... In short, I'm past seventyeight and am so poor that I absolutely don't know how I'll exist. And so, in my complete despair, I beg you, do something, for God's sake, for me. Ask, for example, Kusevickij and other good-hearted people, friends of his, to help me a little.52

In addition, Bunin's peace of mind was disturbed by the rumors which spread in émigré circles in Paris and San Francisco that he had betrayed his convictions, visited the Soviet Embassy, and even managed to go to the Soviet Union. It was a well-known fact that many Russian émigrés in France, expecting political thaw and changes in the USSR, accepted Soviet citizenship. Bunin too was invited to the Soviet Embassy, spent twenty minutes there in a simple social talk, "svetskaja beseda, no ne "

52

Ibid., p. 210. Ibid., p. 221. Bunin's italics.

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35

sovetskaja" ('a social but not socialistic talk'),®3 and went home without committing himself in any way to the Soviet diplomats. Here is Bunin's letter to Sedyx which clearly demonstrates the former's innocence and the baselessness of the accusations which irritated Bunin so much: ...and these are, JaSen'ka, all my "actions'. I went nowhere, although the Soviet Consul and Senior Adviser to the Ambassador informed me, that, in case I should come to the USSR I would be a millionaire, would have automobiles and so forth. But I chose to complete my really last days in poverty in addition to various sicknesses of the old age. Who would have acted in this manner were he in my place? Who?64 Even after Bunin's death, K. Fedin, in his speech which he delivered to the Second All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, spoke of Bunin as if the latter were a Soviet citizen: "Ivan Bunin, already a Soviet citizen, was too weak to return home". 55 Interestingly enough, though Fedin mentioned it, he furnished no proofs of his false statement. 56 There is no doubt that Bunin, a Russian to the marrow of his bones, was homesick. How, otherwise, could one explain the postscript in his letter to his friend, N. Telesov: "I am gray, lean, and wispy, but still venomous. I want very much to go home". 5 ' To his 'venomous' feelings Bunin gave full vent in his Vospominanija [Memories and Portraits], a book, published in 1950, of loose sketches about some of his contemporaries. In spite of his very biased opinions, it reads interestingly and furnishes a key to a more complete understanding of Bunin. In these reminiscences Bunin's wrath fell especially heavily upon Esenin, Bal'mont, Blok, Brjusov, Babel', Xlebnikov, and Majakovskij. He wrote affectionate words about his idols Tolstoj and Cexov; he portrayed Saljapin and Raxmaninov in a favorable light; he highly praised Ertel'; he gave fair treatment to Kuprin; and on a few pages he again returned to the horrors of the Revolution. From 1951 on Bunin did not leave his bed. He realized that his long life was near its end. The excerpt from his autobiographical short story "Mistral"' [Mistral] illustrates the mood and physical picture of Bunin: A light is burning over an old oak bed, on which I have been sleeping for so many years in this old house belonging to others, a lean face is lying on a raised 63 Ibid., p. 218.

64 Ibid., p. 218. Jasen'ka is a diminutive of Jakov. " A. Baboreko, Iz perepiski I. A. Bunina", Novyj mir, 10 (1956), p. 197. Also see: Vtoroj vsesojuznyj s"ezd sovetskix pisatelej (15-26 dekabrja 1954 g ). Stenograficeskij otcet. (Moscow, Sovetskij pisatel', 1956), "Rec' K. Fedina", pp. 500-504. About Bunin: p. 503. " On this subject see Sedyx's letter to this writer. Appendix. " Quoted by Nikulin, op. cit., p. 257.

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pillow, one can see under the light that falls from above the dark hollows of the eyes, one can see the white forehead, a curved line in the silverish hair.... And then I am again lifting my hand — and there is only roar and darkness in which something shining is flowing everywhere.... You boarded the ship, completed the voyage, reached the harbor : it is time to disembark ( V. v I., p. 91). In almost all his letters to Sedyx, Bunin speaks about his fear of death, complains of physical sufferings, and describes his immeasurable, desperate, everlasting poverty.58 In 1951 Bunin became the first honorary member of the P. E. N. Centre for Writers in Exile. Despite illness, he continued writing short stories, miniatures, and poems which he published in various Russian émigré magazines such as Mosty [Bridges], Novyj zurnal [New Review], and Grani. Bunin died on November 8, 1953. He believed, according to Sedyx, that de mortibus nil nisi bonum. Yet in his Memories and Portraits he did not always observe this rule. Once in the heat of a discussion Sedyx asked Bunin: '"And how would you feel, Ivan Alekseeviô, if one day someone would write about you in the same manner you used?' Bunin turned pale, drew himself up, and replied coldly: 'No, they won't, my dear fellow, I haven't deserved it. I never occupied myself with literary prostitution' ",59

68

"

Sedyx, op. cit., p. 242. Ibid., p. 246.

2 THE LITERARY DEBUT: 1892-1909

2.1 THE PEASANT THEME BEFORE BUNIN

The period in which Bunin began to publish, the late 1880's and early 1890's, was a very complex time. The rise of industrialization, the growth of business, the rapid development of 'capitalistic' society, urbanization, the famine in 1891, the autocratic policy of the Tsar Alexander III, the ruthless policy of the Procurator of the Holy Synod, Pobedonoscev, — all of these plus many other sociopolitical and economic factors were bound to find their expression in Russian literature. Bunin was faced with a choice of paths: either to revolt against the Russian literary tradition, to react against the civic ideals of his predecessors and contemporaries by joining the ranks of the newly born poets' guild — in other words, to associate himself with the Symbolist movement — or to continue to write in the old established line. It is impossible to classify Bunin within a rigid frame. He was not long influenced by such writers as Turgenev, Tolstoj, Gondarov, Gor'kij, and Cexov on the' one hand, nor by Brjusov and his confreres on the other. Yet we cannot close our eyes to the fact that Bunin's stories have 'something' from the writers of the first group and that his poetry has 'something' of the Symbolists. "There are some natures", wrote a critic in 1914, "in which traits of both the old and new eras are colorfully and capriciously combined".1 And perhaps, Bunin was right, at least to a certain degree, when he wrote about his literary citizenship: "I belonged to no literary school, calling myself neither a Decadent, a Symbolist, a Romantic nor a Realist" (MP, pp. 13-14). It seems to the author that Bunin achieved this unique place much later, in exile, whereas his works written in Russia reveal more ties with the representatives of the Golden and Silver ages of Russian literature. 1

E. Koltonovskaja, "Bunin kak xudoznik povestvovatel'", Vestnik Evropy (May, 1914), p. 327.

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It is only natural that Bunin's first stories dealt with the Russian village and its inhabitants: peasants, estate owners, country school teachers, in short, with everyone who "propax muzickim polusubkom" ('became permeated with the smell of a peasant sheepskin coat'), as the great actor, SCepkin, felicitously remarked about Ostrovskij's plays. Bunin was born less than ten years after serfdom had been abolished. He grew up in the atmosphere of a country estate where the old way of life was deeply rooted in the peasants as well as in their former lords. Therefore it is only natural that his life on the estate (perhaps it would be more accurate to say on the 'farm' since the Bunins had lost their 'villages') his "personal contacts with the peasants, with the people, are reflected with much feeling in all of Bunin's better works".2 Indisputably the peasants are numerously represented in his early and prerevolutionary works, but another question arises — how truthfully and realistically are they presented? Before we start the analysis of Bunin's views on the Russian peasant we must briefly outline the treatment of the peasant theme by some of Bunin's immediate predecessors and contemporaries. The peasant class in Russia has always been, and, in spite of various Soviet experimentations, still is, the most important segment of her society. From Russia's 'well of days', from the earliest byliny (oral epic narratives) to Solzenicyn's Matrena's Courtyard — throughout nearly a millenium — sermjaznaja Rus' (Russia garbed in coarse heavy clothes, i.e., peasant Russia) has been one of the favorite themes in Russian literature. To give some examples would mean to enumerate many great and small names among Russian writers, poets, journalists, critics, and historians. Our interest at this point is in how the Russian muzik was seen, in what light he was depicted and how truthfully. Thus, in conjunction with the Russian peasant, we must speak of his barin ('master', 'lord') on whom he depended officially until February 19, 1861, and unofficially in many cases until the Revolution of 1917. The barin and the muzik were opposites yet, at the same time, intimately linked. A superficial distinction can be made among those Russian writers who regarded the Russian peasant as an essentially good, unspoilt, naive human being, those who saw him as an evil, unworthy man, and those who took the middle ground and tried to give him an unbiased, objective evaluation. Needless to say, the second group is very small, almost insignificant, and the third is also negligible, for objectivity is inevitably difficult. Thus the first group constitutes the overwhelming majority. 1

L. Nikulin, Sobr. soc., 1956,1, 3. This is Nikulin's introductory article.

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Turgenev's immediate predecessor was D. GrigoroviC, the author of The Village and Anton Goremyka. Turgenev admitted that GrigoroviC's The Village "was the first attempt of the time to bring together our Russian literature with people's life, it was our first 'peasant story'." 3 GrigoroviC's method consisted in faithfully reproducing the hard life of the peasant. But the peasant in his stories does not reveal his inner strength and is presented as a 'humiliated and insulted' man. The peasant milieu in GrigoroviC's conception is truly depressing; peasant life is dull, oppressive, and devoid of any spiritual substance. The tenor of The Village lies in its defense of an orphaned peasant woman, Akulina, who grew up "in a filthy, stinking hut in the cattleyard". Akulina's landlord ordered her to marry a man whom she never loved; her married life became a real martyrdom. Her personality suffered deeply, she acted "as if she were dumb", and she spoke only on her deathbed, when she made a last appeal to her husband not to maltreat their children: "Don't beat her ... don't... what for?" Of course, Slavophile critics attacked Grigorovi5 for amassing every detail possible in order to show the peasants in the most unappealing light. We shall see that some sixty years later the same accusations were directed at Bunin's The Village. Turgenev's approach toward the peasant was different from that of Grigorovic. In A Sportsman's Sketches Turgenev not only appealed to the reader's sympathy with suffering but also invited his admiration by showing the rich inner resources hidden under the peasant's outwardly rough appearance. According to Mirsky "the squires are represented as either vulgar, or cruel, or ineffective. In the peasants Turgenev emphasized their humanity, their imaginativeness, their poetical and artistic giftedness, their sense of dignity, their intelligence".4 In Tolstoj's voluminous works the peasant is almost always shown as superior to other members of Russian society. From the rather gloomy pictures of the villagers in the Morning of a Landlord Tolstoj uninterruptedly progressed toward the idealization of the peasant, reaching a high point with the somewhat stilted figure of Karatajev. The gradual idealization of the peasant by Tolstoj was greatly spurred on by the Populists and Slavophiles, whose writings tended to sentimentalize the peasant. Two of Bunin's contemporaries, Cexov and Gor'kij, also wrote about peasants of the same period, so that some comparison may be useful for 3

I. S. Turgenev, Sobranie socinenij (Moscow, 1956), X, pp. 283-284. * D. S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature (New York, 1960), p. 189.

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clarifying Bunin's conclusions. This will be done primarily in the third chapter of this monograph.

2.2 THE PEASANT IN BUNIN'S EARLY WORKS

The difference in Bunin's treatment of the peasant theme in his early and later writing is considerable; one would almost think that the early stories belonged to another author. With the exception of "Antonov Apples", the early stories are completely omitted in western criticism and have never been translated into western languages. Yet they create an important link between his first period and his second ('gloomy') period, between the early lyric pictures of the peasant with their friendly attitude toward him and the late sarcastic, if not hostile, approach. "Tan'ka felt cold, and she woke up" (Sobr. soc., 1956, I, p. 36). This is the opening sentence of a short story, "Tan'ka", published in Mixajlovskij's Populist journal, Russkoe bogatstvo, in April 1893. Tan'ka and her younger brother Van'ka are lying on the Russian stove. It is a misty, cold, winter morning. In the same room we meet the children's mother, Maria, and a wanderer (strannik) who has spent the night in this peasant house. A calf and a lame drake are also in the room. From a few short sentences exchanged between Maria and the wanderer — this is the only purpose of his presence in the story — we learn that the cow and horse have been already sold. Mention of the sale of the horse leads to a onepage digression in which, through Tan'ka's eyes, the reader views the transaction between her father and the horse buyers, the small-town petty bourgeois. Their father, a peasant-tailor, has gone away in search of a living. The wanderer is about ready to leave but expects something to eat first. However, there is virtually nothing edible in the house, not even cabbage or potatoes. Maria chases her hungry children out of the house to play. "And what should I give them? So I chase them away: 'Go and play, go and play my dear children, run on the ice...'" {Sobr. soc., 1956,1, p. 40). Tan'ka overhears this conversation. She is old enough to understand her mother's grief and feels pity for her. She decides to leave the house, go to the frozen pond, and return home toward the evening: "'I'll go to the pond, will not ask for bread crumbs (kroxi), so that she will not lament (golosH')."' (Sobr. soc., 1956, I, p. 40). This is the first part of the story. In the second part the barin, Pavel AntonoviS, while driving a sleigh through the village, is touched by Tan'ka's miserable appearance as she stands by the pond. He picks her up and brings her to

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his house. There he entertains the girl, gives her a few lumps of sugar and some prunes, makes a clock strike for her, and plays the guitar. While Tan'ka falls asleep, Anton PavloviS thinks of the innumerable Godforsaken villages and their inhabitants. He compares Tan'ka to his nephews who are at that moment in Florence; he thinks of his only son, banished to Siberia. Tan'ka sleeps and "dreams of Vas'ka and the roulades of the clock, she hears her mother either cry or sing old songs in the dark, smoky hut" (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, p. 44). There are elements in "Tan'ka" which should have pleased the Populists and their adherents, such as Bunin's attention to the year of famine and his presentation of the peasant family. However, they might have disapproved of the landowner's Samaritan approach to Tan'ka, for Mixajlovskij did not at all advocate the theory of 'small deeds' but rather 'severely criticized it'.5 But it is the language rather than the plot of the story that is of prime importance. As early as 1893 Bunin had demonstrated his masterful choice of words and his ability to differentiate the language of his characters and his own. Tan'ka, her mother, the wanderer, the fat small-town merchant Taldygin (the horse buyer), Tan'ka's father Kornej, the landowner Pavel AntonoviS, his man Egor, — each uses his own way of speaking. For instance, while Tan'ka says netu (vernacular for 'there is not') her father correctly says net; the wanderer's progusarili korovu stands for promotali or poterjali korovu ('lost the cow'); Taldygin says poskoreica instead of poskoree ('quicker'), etc. The story is very sentimental and rich in melodramatic effects, but it only partly foreshadows Bunin's later work. There is not a single paragraph of nature description, which became an absolute sine qua non of the later Bunin, but his love of detail, also very significant in his later work, is already apparent. For example: "Pavel Antonovi5 ate the knot-shaped biscuits, and Tan'ka furtively watched his jaws amazingly open to the very temples" (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, p. 42). "Kastrjuk" is a story of an old peasant of the same name who, because of his age, does not go to work in the fields but stays at home and takes care of his granddaughter. Yet he does not feel he is ready for complete retirement. He does not want to be a superfluous man while everybody around him works. He offers to work for the landowner, but the latter considers Kastrjuk too old. Toward evening, after he has passed a fruitless day, he meets his son Andrej returning from the fields and asks him, with 5 P. S. Kogan, "Literaturnye napravlenija i kritika 80-x i 90-x godov", Istorija russkoj literatury XIX v.,ed. by D. N. Ovsjaniko-Kulikovskij (Moscow, 1911), V, p. 64.

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little hope for success, for permission to go out with the horses for the night on the meadow. He is childlishly happy when his request is granted. Never mind that this is a job for children! Kastrjuk rejoices at the thought of again being useful. In "Kastrjuk" Bunin demonstrates his knowledge of peasant psychology. He analyzes the 'cast-off' Kastrjuk's moral condition. Like many of Bunin's peasant stories of the early period this story is told in a quiet soft tone and has a 'happy ending'. Unlike "Tan'ka" it has a few short passages of nature description and various very detailed observations are meticulously set down. Here is one of the typical examples: Having planted her leg to one side till it stuck in the mud, nervously quivering with her whole hide from the thinly singing mosquitoes, the mare monotonously sucked the water for a long, long time; one could see the water wavily going down her throat. Before she finished drinking she tore herself away from the water for a time, raised her head and slowly, dully looked around. The old man gently whistled to her. Warm water dripped from the mare's lips, and she either meditated or admired the silent surface of the pond. The bank, the evening sky, and the white stripes of clouds were deeply, deeply reflected in the pond. The fragments of this mirrored picture swung smoothly and merged into a single one as the water circles dispersed wider and wider. Then the mare took a few more sips, sighed deeply and, having pulled her legs out with a smacking noise, one after the other, from the mud, clambered onto the bank (Sobr. soc., 1956, I, 52). This description is typical of Bunin. Again and again we shall find in his works such pictures a la Teniers which, with carefully chosen words, realistically photograph the scene. Critics have often said that Bunin is a writer's writer. In other words, only a writer could fully understand and appreciate Bunin. This is an ambiguous statement which needs some clarification. Can only a writer understand and feel the quoted passage? Surely the general reader, even urban reader, can understand and appreciate Bunin's peasant stories with their lack of action and abundance of special details. He 'teaches' us to know the horse, its behavior, its way of drinking; he familiarizes his reader with surroundings that may be wholly new to him. Therefore not only a writer but an average intelligent reader who has feeling for flora and fauna and some basic acquaintance with them can derive full enjoyment from Bunin's stories. Gor'kij liked "Kastrjuk" and suggested to N. Telesov that he include it in the collection of stories for the 'people' (dlja naroda) which Telesov planned to publish. The whole story is told in a minor key and the end recalls that of Turgenev's "Bezin Meadow": the silence and beauty of a summer night, the group of boys, the horses, and the mention of an evil spirit (domovoj).

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In the "News from Home" Bunin introduces Dmitrij Volkov, the vicedirector of an agricultural research station. While Volkov deals with statistical data and with theoretical problems such as pudo-versty (measure of weight and length), the masses of peasants are dying of hunger in the Central Russian provinces. At one of the meetings, during which everybody is bored to death and thinks of his own affairs, Volkov is told that he has received a telegram. He quietly leaves the lecture hall and walks to his house. Besides the unimportant telegram, he finds a couple of letters from home. To his horror he learns from his son-in-law's letter that there is a severe famine at home: "Our Fedora, the lame soldier of Vorgol, and Miska Smyrenok have died of hunger. First Miska lost his child, and then died himself of typhus and hunger" (Sobr. soc., 1956, I, p. 62). The second part of the story vividly shows Volkov's reminiscences of his own and Miska's childhood, when he, the son of a landowner, and Miska, a poor peasant boy, were friends. They went together to an exsoldier Savelij, their first 'teacher', still unconscious of that social abyss which lay between them. Further recollections show a steadily growing contrast: while Mitja attends the gymnasium, Miska works in the fields; while Mitja-the-student drinks beer and leads a gay life, Miska works hard transporting wine barrels from a distillery. However, most painful for Volkov to recall was his last meeting with Miska about three months before, during the Christmas vacation. On a cold and snowy evening Volkov had come in a sleigh to the railway station and, while buying a ticket, noticed Miska: "His bark slippers were worn, the collar of his homespun coat stuck up like that of a beggar, covering his thin, sickly face" {Sobr. soc., 1956, I, p. 65). The penniless Miska had come to the station in the hope of somehow boarding the train and going to the city in search of work. Volkov had bought him a ticket. This story obviously recalls Tolstoj's views of the intelligentsia corrupted by society and of the poor, but goodhearted, peasant. In The Cossaks, for example, the early relations between Dmitrij Olenin and his servant Vanjusa resemble those between Dmitrij Volkov and Miska. (In both stories the first name of the hero is Dmitrij and the last names, Volkov and Olenin, are derivatives of faunal names). In both Tolstoj's and Bunin's stories social conventions prevented Olenin and Volkov, respectively, from continuing the friendship with Vanjusa and Miska so natural in their childhood. Both "The News from Home" and Tolstoj's The Cossaks are constructed on parallelisms, where, as Victor Sklovskij says, "image is opposed to image and forms the image-aspect of the

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work". 6 Mitja Volkov the high school pupil proudly wearing a new cap, and his opposite Miska "with one hand holding up pants and walking barefoot on the hot dusty sand" (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, p. 64); Dmitrij Volkov the university student drinking beer and singing student songs, and Miska the muzik "burdened with grief and family" (Sobr. soc., 1956, I, p. 64); and, finally, Dmitrij Petrovifi the vice-director clad in a fur coat, and Miska the beggar taking off his sapcortka ('cap') to Volkov. One feels also something like Tolstoj's bitter irony aimed at the work that Volkov and his colleagues are doing. The ending of the "News from Home" is constructed in the Cexovian manner: '"It isn't possible', Volkov exclaimed again, 'No, it is not possible! Collections, herbaria... Fodder Sugar-Beet... What a balderdash'!" (Sobr. soc., 1956, I, p. 65). Just as Cexov in the "Grasshopper" 7 (1892; initially entitled "A Great Man") repeats phrases and words from the opening of the story ('unusual', 'great', 'rare man') in the concluding part, so Bunin uses the same device of repetition. At the beginning of the story Bunin names the title of the lecture, Fodder Sugar-Beet, which he mentions again at the end of the "News from Home". It is a symbol of the meaninglessness of human affairs in the face of suffering and death. The character of Miska is not ficticious: "A peasant", writes Muromceva, "a friend of the author's childhood, adolescence and early youth died during the all-Russian famine". 8 "Away from Home" depicts a group of hungry peasants who search for work waiting for a freight train at a railway station. Their forlorn situation is dramatized by the moment: they are away from home on Easter night. The holiday mood is felt everywhere. The homeless peasants think of the past when they too, dressed in new Sunday clothes, went to their village church. The tolling of the nearby church bell brings them back to reality. The night mass is being celebrated in the waiting room of the railway station: Only the muziks stood in the darkness. They knelt and hurriedly made the sign of the cross. At times, pressing their foreheads to the threshold, then, again, avidly and sorrowfully looking into the distance of the illuminated waiting e

V. Sklovskij, "Form and Material in Art", in Dissonant Voices in Soviet Literature, ed. by Patricia Blake and Max Hayward (New York, 1962), p. 28. "Form and Material in Art" is an excerpt from Sklovskij's book Literatura i kinematograf (Berlin, 1923). 7 A. Cexov, Sobranie socinenij (Moscow, 1962), VII, 54-77. Bunin believed that the "Grasshopper" is one of Cexov's best short stories. He wrote about it: "The story is good, but the title is awful". See Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 67 (1960), p. 677. 8 V. N. Muromceva-Bunina, ¿izrí Bunina: 1870-1906 (Paris, 1958), p. 84.

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room, at the lights and icons, they lifted their hungry eyes... Arise, O God, and judge the Kingdoms of the earth! (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, 70).

"To the Edge of the World" is another five-page story about homeless peasants; here they are migrating to the Ussuri region. This is a loose sketch with no specific hero. Everybody from the village, Velikij Perevoz, has gathered for a common prayer in the open air. In a short digression Bunin recalls the history of the Ukrainian people: "Plenty of tears were shed here in the past" (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, p. 71) when Cossacks left their families for endless Turkish wars. Three quarters of the story deals with those left at home. Two young girls, who have put on their best clothes to see off their dear ones, return home, and one of them tells her companion that there had been some hope that her father would stay home. But he had suddenly changed his mind, influenced by a prophetic dream. Vasil Skut' would have joined the migrants despite his old age and the hardship of the long journey to the unknown Ussuri land ("'Sco vone taie sej Ussurijs'kij krafV "What is it, that Ussuri land'?') if only he had had the seventy rubles needed for the migration permit. Everything seems unchanged in Velikij Perevoz but for the abandoned houses of those who have departed for 'the edge of the world'. He is no longer the owner of his hut; he has been allowed dozit' in his home ('to live through remaining years of one's life'); he realizes that it would be well for him to die as soon as he can, for his life is now out of its normal path. And those who have left spend the night under the warm sky of their Ukrainian homeland, constantly thinking "about that far land at the edge of the world, about the big roads and rivers on their way, about their native villages which they left behind" (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, 75). The indifference of nature is contrasted to human grief and sorrows: It grew colder. Everything was sound asleep — the people, roads, boundaries, and corn fields covered with an early dew. From a distant farm one could hear the weak cry of a cock. The sickle of the moon, turbid-red and inclined to one side, appeared on the edge of the sky. It shone dimly. Only the sky near it became greenly tinted, the steppe darkened from the side of the horizon, and something dark appeared on the horizon itself. It was burial mounds. And only the burial mounds and stars listened to the dead silence of the steppe and to the breathing of the people, who forgot in sleep their grief and far journey. But what do they care, these centuries-old burial mounds, about the joys and sorrows of human beings who live for a moment and will soon make way for other, similar beings, who will again worry and rejoice and disappear in the same manner from the face of the earth? These burial mounds have seen many camps, many strings of carts stopping for the night in the steppe, many people, much sorrow and joy. Only the stars, perhaps, know how holy is human grief!

(Sobr. soc., 1956, I, 75).

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"To the Edge of the World" was first published in Krivenko's Novoe slovo. "This story", writes Bunin in his Notes, "was unanimously praised by the critics so that other periodicals began to invite me to collaborate, and the Petersburg Society for the Care of Migrants asked me to come to St. Petersburg and participate in some kind of a literary evening for raising funds for migrants" (Sobr. soc., Berlin, I, p. 41). And he adds further: "I read, of course, 'To the Edge of the World' and had again, thanks to these unhappy migrants (and the newness of my name) a big success" {Sobr. soc., Berlin, I, p. 43). The story was written in Poltava during the period of Bunin's enthusiasm for the Ukraine. Ukrainian speech is faithfully and nicely reproduced in the peasants' talk and adds to the vivacity of the narration. Bunin's attitude toward the peasants continues to be friendly and sympathetic. Like Turgenev's Birjuk in a story from A Sportsman's Sketches, Bunin's Meliton is a forester. Because of his personal misfortunes Birjuk is an outwardly gloomy person, strict in performance of his duties. Yet at the bottom of his heart Birjuk is not so bad as hearsay among the muziks has reputed him to be. After all, in a critical moment Birjuk releases a poor peasant whom he catches stealing timber. Severe, adamant, enigmatic Birjuk appears in the story in the glare of lightning, in a roaring thunderstorm, against the background of the gloomy forest. The warring elements of nature seem to underline Birjuk's personality. The same literary device, in quite a different setting, is used by Bunin in "Meliton". Meliton appears and acts almost like a saint. He is described as usually "dressed as if he might have expected to die at any time: clean but mended pants and shirt, clothes wrapped around his feet in bark slippers nicely fastened with frills" (Sobr. soc., 1956, I, p. 221). The narrator visits Meliton twice. The first time is in May, toward evening. The introductory paragraph masterfully describes the peaceful twilight atmosphere of the forest in spring with the call of the nightingale and the cuckoo. Meliton is not talkative; it is hard to draw him out. From a few very cryptic answers we learn that he has been a soldier and had to walk cerez stroj ('through the rows'), that he is a widower for the second time, that all his children have died, and that he collects, dries, and stores herbs. Again the protagonist stops at Meliton's hut in winter: "And the forest looked like a dead kingdom in a fairy land. The trees appeared enormous in the hoarfrost of dawn; they deeply lowered their heavy, bushy branches, and the moon silvered their crowns" (Sobr. soc., 1956, I, p. 225). The author looks inside through a half-frozen little window into the hut. He sees Meliton praying in front of an icon. From the short talk which

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follows we learn Meliton's unsophisticated philosophy: he is sad because he is old and has many sins. Has he kept the fast all his life long? Not at all. '"I eat as everybody does. Some people live worse than me, all live this way..." (Sobr. soc., 1956, I, p. 226). How do they live? We can cite Kornej's answer from the "Golden Bottom": "'We live badly'" (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, 262). Some of Bunin's early stories which do not treat peasant themes nevertheless include peasant characters. Especially in those stories which deal with the related subject of the landowners, peasants appear in various situations as domestics, coachmen, watchmen, and beggars. As we can readily see, despite Bunin's collaboration with the Znanie group, his stories lack the pugnaciousness of the "Petrel of Revolution". In a letter to Brjusov of February 5, 1901, Gor'kij, annoyed by Bunin's nonpartisan stand, made the following remark: "I don't understand why he [Bunin] won't convert his talent, beautiful as dead silver, into a knife and stab with it where it is needed".9 Meantime the "Golden Bottom" and "Dreams" (published by the Znanie under a combined title "Black Soil") won Cexov's approval,10 for he saw in these stories progress in Bunin's language and style; Gor'kij liked "Black Soil" because of Bunin's 'sharpened knife'. In a letter to K. P. Pjatnickij of December 1903 Gor'kij writes: "I like very much Bunin's little stories, especially the second one, 'Black Soil'". 11 Gor'kij's opinion on Bunin's "Black Soil" gave the green light to all Soviet critics. Henceforth it was impossible to write on Bunin without quoting Kornej's conversation with the narrator. This is the passage from the "Golden Bottom" in which Bunin, speaking through Kornej's mouth, depicts the mood of the impoverished peasants on the eve of the 1905 Revolution. The narrator, a young barin who has just arrived from the city, asks his coachman, Kornej, about the life in the country. Here is their dialogue: "We still survive." "What do you mean 'still'? And what about later?" "Later — as God shall provide. Something will come..." "What then?" "Well, something will come... Why, must we stay here forever and weave the frills for devils! People will go to other places, or perhaps somehow..." "And how?" One can clearly see Kornej's face in the moonlight, but, lowering his head, he frowns and looks aside. • Pecat' i revoljucija, V (1928), p. 56. 10 A. Cexov, Polnoe sobranie socinenij (Moscow, 1951), XX, p. 268. 11 M. Gor'kij, Sobranie socinenij (Moscow, 1954), XXVIII, p. 153.

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The master continues his inquiry, he worries about this reticence, this secrecy of the peasant's thoughts. "And what do you mean 'otherwise'?" "That remains to be seen," Kornej replies in a very sullen manner. "Let's drive, master, it is late". And he silently climbs on the coach-box (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, 267). Although this story was written in 1903, published by the Znanie, and praised by Gor'kij, one cannot assume that Bunin sympathized with the 'revolutionary' ideas Kornej expresses in fragmentary sentences and puzzling secrecy. The Marxist critic Vorovskij was aware of Bunin's nonpolitical stand. He wrote: "Regarding Bunin's social views everybody knows that, though he was outwardly connected with Gor'kij's 'progressive group' he inwardly remained aloof from this group and stood alone; he did not belong to it both because of his nonpolitical Weltanschauung and because of his somehow aristocratic (barskie) tastes". 12 Likewise, an orthodox Soviet critic, Volkov, admits: "One should not, of course, exaggerate the influence of the revolutionary events of 1905 on Bunin. Bunin's attitude toward the revolutionary struggle of the masses was negative".13 The Soviet writer and critic Nikulin attributes Bunin's political indifference to the latter's 'narrow-mindedness'. He writes, "the life of the squires was so dear to the writer that he did not realize the gentlefolk's nests were doomed; narrowness of the horizon prevented him from seeing and understanding the oncoming events".14

2.3 THE SQUIRES IN BUNIN'S EARLY WORKS

Almost parallel to the peasant theme runs Bunin's preoccupation with the fate of his own class — the class of the gentry in its decay. Three lines from the familiar poem . . . TO JIH H6JIOK aHTOHOBCKHx 3anax, H o ceroflHH Tax iieriKO Meiw flepjKHT npouuioe B 6apxaTHbix jianax.

(... perhaps this is the fragrance of the Antonov apples, but the past holds me today so clingingly in its velvety paws). depicts best of all the entire mood of Bunin in his treatment of this 12 13 14

V. Vorovskij, "I. Bunin", Literaturno-kriticeskie statH (Moscow, 1956), p. 324. A. Volkov, Istorya russkoj literatury (Moscow-Leningrad, 1954), p. 563. L. Nikulin, Cexov, Bunin, Kuprin (Moscow, 1960), p. 192.

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subject. In 1900 in the monthly ¿izn' [Life]15 Bunin published his "Antonov Apples" (a certain kind of Russian apple with fragrance which causes homesickness in a Russian) with the subtitle "Pictures from the Book: Epitaphs". Speaking briefly of this story, the late Professor Poggioli judiciously remarked that "Bunin had used, at least ten years earlier, the Proustian device of the 'intermittence du coeur' by causing the peculiar scent of a particular kind of apple to recall in the mind of the protagonist all the forgotten memories of the past life of his family and himself".16 In order to emphasize the past that is both distant and yet near to his heart, Bunin intentionally repeats several times the verb 'to remember' in the opening paragraph of the story: "... I remember a fine, early autumn... I remember a crisp, clear morning... I remember a big, golden orchard, rather dry, with thinning trees. I remember the walks lined with maples, the subtle fragrance of fallen leaves and the smell of Antonovka apples — a smell of honey and autumn freshness" (ShP, pp. 7-8, passim). The protagonist ("Antonov Apples" is a firstperson narrative) remembers a year of abundant crops, when all is well in Vyselki (the name of the village) and the corn harvest is good. The village described is a prosperous one and recalls the stability of SobakeviS's village in Dead Souls:

The houses at Vyselki were in keeping with the old people. They were mud cottages built by their grandfathers. But the more prosperous peasants, like Savely, Ignat and Dron, had big cottages of double or triple length of timber, for in those days Vyselki did not go in for property division. Families such as these kept beehives, took a pride in their steel-blue stallions, and looked after their property well. Hampfields, thick and lush, stretched beyond the threshing floors; store-rooms and lofts had strong heavy doors, which guarded rolls of linen, spinning wheels, new sheepskin coats, silver-chased harness, and measuring casks, hooped with copper (ShP, p. 17). This description of the peasants' cottages helps to visualize the gentry's way of life which Bunin compares to it: Until very recently, already in my time, the mode of life of most of the country squires bore a very strong resemblence to that of the wealthy peasants in the thriftiness and its rustic old-world prosperity (ShP, p. 18). 16

Zizri, the St. Petersburg literary, political, and scientific journal edited by V. A. Posse during the years 1897-1901 became an organ of 'legal Marxists' from the end of 1898. The publishing "Antonov Apples" — a story which has absolutely nothing in common with the Marxian doctrine — may help us to understand that Bunin's participation in Gor'kij's Znanie and Brjusov's Scorpion cannot be interpreted as evidence of his belonging to one or another political or literary group. 16 R. Poggioli, "The Art of Ivan Bunin", Harvard Slavic Studies (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), I, p. 277.

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The community of interest and the similarity between the impoverished gentry and the masses of peasantry is the unchanging hypothesis of many works by Bunin; most evident in Dry Valley, it forms the cornerstone of his philosophy of the peasant-squire relationship. Hunting was the favorite occupation which supported the waning spirit of the squires. A few pages describing the hunt, with their mention of hunters' horns echo the beginning lines of Puskin's poem Graf Nulin [Count Nulin]: "Pora pora! Roga trubjat" ('It's time, it's time! The horns are sounding'). Bunin recalls the impoverished landowners: "There were no troikas, no Kirghiz horses, no hounds and borzois, no serfs and even no owners of all this — hunting country squires like my late brother-in-law Arsenij Semyonich" (ShP, p. 22). The late Arsenij Semyonich is Aleksej Ivanovich PuseCnikov,17 or Pisarev in The Life of ArserCev (WD, pp. 165-166). While Puskin writes in beautiful verse about the 'prosaic' events B nocJieAHHX HHCJiax c e H T s 6 p a

(Ilpe3peHHoft n p 0 3 0 f i roBopa)

BflepeBHecKyrao: rp»3b, HeHacTbe, OceHHHfi BeTep, mcjikhA CHer J3fL BOfi BOJ1KOB.

(In the last days of September (speaking in despicable prose) there is boredom in the country: mud, bad weather, autumn wind, fine snow and howling of the wolves.) Bunin uses poetical prose for almost the same description: From the end of September our orchards and fields began to take on a desolate look, and the weather would change suddenly. The wind blustered and tore at the trees for days on end, and rain drenched them from morning till night (ShP, p. 22). Bunin-Arsen'ev confesses that Puskin was a part of his life and that all his "youth passed with Pushkin" (WD, p. 204). When the protagonist of "Antonov Apples" happened to oversleep while everybody went hunting he "would settle down to the books of grandfather's day, volumes bound in thick leather, with golden stars on their morocco backs" (ShP, p. 30). Some three decades later almost the same picture is again conjured up in The Life of ArserCev: "But that library proved to contain a multitude of marvellous volumes in thick dark-golden leather bindings with golden stars on the back" (WD, p. 161). Puskin laughs at Natalija Pavlovna Nulina, who "

Muromceva, op. cit., p. 37.

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... CHflHT nepea okohom; Ilpefl Hefi OTxptiT leTBepTbiii t o m

CeHTHMeHTajibHoro poMaHa: JlioSoeb 3AU3U U ApMaua, HM> nepenucxa deyx ceMeu. — POMaH KJiaCCHieCKHS, CTapHHHMH, OTMeHHO flJIHHHWii, flJIHHHblfi, flKjmHHbLft HpaBoyMHTejibHBifi H HHHHtrft;

Be3 poMaHTHiecKHX 3aTefi. (... sits by the window. The fourth volume of a sentimental novel is open in front of her: The Love of Elise and Arman, or a Correspondence of Two Families. This is a classical, old-fashioned novel, a real long, long, long one, moralistic and decent, without romantic intrigues.)

Bunin's protagonist ("I")> in contrast, goes over the pages of similar novels, "sentimentally pompous and long" (ShP, p. 31), with a "strange, sweet sadness" (ShP, p. 31) in his heart, for everything is passing so fast, times change, dear ones die, and, in short: "The fragrance of Antonovka apples is disappearing from the country houses" (ShP, p. 32). The whole story is full of melancholy. Reminiscences of the idealized past, family reunions, twilight hours in a cozy old sitting room, visits of the neighbors (some small-estate owners), gay drinking parties, and singing to the accompaniment of a guitar — all this creates the mood of the "Antonov Apples" and assures Bunin a place in the literature of 1900's. Needless to say, "Antonov Apples" did not meet Gor'kij's approval: "The fragrance of the 'Antonov Apples' is good — but they don't smell democratic at all".18 And in a letter to Cexov, Gor'kij writes: "You know — Bunin is a clever man (umnica). He acutely feels everything beautiful, and when he is sincere — he is magnificent. It is pity that his lordly (barskaja) neurasthenia spoils him...". 19 The common interest of squires and peasants does not, of course, lie in the fragrance of the Antonov apples. To Bunin's mind both classes have one common enemy — the growing industrialization. The peasants are leaving the bare soil for virgin lands in Siberia and new people appear in the steppe, trample down thinly growing self-seeded rye and search for new happiness — "this time in the entrails of the earth, where the 18 19

Arxiv Gor'kogo (Moscow, 1954), IV, p. 53. Quoted by Nikulin, op. cit., p. 193.

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talismans of the future are hidden" (Sobr. soc. 1956 I, p. 199). "The Epitaph" is constructed in a symbolic manner: a white birch, on which hangs the Suzdal' icon of the Virgin Mary, personifies country life. The story of the birch tree is, at the same time, the story of the village from its height of prosperity to its final decay. Seasoned by winds, snow storms, autumn rains, and burning rays of the sun the dark icon and the birch tree have grown older and older. Together they have seen the olden days, good harvests, and green pastures. To break the monotony of the narration Bunin suddenly switches to the first person and uses one of his often-repeated devices: "I remember...". Bunin remembers the old customs which had their roots in heathen Rus': prayers to a cuckoo, 'games of the sun' (igry solnca), and putting out the cooked cereal for the spirits. These pagan customs point to the affinity of the peasants with their ancestors. The peasants Bunin remembers "were true heirs of Rusici" (Sobr. soc., 1956, I, p. 198). But "life does not stand still — the old passes, and we often say farewell to it with great sadness. Yes, and is it not for this reason that life is beautiful and constantly changing?" {Sobr. soc., 1956, I, p. 198). Droughts, famine, and migration bring changes in the village; it is now deserted: " ' N o t a soul', said the wind as it flew over the whole village and in a bravado raised the dust on the road" (Sobr. soc., 1956, I, p. 198). The city people, the new people, in their search for minerals change the century-old, customary mode of country life. They affect both the peasants and the squires. Their coming means an end to the traditional, 'peasant' Russia: The ore! Perhaps, the factory chimneys will soon be smoking here, the strong railway tracks will lie here instead of the old road, and a city will rise on the site of the old village. And whatever sanctified the old life here will be forgotten by everybody.... How will the new people sanctify their new life? Whose blessing will they call down upon their cheerful and noisy toil? (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, 198). In another story, "The New Road", Bunin returns to the same subject and speaks about his fear of mechanization: The new road leads farther and farther into a new region of Russia still unknown to me. For this reason a feeling I experienced fully in my youth returns now with new acuteness: a sense of the whole beauty and whole sadness of the Russian landscape, indivisibly connected as it is with the Russian life. The forests drearily surrounded the new road and one hears them saying: 'Go ahead, go ahead, we part to let you pass. But is this all you are doing, adding the impoverishment of nature to the poverty of people?' (Sobr. soc., 1956, I, 209). Quite different from the "Antonov Apples" is Bunin's early story "In the

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Field" (1896), initially called "Bajbaki" [The Lazy Bones] with a subtitle "Iz byta melkopomestnyx" [From the Life of the Small Landowners], Contrary to the "Antonov Apples" this story shows the small estate in a completely dilapidated state. Ironically the name of the estate is "Lu£ezarovka", something like "Sunshine Place", where actually nothing is left which might recall the sunny, happy life of the past days. It is a cold, snowy, Christmas Eve: It seems that the estate is dead: there is no sign of life except that some straw from the heap near the barn has been used, there is not a single footstep in the back yard, not a sound of human voice! Everything is packed with snow, everything sleeps with a lifeless sleep to the accompaniment of the wind from the steppe, amid the wintry fields.... The wolves roam in the night around the house, come from the meadows to the very porch (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, 109).

The family of the owner, Jakov PetroviC Baskakov, has moved to the neighboring town, but he remains to complete 'the last third' of his life in the country. Baskakov is alone at home. His maid, the former serf, went for the holidays to see her nephew, and the peasant, Sudak, has been sent to the village to buy 'groceries' for one ruble sixty kopecks: "1 lb. tobacco (maxorka) of better quality, 1000 matches, 5 pickled herrings, 2 lbs. vegetable oil, 2 ozs. of fruit tea, 1 lb. sugar, and lbs. mint candies" {Sobr. soc., 1956,1, p. 110). On such a lonely night Baskakov receives the visit of his only friend, old Kovalev, his former orderly from the Crimean Campaign. They both live in the past, in the world of reminiscences, tor their present life is devoid of any sense. They both are real bajbaki ('lazy ones', 'lazy bones'): despite the cold in the room neither wants to go outside and fetch some straw for the stove. Suddenly a bright idea comes to Jakov PetroviC's mind: he takes the axe and begins to chop the chair. The room is soon pleasantly warm, the samovar is boiling, and the old friends, the former officer and his orderly, the squire and the peasant, share their reminiscences. 'Do you remember, Jakov Petrovic', he begins. The evening passes slowly, it is warm and light in the small study. Everything in it is humble and oldfashioned: the yellow wallpaper, the faded photographs on the walls, the pictures embroidered in wool (a dog, a Swiss landscape), the low ceiling pasted with the Son of the Fatherland; in front of the window stands an oak writing desk and a huge old armchair; by the wall stands a big redwood bedstead with drawers, over it a horn, shotgun, and powder-flask; dark, old icons hang in the corner.... All this has been so dear, so familiar, for a long, long time (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, 114).

Reality is sad, endlessly sad. The friends see an escape from it through

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lying to each other. Indeed, the realm of imagination, innocent lying, deliberate phantasy make these two men happy, for a short time at least. Neither of them, of course, believes the stories told. But this conscious deceit, this world of illusions, this renewal of the rosy memories of the past help Baskakov and Kovalev to forget the raging snow storm, the lonely little house in the steppe, their old age. The old friends dream Gor'kij's 'golden dream' expressed in de Beranger's poem through the mouth of one of the dramatis personae from The Lower Depths who welcomes the fool kotoryj naveet celovecestvu son zolotoj: Then, gentlemen, for all our pain If truth still flee our straining eyes Shall we not hail the madman's brain: The brain that spins us golden lies? Having fed themselves with this vsevozvysajuscij obman ('all-elevating deceit' which raises their spirits) they fall asleep. "Suddenly bricks fall noisily upon the roof. The wind has knocked down the chimney. This is a bad omen: it looks as if soon, very soon there will be no sign of Lucezarovka" (Sobr. soc., 1956, I, p. 118). Some passages of the story have something of Cexov. In the quoted description of the study, details such as The Son of the Fatherland, as a ceilingpaper, the pictures on the wall, and 'the shopping list' are very typical Cexovian devices. But, Bunin never achieves Cexovian objectivity, for he allows his sympathy with the two men to appear. As a matter of fact Bunin was never an objective writer when he touched the subject dear to his heart — the decline of the patriarchal life of the squires. In his Notes (Sobr. soc., Berlin, I, pp. 24-27) Bunin writes of the Russian language his father used to speak: "Usually my father spoke beautiful Russian: simple and correct. But, occasionally he used old-fashioned expressions and archaisms" (Sobr. soc., Berlin, I, p. 25). The modern colloquial language of Baskakov and Kovalev is also mixed with such words as ne frapirujte srazu-to ('don't reject it at once'), interesan ('selfish person'), maskerad (the e instead of the a, 'masquerade'), azitacija ('excitement'). The description of the snowstorm and the coziness of the warm room achieve the expected effect, and the love for details makes "In the Field" look more like Bunin's own story, independent of any influences. Here, for instance, is the burning stove: And there was a hollow rumble in the stove; the droning flame appeared here and there through the straw, reddish, trembling stripes of light on the ceiling in the study, grew slowly larger and larger, and came nearer to the mouth of the stove; the rye grains cracked and noisily burst.... Little by little the whole

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room was illuminated. The flame completely absorbed the straw, and when only a trembling pile of the straw embers remained, like glowing gold-fire wires, Jakov Petrovic took off his coat, sat down with his back to the stove and folded up his shirt {Sobr. soc., 1956,1, 113). 2.4 OTHER WORKS

The subject matter of Bunin's early period was by no means limited only to the peasants and squires. True enough, Bunin's range of interest was at that time chiefly concentrated on country life. Even if a story's subject does not deal directly with the peasant-landlord relationship, it has a country background: the village, a summer house, a manor. In Ertel''s opinion one of Bunin's best early stories is "UCitel'" [The Schoolmaster] (1896). As in "In the Field" the 'action' takes place on Christmas Eve. Nikolaj Nilyc Turbin, a twenty-four-year-old teacher in a village school, is homesick. During the whole year he has dreamed of going home to visit his father, an old d'jacek ('deacon's assistant'). He has tried to save money and supplement his meager salary by writing articles for a local newspaper. Only two of them were accepted: one about the rains and one about an accident in the distillery.20 So Turbin's plan of going home has not been realized, and he has sent his scant savings to help his ailing father. Turbin reminds us, in some way, of Kuprin's Romasov in The Duel. They both dream of a better life, have high aspirations of selfperfection, and believe that through self-education they can change their social positions: one, a young army officer, dreams of the General Staff Academy in St. Petersburg, the other, a poor schoolmaster, dreamed about many things — he thought of becoming a missionary, then a city priest. He imagined himself as Reverend Nicholas, in a gubernatorial city, dressed in a silk cassock of purple, with his well-groomed curls falling on it, he even thought of wearing eyeglasses in a gold frame, like the archpriest in Voznesensk Cathedral. He dreamed of living in easy circumstances, he thought of having pleasant acquaintances, of being a cultivated man who would keep up with scientific progress and politics. These dreams perished. (Sobr. soc., 1956, 1, 82).

More than that, life has played a bad joke on him. Turbin was invited for Christmas dinner to the house of Lintvarev, a local landowner. First he hesitated to go to the party, but his friends persuaded him to accept the invitation, even supplied him with a white shirt and assisted him in getting ready for the occasion. The evening from which the schoolmaster 20 While on his parent's estate young Bunin also tried to earn some money writing similar reports ("From Our Correspondent") for a regional newspaper.

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expected so much has ended in disaster. Awkward, unpolished, and poorly mannered, Turbin ended up getting drunk and making a complete fool of himself, dancing solo the tarantella ("Tarantella" was the initial title of the story; it also had a subtitle: "From the Life of the Rural Intelligentsia"). In the end Turbin was politely led out of the house. Humiliated and crushed by his conduct at the Lintvarevs, Turbin succumbs to the influence of his friends and goes on drinking with them. All this ends in a true drunken orgy with the muziks: "It seemed to him [Turbin] that the crowd was growing around him and he was dancing the tarantella. He danced and danced without end and suddenly heard applause and cries over his head, a desperate cry. He jumped up: a rooster cried once more in the room and flapped his wings" (Sobr. soc., 1956, p. 104). In a letter to Bunin of January 27, 1898, Értel' praises "The Schoolmaster": There is everything in it; it is, in my opinion, absolutely true. The type (of the teacher) is courageously drawn, rightly explained, including his "fall". Nevertheless there is a jarring note in this story; I think it is the "realism" which is foreign to your talent, the absence of a poetical perspective, of atmosphere, as painters would say, of that atmosphere which softens the intrusive coarseness and superfluous "truthfulness" of things. In other words — "the truth" of the story is only external, the very same, which is visible to a Philistine's eye (of "a man in the street") — in a word — it is the truth of an excellent newspaper report, but not that of artistic work.21 Bunin's ambiguous attitude toward Tolstojanism appears in the autobiographical story "Na da5e" [In the Summerhouse]. We meet here two opposite worlds: Kamenskij, the Tolstojan, and his disciple Grisa Primo, the son of an architect, try, in life and in theory, to follow Tolstoj's preaching. Conversely, the Primo family and their guests challenge Tolstojanism. The narration of "In the Summerhouse" is built on contrasting pictures: Primo's fancy house and Kamenskij's 'cell in the dell', the vain life of the city dwellers and the industrious life of the peasants, etc. Kamenskij is invited to the Primo house in order to stage an ideological dispute. Many 'burning' issues are brought to light. This or that person present begins to talk about railways, newspapers, Tolstoj's private life, drunkenness, useful and useless work, manual and intellectual work, what is important and unimportant in life, goodness and love, sex, prostitution, and nonresistance to evil. In a heated, disorderly, typical Russian discussion (cf, Lavreckij's meeting with Mixalevic in A Nest of Gentlefolk) in which the opinions of all political parties of the time — 21

A. Baboreko, "Bunin i Értel'", Russkaja literatura, 4 (1961), p. 151.

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Marxist, liberal, Populist, and so forth — are heard, everyone sticks to his own belief and makes fun of his opponent. In August 1896, A. SkabiSevskij, then a member of the editorial staff of the Novoe slovo, to whom Bunin sent this story, wrote to the author: We are sorry, but we cannot print your story "Twenty-Four Hours in the Summer House" ["Sutki na dace" — the initial title of the story]. It has too much the character of a feuilleton. You presented a few moral monsters, as if they were all put together intentionally, with a Tolstojan heading the cast. Besides, you failed to explain: what do you think of him? Is he a hero or a monster too? (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, 418).

So far we have discussed Bunin's stories with a more or less clear-cut thematic range. We can readily see that they have little if anything of Bunin's later writing. In a few stories of this period Bunin wrote on subjects completely unrelated to the peasants and squires. "In Autumn", for example, is just a poorer version of Cexov's "The Lady with the Dog". Like many of Cexov's stories it has no 'ending' — it is written in a manner which D. Cizevskij calls Nicht-zu-Ende-sprechen. The protagonist loves a young married woman. They ride together in a horse carriage. She responds to his feelings. They both realize their short-lasting happiness must end; they think of tonight, not tomorrow: "Yes!", she slowly said, and I saw her pale and happy face lightened by the shining stars. "When I was unmarried, I endlessly dreamed of happiness, but then everything turned out so boring and common, that now, perhaps, only this night seems to me unlike the real one; it is a theft. Tomorrow I'll remember this night with horror, but now nothing else matters. I love you", she said tenderly, softly, and thoughtfully, as if she were repeating it only to herself (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, 242).22

The sudden, momentary love, burst of passion, magnetic sex attraction will resound powerfully in Bunin's later works. "In Autumn" is just an immature prelude to the similar but perfect story "A Sunstroke". Again in "Malen'kij roman" [An Insignificant Romance] the momentous spark of love wins out over the voice of reason, and a betrothed girl, who hates her flaneé, surrenders herself fully to the protagonist: "'This is the first and last time', she said. 'Do you agree?'" (Sobr. soc., 1956, I, p. 305). As in "A Sunstroke" the incident is more than just an insignificant adventure for the protagonist; it deeply arouses a feeling of love for the girl whom, however, he is destined never to meet again. 22

The same theme is recreated in Chapter XXVII, "Book Five", of The Life of

ArserCev.

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58

Somewhat more fragmentary, disconnected, and impressionistic is "Bez rodu-plemeni" [Without Kith or Kin], The story differs in character from the others: Bunin tries to portray his contemporaries, their indefinable expectations, dissatisfaction with life, search for happiness. Not without reason Zina asks Vetvickij whether he is a 'decadent': "Why?" I answered and was involuntarily embarrassed by her glance. "Because... people say you are unsociable, proud... besides, you have such a face...." "What do you mean 'such a face'?" — I asked excitedly. "Sickly", Zina hesitatingly said. "Are you sick?" I looked at her eyes and lips, at her pretty body which was that of a tall, fully developed girl, heard [slySal — italics added] the smell of her perfume.... CSobr. soc., 1956,1, 173). At the end of his life the poet A. N. Majkov, wrote about the 'decadents': Y aeKaaeHTa Bee — HTO TaM He roBopn — Kaic 6M HaBMBopoT — npHMep TOMy cBHfleTejib:

OH BHflen My3bncy, OH cnwrnaji 6necx 3apH, O H OÖOHSJI

3Be3fly, OH my nan floöpofleTejn».

(The decadent does everything, no matter what you say, the other way around — the example will prove it: he saw music, he heard the light of the dawn, he smelled the stars, he touched virtue). Bunin's expression — heard the perfume — perfectly coincides with Majkov's conception of the decadents. Shortly after Bunin had received the Nobel Prize, F. Stepun wrote about the new laureate for a German literary journal: "Selbstverständlich gibt es auch bei Bunin wie bei allen Künstlern sehr starke und relativ schwache Werke..." 23 To such 'weak works' belong, to our mind, his love stories (those just mentioned, and "The Dawn throughout the Whole Night", "The New Year", and "In August") and a few stories of a 'philosophical' nature such as "Over the City", "The Fog", "Silence", "The Hope", and "The Mountain Pass". "The Mountain Pass" (18921898) is very similar in structure, style, and idea to Korolenko's "Ogon'ki" [The Little Lights] (1900). Both authors allegorically compare human life with a traveler's road: Bunin's first-person protagonist struggles with snow and wind on top of a mountain: Go! Go! We will drag ourselves on until we collapse. There have been many hard and lonely passes in my life! Sorrows, sufferings, illnesses, betrayals by loved ones, and deep mortifications of friendship came back to me as the night and the hour of parting I got accustomed to arrived. And, grudgingly, I again "

F. Stepun, "Ivan Bunin", Hochland, 1 (October 1933-March 1934), p. 550.

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took up a wanderer's staff. And the approaches to the new happiness were high and difficult — I met night, fog, and storm at the summit, insufferable loneliness seized me on the mountain passes.... But... let us go on, let us go on (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, 35).

In Korolenko the social motive is stressed: "But... in spite of all... in spite of all... the distant lights are in sight!". "On the Donee" takes its motto from Igor Tale ("O Donee! You have a great deal of grandeur..."), which is one of Bunin's favorite works of old Russian literature and to which he was more than once to return. The story describes the river, the Svjatogorskij monastery, the pilgrims, and the huge pines growing on the Donee banks. "On the Donee" initiates one important aspect in Bunin's thinking: "It is always the memory, a pre-existential and parental memory, without which life would be nothing but a succession of insignificant and absurd facto". 24 The linking of the past with the present, of the people's of Igor's time with the crowds of pilgrims, makes Bunin feel the historical continuity. I passed the crowd composed of women, youths, and crippled old people, whose eyes were pale from time and the wind from the steppes, and thought continually of older times, and of the strange power of the past. What is the source of this power? And what is its significance? Therein, perhaps, is hidden one of the greatest mysteries of life. And why does it rule man with such a miraculous power? In our religious feeling, in our homage to the past — of which we are not conscious sometimes — the relationship of our thoughts and actions to men long since dead plays an immense part...' (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, 122).

This is why the Revolution of 1917 was so abhorrent to Bunin — it strove to destroy the traditional Russia, to break the ties which connected the generations throughout the centuries. It is interesting to compare Cexov's description of the same Svjatogorskij monastery in his traveler's sketch "Perekati-Pole" [Tumble-Weed] (1887) (the title applies to man — 'a rolling stone'). As is to be expected of Cexov, he turns his attention more to contemporary people and less to nature or history, while Bunin's mind is directed toward reminiscences. Skabiôevskij's judgment of the story was severe: "To our greatest regret", he wrote to Bunin in a letter of May 1896, "we cannot accept your story 'On the Donee': there are too many descriptions in it and too much mysticism and nothing besides. Pardon us, the sinners, magnanimously, don't complain, and send something soon of the same kind as your magnificant 'Tarantella', which everybody liked" (Sobr. soc., 1956, I, p. 418). 24

J. Croisé, "Ivan Bunin", The Russian Review, 13 (1954), p. 151.

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We have briefly discussed "Meliton". This almost saintly hermit living in the primeval forest was always ready to meet death as naturally and submissively as he had lived throughout his life. In "Sosny" [The Pines] (1901), we learn of Mitrofan, the Pathfinder, after his death. Like Meliton he spent all his life in the forest, in days of toil, of work from dawn till evening, in endless winter nights in a lonely hut, and in thoughts of daily bread (xlebusek). A month of illness ended his life. Bunin seems to ask along with Tolstoj: What does man live for? What is the meaning of life and death for millions of such Melitons and Mitrofans scattered in numberless Russian villages? In Cexov's letter to Bunin of January 1902 we find the former's opinion of the story: "'The Pines' is very new, very fresh, and very good; only it is too concentrated like a condensed broth". 2 5 Basically the story consists of three parts. The longest one is the description of the forest during a very cold winter day, then we have a very concise presentation of Mitrofan's life, and finally we see the dead Mitrofan and attend his funeral. Bunin uses various devices in describing the forest and frost in "The Pines". The author's direct description is interwoven with the utterances of the people whom he introduces at various phases of the story. The roar of the snowstorm mixes with the roaring of the forest. The combination of the three Russian letters in gul ('rumble', 'boom', 'buzz', 'roaring') achieve the desired verbal effect which actually makes the reader hear the storm: Tyn ¿ e c a BbiptiBaeTCH H3 uiyMa BbKvn, Kan eyji 0p2a.ua.. Si Kpemco HaaaGaio EOAOBY, noapyMcaiocb noHTH n o n o n e B c>>apo6 h HOJITO NAY, caM He 3Haio yyaa.. (Sobr. soc., 1956, I, 216). (The roar of the forest bursts from the noise of the storm, like a roaring organ. I strongly bow my head, plunge almost up to my waist into a snowdrift and go on walking not knowing myself where to.) The coldness of the beautiful, extremely frosty morning is emphasized by the description of the people who have just arrived from the city: The air is strongly compressed by morning frost; our voices sound somehow strange, the exhalation evaporates spirally after each word as if we were smoking. A thin, sharp (ostistyj), hoar frost sets on our eye lashes (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, 217).

The outward appearance of Mitrofan is rendered in 125 words (including prepositions and conjunctions), his mentality is also depicted in one paragraph of about the same length and presented in the form of a monologue ("he often used to say to me"). Mitrofan's 'philosophy' is 86

A. Cexov, Polnoe sobranie socinenij i pisem (Moscow, 1950), XIX, p. 222.

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the simplest in the world: '"They say: 'you live in the woods and pray to the stumps', and when I ask him how one should live he doesn't know. It amounts to living like a day laborer: do what you are told and that's it.'" (Sobr. soc., 1956, I, p. 215). Bunin is seldom interested in revealing the psychology of a dying man (there are some exceptions; for example "The Weed"), but he seldom misses the opportunity to describe a dead body and is ever ready to underline the physical changes death makes. In "The Pines", too, a woman lifts the oil cloth which covers the dead: Oh, how pompous and serious Mitrofan had become! His head is small, proud, and silently sad; the closed eyes have sunk deeply; the big nose has become sharp; the big chest, lifted by the last breath, is petrified, and two big wax hands lie below it in the deep hollow of the stomach. A clean shirt nicely sets off his leanness and yellowness. A woman silently took his hand — one can see how heavy his icy hand is — picked it up and again put it back. Mitrofan remained completely indifferent and silently continued to listen to what TimoSka read. Perhaps, he even knows how clear and solemn this day is — his last day in his native village? (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, 218). Mitrofan's brother, Anton, comes to the landowner's house. He talks about Mitrofan's death without feeling, in a business-like manner asks for lumber to make a coffin for his brother. Here Bunin pauses to ask a question: "Is it indifference or strength?" (Sobr. sod., 1956, I, p. 217). Is the Russian peasant's acceptance of death different from that of an educated person? Does he regard death as a natural step to still another life? Does he really die like Tolstoj's or Turgenev's peasants without fear of death? We are inclined to think that Bunin shares the belief stated in Turgenev's well-known concluding sentence in the latter's story "Death", from A Sportsman's Sketches: "Yes, the Russian people die marvelously, indeed!" Another quotation from the same story seems to us an even more precise answer to Bunin's question: "The Russian muzik dies strangely! One cannot call his condition before death either indifference or dullness; he dies as if he were performing a ritual: coldly and simply". In 1909, that is at the end of what we have termed the first period of Bunin's literary career, he published in the Znanie a story about a beggarpeasant who freezes to death. The story was initially entitled "Beden bes" [Poor is the Devil], which sentence the beggar repeats a couple of times; the title was later changed to "Pticy nebesnye" [Celestial Birds] — this phrase is also repeated in the story. "Celestial Birds" is interesting not only because of its parabolic-figurative (pritocno-inoskazateVnyj) style, characteristic of the beggar's speech, but also because it indicates a sharp change in Bunin's approach to the Russian peasant, the first sign of his

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new understanding of the muziks. The story too is very simple. A student, Voronov, meets a beggar, Luka, on a very cold, windy morning. The student starts a conversation with the beggar and tries to persuade him not to go to the next village, fearing that the badly clad and physically exhausted Luka might fail to reach his destination and freeze to death in the blizzard. The latter stubbornly rejects the student's offer to spend the night in the village and disappears in the twilight. Next morning Voronov's mother and her coachman, who came in a sleigh from the city, announce on their arrival that the dead body of a frozen man lies on the road. The editio princeps of "Poor is the Devil", as it appeared in 1909, considerably differs from the later version, rewritten by Bunin in 1927. The 1909 version is longer and sheds more light on the 'newness' of Bunin's treatment of the Russian peasants. Voronov attends Luka's funeral next morning. Suddenly a peasant with a child's coffin in his arms comes running to the church and joyously shouts that the priest gave permission to bury the peasant's child in the same grave with the beggar. The peasant is so overjoyed with this happy solution which saves him the trouble of digging a grave and calling a priest that he even promises to buy some vodka (magaryc) for the church watchman. This event gives Voronov the opportunity of drawing some conclusions about the character of the Russian peasants: With mixed feelings and for a long time, the student looked at the unknown grave in the cemetery beyond the church. He thought of the high crutch, dark eyes, and lock of long hair. He wanted to write a story.... But so much has been written about those freezing to death! He wanted to give it a malicious and sharp title: 'The Savages'. But are they savages? He also was perplexed by the small coffin of the child, which quite accidentally got into this grave and was put on top of an incongruously huge (beztolkovo-ogromnyj) coffin — somebody else's. Is this all possible? (Sobr. soc., 1956,1, 437). In the "Celestial Birds" Bunin for the first time became concerned with the mystery of the Russian peasant's soul. Its dark side puzzled and surprised him. 'The savages', 'the wild ones' becomes a leitmotif in his later works, in which Bunin's changed attitude toward the peasants found powerful new expression in such works as The Village, "A Night Conversation", "Zaxar Vorob'ev", and others. 2.5 TRAVELOGUES

In 1905, during the first Russian Revolution, Bunin went abroad. His departure underlined his indifference toward politics. The cycle of travel

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sketches, or 'travel poems' as Bunin called them, appeared in his sixvolume edition of 1915 and again in the Petropolis/Berlin edition under a common title Xram solnca [The Temple of the Sun]. These two editions are separated by the span of about two decades and it is interesting to read a quotation from the first sketch, "The Shadow of a Bird", that appears in both of them: 1 get dressed by the open porthole from which comes a cool freshness, and think with joy that Russia is already 300 miles away from me. Oh, I have never had any feeling of love for her and, probably, I will never understand what love for one's native land is, which is supposed to be rooted in every human heart! I know well that one may love this or that way of life, and that one may give all his strength to achieving it.... But what does a native land have to do with all this? And if the Russian Revolution stirs my feelings to a greater degree than the Persian I can only feel sorry for it.2® Indeed it is hard to understand Bunin's attitude toward Russia at that time, for in his "Autobiographical Note" of 1915 he clearly indicates his attachment to Russia: "...and speaking Baratynskij's words 'I always kept coming back to you, my native steppes, my first love', and again 'I wandered through the world and studied the human kind!'" 27 Bunin's travels to the Orient occupy a special place among his works. Already in 1928 N. Koulman, in an article for Le Monde Slave, had noticed that, Dans ses Poèmes de voyage, Bunin a montré son extraordinaire faculté de description: devant le lecteur se succèdent des tableaux pleins de couleur et de vie : la Corne d'Or, le Bosphore..., etc. Et tout cela est plein de scènes vécues, de souvenirs historiques et littéraires, d'impressions profondes de l'auteur luimême, de son ravissement devant ce Dieu qu'il appelle Beauté, Raison, Amour, Vie et qu'il voit en toute chose.28 Bunin's delight with the Koran found expression in his love for Constantinople and the Near East. Bunin's travel sketches differ from, say, Fonvizin's Letters from France or Gonôarov's Frigate Pallada in many ways. Bunin directs his attention mainly toward nature, historical places, reminiscences, and, to a lesser degree, toward people, customs, modes of life. Bunin runs away from Russia and the Russian God, and herein lies, perhaps, a partial explanation of the strange quotation: "I think M

Poln. sobr. soc., IV, 102. In the Berlin edition Bunin omits everything after the sentence: "... and I think with joy that Russia is already 300 miles away from me" a, P. 173). 27 S. A. Vengerov, Russkaja literatura XX veka (Moscow, 1915), II, p. 339. m N. Koulman, "Ivan Bunin: son activité littéraire en France", Le Monde Slave, IV (1928), p. 42.

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with joy that Russia is 300 miles away from me". He rushes to the lands of other Gods or, to be exact, "to the lands of some other God, common and present everywhere, not to a God of death but life...". 29 Bunin's first visit in Constantinople is, of course, to the famous Hagia Sophia, originally a Christian Church, later a mosque. The reader feels Bunin's sympathy with Mohammed and his liking for the dignified and touching Turkish ritual. Bunin's memory goes back to ancient times, for antiquity always attracts the poet-writer. Often, with ever-varying nouns and adjectives, Bunin stresses the power which past centuries have over him. With an almost sacred delight he looks at the remains of the fortress, the monstrous ruins of its antediluvian tower, the low dome of Sophia "which has something incommunicably ancient, like the cupola of a synagogue", the old walls of Byzantium, Constantine's castle, the thousand-year-old Church of St. Irene, and so forth. 'Decay' and 'desolation' are the keynotes which constantly recur in the description of Istanbul. Again and again they will be repeated in Bunin's other works to describe either an old Russian cemetery, a Catholic church, or a landowner's manor. About forty times in "The Shadow of a Bird", a comparatively short travel sketch, Bunin uses such words as ruiny, razvaliny, dopotopnyj, staryj, starina, starinnyj, drevnij, pervobytnyj, vetxij, and zapustenie, so that the reader actually feels the antiquity of Istanbul and the places described there. Ancient Greece is depicted in the "Sea of Gods". While on the sea the author gives himself to 'meditations' (razdum'ja — a leitmotif of The Temple of the Sun). The poet sings a hymn to the sun, the source of life, the antithesis of death: And the sun sets, but everything existing lives and breathes only thanks to the sun. It is the sun that turns the screw of the steamer, it is the sun that carries me on the sea: it is the sun — an unceasing source of all forces which gives life on earth...." (Sobr. so6., Berlin, I, 210). The pyramids ("Delta", "The Light of Zodiac") still further increase Bunin's reverence for antiquity; he feels that "he falls into the depth of times", that "the Zodiac light of the primordial faith rises before him [me] in all its terrible grandeur" {Sobr. soc., Berlin, I, p. 232). In "Judea" Bunin, while visiting historical and holy places, meditates about the simple, real life led many centuries ago on the shores of Jordan. Bunin shudders at the mere thought that Jesus Christ lived there as an ordinary man "lean, sunburnt, with sparkling black eyes, with the dark2

*

K . Zajcev, " / .

A. Bunin: iizri i tvorcestvo (Berlin,

n.d.), p. 88.

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purple wispy arms and thin feet burned by the heat of the sun".30 Bunin visits Golgotha, Jesus's Tomb, and the Wailing Wall. His choice of words used to describe the summer night in Palestine is most artful, and the picture of it — absolutely perfect: Yet in the twilight, the cicadas, whose invisible myriads filled the sultry cup of the oasis, began their mysterious tingling and feverish whispering. Bitter sweet was the smell of the eucalyptus and mimosa, illuminated by myriads of phosphorescent insects. Now a ringing whisperfillsthe air with complete crystal-like delirium and merges with a distantly-unclear drone, with the trembling groan of the entire valley with the passionate somnambulistic murmur of the frogs. The walls of the hotel, its cobbled courtyard — everything appears deathly pale and unusually distinct under the silvery light of these tropical stars, which hang like enormous semiprecious stones from the unbounded heavens. The sky is unbounded because of the unusual clearness of the air — the stars actually hang in it, and on earth every shrub, every stone can be seen far, far away (Sobr. soc., Berlin, I, 279). The climax is reached in a sketch "The Temple of the Sun", when Bunin travels through Syria (a Sanskrit word meaning sun), "a country of fabulous tribes, Adam's birthplace, sanctuary of the Sun" (Sobr. soc., Berlin, I, p. 292). Here he sees the ruins of Baalbek — an enormous building erected in honor of the gods of the Sun. The detailed description of this almost legendary place, the size of which surpasses everything made with human hands, is paralleled by the description of the country where Baalbek lies. The stress is on the word sun which makes the reader think not only of "The Temple of the Sun" but of all the works included in this cycle. In what contrast to the sun of Syria comes then the gloom of the next period in Bunin's literary activity!

»0 Ibid., p. 90.

3

THE PERIOD OF GLOOM IN BUNIN'S LITERARY CAREER: 1909-1912

3.1 THE

VILLAGE

The first period in Bunin's literary creativity, his literary debut, was a time of experiment. In his Le Génie du Christianisme Chateaubriand says : Nous sommes persuadés que les grands écrivains ont mis leur histoire dans leurs ouvrages. On ne peint bien que son propre coeur en l'attributant à un autre et la meilleure partie du génie se compose de souvenirs. Doubtless this statement cannot be accepted without reservation; great authors have distinguished themselves from other mortals by their faculty of penetrating into the personalities of their heroes, but the hallmark of their talent is always invention. Tolstoj's opinion in this matter is less disputable than Chateaubriand's: "I would feel ashamed to publish", he said, "if my work had consisted of copying a portrait or I had to write just a report or give myself up to memories". But Chateaubriand's assertion applies to many young writers, who often try to tell their own stories and to communicate the beating of their own hearts. Bunin was one of these. In his first works he gives us a gallery of popular and provincial types whom he knew well in his youth. Although he does not simply make photostatic copies of them — he artfully transforms them into literary works — the apparent literary values of Bunin's early prose works are not great enough to distinguish him from Elpatevskij, Eleonskij, Gusev- Orenburgskij, Skitalec, Cirikov, and many others whose names have been consigned to oblivion. Judging by the correspondence between Bunin and Gor'kij, the years 1909-1912 marked the summit of their friendship. Bunin's sincere and affectionate letters to Gor'kij show that Bunin was then anxious to submit new works and literary plans to Gor'kij for judgment and his support. "Gor'kij was for Bunin", writes A. Volkov, "an indisputable authority. Bunin himself admitted that Gor'kij's literary creativity and praises

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1

'induced him to a new and better work'". In September 1909 Bunin wrote to Gor'kij: "I returned to the question you had advised me to treat — to the story about the village".2 And when the final portion of The Village was published in 1910 in Contemporary World, Bunin again wrote to Gor'kij from Constantinople en route to the Indian Ocean: "...and if I write something worthy after The Village I will owe it to you, Aleksej MaksimoviC. Even you cannot imagine how valuable your words are for me, what water of life you have poured out for me!" 3 We have seen that in his early stories Bunin tended to present his peasants in somewhat idyllic terms. The peasants' rebellions during the 1905 Revolution apparently changed Bunin's views of them, and this drastic change of mind manifested itself in The Village. One early critic wrote about this work, at the time Bunin's largest and most perfect: Bunin's book about the village is a terrifying book (strasnaja kniga). Although one can feel that its author is not a mere observer-narrator but rather a nervous intelligent, inclined to one-sidedness and subjectivism, nonetheless he captivates the reader with his awful "truthfulness". Bunin's The Village is the new Podlipovcy. It burns. N o t only peasant life, but also the people's soul, language and psychology are presented in it with a great mastery. Thanks to the concreteness and clarity of images and to its general purity, The Village is the most outstanding creation of Bunin. This is an amazing (udivitel'naja) book — mature and truly, naturally intoxicating, like an old wine. 4

Many years later, in 1952, in the preface to his book, In Spring, in Judea; Jericho's Rose, Bunin himself stated clearly that his popularity began with The Village: It was the beginning of a whole series of my works in which I vividly painted the Russian soul, its bright and dark sides, often its tragic aspects. In Russian criticism and among the Russian intelligentsia, where, because of their ignorance of the people or due to political considerations, the people were almost always idealized, my "merciless" works provoked heated, hostile comments (V. v /., P. 8).

First and foremost, the truthfulness of Bunin's statements and conclusions in The Village was questioned. In the heat of discussion the formal analysis of the work's literary value was almost neglected, and the critics dissipated their energy either in accusing or defending Bunin. 1

A. Volkov, M. Gor'kij i literaturnoe dvizenie konca XIX i nacala XX veka (Moscow, 1951), p. 167. 2 M. Gor'kij: Materialy i issledovanija (Moscow-Leningrad, 1936), II, p. 414. ' Ibid., p. 422. 4 E. Koltonovskaja, "Bunin, kak xudoznik-povestvovatel'", Vestnik evropy, 5 (1914), pp. 337-38.

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Before attempting to discuss various aspects of The Village, we must decide whether it is a novel, a long short-story, or simply a story. It has already been said that Bunin subtitled The Village 'a poem'. First, while reading Bunin's prose, one must remember that he is also a poet and that he was aware of the poetical quality of his stories, particularly of The Village. Second, one must consider the meaning of the Russian word poèma. It denotes not only an epic poem or poetic narration written in elevated style, with magnificent lyrical digressions and ornamental language (e.g., Dead Souls), but also any work of vast proportions — vast not necessarily in length but in idea and intention, in scope of theme, in grandeur, serenity, and impartiality. The epic-like feature of The Village is found immediately in the title itself, because the Russian noun derevnja has two meanings: 'village' and 'country'. Bunin's The Village is not only the village, Durnovka, in which the action revolves, but a symbol of all rural Russia, as the old peasant Balaskin says to Kuz'ma Krasov : "Russia, all Russia, is but a village — fix this well in your mind!" (Sobr. soc., II, p. 56). Like Gogol', Bunin aimed at transforming repulsive reality into a lofty work of art. This is why he called The Village a poem. But to find an appropriate technical literary term for The Village remains difficult. Not a single Russian critic who wrote on it ever called it a roman. They all agree on one common name: povest'. The English classification is mixed. Mirsky sometimes calls it a novel and sometimes uses Bunin's subheading poem ;5 Renato Poggioli consistently terms it a novel* and Gleb Struve insists that The Village "is not a novel in the conventional accepted sense of the word" 7 for "in The Village there is no plot, almost no development".8 We agree with Professor Struve in his terminology and share his view that The Village is "a large fresco, a diptych, picturing Russian village life during the first Revolution (19041905)".9 In the foreground of this fresco are the two Krasov brothers, Tixon Il'iS and Kuz'ma Il'ifi. In the background are numerous small pictures of the peasants and the whole book makes a huge canvas of the Russian 6

D. S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature (New York, 1960), p. 392. R. Poggioli, The Phoenix and the Spider (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), p. 144. 7 G. Struve, "The Art of Ivan Bunin", The Slavonic and East European Review, 32 (1933), p. 426. 8 Ibid., p. 426. Cf. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary: "A fictitious prose tale of considerable length, in which characters and actions professing to represent those of real life are portrayed in a plot". • Struve, op. cit., p. 426. •

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village. While working on The Village, Bunin was guided by the real events in his native Efremov County, particularly those on the estate of his brother, Evgenij, in the village of Ognevka — Durnovka in the story. Muromceva tells us that "approximately all the events recreated in Bunin's The Village (Durnovka) happened during the summer in his native region". 10 "More than that", writes a recent student of Bunin, L. Krutikova, "we can assume that the Bunin brothers, Evgenij AlekseeviC and Ivan AlekseeviS himself, became distant prototypes of the Krasov brothers in The Village. At least many facts from the life of the Bunin brothers found their embodiment in the characters and biographies of the Krasov brothers". 11 As is to be expected, the two brothers have very different dispositions. The narration is divided into three equal parts of which the first is the story of Tixon, the second of Kuz'ma, and the third of both brothers after their reconciliation. Using an omniscient point of view at the opening of the first part, the author tells us about Tixon's and Kuz'ma's ancestors encompassing the whole geneology of the Krasov clan in less than half a page. Turgenev's lengthy description of Lavreckij's kin in A Nest of Gentlefolk is diametrically opposite to Bunin's compactness in The Village. Not without reason did Gor'kij write Bunin about it: "If one should speak about the shortcomings of the story then I see only one — the density of it. I don't mean that the colors are dense, no, but there is a great deal of material in it. Three or four subjects are packed into each sentence, and each page is a museum!". 12 The best illustration of Bunin's economy of words is the opening paragraph of the story: The Krasovs' great-grandfather, nicknamed "the Gypsy" among the domestics, was hunted down by the borzois of the landowner, Durnovo. The Gypsy won over the mistress of his landowner. Durnovo ordered the Gypsy to be led out into a field, outside Durnovka, and placed on a hillock. Then he himself drove up with the pack and shouted: 'Sick him'. The Gypsy, who sat as if benumbed, took to his heels. And running away from the borzois is not to be recommended (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 9).

If after a millenium or so our present culture and its documents are destroyed and only this one paragraph of The Village found, the future 10

V. Muromceva-Bunina, ¿izn' Bunina: 1870-1906 (Paris, 1958), p. 166. L. Krutikova, "Iz tvorceskoj istorii Derevni I. A. Bunina", Russkaja literatura, 4 (1959), p. 132. Krutikova traces all changes Bunin made in the text while preparing it for later publication. 12 M. Gor'kij, Sobranie socinenij (Moscow, 1955), XXVIII, p. 283. 11

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historian can easily reconstruct the relations between Russian landowners and their peasants at the end of the eighteenth or the beginning of the nineteenth century. The finder of these few short sentences will know about the legal status of the serfs, the despotism of the landowners and their mode of life, and the interrelationship between the landowner and his serf — the sharing of a mistress. For us in the present, this paragraph and the passage following it give the background of the protagonists of The Village. We learn their names, the name of the place — Durnovka, which originates from the landowner's last name Durnovo; we learn that their grandfather managed to receive personal freedom (yoVnaja) and became a famous thief — he robbed the churches in the gubernia, and, when finally caught, admitted his crimes in a bold and arrogant way. Further, the Krasovs' father was a small merchant who went bankrupt, took to drink, and died. His sons (only now does Bunin tell us their names) became the most primitive of peddlers. So they dragged themselves in a cart with a chest in the middle of it and shouted dolefully: 'Wo-o-men, go-o-ods! Wo-o-men, go-o-ods!' The goods — small mirrors, cakes of soap, rings, threads, kerchiefs, needles, and biscuits — lay in the chest. And on the cart there was everything they received in payment for their goods: dead cats, eggs, linen, rags.... (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 9). Their partnership almost ended in bloodshed, but they parted in time. Now in the first part we follow Tixon alone. Tixon, like his father, established a small village shop and an inn, but, unlike his father, he turned out to be a successful businessman, a sort of Cexovian Lopaxin from The Cherry Orchard, and soon became a wealthy bourgeois-peasant rich enough to acquire Durnovo's estate. Bunin hated this sort of upstart nouveaux riches, who, by buying up the estates of impoverished gentry, directly affected the decline of his class. For quite different reasons, of course, Gor'kij too disliked Tixon-type kulaks. First Tixon lived with a mute cook and they had a child whom she choked while sleeping with her (prispala). Then he married Nastas'ja Petrovna, the chambermaid of an old countess, an unattractive girl who gave birth to dead girls and this deprived Tixon 11'iS of descendants. Childlessness was his real misfortune. If there is a plot in The Village at all, it revolves around the desire to have an offspring, a hope which Tixon never abandoned. In his fifties he enters into intimate relations with the beautiful young wife of a lame soldier named Rod'ka. But even Rod'ka's wife, whom Bunin calls simply the 'Young One' (Molodaja), bears no child for him. Rod'ka, aware of his wife's infidelity, beats her cruelly and systematically. Molodaja's patience apparently comes to an end, for one

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day Rod'ka, coming home just 'to change his shirt', suddenly dies 'of stomach' (ot zivota). There is no investigation or any hint from the author to show whether he was poisoned or not. At about this point in the story we meet the second Krasov — Kuz'ma. Tixon, tired of running the business all by himself, decides to entrust his brother with the management of a piece of land he has bought. Kuz'ma settles down on the farm and takes Molodaja as a cook. The story ends with the marriage of Molodaja to Deniska, son of a village shoemaker — a marriage planned and desired by her former lover, Tixon, which Kuz'ma vainly tries to prevent. This marital arrangement is very unexpected and fits poorly into the texture of the story. Bunin indicated that he wrote The Village in two installments with a long interval between them. In a letter of September 22, 1909, he announced to Gor'kij that he had begun writing The Village and almost a year later, when the story was finished, he again reported to Gor'kij that he had worked hard on it in Moscow.13 Perhaps because of the interruption, the whole work is loosely connected and the ending is quite puzzling: one gets the notion Bunin did not know how to finish his story. No one can explain the purpose of the marriage between Molodaja and Deniska. Even the initiator of this matrimonial affair, Tixon, avoids answering his brother's direct question about his purpose: "Brother, for Christ's sake, tell me what profit you gain from this marriage?" (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, p. 99). Obviously the merit of the story does not consist in its plot. Nor do the numerous 'heroes' of the story, including the Krasovs, constitute the main interest of The Village. Rather the village itself, as shown through the various dramatis, personae is the essence of the story. And the language in which the story is written adds to its literary value. Through the personal life stories of Tixon and Kuz'ma, Bunin paints the general picture of the village; the brothers, the author's mouthpieces, reveal not only their own characters but also the scene in which their lives take place. To build up material wealth sufficient for a decent life seems to be the main goal of Tixon's life. His portrait recalls some traits which Bunin found in his observation of small-town dwellers and merchants and others which he found in his own brother Evgenij particularly: stinginess, callousness, narrowness of interests. Evgenij AlekseeviS had no children by his wife — only late in life he had children by his maid, and Bunin makes Tixon Krasov childless, a condition which underlines sterility, the emptiness of life in which a man's whole energy is aimlessly burnt out in striving for material wealth. 13 Gor'kij, Materialy i issledovanija, II, p. 418

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The figure of Kuz'ma is entirely different from that of Tixon. Kuz'ma is an idealist and a poorly schooled poet, a failure in life, a superfluous man, a relative of Oblomov, a double of KaliniC from "Xor' and KaliniC" in A Sportsman's Sketches. He certainly is a more complex character than his brother. Gor'kij even suggested that Kuz'ma should be regarded as a type, in a special sense. In a letter to Bunin (October/November, 1910) he wrote: An original in our literature, Kuz'ma appears to be a well drawn character and a "certified true copy" ("s podlinnym verno") — his characterization is so truthful, that I am sure a thoughtful writer of literary history would lean on Kuz'ma as if he were a type, presented definitely for the first time.14 Kuz'ma is an image of wide relevance. He is a talented self-taught man, a Russian truth-seeker; he is just one more individual whose sad and tragic life incarnates the pitiful fate of many talented Russian people. In Kuz'ma's biography we find some of the life impressions, thoughts, and anxieties of Bunin himself. For example, Kuz'ma's mother while blessing her son made him a gift of a little silver icon. It is known that Bunin too all his life kept a small icon — the gift of his mother. Both Kuz'ma and Bunin were afraid of being drafted into the army, and both drew large numbers at the recruiting station which meant that their chances of being called up for military service were greatly reduced. Other episodes of Kuz'ma's life, such as his wanderings through Russia and the Ukraine, his interest in Tolstojanism, his writing of short articles for local newspapers about harvests, his 'desire to speak out one's own soul', to draw final balances (itogi) — a severe and rigorous epitaph of himself — all these Bunin himself had experienced. However, one should not exaggerate the autobiographical ingredients in the character of Kuz'ma. The story of the latter, as Bunin tells it in The Village, is "the story of all Russian self-taught men. He was born in a country with more than 100 million illiterates. He grew up in Cernaja Sloboda where until recently people kept being killed in fist fights" (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, p. 53). Another true model for Kuz'ma was, as Muromceva indicated, the self-taught poet of Elec, Nazarov, whom Bunin personally knew and about whom he wrote an article.15 The city dweller Dostoevskij saw truth in Nekrasov's muzik, who mercilessly beats the defenseless horse who, as Raskol'nikov sees in his dream, 'whips its gentle eyes'. At random the reader can open Bunin's 14

Gor'kij, Sobranie socinenij, XXVIII, p. 288. I. Bunin, "Pofet samoucka. Po povodu stixotvorenij E. I. Nazarova", Rodina (June 12, 1888). 15

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The Village, read a few lines, and everywhere find such 'Russisms'. The primitive cruelty of villagers, their awful, senseless bestiality, is a leading reason for Tixon's saying: "Let's go, brother, to the town, away from these butchers" (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, p. 96). The physical and moral image of the peasantry is really terrifying. The author lays bare before our eyes a picture of unbelievable poverty and lack of civilization, a primordially primitive existence. And still more incomprehensible to Bunin is the fact that all this happens in the part of Russia where the black earth is one and one half arshin deep, and what an earth! And a five years do not pass without a famine. The city is famous throughout the whole of Russia for its corn trade, and one hundred people in the whole city eat bread. And look at a country fair. There is a whole regiment of beggars, fools, blind and crippled men, and such others that one is afraid and reluctant to look at them (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 16).16 Returning home from the city Tixon passes hundreds of muziks; they look all alike to him: "red-haired, gray, dark, all equally ugly, gaunt, and dishevelled. And passing their horse carts, Tixon 11'iS shook his head: 'Oh, beggars, the deuce take them (propadi onipropadom),n {Sobr. soc., 1956, II, p. 18). On the way home he stops by a pond, but the water is so warm and stagnant that his horse refuses to drink it. It was "thick, yellow water, in which stood a herd of cows, every minute relieving their nature, and in which a naked muzik soaped his head" (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 19). Tixon turns to the muzik and says: "'What bad water you have! Do you drink it?' 'And is yours sweetened?' — the muzik replied tenderly and gaily. 'We have been drinking it for one thousand years! Never mind the water — but there is no bread...'." (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, p. 19). Secretly the peasants talk about revolution; one day they go in a big crowd to Durnovka and demand higher wages for day labor; in other places they burn and devastate the estates. Conversations between the brothers further reveal the psyche of the Russian peasant (Muromceva suggests that Ivan Bunin had similar conversations with his brother, Evgenij). The Krasovs accuse the people of their backwardness, savage instincts, and laziness. Kuz'ma wonders whose fault it is that the Russians are wearing bark slippers now in the second millenium. Carried away by his invective against the peasantry, Kuz'ma exclaims: "'They smear the gates of the poor brides with tar! They set dogs on beggars! Just for fun they knock down pigeons from the roof! But they wouldn't eat these pigeons — you see this is a great 16 The remark of the richness of the soil in Bunin's native province is again repeated in The Life of Arseifev.

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sin. The Holy Spirit himself takes the image of the pigeon!'" (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, p. 19). Kuz'ma is shocked by the low mentality of the people. He quotes Deniska's story: "It happened, in the year of famine, that we, apprentices, would go to Cernaja Sloboda. There we saw a multitude of these prostitutes. And they all, the beasts, were hungry, very, very hungry. You would give her one half pound of bread for the whole job, and she would devour all of it under you. Oh, how funny it was!" "Note!" — Kuz'ma exclaimed angrily — "Oh, how funny it was!" (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 32).

One of the most repellent characters in The Village is Deniska, the future husband of Molodaja, a caricature of a revolutionary who carries in his trunk Marusja (a collection of songs), Greeting Poems for Parents, Teachers, and Benefactors, and a brochure About the Role of the Proletariat. His cynicism toward his father, Seryj, a representative of the village poor, is shocking: '"That dog is old, and why should I call him father? If he is my father he should have fed me. And did he feed me much?'" (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, p. 47). The self-educated peasant Balaskin, esprit fort of country fairs and taverns, plays the same role as Potugin in Turgenev's Smoke. Balaskin not only orally condemns the ills of Russian reality, he also writes a kind of a diary in which he registers his thoughts and impressions of Russia, and he reads newspapers and collects clippings from them. In an exalted dispute with Kuz'ma, Balaskin exclaims: "Gracious God! Puskin and Lermontov were killed; Pisarev drowned, Ryleev was hanged.... Dostoevskij was dragged to the scaffold.... They made Gogol' insane.... And Sevcenko? And Polezaev? You may say — it is the guilt of the government? We can judge the master knowing his servants. Oh, say, is there another country like this in the world, another such people, be it thrice cursed?'" (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 55).

On another occasion Kuz'ma learns from his coachman, a young muzik sick with a venereal disease, that everywhere in the province the peasants are burning the landowners' estates. While driving his miserable horse cart Kuz'ma sees a sad picture of dirt, destitution, and drunkenness along the road. Inside, in the huts there are: Darkness and the invariable cram: berths, loom, huge stove, tub with slops.... And the family is large, has many children, and in winter — lambs, calves.... And dampness, and fumes, and green steam hanging in the room. The children snivel and cry aloud when they are beaten; the daughters-in-law abuse each other — "may thunder strike you, you dirty bitch!" — each wishes the other "may choke on a piece of bread at Eastertime..." (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 65).

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There is no 'beam of light in the dark kingdom' of Bunin's The Village. Even N. Dobroljubov saw some 'light' in Ostrovskij's world of merchants, at least when he reviewed The Thunder. But Bunin is indeed merciless in The Village : there is no word of hope or encouragement, not a smile. Kuz'ma listens to the watchmen conversing in the apple orchard. One of them, Akim, lets his friend have his wife for fifteen kopecks a night and remarks that she will not be marred (ne polinjaet) because of that. The nightingales annoy Akim to such a degree that he would enjoy killing them with a shotgun. And right after this statement the very same Akim prays to God. The peasants believe in superstitions, the village schoolmaster is a half-literate ex-soldier; the women steal the snow fences f o r firewood. The endless Russian winter — deep snow, hunger, misery, diseases, cockroaches which bite the hands of people asleep — make the general picture of the village even more depressing. And again there is a bloodchilling scene of Seryj killing a horse, followed by Deniska beating his own father. "And all these people", says Tixon, "plow the soil for one thousand years, nay, more than that! And no one knows how to plow the right way! They don't know their own profession! They don't know when they have to start working in the fields! When they have to sow, to mow!" — "We do as other people do!" — "And that's all. Remember that!" — Tixon angrily repeated Kuz'ma's words which the latter had shouted at him a while back. "We do as other people do! No woman knows how to bake bread, the whole upper crust falls off to the devil, and under the crust — an acid water" (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 101). The above passages summarize the general picture of the Russian village at the beginning of the twentieth century as Bunin saw it. Needless to say, the social aspect of Bunin's work called forth fierce controversy in literary criticism and journalism. Some, e.g., Social-Democrats, hailed the book. Others, who were inclined to idealize the peasant (Populists and, to some extent, Social-Revolutionaries) resented it vigorously. Even the critics of the moderate camp were divided. Many participants in the dispute accused Bunin of partiality and lack of patriotism and blamed him for his one-sided approach and his hatred toward his own country and people. Those who survived the Revolution of 1917 regard many things in Bunin's The Village as prophetic foresight: "Aujourd'hui, au contraire, beaucoup pense que, dans cette oeuvre, il y avait un aperçu prophétique du caractère spécial de la révolution russe" 17 , wrote Koulman 17 N. Koulman, "Ivan Bunin. — Son activité littéraire en France", Le Monde Slave, 4 (1928), p. 42.

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for a French journal. A few years later another Russian critic, Vejdle, questioned the validity of attacks launched against Bunin's The Village: Is it not true that in The Village and in all stories about muziks one deeply feels a purely Buninesque sense of Russia? How badly all this was understood at that time; what cheap discussions all this provoked! What scarecrows of the journalistic world doubted the truthfulness of all this real knowledge attained through much suffering, which was a prophetic warning.18 At the outset we must make clear that many Russian writers took up the subject of the 'new' village at the turn of the century. We say the 'new' village in order clearly to distinguish it from the village of Grigorovic, Marko-Vov£ok, and others who wrote about the peasants before the emancipation or shortly after it, in the transitional period, when everything still recalled the old order. It must be noted that Bunin was not alone in expressing somber views about the peasants. In 1897 Cexov published his Peasants and three years later his In the Ravine. Cexov's conclusions about the life of the peasants were almost as gloomy as Bunin's. And while Bunin's contempt for the village was attributed to his gentry origin, Cexov's too dark picture was ascribed to his urban origin and resulting ignorance of the village. Cexov's critics apparently disregarded the fact that he lived in the country, in Melixovo, practiced medicine among the peasants, and was active in social work and education; he therefore knew the Russian muzik. And the mild, gentle Cexov, whom nobody would accuse of misanthropy as Bunin was accused,1® gives, nevertheless, a severe verdict on the peasants. With simplicity, with purely Cexovian breadth of mind and with his inner freedom, with the talent of a great independent artist, he paints a very sad picture of the Russian village. He claims that the peasants are "rough, dishonest, filthy drunkards", that "there were such days and hours, when it seemed, that these people lived worse than cattle", but — and here lies the main difference between Cexov's and Bunin's approach — "they are human beings after all, they suffer and weep, as other people do, and there is nothing in their life which could not have had its justification". 20 Yes, Cexov deplores the life of the peasants "with no hope from anywhere", yet he does not come to any hasty conclusions (nor does Bunin), does not judge or accuse anyone. Cexov made some observations on life in 18

V. Vejdle, "Sobranie sofiinenij I. A. Bunina", Sovremennye zapiski, 58 (1935), p. 464. " A. Derman, "I. A. Bunin", Russkaja mysl', 6 (1914), p. 70. "Indifference to man", Derman wrote, "is a bad school of learning a human soul". 20 A. Cexov, Sobranie socinenij (Moscow, 1962), VIII, p. 228. All other quotations are taken from the same page.

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2ukovo, but his observations remain purely those of an artist. The injunction not to judge, so marvelously developed by Dostoevskij in his Memoirs from the House of the Dead, has good authority; and it is followed to artistic perfection in Cexov's Peasants. Cexov remains true to himself: even in the lamentable atmosphere of Peasants he retains his ever-present love for his fellow men — a trait which is entirely absent in Bunin's The Village. Another book which presents peasants in gloomy colors similar to Bunin's is Rodionov's Our Crime. Rodionov's heroes are genuine muziks, striking in their realism. Nothing remains of the patriarchal customs and life of the village. The new, young generation of peasants is shown at its worst: drunken orgies are followed by murders, rapes, knife fights. A gang of youths terrorizes the inhabitants of Cernozem': five of them kill a peasant, Ivan, for no apparent reason. They feel no repentance at all, nay, having met the funeral procession they use obscene language and mock the relatives of the murdered man. Rodionov disillusions the reader who perhaps believes in a strong religious feeling among the peasants as compared with the urban population. For Rodionov shows their philosophy as simplified: there is no God, no Holy Virgin — for them to eat drink and enjoy women are the aims of life. (Bunin too does not believe in the peasants' religiosity). On the whole Our Crime is the most pessimistic book written about the Russian village — many passages go beyond even Bunin's realistic observations. Today Rodionov's book is forgotten because it lacks the literary value of Cexov's Peasants and Bunin's The Village. Gor'kij's peasants so much resemble those of Mujzel' in their stilted unrealistic artificiality that discussion of his treatment of the peasant theme might be omitted if so much had not been said about Gor'kij's 'influence' on Bunin especially in the period between 1909 and 1912. Although Bunin's letters to Gor'kij in these years are affectionate and appreciative of his judgment and advice they are probably insincere and besides they afford no basis for the conclusion that Bunin as a writer was influenced by Gor'kij. As a matter of fact the whole story of Gor'kij's influence is more seeming than real. S. Kastorskij, a Soviet scholar and specialist on Gor'kij, admits that the two authors probably disagreed: "There are some reasons to believe that in his story The Village Bunin was arguing a point of principle with Gor'kij — the author of the stories Summer and The Small Town of Okurov,"21 21 S. Kastorskij, "Gor'kij i Bunin", Zvezda, 3 (1956), p. 148. Gorodok Okurov was rendered by Mirsky as Okurov City.

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Bunin lived as Gor'kij's guest on the island of Capri from the fall of 1908 until May, 1909, that is, when Gor'kij was writing his stories about villages and country towns. Thus Bunin was surely informed of Gor'kij's ideas and the plots of the stories. And in 1909 when Summer appeared in the November issue of the Znanie and The Small Town of Okurov in December, Bunin was writing The Village. In the spring of 1910 Bunin again visited Gor'kij on Capri and had a chance to discuss the nature of the Russian peasant with him. Both authors touch upon many similar situations, but they interpret them differently; each has his own conception of the same human material. The correspondence between Bunin and Gor'kij inspired Bunin to write about the village. But while Bunin accepted this challenge, he developed the theme in his own way. The traditional time, place, and action are comparable in both authors. Both Okurov and Bunin's little country town are shown during the 'troubled times' of the 'Little Revolution' of 1905 and the years following it. Gor'kij writes two independent stories of which one is set in a small town, Okurov, and the other in a village, Vysokie Gnezda, while Bunin combines the theme of small town and village in one work. As for action, the lack of it has already been noted in Bunin's loosely structured The Village. In Gor'kij's stories, on the contrary, plot is not only present but even has a dynamic force; though the narrative, despite intensity and rich texture, fails to achieve organic unity. Bunin's country town has some traits in common with Gor'kij's Okurov. Their bustle and confusion are similar. Both writers divide their urban populace: into the well-to-do and the poor, and the latter huddle together in the Puskarskaja sloboda — a kind of Zare5'e in Okurov. One of the 'heroes' in The Village, Kuz'ma, has much in common not only with Jakov Tiunov in The Small Town of Okurov but also with Matvej Kozemjakin in The Life of Matvej Kozemjakin. The formative years of Kuz'ma and Jakov were those of the 1870's and 1880's, thus both are products of the same time. Their origin too is very similar: both are poor small-town bourgeois (mescane). Kuz'ma's life story is simultaneously the biography of Jakov, or as Bunin puts it "the story of all Russian self-taught men". Nevertheless, it would be wrong to link Kuz'ma only with Jakov. While both men grew up in similar conditions of filth, laziness, boredom, and drunkenness, Kuz'ma has poetic inclinations and is therefore reminiscent of another character from The Small Town of Okurov, the poet Sima Devuskin. Kuz'ma's sentimental, intimate, and naively immature poetry does not suit the crowd's taste, and

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the audience of the market place demands of him something 'decent', more sensible. Kuz'ma, like Sima Devuskin, yields to this demand and writes about the Russo-Japanese War, popular at that time. Both men, Kuz'ma and Jakov, having no common 'roots' with the people of their towns, find themselves, from a sense of depressing loneliness, compelled to wander through Mother Russia. Changing occupations, aimlessly moving from one place to another, Kuz'ma becomes subject to fits of hard drinking. The events of 1905 sober him for a time, and he becomes interested in politics. In this period Kuz'ma acquires Tiunov's features; he shows interest in life, develops keenness of observation, displays love for his fellow men. Kuz'ma's regeneration is reminiscent of the similar changes in Tiunov's psyche after his second prolonged journey. Here is the portrait of Tiunov after his spiritual change: Tiunov came back at the age of forty five, with gray locks of hair on his sharp, pumpkin-like, skull, with a scanty little beard on his bony leathery face. This time one eye looked at people straightforwardly, seriously, and pensively.22

And here is how Bunin describes Kuz'ma: His little beard had turned completely gray, his hair, curled at the end and combed in a simple manner, had grown thin and acquired the color of iron; his wide face had darkened and become still more lean. His vision and power of observation were now sharper, his mind — skeptical. His heart [literally 'soul'] was now sickly and sensitively refined though he knew how to hide it behind the simple, serious, and, at times, even severe look of his small eyes under the slightly twisted eyebrows. He drew himself up, began to think less of himself, more of everything that surrounded him. (Sobr. so(., 1956, II, 59).

However, there is a substantial difference between Kuz'ma Krasov and Jakov Tiunov in their approach to the Revolution of 1905. Kuz'ma is shown as a bourgeois anarchist spontaneously accepting the rebellion ('"Do they burn the landowners? It's wonderful!'") whose zeal dies out quickly, while Tiunov is truly fired to become a propagandist of bold ideas and an adherent of decisive action. Under Bunin's pen Kuz'ma becomes not a revolutionary but a provincial superfluous man. And this is why, perhaps, Kuz'ma Krasov and Matvej Kozemjakin have so much in common. They both dream of doing something, they both have good intentions and noble impulses, yet they cannot accomplish anything positive. Kuz'ma is eager to write a book about life, events, and the people of his little town — in Bunin's words: "he [Kuz'ma] began to live the complex life of the settlement and to recall his childhood, youth" 22

M. Gor'kij, Sobranie socineny (Moscow, 1950), IX, p. 15.

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(Sobr. soc., 1956, II, p. 57). Later he wants to write a Summing-Up (Itogi), a kind of cruel epitaph for himself. This idea is again near to Kozemjakin's intention of writing a 'confession'. At the beginning of the story Kuz'ma joins the Slavophiles, but the Russian people soon disappoint him and he arrives at the pessimistic conclusion that "it isn't worth a dime". Tiunov is, in this respect, just the opposite of Kuz'ma. Merging with the people, he begins to look at it optimistically. And herein lies the main difference between these characters who, at first, seem to be so similar. Bunin's The Village is a response also to the political and philosophical thoughts Gor'kij expressed in Summer. The small town of Okurov is for Gor'kij a symbol of the self-satisfied, rapacious, and ignorant petty bourgeoisie, while his village, Vysokie Gnezda, is a symbol of the working people dearer to Gor'kij than the profoundly despised mescanstvo. Bunin cannot be charged with sympathy toward the petty bourgeoisie, yet his heroes the Krasovs choose, at the end, to live in town rather than in Durnovka, which they hate as Gor'kij hates Okurov. Kuz'ma Krasov (and Tixon too) is morally crushed by the village as Mansurova in Summer is annihilated by Okurov. Bunin's Durnovka is a symbol of something bad and repulsive. Gor'kij's name for the village, Vysokie Gnezda ('High Nests') is meant to inspire the reader with cheer and optimism toward peasantry. This tendentious name is in full harmony with the general optimistic spirit of Summer. Bunin clearly shows that a wild, disorganized rebellion of the peasants is not only possible but is to be expected at the first suitable occasion — a rebellion which would lead to murder, plunder, and violence. Like Dostoevskij in his The Possessed or Turgenev in Torrents of Spring, Bunin ridicules the revolutionaries. In addition to the comic figure of Deniska, another malicious caricature of one of the initiators of the riot, Komar ('Mosquito' — a symbol of a complete smallness and weakness) underlines Bunin's satiric approach to the revolutionaries. Komar ends his life in a manner very unlike that of a true revolutionary; he accepts a job in a distillery and, drunk, falls asleep in the drying room, where he suffocates to death. Deniska's father, Seryj ('Gray One' — insignificant, lacking individuality), a representative of the village ragged proletariat, is unbelievably stupid, weak, and ludicrous. In Gor'kij's Summer the ex-soldier, Gnedoj (which means 'gray' as an adjective but which is used by Gor'kij as a noun meaning 'a bay horse', a symbol of force, nobility, and manliness) is an active and successful revolutionary. Bunin regarded Russia as a rural, peasant country. Kuz'ma's teacher,

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the 'free-thinker' Balaskin, is the author's mouthpiece when he proclaims: '"And all Russia is a village, mind it well! Look around yourself: is this a city, in your opinion? Every evening the herds walk down the streets, one cannot see anything for the dust.... And you say: 'city'!" (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, p. 56). We have already mentioned that The Village provoked a divided reaction among Russian critics and politicians. In his letter to Gor'kij (of April 20, 1911) Bunin gives his opinion of the criticism received by The Village: W e [Bunin and his wife] read a little of what has been written about The Village.... Praise a n d detraction seemed so vapid and cheap that all this m a d e me almost cry (éto xot' plac'). I even felt offended by the mention some critics, f o r some reason, m a d e of my shoes (which, in their opinion are "patentleather"), they spoke of my estates, my migraines, a n d my fears of peasant rebellion. It is quite possible that I'll have migraines, but I doubt that I'll have estates, land a n d coachmen. Until now at least I have h a d nothing of this sort — in all my life I have owned nothing except a suitcase. 83

One of the main points in Vorovskij's criticism was that "Bunin gave us 'the village' not in its entirety, sketched it not from all sides, looked at it not in all its corners".24 On the whole Vorovskij deplored the fact that Bunin had not written The Village in the spirit of Gor'kij's Summer or, in other words, that he had failed to show in The Village the new, revolutionary forces in the making. An unbiased critic, Batjuskov, in his brief analysis of The Village, summarizes his remarks in the following words: His [Bunin's] observations are valuable; the little figures of Tixon and K u z ' m a are described with love and discernment, graphically a n d colorfully. In general, the story turns out to be instructive and, though not very interesting in itself f r o m the literary point of view, it is still important as a document of life at a given historical moment, pertaining not as much to the village per se as to the petty bourgeoisie in the village a n d their approach to rural life. 26

Another critic, Koltonovskaja, writing about The Village shortly after its publication in 1911 in the newspaper Rec' [Speech], concludes her article with the following words: Maybe, Bunin, like many an alien intelligent saw but did not know the whole village, did n o t hear its heart pulsation. Maybe, the village hides its heart, opening only to those cultural workers who live in its midst fearlessly, who 28

Gor'kij, Materialy i issledovanija, II, pp. 425-26. V. Vorovskij, Literaturno-kriticeskie stat'i (Moscow, 1956), p. 332. Vorovskij's italics. 25 F. Batjuskov, "Iv. A. Bunin", Russkaja literatura XX v., ed. by S. A. Vengerov (Moscow, 1915), II, p. 363. 24

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silently do their work.... Yet the truth about the village from an alien intelligent also has its value. Everything which horrified Bunin and gave him material for his story really exists in our contemporary village. The facts should neither be concealed nor softened.2" And here is the very different statement of a British critic who, looking back after a lapse of forty years, writes: The whole picture of pre-revolutionary provincial life is painted in the blackest possible tones. This is a pity; because, despite Bunin's artistry, the story does not ring quite true.27 Along, with praise from Gor'kij, who was the greatest admirer of The Village, we also find very unfavorable comments from Txorzevskij: And how stingy, mistrustful, and gloomy Bunin is in his approach to the people, to their life, love, and misfortunes. Bunin's (undeservedly) famous The Village is one of the most cheerless works in Russian literature. Aimed at sobering the Russian pocvennik, it was meant to show the people in their nakedness and unprepossessing appearance. The political approach became also an artistic failure: The Village is deliberately empty as a story but one doubts whether it intentionally lacks artistic relief. Awfully boring, gray images weigh heavily, are repeated oppressively all the way on the same plane. Often, all of them are of the same dimension.28 In the discussion about The Village, which mainly revolved about its socioeconomic and political content, its literary value was usually just barely mentioned if not forgotten altogether. But, if today we still read Bunin's The Village and only under pressure turn to Pod'jaCev's or Vol'nov's even gloomier writings on the same subject, we do so for artistic rather than merely historic reasons. Bunin's The Village is a work of art, the work of art of the mature forty-year-old Bunin, the Bunin of his 'second period', the realist who had freed himself of all early influences. Rejecting Gor'kij's imaginary influence on The Village we now remain only with Bunin alone, with the original author of an original work. The traces of influence by Turgenev, Gondarov, and Tolstoj are almost nil and easily explained by the fact that Bunin's roots go back to the nine26

E. Koltonovskaja, "Intelligent i derevrua", Kriticeskie etjudy (St. Petersburg, 1912), p. 280. This acknowledgment about 'truthfulness' of Bunin's work by Koltonovskaja contradicts her other statements: "Bunin's truth about the village is his subjective truth; one accepts it as his private and passing mood, not as a real frightening reality.... It [The Village] furnishes more material for understanding the modern representative of intelligentsia than for characteristics of rural life". — "Iv. Bunin. Derevnja", Vestnik Evropy, 2 (1911), p. 396, passim. " A. Colin, "Ivan Bunin in Retrospect", The Slavonic and East European Review, 34 (1955), p. 169. M I. Txorievskij, Russkaja literatura (Paris, 1946), II, p. 541. Pocvennik is one who views Russian culture and society as an organic product of the national soil (pocva).

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teenth-century realists. In his realism Bunin followed standards of impersonality and objectivity, very seldom indulged in introspection and evaded reporting directly his autobiographical experiences. There is also a fine admixture of 'modernism' in The Village: Bunin is unwilling to keep strictly to the established moral code. He was one of those realists and Russian 'classics' who violated the 'taboo' of the nineteenth century and began to write rather freely about sex — a subject in which even such a flesh-and-blood realist as Kuprin did not go so far as Bunin did. But although The Village is a work of art, its 'social' aspect and impact undoubtedly overshadows its literary merits. We tend to agree with those critics who are not enthusiastic about The Village. Even AdamoviS, a true admirer of Bunin, thinks that The Village cannot be placed on the same level, from the purely literary point of view, with Bunin's later works. In his book Adamovid quotes a conversation he had with Bunin: One day, having heard or read, that André Gide considered his story The Village a masterpiece, Ivan Alekseevic waved his hand and said with a smile : "Why, what should one expect from a Frenchman? He is a clever old man, but, nevertheless, he is a Frenchman.... One day I began to read my own works in translation, then I read Nazivin, also in translation. Upon my honor, there is no difference at all! And speaking of The Village I think the following: it is overcrowded.... I wrote it somehow too densely.™ The composition of The Village is less perfect than that of Dry Valley. The story also lacks musical tonality and rhythm which Bunin was soon to develop to a high degree. Bunin seems never at home as soon as his short story grows in length, and The Village is an example of this. The story starts and ends abruptly. Although one can see in this the famous Cexovian device according to which 'the ending' of a story is permanently 'missing', the fragmentary character of The Village is just too evident. The density of it consisting in a score of loosely connected frescoes or small episodes spoils the unity of the story. True enough, all these individual little pictures form one large canvas of rural and provincial Russia, but had they been taken separately written as separate short stories, they would have been much more effective and justified. On the other hand, if we regard them as 'lyrically tinged vignettes' necessary to the story, then their monotony is apparent. Local color in The Village is richly employed in the form of dialecticisms, and the characters' speech is constantly interspersed with words and expressions indigenous to the Orel Province. Although these un29 G. Adamovic, Odinocestvo i svoboda (New York, 1955), p. 100. 'Densely' was the adverb used by Gor'kij. Adamovic's italics.

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familiar words in the text often make it hard to understand and force the inquisitive reader to turn to the Akademiceskij slovar' [Academic Dictionary], they are absolutely indispensible in such a work. Bunin's story would be a complete failure if his muziks spoke in literary language. As in many other works by Bunin, the nature description plays a paramount role in The Village. Bunin's primary intention was to show the village in an unappealing light, in such dark colors that an overwhelmed reader would repeat Puskin's words about the picture of Russia in Dead Souls: "Oh, how sad is our Russia!" Gray is one of the best colors to convey the mood of the depressing village atmosphere. This makes us think of a passage in Gogol' 's story "Portrait", where the writer spoke of the difficulty of portraying those characters whom he defined as ashen-colored, and whom Gogol' used to paint in shades as gray as possible. Bunin too makes good use of gray. Kuz'ma visits Seryj's (Gray's) house, the poorest hut in the whole village. It is winter time. The oppressive atmosphere of hopeless penury and the senselessness of life is vividly conveyed by the intentionally repetitious insertion of the adjective seryj: the winter storm blows the seryj nasi ('gray snow-crust'); the women wash their serye zamasnye rubaxi ('gray linen shirts'); it is getting cold in the house s zamerzsimi serymi oknami ('with the frozen gray windows'); under the whitish sky spreads a seroe sneznoe pole ('gray snowy field'); after a prolonged life in Durnovka Kuz'ma is struck by snezno-seryj prostor ('snowily-gray open space'); and even a beggar eats a slice of bread seruju ot soli ('gray from salt') (Sobr. soc., 1956, II. pp. 88-91, passim). The culmination of 'grayishness' finds its best expression in the opening of the paragraph in which Bunin describes the winter morning: "The morning was gray. Under the hardened gray snow the village too was gray. The wash hung in gray frozen lumps on the cross beams under the roof of the barn" (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, p. 89). If we add to this gray color many other shades as, for instance, bledno-belejuscie pod sinevato-sumracnym nebom polja ('pale-white fields under the bluish-dusk sky'), if we look through Bunin's exact prism at the entire village buried in deep snow, if we feel (and to be sure Bunin makes the reader feel) the penetrating cold of the Russian winter — then we can well understand what many critics of Bnnin mean by saying he is a 'magician of words'. Already in the still imperfect The Village, Bunin is able to render in words the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. This extraordinary faculty, virtually unique in Russian literature, never deserts Bunin. He develops it more and more in his later works.

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3.2 CONTINUATION O F THE PEASANT THEME: "A NIGHT CONVERSATION" A N D OTHER STORIES

A thoughtful critic, writer and poet, V. Xodasevic, also noted the predominance of documentary material in The Village to the detriment of its literary value. He wrote in 1934 for a leading Polish literary journal: "The story, which attracted the readers' and critics' attention, despite its undoubted merits, rather gave them material for meditations and journalistic remarks than provoked criticism of its literary qualities".30 After The Village Bunin did not abandon the peasant theme, but, on the contrary, enlarged it and used it more artistically in a series of short stories in which, as K. Zajcev correctly writes "the merciless truth of representation, the inwardly tense and externally calm matter matches the inaccessible perfection of form". 31 The Village was neither Bunin's last word on the peasants nor his last bleak look at Russian reality. "A Night Conversation" blurs the scenes which we have discussed in The Village. The structure of "A Night Conversation" echoes Turgenev's "Be2in Medow". A thin, awkward stripling, a high school boy, the son of a landowner, is infatuated with the muziks and resolves to study the narod ('common people'). The student spends all his time working side by side with the farm hands. One evening, after a hard day's work, the student joins a group of five farm laborers with whom he plans to spend the night in the open, in a haystack. Although he is dead tired, he does not fall asleep because the tiny dog-fleas burn him as with fire and dissipate his drowsiness. And like Turgenev's 'hunter' among the boys in "Beiin Meadow", the student begins to listen to the conversation of the farm hands. In Turgenev's story, which begins as an idyll and ends as an elegy, the boys tell horror stories in the spirit of E. T. A. Hoffman's supernatural and fantastic, but Bunin's "A Night Conversation" is a real horror story. Its topic is murder, murder which lacks such things as 'repentance' and which may be committed with ease by anyone, not necessarily a 'superman' a la Raskol'nikov. The farm hands, simple peasants like millions of others, talk among themselves about how they have killed men. The horrorstricken student is speechless. His belief in the people is shattered. One of the five muziks, Paska, asks the young master the time. Hearing the answer, he quite casually remarks: "'Just exactly at this time last year I killed a man'" (GSFr., 1933, p. 181). And he goes on to tell the story. 80 81

W. Chodasiewicz, "lwan Bunin", Przeglqd wspolczesny, 69 (1934), pp. 8-9. K. Zajcev, I. A. Bunin: ¿izn' i tvorcestvo (Berlin, n.d.), p. 110.

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What makes the schoolboy (and the reader too) shiver is the tone of the narration. Paska, then a soldier in the Caucasus, was escorting a Georgian prisoner. When the latter tried to escape, Paska shot and wounded him. And here are Paska's concluding words: "He's sitting down, propped up with his hands in the dirt; his teeth are bared and he's rattlin': 'Quick', says he, 'quick, Russ, stick your bayonet into me here...'. Meaning the chest, that is. I charged with my bayonet on a run, — straight through his heart.... Why, the bayonet went right out at his back!"

(GSFr., 1933, p. 185).

Paska's murder wins, of course, the full approval of his listeners. They even envy Paska because his name was in the order sent to the regiment, and appeared in the papers, and the officer rewarded him with a ruble before the whole battalion. Challenged by Paska's 'exciting' story, Fedot too has something to tell: " 'Well, now, I sinned absolutely for nothing. I killed a man over a mere trifle, you might say; all on account of a she-goat I had'." (GSFr., 1933, p. 186). Fedot's report is long and keeps the reader in suspense. Bunin intentionally makes Fedot talk endlessly about his adventures with his goat. A neighbor peasant, Andrjuska, is involved in this affair and he offends Fedot. The latter dashes out with a scythe whetstone in his hand and hits Andrjuska over his head. The injured man dies toward evening. Fedot, locked for a few days in the barn, watches the autopsy of the murdered Andrjuska. He talks about the dissecting of Andrjuska's corpse in such an imperturbable tone, and tells such naturalistic details of the doctor's performance that the student's nerve gives out. While the peasants fall asleep he jumps up and walks home. The student is Bunin's mouthpiece. The omniscient author follows the student's thoughts: "Yes, murder means nothing to him!" reflected the student, shivering. "That is the foot of a real murderer! How horribly he killed this beautiful she-goat! And the man that he killed with a whetstone... he must have been sharpening a scythe... and must have struck him straight in the temple, killing him on the spot.... But Paska!... Paska!... How could he tell about it so gaily and with such enjoyment, too! 'It came right out at his back'" (GSFr., 1933, p. 200).

In The Village the stress was put on the 'grayness' and primitivism of the peasants; in "A Night Conversation" Bunin refuses even to regard the peasants as human beings: they are monsters and moral Quasimodos, shorn of any human feelings, capable of most cruel atrocities and murder. Paska himself laughs at the populist ideas of his young master, who believes the peasants ought to be treated humanely. Another muzik, Ivan, recalls an episode from the riots of 1905. The peasants caught the land-

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owner's bull, tied him up with ropes, stripped him to the last hair and let him run to his owner's house. This senseless cruelty is beyond the student's comprehension, and he naively asks: '"They took his hide off? While he was alive?' — 'No, while he was cooked', mumbled Ivan. 'Oh you Moscow feller!'" (GSFr., p. 201). Laughing heartily, Paska recalls another 'funny' incident which happened during the 'Little Revolution': A mob of muziks killed a landowner, and one of them beat him over his head with a dead peasant baby accidentally shot in the riot. "A Night Conversation" is an almost incredible 'documentary' story about the peasants, a true invective against the village. Trying to compare the realism of "Bezin Meadow" with "A Night Conversation", Professor Poggioli comes to the conclusion that, while Turgenev's realism shows the author's sympathy with the object observed, Bunin alienates himself from the human content of the experience, he contemplates in order to represent it better. Turgenev's is the realism of grace, and Bunin's the realism of necessity. For this reason, while Turgenev's vision remains in the reader's memory like the shadow of a dream, the echo of a song, the nightmare of Bunin preserves even in recollection the rigid and static impression of a bas-relief.32 It might seem that in The Village and "A Night Conversation" Bunin had said everything he wanted to about the peasants. However, though his thematic range widens, the peasant does not entirely disappear from the scene. He continues to dominate Bunin's stories, but in a somewhat changed guise. We have seen that neither in The Village nor in "A Night Conversation" was Bunin willing to admit a single human trait in the long gallery of muziks he presented to the reader. However, in a few of his tales of the same period (some written during Bunin's "Boldino autumn" — the very prolific autumn and winter of 1911-1912 which Bunin spent with Gor'kij on Capri) he shows a somewhat different attitude toward the peasant. To our surprise we learn that the peasants are human beings after all and have human hearts capable of loving and suffering. We learn, for example, that such things as paternal and maternal love exist among the peasants too. That the 'savages' are capable of real love is clearly demonstrated in "The Cricket" (Capri, 1911). Sveriok ('cricket') is the nickname of a peasant, Il'ja KapitonoviS, who tells how his twenty-five-year-old son Maksim froze to death on a foggy, frosty night. The frame of the story 38

Poggioli, op. cit., p. 137.

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is traditional and familiar from frequent use. Two peasant craftsmen (harness-makers), Sverfiok and Vasilij, are sitting at the work bench on a stormy, snowy, and cold winter evening. A kerosene lamp throws a dim light over a well-heated room, in which a woman cook and a laborer have also gathered. Taking a walk, the Remers, a young landowner and his wife, enter the room, only "for a minute" as they say. "And it was just then that the Cricket, unexpectedly for all, told how his son had frozen to death" (EA, p. 119). The story is very simple. Five or six years earlier SverCok and his son, returning home from work, lost their way in the fog, and the young, strong Maksim was frozen to death despite his father's heroic efforts to save him. The weak, old man carried Maksim in his arms and collapsed with his burden a few steps away from the railway tracks, where he was picked up unconscious by the engineers of a freight train. Ironically the story discards the theory of the survival of the fittest. It is hardly possible that Bunin read "The Open Boat" — a fine short story by the American realist writer, Stephen Crane (1871-1900) or even ever heard of its author — but Crane's story, like Bunin's, tells of blind forces of nature which decide man's fate independently of man's will: out of four shipwrecked men (including the author himself), the strongest two, the captain and the oiler, perish, while the weakest two survive. Everyone present feels uneasy about SverCok's sad tale. The surprised woman cook asks him: "'But there's one thing I can't understand — how is it you yourself wasn't froze to death in such fierce weather, how?...' — 'I had no time for that, mother', the Cricket answered absentmindedly, searching for something on the workbench, among the scraps of leather" {EA., p. 131). "The Cricket" is a powerful representation, in brief compass, of a naturalistic concept of fate. Everything is in perfect proportion in this story. The rhythmic flow of Sveriiok's narration moves even the rude Vasilij, who, at the beginning, was rather sceptical of his companion's narrative talent: "'Well, now, it's a pity I cut you short. You tell a story well. I didn't even expec' such spirit from you'" {EA, p. 130). Of course, "The Cricket" has not the psychological depth of Tolstoj's Master and Man, nor does it give enough material for a psychological analysis. But we often fail to realize that in Bunin's chosen medium, the short story as brief as the sketch and as tight as the prose poem, there is no room for searching and slowly developing insights. In "The Cricket" Bunin succeeded in accomplishing what he had intended: to present the love of a simple peasant-father for his son, who, by the way, rumor said, was not even his son.

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The maternal love of a peasant-woman is displayed in "Veselyj dvor" [A Gay Farmhouse]. There is nothing gay in this story. The house has been ironically called by the neighbors a 'gay' one because Anis'ja's late husband, when drunk, used to make rows and beat his wife. Such free 'entertaining' was enjoyed and appreciated by the peasants. "However, after Miron's death, even such a past seemed happy to Anis'ja. Indeed, she was young, had family and farm; she had her husband, children; there were joys and sorrows — everything as other people have..." (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, p. 227). Her only son, Egor Minaev, a stove-setter, is a failure: lazy, a drunkard, an unstable and restless nature. In spring he receives a job as a forester in Lanskoe, fifteen versts away from his native village. Anis'ja is left alone in her dilapidated house and is virtually starving. So she decides to go and visit her son in Lanskoe. Old Anis'ja's walk to Lanskoe on a summer day through the ripening rye fields is a very fine part of the tale. Bunin is always at his best when he places nature at the center of his narrative and describes his 'hero' against its background. Anis'ja is so weak, tired, and sleepy that she sees everything around her as if through tinted eyeglasses. Here is how Bunin describes Anis'ja's semi-conscious condition: It was so pleasant to walk barefoot on the warm soil. But the non-existent windmills waved and waved with their wings. And when she lifted her eyes toward the cloudlets in the sky, she saw a little glass worm swimming and swimming in the air, little glass flies were swimming too, and there was no way to catch them nor to keep them in one spot: as soon as she fixed her eyes on the little worm it slipped out somewhere, then again swam up, glided, rose, and the little flies multiplied and multiplied in the air... (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 231-232).

With her last strength she continues her walk to Lanskoe. She stopped for a while and with a pensively-sad smile she began to pick some flowers; she gathered into her coarse hand a big, colorful bunch — delicate, beautiful, fragrant; at first she gently and pitifully looked at her bouquet, then she looked at the fertile soil which was so indifferent only to her, at the juicy and thick greenish-lead peas, entangled with the scarlet wild peas. The women were silent, the windmills disappeared. Now she swam, swam in the air like that little glass worm. There, in the distance, amid the peas was a watchman's hut, still unoccupied: how delightful it would be to crawl into it and — sleep... (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 233).

Dizzy, seeing everything through a mist, she finally arrives at her destination. Egor is not at home; his cabin is empty. She enters it, lies down on the bench, and falls asleep.

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She slept, and was dying in her sleep. Her face, the face of a mummy, was quiet, expressionless. It stopped raining, the evening sky cleared up, everything became silent in the forest and fields. The night butterfly swam noiselessly in the air. In the twilight one could see only the white flowers on the ground. Beyond the cabin, the blackish-green top branches of the shrubs appeared as a fine, beautiful pattern in the orange-scarlet haze, which, in the higher strata, turned into a transparent, lemon-colored, light emptiness. The full, clear, but not bright moon, which as yet gave no light, hung in the colorless, ash-gray skies in front of the cabin. And it looked straight into a little window by which a primitive human creature, half dead half alive, lay. The wind blew through the other window, without glass and frame... (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 236-237). Egor's life is the life of a profligate : He grew up, acquired strength, became a real muzik ; sometimes he was sick, drunk; he worked, knocked about the region, and only seldom thought of his deserted farm and mother, whom he called, for some reason, a burden; he liked life which he senselessly spent. In moments of weariness, exhaustion, and depression when he used to say "the wide world is no more dear to him" it never occurred to him there was a link with his boyish, immature talk about suicide (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 237). The thought of suicide is Egor's idée fixe. (Bunin was interested in the motives of a suicidal death — e.g. "The Son", The Elaghin Affair.) A few times Egor attempted to commit suicide, but each time he was rescued. While his mother was dying her lonely death, Egor was drinking with the village blacksmith. In the middle of the night he went home: Rustling through the dew-covered burdocks and singing, Egor courageously approached the door, pulled the handle and stopped at the threshold of his tiny, barely lighted hut. A dead silence stood in the whole world at this hour before dawn. A dead silence filled the forester's hut. In this silence, in the sleepy twilight something motionless blackened on the bench under the icons. And, having looked closely, Egor suddenly uttered such an awful, shrill cry that the black-gray old dog jumped out from the weeds... (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 249). Owing to the landowner's ten-ruble gift to Egor for his mother's funeral expenses, Anis'ja's burial is performed according to the ritual. During the funeral Egor drinks heavily, even dances. Left alone in the world, Egor ages within a month; anxiety seizes him; one autumn day, early in the morning, Egor throws himself under a freight train. The locomotive pushed lightly against his cheek. And Egor turned over like a top, and fell with his head against the embankment and his legs against the rails. And when the train, shaking the earth, rushed by with a deafening roar, the boys saw something horrible floundering and struggling by the rails. It was Egor who struggled on the sand, or rather that which had been Egor a second ago ; it struggled, bloodying the sand, throwing upwards the two thick stumps

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— two legs, horrifyingly short. Two other legs, wrapped with bloody cloths round his feet and in the bark-shoes, lay on the ties. And through the empty, autumn field, in the fog of a drizzle, one could hear the alarming sound of the horn of the watchman who ran out from his cabin to announce the accident to the next fellow watchman.... Thus, so differently the proprietress and the proprietor of the "gay" farmhouse in Pazen' finished their days (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 252).

"A Gay Farmhouse" is the story of two lives and two deaths. How quiet and unnoticed, as her life had been, is Anis'ja's death on a warm summer night, and how ugly and repulsive is that of her son! The meek Anis'ja dies like Mitrofan or like Turgenev's Luker'ja from "Living Relios" in A Sportsman's Sketches; the sinner, Egor, dies like the Gentleman from San Francisco, on a foggy, rainy late fall day. One can hardly say that the old woman 'died'. No, she passed away. Not without reason Bunin builds up the mood of a beautiful summer day. Many times he describes the real and imaginary butterflies which Anis'ja sees. They do not 'fly' but 'swim' in the air. And Anis'ja's sinless, unsophisticated life also 'swam' away from the earth. The awful death of Egor is a logical conclusion to his no less awful life. It is hard to avoid comparing the concluding passage of "A Gay Farmhouse" with that of Anna Karenina: A few minutes before his death, Egor, talking to the boys, "added to each word he said another curse word (maternoe stove)", while Anna made the sign of the cross; Egor has no last reminiscences of his prodigal life, while Anna sees her happy past. Bunin is not interested in Egor's last thoughts; his attention is concentrated on the physical mutilation of Egor's body. While Tolstoj only briefly mentions that Anna "tried to get up, to drop backwards; but something huge and merciless struck her on the head and rolled her on her back", Bunin uses all his descriptive power to portray naturalistically the scene of Egor's suicide. It must be constantly kept in mind that Bunin is always anxious to make use of the senses, to make his reader see and hear the scene described. And to see it, to be sure, in minutest detail. There lies the dead Anis'ja: There was not a slightest sign of blood on her bluish face. The eyelid of her right eye closed; her thin lips stuck together and dried out. And her icy forehead had been already crowned with a wreath of superior glory — with a golden paper ribbon. And in her wax-gray, transparent hand, in her crooked fingers, under fingernails of which the dead blood blackened in spots, someone had

already stuck the Nunc Dimittis [otpusk] (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 250-251).

The immediacy of Bunin's vision seems to suggest that he writes under the shock or impact of the event; yet at second sight we realize that he represents the event itself as if it were detached in both mood and time.

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Very similar in structure to the already discussed "Celestial Birds" is the story "Drevnij celovek" [An Old Man] originally titled "One Hundred Eight". Instead of the student who tries to penetrate the peasantbeggar's mentality we have in "An Old Man" a young teacher, Ivanickij. Ivanickij visits Taganok, a peasant one-hundred-eight years old. Although Taganok's mind is still, despite his advanced age, perfectly alert to everyday events, the teacher, trying to extract some interesting experiences from this long life, is struck by Taganok's primitivism. "But he is shallow, shallow! Taganok's thoughts, reminiscences are so surprisingly simple that sometimes one wonders: is this a human being at all?" (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, p. 168). We recall that in "Celestial Birds" Bunin uses sharp words: 'the savages'. To the teacher's great disappointment Taganok has very little to say. Ivanickij learns that in his youth Taganok, a team-driver, visited Moscow, and, though he does not remember the French invasion, he does recall the old landowners who were 'good' to him. "Did they flog you?" the teacher asked. "No, God spared me", answered Taganok. "Only once they did. And once I got it in the neck from Nil Semenyc.... During the construction.... I took a wrong beam.... But they wanted to sell us once.... They delivered us.... The master was cross with us, the fellers.... Well, then he sent eleven heads.... Into this, how you call it, Belev.... Well, they brought us to the market place and lined us up close one to another.... Then the burgomaster of Selexnev came to.... We got awfully scared, but they didn't agree about the price, somehow.... But they offered a good price for me — one hundred fifty five, they gave.... (Sobr. soc., II, 168).

What are Taganok's wishes? Does he want to live longer? "I would like to.... I would like still to live five years more.... But during these five years...". He probably thinks of his daughter-in-law, his hut, his state of neglect, his helplessness. And he sighed lightly. "But the lice will eat me in those five years. Otherwise, I would like to live longer" (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 170).

Although this story is inferior to those we are about to discuss, it is, nevertheless, interesting to compare "An Old Man" with Korolenko's "Emel'jan". "In 'An Old Man', Bunin, through his mouthpiece, the teacher, questions Taganok to satisfy his own curiosity; in 'Emel'jan', Korolenko converses with the peasant for the latter's benefit". 33 Neither "An Old Man" nor our next story, "Zaxar Vorob'ev" shows the hatred for the peasants and for mankind in general with which Bunin, with his 'cruel' talent, is often charged. Indeed, Bunin's mis83

Derman, op. cit., p. 69.

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anthropy is altogether exaggerated; it would be just to say about Bunin what Tolstoj says about Levin, and, eo ipse, about himself: "He liked and he did not like peasants, just as he liked and did not like men in general". Bunin is rather surprised by the peasants' atavism and backwardness. And not without reason Bunin took for an epigraph for the cycle of his stories of 1911-1913 Ivan Aksakov's words: "And old Russia has yet not vanished". In search of a positive hero, Bunin turns his attention to the past. He finds him in Zaxar Vorob'ev, an almost mythical giant of a stature taken from the Russian heroic epos. There is no doubt that Bunin's sympathy is with Zaxar. He openly admires the figure of this fantastic Mikula Seljanovic: He felt that he belonged to some other sort of people and he ought to behave among them as an adult among children, with whom he ought to stay on equal footing. All his life — he was forty years old — he also was seized by another feeling, an uneasy feeling of loneliness: in the olden time there had been many like him, but this sort of people was disappearing now (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 276). Like many people of athletic constitution Zaxar is childlishly naive and harmless. Without ever tiring he can easily walk forty versts in a day. Once he carried in his arms to the village a woman injured by a bull and thus saved her life. He was smiling and satisfied when his case in the regional court ended peacefully. And yet we learn right away, in the opening sentence, that Zaxar died a few days ago, that this cudo-bogatyr'' died a senseless death. He made a bet with the muziks that he could drink a 'quarter' (approximately three quarts) of vodka in an hour. He wins the wager and even feels the desire for more, and so, having walked to the nearest liquor shop and bought a few more bottles of vodka, he goes on drinking. Suddenly he realizes that he is dying. He still finds enough strength in himself to say to the shop owner: "Listen. I'm dying. I'm finished. I won't make you responsible for me. I'll leave. I'll leave". And he firmly walked to the middle of the highway, and, having reached the middle of it, bent his knees — and heavily, like a bull, fell to the ground on his back and spread his arms. — That August moonlight was awful. Women and children came from all sides to the tavern; talking quietly and with reserve, came the muziks. The moonlight appeared like a transparent smoke over the harvested fields. Something huge and terrible whitened and shone in the middle of the highway. Barefoot women approached quickly and noiselessly, made the sign of the cross, and put some copper coins at his head (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 286). Although one does not always agree with Gor'kij's literary criticism, he is eminently right when he says that "Zaxar Vorob'ev" is "simple and

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frightening".34 The story was written during Bunin's sojourn on Capri and was read in Gor'kij's home. El. Viktorova, who was present during the reading, quoted Gor'kij as saying to Bunin: '"Ivan AlekseeviC! How well you have done it!' And, turning to the others he added: 'This is the way one should write! Learn!'" 36 "Zaxar Vorob'ev" demonstrates that Bunin had already freed himself of various stylistic influences and found his 'own language', as Cexov recommended to every writer. This story marvelously exemplifies Bunin's unique use of senses. Here is smell: And he emitted a pleasant smell: a smell of rye bread mixed with the smell of tar from his leather boots shoed with iron bars,1 with the acid odor of his tanned sheep coat and the mint aroma of the snuff... (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 276).

And here are taste, hearing, and sight all in a few sentences: And Zaxar, having put the bottle aside, took two or three more arrows of green onions and, having broken them, pushed them into a big wooden salt-box filled with the coarse gray salt, and ate them with an appetizing, juicy crackle. His eyes filled with blood and tears and seemed horrible. But he smiled; his deep bass was sonorous, gentle, pleasantly mocking (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 279).

The postponed denouement is another characteristic of Bunin's mature work. Although we already know that Zaxar will die, Bunin postpones the catastrophe. The major portion of the story is taken up with Zaxar's narration of his experience with the court procedure. This digression has a threefold merit: first, it keeps the reader in suspense; second, it extends the characterization of Zaxar; and third, it allows Bunin to display his knowledge of the peasant language and manner of speech. Another masterpiece, "Ignat", seems to represent the end, in Bunin's work, of the peasant theme as such (i.e., the peasant theme in which he was concerned with the 'dark' corners of the peasant soul). This is not to say that "Ignat" is not a peasant story, but that the author is interested in showing more than peasant features. In "Ignat" Bunin comes close to the theme of love, passion, jealousy, and crime. The story revolves around two central characters, Ignat and Ljubka. Ignat, a poor, twentyyear-old shepherd, falls in love with the house maid, Ljubka, one year older than he. He is innocent, she is depraved. "At about fourteen she was raped by the district councillor, old man Satilov; and now her behavior with the young masters, the Panins, is very free, for she is not 34

Gor'kij, Materialy i issledovanija, I, p. 358. From a letter to the beginning writer P. A. Beresnev. " E. Viktorova, "Gor'kij na Kapri", O Gor'kom — sovremenniki (Moscow, 1929), p. 177.

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afraid of falling in love" (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, p. 253). Ignat sees Ljubka flirting with the Panins, and, realizing how slight his chances are with her, takes to drink. Under the influence of alcohol and driven by his growing sexual desire, Ignat makes love to a simple-minded girl (durocka), Fiona: She was slightly drunk. When Ignat approached her, she fell on her back and, laughing stupidly and passionately, put forward her knees and began to rub with her big bark-slippers on the grass. She had some biscuits and vodka in her bag. And, having drunk some vodka, he lost control of himself... {Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 253).

Ignat has already given up his hope for Ljubka, but pure chance brings them together. One summer night Ljubka drives a horse carriage from the railway station and meets Ignat walking along the road. She offers him a ride, and soon he is sitting next to Ljubka: He remembered only the moment when he suddenly grasped the reins, and, having stopped the horse, threw his legs into the carriage. "Wait", Ljubka said in a whisper, and she said it as simply as if they had lived together for many years, and, because of this simplicity, his head became even more dizzy. "Wait, you'll rumple my skirt.... Let me straighten it up..." (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 261).

After living with Ljubka for three months, he goes to the army for four years. And, one frosty winter night, having served his term, he returns home. He never trusts Ljubka. From the very beginning of their marriage he suspects that she has married him because she was already pregnant by somebody else. He beats her severely and causes an abortion: He did not believe a single word she said, lived in anxiety, in unceasing suffering, in jealousy, inventing the most cruel punishments for fancied infidelities (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 261).

The rest of the story develops rapidly. Ignat learns that Ljubka is in the landowner's house and is entertaining a merchant. Ignat watches the couple through the window: he sees but does not hear them. The merchant eats slowly and talks to Ljubka. The whole conversation is saturated with sexuality. Ljubka, answering the merchant's questions, tells him that she is bored by her husband's jealousy, that she fears he may kill her, that she knows she is a healthy and fine woman (the merchant's compliment): "Yes, I'm awfully good!" said Ljubka, flattered, but she smiled mockingly and began to lie: "And this is certainly not my fault that we don't have children.

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I myself miss them. It happened I bit him black and blue, and he too tried very hard, and there were no results..." (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 269). Bunin fully depicts Ljubka's depravity and greed, her venal, reckless character. Like a cunning prostitute, she accepts a ten-ruble note from the merchant and notices that the billfold hidden in his vestpocket under his shirt is quite thick. "And, rising suddenly, she said in a resolute whisper: 'Well, let's go...'" (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, p. 270). The merchant, entering the dark hall, gropes for the revolver in his pocket. Ljubka and the merchant enter a dark, cold storage room. Ljubka leads him through the barrels standing here and there full of butter and salt pork, past the bicycle and other household goods to a wooden bedstead: She stood in such a manner that she could have lain down comfortably and the merchant could have felled her. Her whisper paralyzed his legs. She whispered something, gentle, with a trembling voice, but he did not listen to it. Embracing and pressing to himself her heavy body, he pushed her nearer and nearer to the bedstead until the calves of her legs rested against it, until her knees touched the bedstead. And now Ljubka, who had weakly resisted him hitherto, fell silently on the bed. She felt pain from the pressing pocket watch and its chain; with one hand she caressed his thick, soft beard, and with the other strongly held his forefinger with a big gold ring. She felt the sweet torment enter her body, she felt the waves of languor, and, as if she were angry, she started to bite the hair of his beard, which covered her mouth. With both arms she pulled strongly toward her and embraced his bullish, wrinkled neck, his disheveled head.... But this head suddenly slipped from her hands, Ljubka's body felt light and her legs ached from weight.36 Apparently the merchant lost consciousness from a stroke. While Ljubka rushes to fetch some ice, cold water, and a towel, her husband appears: And, suddenly, like thunder, the door cracked. And, raising her eyes, Ljubka was petrified as she saw the soldier over her, who seemed to her almost as tall as the ceiling. In his right hand, pulled backwards, he held an axe. Approaching Ljubka, he grasped the handle of the axe, but she, still quicker than he, in the last moment, riveted him to the spot with her determined voice: "It's my sin", she said quickly. "Finish him quickly. We'll be rich. We'll say he died of a stroke. Quicker!" Ignat looked at her face, which of a sudden became lean and bony, looked at her enlarged and motionlessly fixed black eyes, at her red blouse and the tanned fat arms below the rolled sleeves — and smote with all his might with the butt of the axe into the wet towel (Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 274). The tense, feverish narration slows down. In the next and last chapter Bunin describes the merchant's coachman and how he harnesses the 36

Sobr. soc., 1956, II, 272. All adverbs such as 'suddenly' as well as some adjectives in the passages from "Ignat" quoted below are italicized by me (S.K.).

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stallion to a sleigh. Then Fed'ka, in order to warm up the horse drives around the house. It is a cold dawn: In the west one still felt the night, its mystery. The low moon shone deadly on the gloomy horizon.... Suddenly a white and brown spotted dog jumped out from the front entrance, from the quiet, snow-covered house with its dead windows. Barking curtly, the dog, like mad, made two circles around the house and again ran into the house. Fed'ka looked at it with surprise.... The reddening moon, set beyond the village, the roofs of which whitened and stood out against the background of the gloomy, purple horizon.... Going at a slow pace, Fed'ka drove into the yard toward the front entrance — and suddenly opened his eyes and drew the reins: crying with a distorted face which seemed paler in the golden morning light, the woman cook ran from the front porch to the servants' quarters. A man clad in a reddish gray coat with an upturned collar fastened around his neck, with uncovered head and clipped hair sat on the porch. Inclining his head, he shoveled fresh, white snow with his right hand from the gray snow crust near the steps and held it against his forehead (Sobr. sod., 1956, II, 273-275, passim). The finesse of this story can hardly be overemphasized. Bunin's The Village had provoked such lively discussion that his other stories of the same period passed almost unnoticed. At any rate, the critics certainly overlooked Bunin's shorter stories such as "Zaxar Vorob'ev", "The Cricket", "Ignat", and others. Many names among Russian and foreign writers have been mentioned in order to show how this or that writer influenced Bunin. Intentionally many quotations have been given from "Ignat", especially from the sexual, sensual passages of the story. Needless to say, neither Turgenev nor Gon5arov nor Tolstoj, whose names are often mentioned in connection with Bunin, would have written the scene with Ljubka and the merchant in such a daringly realistic manner. Cexov had called "The Pines" "a condensed broth". What would he have to say if he had read "Ignat"? Everything is a jewel in this story. We cannot quote as many episodes as we would like to. Bunin found time and space to describe Ignat's trip home on a train, waiting rooms at railway stations, the food on the counter including "a slice of cheese covered with sweat", his empty hut, peasant Marej's house — even a hare jumping in the landowner's orchard did not escape his piercing look. The physical and moral portraits of Ljubka and Ignat are perfectly complete; one can draw pictures of both, to say nothing of their personal characterization. The greater part of the story deals with the little worlds of Ljubka and Ignat. It is told in racy language with a steadily increasing tempo of narration which gathers momentum in the scene of murder. To mention

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Dostoevskij's name in connection with Bunin's writing would be obviously misleading. Bunin's idol was, as we already know, Tolstoj, and he neither liked nor appreciated Dostoevskij's genius.37 In our bibliography not a single article deals with these two authors. And yet we cannot resist saying that Bunin's writing in "Ignat" in at least one respect resembles Dostoevskij's nervous style: the two authors use similar devices in expressing an unexpected turn of thought or action. The intrusion of a fatal, mysterious force into the lives of their characters is always unexpected. This intrusion of something accidental or fortuitous Dostoevskij and Bunin realize by introducing numerous sentences with the adverb 'suddenly',38 italicized in the chosen quotations. The process of nagnetanie ('stylistic crescendo') is also similar, in some ways, in both authors. Bunin, of course, uses for this purpose the elements of nature, while Dostoevskij, almost disregarding nature, seeks other means. In "Ignat" the night is 'mysterious', the horizon 'gloomy', 'red', or 'purple', the windows of the house where the murder has been committed look 'deadly'. However, Ljubka never talks in exaltation, in excitement: her passion is emphasized by her way of talking — she always 'whispers'. The last short chapter is especially effective. As we know, the story does not end with the scene of murder. While extending "Ignat" for two more pages Bunin changes the rhythm of narration. K. Zajcev writes about the closing chapter : The silence came to the world. That storm, into which the microcosm created by Bunin had been drawn and to which the reader's spiritual world had been confined, whirled away and disappeared; only astonishment remained, as sometimes happens after the disappearance of the sorcerer who, suddenly appearing, seizes the man in his power: What was this? And did it happen after all?38

The rhythm of this last section becomes lentando, quiet, epic. Petty, insignificant human affairs dissolve in a greater world, with its own rules, independent of human will. The mature Bunin found his 'own expression', achieved infallable facility and an almost sculptural structure in his prose works; he attained "that gift of structure, rhythm, and synthesis" which is, as René Ghil shrewdly observes, the hallmark of Bunin's talent.40 ** I. Bunin, O Cexove (New York, 1953). M. Aldanov's foreword, p. 9. 38 C/., an interesting article by A. Slonimskij, "'Vdrug' u Dostoevskogo", Kniga i

revoljucga, 8 (1922).

*• Zajcev, op. cit., p. 115. 40 Ibid., p. 111. Quoted by Zajcev.

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VALLEY

No discussion of this period would be complete without a visit to Bunin's native village in Suxodol and the veiled biography of Bunin's clan. For many reviewers Dry Valley is the supreme expression of Bunin's art, a perfect work, second only to MitjcCs Love or The Life of Arsen'ev.41 Mirsky calls it "one of the greatest masterpieces of modern Russian prose",42 while the Soviet critic Kastorskij quotes Ivan Vol'nov's opinion of Dry Valley ("a jubilee cry of despair about the estate") and calls it "an apt expression", thus acquiescing in Vol'nov's view.43 Dry Valley is indeed a better work than The Village if only because it is shorter, but it is in no way superior to the stories just discussed. In our judgment Bunin is not at home with a long work: a true master of the short shortstory, he does not have to write a long story in order to say all he means. As we have seen, he can encompass his meaning in the short form {e.g., "The Pines", "Ignat") with a truly brilliant result. Like The Village, Dry Valley has the subtitle poem. Actually it is a saga of the 'fall of the house of XrusSov', i.e., of the ancestors of Bunin's own family. The subtitle suggests not only the mood of nostalgia, but it may also indicate to the reader that this story (or novelette, as Poggioli calls it) is a prose poem. There is no plot or action in Dry Valley. It is a colorful vignette of reminiscences of the times which seem to Bunin "now infinitely distant, now ever near" (EA, p. 287). Bunin's attention is focused on his own class. The time span is wide; it shifts from contemporary Russia at the turn of this century to the period preceding the Crimean War. The structure of Dry Valley is most interesting and difficult to define. The chief story teller is a former serf girl Natal'ja; but at times the author takes the omniscient point of view; and then again he hands over the narration to a pair of young people who identify themselves by the first person plural 'we' or by 'my sister and I'. Dry Valley, preceded by the earlier sketches "The Well of Days" and "Antonov Apples" and followed by The Life of Arseriev, is central to a family chronicle resembling that of Sergej Aksakov in depicting the patriarchal mode of life among the landed gentry. However, at the time of Aksakov's chronicle the 'nests of gentlefolk' were still flourishing, 41

Struve, op. cit., p. 427. Mirsky, op. cit., p. 392. 43 S. Kastorskij, "M. Gor'kij i I. Bunin", M. Gor'kij: Materialy i issledovanija (Moscow-Leningrad, 1936), II, 396. See about Vol'nov's remark "apt expression" in M. Gor'kij, "Ivan Vol'nov", Krasnaja nov\ 5/6 (1931), p. 143. 42

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while in Bunin's story they are in a state of decay, impoverishment {oskudenie dvorjanstva — a term coined by the now-forgotten Terpigorev), moral degradation, and even physical degeneration. Bunin himself characterizes Natal'ja's narrative: There were in this narrative jests, reservations, evasions; there were animation, pensiveness, unusual simplicity. But along with all this, there were other elements: a mysterious air, a stern and canorous half-whisper. But the prevalent element was a certain sadness of long standing. And everything was permeated with the feeling of an ancient faith in predestination, with a feeling of nevervoiced, vague, yet constant self suggestion that every one — every one! — of us must take one role or another upon himself, in accordance with one dispensation of fate or another.44 This amounts to a resume of Dry Valley by the author himself. L'vov-Roga£evskij's ironical remark that in Dry Valley Bunin "ne vospel dvorjanskuju usad'bu, a otpel" ('did not sing an eulogy to the gentlefolk's estate, but sang a dirge over it') 45 is just a bon mot devoid of any deeper meaning. Bunin perfectly well realized (and we have shown it in the examples from his early works) that the old way of life had been gone from the start and that the only thing to be regretted was that even the remembrance of the past would soon be lost in history. Therefore, first of all, Dry Valley must be regarded as an attempt to recapture the temps perdu of Russian rural life. It is hard not to agree with R. Poggioli when he says: This hopeless feeling that even the last memories will fade away forever, that no heart will survive where the religion of memory could be rekindled again, gives Dry Valley a sense of tragic pathos which no work of Bunin ever attained either before or after.46 There is a symbolic image in Dry Valley, the peasants dredge ponds in the bed of an old rivulet. But these ponds dry out without fresh water supply. Similarly the Xruscovs' clan, with no fresh blood admixture, with only one male descendant of their family still alive, is doomed to extinction. "To us Dry Valley was only a poetical monument of the past. But what was it to Natal'ja?" (EA, p. 193). The half-crazy aunt Tonja and Natal'ja are the only true 'souls' of 44

EA, pp. 212-213. Bunin excluded this passage from his revised Berlin/Petropolis edition. 46 V. L'vov-Rogacevskij, Novejsaja russkaja literatura (Moscow, 1927), I, p. 77. This quotation is untranslatable in its original meaning. Vospet' ('to glorify') and otpet' ('to perform a funeral service') have a common basic verb pet' ('to sing'). The prefixes vos- and ot- completely change the meanings of these verbs. 46 Poggioli, op. cit., p. 153.

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Dry Valley left. Natal'ja is the last living monument of the past, the last remaining link with 'times past'. But Natal'ja is just a servant, a former serf. What has she, a housemaid, to do with the noble Xrusèovs "inscribed in the sixth Book of Heraldry"? In Dry Valley Bunin again underlines with a special force the kinship of the squires and peasants (he had previously done it in "Antonov Apples", for example). "It's long, long since time for the Krushchevs to be reckoned as of kin to their domestics and their village!" (EA, p. 196). It is wrong, at least to our mind, to search for a 'Russian soul' in Dostoevski's novels. But, a curious westerner can read Dry Valley, there he may find some clues to the mysterious âme slave, at least as it looked in Bunin's 'traditional Russia', that is, in pre-revolutionary Russia, from the time of her historical beginning until the end of the last century. In each of the character portraits as drawn by Natal'ja, one can find the contradictory traits of the 'truly Slavic soul' : wisdom and want of sence, sluggishness and instability; individual sensitive brilliance and basic insipidity and coldness of feelings, and both quickness and poverty of imagination. And Natal'ja herself has been corrupted by this Dry Valley atmosphere because "there was all too little savour in the water she drank, drawn from those ponds which her grandsires had dug in the bed of the dried river" {EA, p. 264). The pre-revolutionary critic Derman wrote that "the last traits of the life dear to Bunin are fading away. This is a leitmotif of Dry Valley",47 That this 'motif' is very artfully presented is something Derman totally ignores. For "mastery is knowing how to communicate to the reader what the writer has in his heart; to do it in the most expressive, most emotional, most economical, and most euphonic way".48 This is not an easy requirement for a writer to fulfill, yet we believe Bunin has achieved it in Dry Valley. This story is written from beginning to end in a remarkably subtle language. Its realistic simplicity is permeated with spirituality and colored with symbolism. The concrete, visible, colorfully sketched Dry Valley is closely interwoven with the unreal, ethereal, symbolic Dry Valley. The seemingly disordered form of narration — the abundance of digressions and repetitions — is actually logical and justifiable: it is in accordance with Natal'ja's delirious memories. The suggestiveness of Dry Valley is based on intuition and insight, and its verbal art is often a "

Derman, op. cit., p. 71. V. Inber, Vdoxnovenie i masterstvo (Moscow, 1961), p. 41. Vera Inber ascribes these words to the writer Boris Gorbatov who said them during his literary lecture in Irkutsk in 1949. 48

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matter of musical sonority. A cliché is used by most of those writing about Bunin; they say he is a 'magical' writer, and, indeed, there is a great deal of truth in this. Dry Valley is a magnificent example of Bunin's verbal mastery, of his marvelous facility in the selection of the right word which best conveys the given situation. And even if R. Poggioli is correct in deprecating nostalgia as "a characteristic aristocratic trait",49 there is nothing hackneyed in Bunin's masterful portrayal of it in Dry Valley. We rather inadvertently think of Majakovskij's two lines about the power of words: il 3H£IK) CHJiy CJIOB. TjISWHTCH nyCTHKOM, OnaBiiiHM jienecTKOM new Ka6jiyKaMH Tamta. (I know the power of words, though they seem as small as petals ground under foot in the dance). Indeed, 'the power of words' transfigures the nostalgia of Dry Valley.

*' Poggioli, op. cit.. Poggioli says this about Tolstoj; about Tolstoj's longing after a noble past.

4 THE WIDENING HORIZON: 1912-1920

4.1 THE NEW OWNERS OF DRY VALLEYS

A variety of themes is the keynote of the 1912-1920 period in Bunin's literary career. Some have no apparent connection with his preceding writing, and some continue the old themes in new guises. In a letter of May 18, 1913, to the editor Klestov Bunin describes the character of his new stories: There also will be in this book the stories of another kind — love stories, "dvorjanskie" ["gentry"; Bunin's quotes], and even, if you wish, "philosophical" stories. But again the muzik will be in thefirstplace — or rather not the muzik in the narrow sense of the word, but the muiik's soul — the Russian, Slavic soul. With great pleasure I would have used as an epigraph in this book one of the last behests of Gleb Uspenskij: "Look at the muzik.... All the same one has... one has to look at the muiikV1 Old landowners either went bankrupt or lived through their last days. The new owners of Tixon Kuzmi£'s sort, the petty bourgeois whom Bunin despised, were about to assume the ownership of the old nests of gentlefolk. Essentially only two stories deal directly with the theme of the impoverished gentry and their counterpart, the new rich, the muzik-kulak. "The Prince among Princes" is a story of two worlds: that of the impoverished landowners, the Nikulins, and that of the wealthy muzik, Luk'jan Stepanov. These two worlds are contrasted, but no conclusions are drawn. First Stepanov visits the Nikulins, and shortly afterward the young student, Seva Nikulin, stops at Stepanov's farm, the former property of the baron ASkasov. Stepanov is an old man in his eighties, strong, shrewd, and rich. When he comes to the Nikulins, they covertly hope that he wants to buy their estate. While despising Luk'jan Stepanov 1

The original of this letter is in the Department of Manuscripts at Lenin's Library in Moscow. Quoted by I. D. Sterlina, Ivan Alekseevic Bunin. Nasi znatnye zemljaki (Lipeck, 1960), p. 16. Bunin highly appreciated Gleb Uspenskij's peasant stories.

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profoundly, the lady of the house, her two adult sons, and her daughter entertain him with afternoon tea. But it soon turns out that the guest came only to boast about his wealth: "Finally he got up and brought from the anteroom his heavy little sack full of silver and gold coins and untied it" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 60). Despite his material wealth, Luk'jan is a real muzik: he eats jam out of the bowl, speaks in a dialect, and feels contempt for education or anything impractical which earns no money. He and his large family live worse than his famous horses. From the somewhat artificially constructed conversation between Seva Nikulin and Stepanov (Bunin's old method; cf., "Celestial Birds", "Taganok"), we learn that the latter has no desire to live a decent life. Having built a new, comfortable house, he still continues to live in a huge old mud-hut and uses one of the rooms in the new house for preparing grass-fodder for the pigs. And despite all this, Stepanov is firmly convinced that he is leading the right, creative, resourceful life: "'I'm truly living like Adam in Paradise. Truly, I'm a prince among princes!'" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 64). On a few occasions he proudly repeats this, apparently his favorite, expression, and he even calls his old wife 'the princess'. Stepanov is as full of contempt for the Nikulins' way of life as they are for his. The sarcastic title of the story cannot hide Bunin's hatred for all these Stepanovs, but at the same time there is no indication here that Bunin sympathizes with the landowners, either. They are bored with living in the country, have no interest in managing their estate, and live a dissipated life while in Moscow. The daughter, Lulu Nikulina, unexpectedly marries an old Muscovite, "a theater-goer, shaved, very corpulent, short-winded, and known by his jokes throughout the whole city" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 66). Her husband soon has a paramour and Lulu is unhappy in her marriage. The general picture shows degeneration and decay in the gentry. Their life is as empty as Stepanov's. Although the greater part the story has a rural setting, it does not depict merely the dark traits of the peasants but features a more general theme — the 'philosophical' quest for the meaning of life. This widening horizon in Bunin's writings — the addition of new themes into the peasant stories or the change to altogether different topics — is characteristic of many stories of Bunin's last period of literary activity in Russia. "The Prince among Princes" demonstrates clearly this new turn of Bunin's, the change which he himself underlined in his letter to Klestov. While Tolstoj urges the superiority of the rural life and makes Olenin run from Moscow to the Cossack village, Bunin shows city and country life as equally bad. The concluding paragraphs of "The Prince among

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Princes" draw best these contrasting ways of life. One symbolizes emptiness, the other, dullness. The life in Strel'na at Jar's was just to begin. It was fun to enter the restaurant, to walk into the lights, the warmth, the shining mirrors, the warm air filled with a smell of cigars, champagne and roast partridges, to shake off the frosty snow from the fur coats, to throw them into the hands of dextrous lackeys, to help the ladies in the rustling silken skirts who were red-cheeked from frost, to unbutton their overshoes! A n d Luk'jan Stepanov, who was peacefully spending the night with his large family and calves in his warm den, woke up for the third time and walked barefoot upstairs into the open, onto the crunching snow, under the blackbluish sky and stars (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 67).

The sale of the Nikulins' estate is not realized, though it is clearly imminent. A sale actually happens in "The Last Day", a story Zajcev believes even more horrifying than "A Night Conversation". 2 Voejkov, the landowner, has sold his estate to the mescanin Rostovcev. Voejkov's family is already in town. Voejkov has been left alone and is ready to leave within a few hours. He walks through the empty house and thinks of his childhood, of his grand- and great-grandfathers who had lived and died on the estate. He thinks of the famous Voejkov hunting parties, of their incomparable borzois. Only six lean and hungry old dogs survive from the whole pack. Voejkov shudders at the thought that they will be owned by this detestable bourgeois, Rostovcev. So he calls his two muzikservants and orders them to hang these unhappy creatures, offering them a quarter a piece. The execution takes place in the orchard, near the house. Bunin spares the nerves of the weak reader a description of the hanging of all six dogs, but he makes him see the killing of one old bitch from the very beginning, when Petr throws a piece of rope around her neck and leads her through the yard into the orchard, to the end when she hangs on the branch: "Her blackish-purple tongue was out, her coral gums opened in a grimace, and the daylight, reflected in her dying eyes which were the color of grapes, began to grow dim" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 69). The peasants perform this abhorrent task rather emotionlessly. Saska digs a hole and buries the dog in it. Voejkov orders him to dig out the dog and hang it back on the tree. Voejkov's rage is reminiscent of that of the old Prince Bolkonskij in War and Peace. First Bolkonskij orders the snow to be cleared from the driveway, but, learning that the servants had done it not for the Princess Mary but for a prominent minister whom 2

K. Zajcev, I. A. Bunin: ¿izn' i tvorcestvo (Berlin, n.d.), p. 125.

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he disliked and who was about to arrive from Moscow, Bolkonskij issues a new order to shovel the snow back on the driveway. Voejkov's and Bolkonskij's stupid wilfulness, his petty tyranny (samodurstvo), is one of those Russian-Slavic traits Bunin has spoken of. When everything is finished and Voejkov is gone, one of the farmhands, Saska, rushes to the village store where "the shopkeeper chopped off for him with a rusty axe, on the threshold, a piece of salt pork" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 71), while his companion, Petr, waited for him near the liquor shop. "And beyond the river, in a clear golden brilliance, the sun was setting — and the window glass of the wide-open dead house on the strangely silent estate blazed with an orange light" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 71). Rostovcev and his shop-assistant arrive at the deserted house and walk through the rooms: "there was something frightening in their disfigured emptiness, in this framework of somebody's destroyed nest, which for so many years had been living its own life incomprehensible and inaccessible to all Rostovcevs" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 71). While inspecting the house, observing window glass broken and wallpaper torn off by Voejkov, Rostovcev suddenly notices the corpses of the hanging dogs. Thinking of Voejkov, he indignantly exclaims: '"Oh, scoundrel, oh boor!'" And he is right in his own way: two completely alien worlds, that of the 'noble' Voejkov and that of the 'plebeian' Rostovcev, collide in their perception of life. Three classes are represented in "The Last Day": the impoverished nobility escaping to the town, the rich bourgeois coming from the town to the village, and again the same half-human beings, the muziks. All three classes are equally bad in Bunin's eyes; in this story he does not discriminate against the muziks. Yes, they are cruel and bestial, but, alas, what can one expect from them if the gentry is in a state of complete degeneration? 4.2 THE MYSTERIES OF THE "RUSSIAN SOUL"

Almost all of Bunin's stories touch to a greater or lesser degree the inmost recesses of the Russian soul, but a real wealth of material for studying the psychology of the Russian muzik, landowner, semi-intelligentsia, petty bourgeois, and clergyman is to be found especially in those he wrote before and during the First World War. It goes without saying that Bunin's characters may not be typical; almost every statement in fiction is subject to pro and contra arguments. Each one of Bunin's numerous short stories presents a little of the Russian national character and together, like many streams merging into one mighty river, they

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form a general picture of the outward and inner appearance of a Russian; we are not concerned here with whether this picture is true or false. There is no apparatus for measuring their truthfulness ; there is no way of judging their validity. The fact is that Bunin was preoccupied with the Russian psyche and was struck by its contradictory heterogeneity. It is up to the reader to judge whether these facts are distinctly Russian or whether they are also applicable to the western world. "I Say Nothing" is a story of how a son of a formerly wealthy peasantentrepreneur becomes a beggar, a holy fool, by his own will and inexplicable desire. His father, Roman, beats him fiercely, often for no apparent reason; he cannot see his son Sasa as his heir. In Roman's opinion Sasa lacks the pride, boldness, posture, and 'manners' of a real merchant's son. And when the father would grab Sasa by his hair for his 'misbehavior' in front of guests, the latter, smiting his bosom with his fist, would say, hissingly: "All r-r-right, father! I say nothing! I always say nothing!" "Why, she-animal that you are!" Roman would bawl at him. "Why, it's for the same silence and hoititoitiness that I'm beating you! So, then, you're striving for the beating yourself? Why? Wherefore?" "My ashes when I'm laid in my grave shall know it all!" Sasha would answer ferociously and enigmatically (GSFr., 1933, p. 251).

Having every chance for a comfortable life, Sasa nevertheless plays the role of martyr and conducts himself so as to eventually ruin his life. Thus, at his own wedding, he feigns intoxication, having convinced himself that he was jealous of his young wife and a certain landowner. He grabbed a knife, trying to cut his own throat, and, upon being disarmed, he sobbed wildly, tearing off his starched collar and his white tie, calling upon the memory of his departed mother.... Shasha did everything that lay in his power to wreck his own domestic well-being, and to hasten the ruin of Roman (GSFr., 1933, p. 254).

Indeed, Sasa rejoices malignantly in seeing his father slide downward, entangled in debts, aged, his face resembling "a dirty-gray, milked-out udder". Not being content with his wife, Sasa lives with his father's mistress, who is the wife of a soldier and works for Roman as a cook; one day, she takes the children with her and flees to her lover. And when the paralyzed Roman dies, the soldier's wife passes openly into Sasa's hands. In the meantime her lawful husband, having served his term, returns from the service. Although she is completely useless to him, "he held it to be his most sacred duty and his inalienable right to avenge his

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sullied honour" (GSFr., 1933, p. 258). The time of his revenge he sets on the day of the folk festival which is attended by crowds of people. Sasa too is all excited: he washes his face, puts on his best blouse, goes to the church, and prays both frenziedly and austerely. After the service is over, Sasa has a few vodkas and is ready to assume his role. He meets the soldier, initiates the quarrel, and is at the end soundly beaten by the latter. After the first mighty blow of the soldier, Sasa falls down in the mire as if he were dead, underneath the iron-shod heels that beat heavily upon his chest, upon his shaggy head, upon his nose, upon his eyes, — already glazed, as is a ram with his throat cut. And all the folks "oh" and "ah" and wonder: "There's a queer, incomprehensible fellow for you! Why, he knew beforehand how this matter would end! Why did he go into it, then?" And truly, — why did he? (GSFr., 1933, p. 262). A few years pass. Sasa sinks completely into the 'lower depths'. The last beating he receives is exceptionally unfortunate for him: The soldier breaks Shasha's arm with his heel, and shatters the bridge of his nose, and knocks out his eyes. Lo, now Shasha is both blind and a cripple. The soldier's wife abandons him; his mill, his land, is taken by good folks for his debts. And now Shasha is safe in harbour; now he is fully-priviledged member of the horde of beggars that stand in the church enclosure (GSFr., 1933, p. 266). Neither the author nor the puzzled reader can answer why Sasa ceaselessly thirsts after humiliations, disgrace, and beatings; why he, lying beaten and out of breath on the ground, moans out profoundly with his last strength: "All r-r-right, good folks! I say nothing! I al-ways say nothing!". Besides the detailed descriptions of Sasa and Roman, Bunin sketches a few pictures of some horrible specimens of humanity — the beggars. If his presentation of these people, which "Russia breeds from old, and without end" (GSFr., 1933, p. 263), does not surpass that of Hugo's misérables and Dickens' outlaws, it at least equals them. Bunin's description of the country fair is an extension of the similar one in The Village-, it lacks the warmth of Turgenev's "Lebedjan", where we see merely the bustle and stir of a horsefair in a small country town, or of G o g o l ' V fanciful and romantic tales in his Evenings on a Farm near Dikaríka. Bunin strictly follows the method of French Parnassians, the coolness of Flaubert and the Goncourts, their ideals of impassiveness and impersonality, and their exact and faultless workmanship are felt in Bunin's works of this period. In "I Say Nothing" Bunin not only treats the subject described with rigidity of form and emotional detachment

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but also uses the stylistic practices of French naturalism, particularly those of Zola. For instance, one of the beggars is pictured thus: His entire kerchief, his ear, his neck, and one shoulder are all caked in blood. In his long bag there are pieces of raw meat, cooked bits of mutton, bread crusts, and millet. His seat, now, is sewn with a bit of leather, •— and twisting himself up, he squirms and starts off, on and on over the mire, extending in front of him his unshod foot, his leg half-bare, in lime-covered scabs that are oozing with matter and pasted over with strips of burdock (GSFr., 1933, 265). Bunin positively shuns a smile, laughter, and humor. Even on such an occasion as Sasa's wedding celebration, Bunin would never say as Cexov did that "the sexton ate two pounds of caviar"; instead, he says, "the sexton, having imbibed too much cognac at the feast, died on his way home", and "the deacon, having fallen down in his own yard into some half-liquid manure, was almost tramped by his sheep" [GSFr., 1933, p. 253). Bunin replaces Cexov's gentle humor with bitter irony, Cexov's indulgence for men's foibles with sarcasm, and Cexov's pity for fellow men with indifference. Thematically very close to "I Say Nothing" is "Ioann the Weeper". Ioann is Sasa in his last stage of human degradation: a raving lunatic taken by some unknown disease, which covered his whole face with a white slaked crust and which made his red eyes look still more terrible.... Bloodshot, with foam on his lips, with dishevelled hair he chased the people.... He was lean, sinewy, wore only a long coarse shirt, girdled with a piece of rope, carried mice in his bosom and a crow-bar in his hands, in summer or winter he never put on his hat or shoes.... For a long time he has been chained in his father's hut, bit his own hands, his chain, bit everybody who approached him and bawled out his favorite: "Do me a pleasure!" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 20,passim). This 'pleasure' consisted of receiving blows and beatings. Almost every week the flogging was administered by the queer old prince, whom Ioann, in spite of the former's warnings, used to scare by throwing mice at him from around the corner. The strange part of this story is that when the old prince was notified about the death of this God's fool, he issued the following order: "Bury this madman by the church, and me, the magnate-prince, lay next to him, to my serf" {Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 20). The old prince's tyrannical instincts remind us again of the old Prince Bolkonskij. He talks abruptly, walks rapidly, and puzzles us with strange ideas. He is a true despot on the estate and shares Voltaire's prejudice against religion and clergy. When the local priest with his helpers arrive at his house to pay him a welcome visit, he orders them to sing a requiem for the old year. And they do it, not daring to disobey him. Only shortly

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before his death does the old magnate make peace with God and people. And while his tombstone is ornamented with the beginning words of David's penitential psalm, Ioann's gravestone bears "those words of the bitter and fearful prophet Micah which were on the lips of the dying Ioann: 'I shall weep and cry, I shall walk as the robbed, I shall howl as the jackals, I shall lament as the ostriches'" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 18). In this short story Bunin aims at revealing two alleged aspects of the "Russian soul" on the one hand the desire for self-annihilation and humiliation (Ioann), and on the other hand the urge for deathbed repentance after a cruel and despotic life (the prince). "Ioann the Weeper" is merely a legend known only in a Godforsaken village, Gresnoe ('sinful one'), somewhere on the big railway artery leading to the south. The luxurious express stops at the railway station, and a "lean Englishman with a pipe in his mouth" looks at the scenery which appears strange to the western eye. The train and its passengers are a different world, a small island in the endless Russian steppes. Not one of the persons on the train has even heard of the village of Gresnoe or of the strange lives of the prince and Ioann. The bell rings and the train disappears in the distance. A lonely peasant, who has come to the station for no apparent reason, goes back to the village. This is how Bunin builds the story: first, from a distance, he makes a few general observations through the eyes of the Englishman; then he directs our attention to the peasant who, on his way home, passes the prince's manor and the cemetery across from it. Thus from a distant world we arrive at the place where "behind the church enclosure, near the altar, next to the grave of the prince, who quarrelled even with the tsar himself, rests the simple, God's fool, Ioann the Weeper" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 18). Konstantin Paustovskij, a great admirer of Bunin, wrote: But, taking into consideration its bitterness, suffering, and faultless language, I esteem above all others a very short story — only two or three pages long — entitled "Elijah the Prophet". 3

Indeed, it is one of Bunin's most powerful short stories. Its genre is that of a folkloristic tale, a combination of a dream and a peasant's miraculous vision. The fable is the simplest one can imagine. Semen Novikov, the peasant, builds a new house at some distance from the village. On a very sultry July night before a storm, he resolves to spend a night in his unfinished house. In the meantime, in the violent thunderstorm "the heavens 8

K. Paustovskij, Nacalo nevedomogo veka (Moscow, 1958), p. 214. "Il'ja Prorok" was the initial title of the story. In later editions it was changed to "Zertva" [The Sacrifice].

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were split by such a peal that all the earth quivered beneath him" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 24). Overtaken by anxiety, Semen rushes home to learn that the lightning has killed his infant girl in her crib. The story, unlike "Ignat", moves slowly: the first part is the description of the tense, charged atmosphere before a thunderstorm; the second part is a dialogue between the Prophet Elijah and Semen; and the third part is the opening of the heavens, Semen's rushing to the village, and his discovery of his child's death. The last paragraph, a presentation of the catastrophe, is written in a racy, terse language reminiscent of Puskin's prose: Semen jumped to his feet. Forgetting all about his short coat, he hurriedly started off for the village. The heavy rain caught him out on the common. The dark clouds had piled up above the darkened ravines. The red moon was sinking beyond them. The village was in heavy slumber, but the cattle in the yards were stirring uneasily, and the roosters were crowing in alarm (Sobr. soc., 1956, HI, 24). The second part, a page-long dialogue between Semen and Elijah the Prophet, is a masterful treatment of Russian superstition and the peasants' view of religion. Bunin often connects the state of mind of the peasant who is contemporary to him with that of the pre-historical, pagan Russian. For Semen the Saint-Prophet Elijah is just the ancient god of fire, omnipotent Slavic Perun, or the Roman Jupiter, protector of petitioners and punisher of the guilty. The primitive idolization and fear of fire, so much stressed in Dry Valley, comes back to light in "The Sacrifice". Elijah wants to punish Semen for acting in the past against the will of the Prophet. Thus, the year before Semen had brought back to life his eldest son, who had been struck by lightning, by burying him in the ground up to his waist; he had sold his rye when it still stood uncut and thus escaped the losses for damages in his fields made by hail and whirlwinds caused by Elijah; and now he hastens to build a new house in place of the old one, burned by lightning. Elijah cannot think how to punish Semen severely enough. He rejects the buying of a three-ruble candle, as well as a pilgrimage to a Kiev or Belgorod monastery. He demands a greater sacrifice. He agrees on Semen's proposal to take the life of Semen's little girl, and he does it. Having given the required sacrifice to Elijah, "Semen has been living happily, ever since" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 25). This is the concluding sentence of the story. "The Sacrifice" exemplifies Bunin's great stylistic skills. Much has been said about Bunin's impeccable, cool, brilliant language. The conversation between Semen and Elijah the Prophet is the best illustration of Bunin's adeptness at sustained stylization. Elijah the Prophet speaks Semen's

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dialect just as God in Marc Connelly's Green Pastures uses the southern Negro dialect. Here are some samples of Elijah's manner of speech: "Sluxajte, knjaz'ja-xrestjane [Hearken, ye princes and peasants].... Ja sercal na tebja [I was wroth with thee].... Pozaletosnij god ja ubil molon'ej [Summer before I did kill with a stroke of lightning].... Prislusajte pravoslavnye [Lend ear, you faithful]..." (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, pp. 23-24, passim). From the very beginning of the story, nature is full of ill omens: The aureate July moon, which had risen far beyond the ravines of the Ford, hung low and was turbid. Its warm glow was diffused over everything. The ripe grain glimmered whitely ahead, — dully, somberly, like stretches of sand. But toward the north the sky was altogether overcast, — a cloud was gathering there. A soft breeze, blowing from all sides, would at times gather strength and run fitfully over the rye and oats, — and they would rustle crisply, disquietingly. The cloud toward the north appeared immovable, but it was frequently with an eerie, fleeting, golden sheen (GSFr., 1933, p. 138).

It should be noted, parenthetically, that in the Russian text such words as 'rye, oats, grass', etc., are used by Bunin, in most cases, as plural nouns — such use is not too common in Russian and marks Bunin's characteristic style. Perhaps a few more stories of this period about the peculiarities of the "Russian soul" should be mentioned here, although they present little interest from the iiterary point of view. In "Aglaja" (1916) Bunin describes a simple peasant girl, Anna, who, influenced by an inborn inclination and her elder married sister, Katerina, is attracted to monastic life and the reading of sacred books and stories. Eventually she takes the veil and a new name, Aglaja. In the nunnery everybody loves her, and even the saintly Father Rodion wonders at the diligence she shows in the fulfillment of her duties. In a few years Aglaja, who has never sinned in her life, dies, bidding her farewell to everybody and asking for forgiveness. The story, sent to the monthly Letopis' [The Annals], which was edited by Gor'kij, was ignored by the latter. Bunin apparently never received Gor'kij's answer to his inquiry: "Why didn't you write me a few words about your impression of 'Aglaja'? You know how highly I value your opinion". 4 Actually, it is fair to assume that Gor'kij had little use for a story (no matter how well written) which featured a religious-monastic theme and had no social significance. And certainly "Aglaja" has none. We cannot share the opinion of Kastorskij who states quite lucidly that in this period 4

Bunin's letter to Gor'kij of August 27, 1916. See M. Gor'kij: Materialy i issledovanya (Moscow-Leningrad, 1936), II, p. 456.

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I. Bunin begins to disregard the realism of the contemporary village and plunges into reactionary romanticism, into the folklore, into the ancient Russia with her prince-ascetics, with her legendary heroes (poems "Prince Vseslav" and "Svjatogor and Il'ja"), and creates images of "his own" Russian saints in the style of Nesterov's "The Holy Russia" (see the poems "The Baptist", "St. Procope", the story "Aglaja").6

The early critic Koltonovskaja also noticed that Bunin's stories of this period are "particularly saturated with Russian-style lyricism based on the themes of Russian life, and religious antiquity". 6 And here is an excerpt from "Aglaja" which illustrates the stylistic device stressed by the quoted critics: H no ero 6jiarociiaBjieHHio, nonoauum ee, Tomcyio h poctohkom otmchho flonryio, b t o t rpo6 c BonocaMH pacnymeHHbiMH, b flByx py6amKax-caBaHax, b 6enoM noflpacHHKe, onoacaHHMM HepHOK) noKpoMKoro, a noBepx ero — b nepHOft, c 6ejn»iMH KpecTaMH, MaHTira, Ha ronoBicy naneim 3ejieHyio, nmTyio 30J10T0M manoiKy-KaMHJiaBOHKy, nocne ace Toro noBa3anH cimeM mantio c KHCTOiKaMH, a b pyiKH b j i o k h j i h KOKaHbie neTOHKH (Sobr. soc., Berlin, V, 84). (And he blessed her as she was laid out, slender and just a trifle too tall, within that coffin, with her hair all let out, in two shroudshifts. She was in an undercassock of white, with black selvage all around, and in a black mantle with white crosses on top of it; upon her little head they put a green little cap of velvet, broidered with gold; on top of the cap a small skull cap; and after that they tied a blue shawl with tassels upon her head, and then they put a leathern rosary into her hands (GSFr., pp. 156-157).

"Vsxody novye" [The New Growths] echoes the well-known, old motifs of "Antonov Apples" and Dry Valley. The impoverished squire, an old prince (no family name is given), attends a public thanksgiving service in the open air on a sunny spring day. Again the familiar picture of a fading peasant Russia flashes before the eyes of the reader: germinating rye and oats, an orchard awakening from a winter's sleep, the gentle breeze, the figures of the peasants here and there, and the impressive stature of the old prince. The larks are singing in the sky, and the congregation and the church choir, standing by a provisional altar — a table covered with a clean linen cloth — pray for a happy new life which is being born in nature. The eyes of the prince, overcome with emotions ("lordly neurasthenia" as Gor'kij said about "Antonov Apples"), fill with tears, and he fails to see anything till the end of the service. And the ending of the story enlarges this characterization of the 'Russian soul': "In order to avoid a fit of heavy drinking, the Prince and the old Pankrat started off 6 6

Ibid., p. 402.

E. Koltonovskaja, "I. A. Bunin: Garmonija kontrastov", Russkaja mysl', II (1917), p. 101.

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next morning, before dawn, to Zadonsk. Spring crops were sown without him" (Sobr. soc., Berlin, V, p. 18). Indeed, very enigmatic is the Russian soul. But is it only the Russimi? Or is Bunin's pondering over the Russian, Slavic soul just that "frugal chariot" of Emily Dickinson "that bears a human soul"? 4.3 THE LOVE THEME

A few stories in this period touch upon very sensitive strings: the strings of love. This cliché is used here deliberately. Bunin's "The Grammar of Love" is a short story about a very romantic, if not sentimental, love comparable to the love of Beethoven's unsterbliche Geliebte, with a Turgenevian setting. Exactly one half of the tale involves a description of the travel of a certain Ivlev by a horse carriage {nota bene, Ivlev is an early pen name of Bunin). Since the 'lad' ( M a l y j — Ivlev's coachman) is not talkative, the only occupation for the traveler is the observation of the landscape. It is pouring. The coachman, thinking of giving the horses some rest, stops at the house of a countess, a lady in her forties, an acquaintance of Ivlev. The countess in entertaining Ivlev, leads her talk around to love (judging by her appearance and age, she probably would not mind having a love affair herself) and tells her visitor about her eccentric neighbor Xvoscinskij, who has recently died. All his life long XvosSinskij had loved his chambermaid Luska, a peasant girl who had died many years ago, in her youth. After a glass of tea and "flyspecked" tea cookies (Bunin's love for detail!), Ivlev starts off again. But the conversation about XvosSinskij's maniacal love for the legendary Luska arouses Ivlev's curiosity, and, as they drive by the estate of the deceased old man, he decides to have a look at the place of this extraordinary love which has been the subject of controversy in the region. After Luska's unexpected death, Xvosdinskij had lost his interest in life, locked himself up in the room of his beloved girl, and "ascribed literally everything that took place in the world to Lushka's influence: if there were a thunderstorm, — it was Lushka who sent it ; if a war were declared, — it meant that Lushka had so decided ; if the harvest happened to be bad, — the peasants had not succeeded in pleasing Lushka" (GSFr., p. 162). In the half-deserted house Ivlev meets a high school boy, the son born of that common-law marriage, who leads the visitor to the 'shrine of love'. Ivlev enters Xvosèinskij's house under the pretext of looking at and eventually buying some of the books left by the late father of the

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boy. To Ivlev's great disappointment the book collection is very strange. The little bookcase consists of such volumes as The Latest Dream Book, The Morning Star and Night Demons, The Forbidden Ground, etc. At any rate Ivlev's hands tremble slightly, since Bunin's protagonists always feel an inexplicable reverence for any antiquity, for the past, for the 'books of grandfather's day' (cf., "Antonov Apples", The Life of Arseríev). But what really attracts Ivlev is an old casket with the necklace of Luska and a small volume resembling a prayer book which lies separately on the shelf. First, overcome with emotion, he looks at the simple, cheap beads on a "much worn bit of cord"; he glances at "These globules, which had at one time lain upon the neck of her whose lot it was to be loved, and whose dim image could no longer be anything but beautiful, and his eyes grew dim from the beating of his heart" (GSFr., p. 170). Then, Ivlev takes up the little book, Grammar of Love, or the Art of Loving and of Being Loved in Return, which was published almost a century before. Turning slowly the pages of the book, Ivlev reads through its short chapters (e.g., "Of Love's Signs", "Of Attack and Defense") and, at times, wonders at some subtle and elegant sentences such as "Love is not a mere episode in our Life" ( c f , "A Sunstroke" written later in exile) or "A Woman of Beauty must take the second place; the first belongs to the Woman of Charm" (GSFr., pp. 170-171, passim). The aphorisms are followed by "An Explanation of the Language of Flowers". Although the student insists that this book, to his regret, is not for sale and is very valuable, Ivlev succeeds in acquiring it at a high price ('impoverishment of the gentry' becomes handy in this case!). Ivlev is again on the road, it stops raining, and by the light of the evening glow he reads over the stanza that XvosCinskij wrote himself: Te6e cepjwa JIK>6HBIIIHX CICAHCYT: "B npe^aHBflx pa^ocTHtix JKHBH!" M BHyicaM, npaBHytcaM noicaacyT Cmo TpaMMaTHicy JIK>6BH (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 216).

(The hearts of lovers are thus saying: "In legends joyful live your life!" To their offspring they are conveying These Grammar Rules, the rules of love).' ' This is my own English translation in verse. B. G. Guerney's translation fails to render the lightness of this unpretentious and unsophisticated rhyme. But — "Live thou in legends of Love's bliss!" Shall greet it hearts that with Love strove; And to their grandchildren show this Grammar of Love (GSFr., 1933, p. 172).

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Of course, in the infatuation of old XvosCinskij we recognize Petr KiriloviS's (in Dry Valley) love for his beautiful wife; he began to fail through melancholy soon after her death and, like XvosCinskij, finished his days in harmless lunacy. The prototype of both these men is Bunin's grandfather Nikolaj DmitreeviS (Sobr. sod., 1956, III, p. 379). This is another instance of an autobiographical or family trait in Bunin's work. Bunin himself was almost obsessed with the idea that any autobiographical facts in his writing would decrease its value, but his opinion is hard to either understand or share. "The Russian novel", writes F. M. Borras, "ceased to be great when it ceased to be truly autobiographical". 8 The late V. Muromceva-Bunina published some materials f r o m her husband's archives. In them are Bunin's notes pertaining to the origin of his stories. Thus, Bunin says that in his early youth he heard his father telling about "a poor landowner, one of the neighbors, who had become insane with love for one of his own serf girls". 9 We mention it here because we know that in many of his stories he deals with the material of his own life. However, Bunin reworks the small happenings, the insignificant incidents of his microcosm, into real works of art, as, for instance, in "The Grammar of Love". Bunin's comment upon the fate of Xvoscinskij clarifies the uncommonness of his otherwise very ordinary life "that perhaps was destined to be a most commonplace one had there not happened to be a certain Lushka, mysterious in her enchantment" (GSFr., p. 169). Bunin creates a story 'out of nothing'. Under his dispassionate pen the treatment of a purely lyrical, sentimental, almost Karamzin-like theme becomes a typical example of Bunin's art "with his successful 'alienation' of the subject and the controlled, but effortless, seemingly casual progress of action". 10 N o matter how much Bunin is involved with the main theme of the story, he very seldom fails to neglect nature, to find a striking simile, to use onomatopoeia, to make use of the senses: TpoMBixanH rnyxapHMH nomaflH, no HX TCMHBM H 6necTHmHM JiaxocaM 6e3KajiH CTpyflKH, nofl KOJiecaMH uiypmajiH TpaBbi KaK0r0-T0 py6e»ca cpeflH xne6oB... no,q BepxoM co6npajica TennMft pacaHOH jxyx, MemaBmmicH c 3anaxoM cTaporo TapaHTaca... mmo ero 6HJIO 6neflHo h OT BecHymeic neerpo, KaK nTHTbe aflno... Ha o6pa3e, SKenTeH BOCKOM, KaK MepTBbiM TenoM, jieacajm BemanbHiie cbchh B 6jieflHO-3eneHbix 6airrax (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 210-213, passim). 8

F. Borras, "A Common Theme in Tolstoy, Andreev and Bunin", The Slavonic and East European Review, 32 (1953), p. 235. 9 I. Bunin, "Proisxozdenie moix rasskazov", Novyj zurnal, 53 (1958), p. 5. 10 Introduction by P. Henry. See I. Bunin, Rasskazy (London, 1962), pp. 19-20.

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(The horses clattered their muffled bells; little streams ran over their dark and glistening haunches; the grasses swished succulently under the wheels as they passed some boundary or other, among the fields of grain... the warm ryescented air gathered underneath the top, blending with the odour of the old tarantass... his face was pale, and as spotted with freckles as a bird's egg... upon this image, their wax gleaming yellow like dead flesh, were lying wedding candles tied with palegreen bows... (GSFr., pp. 161-167, passim).

Love in Bunin's works is, in most cases, organically connected with death or, at least, with a tragic end: insanity, crime, disenchantment. If "The Grammar of Love" is an example of both death and insanity, then the example of disenchantment in love is "The Last Rendezvous", the keynote of which is sounded by a squire Andrej Stresnev, the male protagonist of the story: "We, the breed of noblemen ['we Russians' in the early version], cannot take love simply. It's bane to us" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 8). There is almost no action in "The Last Rendezvous". Using musical terminology, it is merely a 'variation on a theme' of questions raised in Lermontov's The Demon: Hjib Tbi H e 3 H a e n n > HTO T a K o e Jlioflett M H H y T H a a JHO6OBI>? B o j r a e H i e KPOBH M o n o a o e ,

—

H o AHH 6 e r y r H CTMHCT K p O B b . KTO ycTOHT

Co6jia3Ha

nporaB p a 3 J i y K H , KpacoTBi,

HOBOE

n p O T H B yCTajIOCTH H CKyKH

M CBOeHpaBHH MeiTbl? (Don't you know what it is Men's momentous love? Blood's youthful agitation, — But days are passing and the blood cools off. Who would resist parting, The temptation of a new beauty, Tiredness and boredom, And a capriciousness of a dream?)

Stresnev, one of the gallery of impoverished small landowners, rides horseback to bid good-by to his lover Vera with whom he has lived for fifteen years. Vera too belongs to the same "breed of noblemen". The lovers, whose youth is now passed, blame each other for their unhappy, senselessly spent lives. Their last talk before dawn after they have spent their last night together is bitter but moderate in tone, which perfectly matches the entire mood of the story. After breakfast Vera departs in a horse cart; Stresnev accompanies her on horseback as far as the highway; and here they say good-by to each other:

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Vera turned round with a shy smile. Streshnev took off his cap, leaned down from the saddle, took her hand and gave it a long kiss. Her lips clung to his greying temple and she said softly: "Take care of yourself, dearest. Don't think ill of me" (ShP, p. 163). "The Last Rendezvous" is more appealing for the purpose of textual analysis than for analyzing the psychology of the lovers. It has common roots with Bunin's early stories of this kind (e.g., "In August" and "In Autumn") and, as Adamovifi wrote in 1927, it "has some resemblance to the contemporary works of Bunin".11 These love stories are alike in their protagonists: the representatives of the new (and last) generation of the impoverished gentry at the cross-roads. Poverty, broken life, unfulfilled hopes, and incapability for genuine love are the common denominators of these stories. The longing and desires of the protagonists in "The Last Rendezvous" are vague and indefinable, and in order to convey their mood Bunin chooses a form of narration which excellently corresponds with this general setting. The story unfolds very slowly. It seems that Bunin is more preoccupied with Stresnev's saddle-horse than with his hero. But the horse is not 'superfluous', as some casual and shortsighted critics sometimes refer to the details Bunin describes. Many of the details in "The Last Rendezvous" are meant to indicate the poverty and decay of Stresnev and Vera. Thus, for instance, Bunin notices that "one of the girts was broken", that the groom "wound the bridle round a rotting pole", that Stresnev's "tall boots were old and the skirt of his coat showed dark spots of long-dried hare's blood". Stresnev's father, introduced briefly and obviously for this purpose only, stands "in his underwear with an old topcoat thrown over his shoulders", "an old dog lay curled up" on Vera's porch; the little golden cross on Vera's bosom is "all her remaining wealth", for their last rendezvous Vera puts on "her sheerest nightgown, her cherished nightgown, the only one she possessed, saved for the most important occasions"; during their morning tea "in the cold hall" Vera is wearing "a fur coat that had once been expensive but was now shabby and old-fashioned", and they pour water from the samovar which is "tarnished and covered with green mould" (ShP., pp. 155-168, passim; italics mine, S.K.). The missing button on the coat of the Rostovs' servant and the unrepaired door handle and chipped-off stucco in their Moscow house are similar well-chosen and unforgettable details of decay used by Tolstoj in War and Peace. Further, the mood of the lethal, somnambulistic, dreamy atmosphere 11

G. Adamovic, "Poslednie svidanie", Sovremennye zapiski, 32 (1927), p. 455.

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is intensely increased by the frosty, autumnal moonlight night of the last rendezvous. Here is the opening sentence and all that follows in which the lunar light is stressed, almost overstressed: The moonlight autumn night was damp and old when Streshnev ordered his horse to be saddled. Moonlight fell in a streak of blue smoke through the narrow window.... But even in the light of the moon, you could see that he had a worn and weather-beaten face.... The horse flung up its head and, smashing the moon in the puddle with a hoof, set off at a brisk amble.... The balks in the damp, moonlit fields were blurred white with wormwood.... The road passed through a thin wood, desolate and cold with moonlight and dew.... The moon hung to the right over the desolate, hazily silver meadows.... Oh, melancholy beauty of autumn!.... How mournful it all looked in the moonlight\.... The moon was setting... (ShP, pp. 155-165, passim-, italics mine, S.K.). Bunin's stylistic method of repeating a given word in order to create a certain mood has been noticed by a young Soviet writer, Bondarev: There is a story of Bunin entitled "Dust" [1913], In this story, in order to depict a Godforsaken, sleepy little town in the old Russia, Bunin repeats at least ten times such words as "dust, dusty": dusty railway cars, the dust on the pavement, dusty cabs, dusty poplars. But Bunin was an expert in the Russian language, and the repetition of these words was not due to carelessness; he did it consciously, as if he were placing special emphasis on the necessary epithets which would instantly conquer your imagination.12 A few decades later John Steinbeck successfully employed the same device in his novel The Grapes of Wrath. One whole chapter is saturated with the word dust. When Stresnev sees Vera off, he aimlessly rides home. The homeless dog follows and seems to ask: "'But where am I to go?'" It turns out to be a beautiful, sunny, fall day: The stark fields, the gullies, the whole of Russian steppe was locked in silence. Puffs of cotton from the thistles and the dried-up burdock floated slowly in the air. Finches sat on the burdocks. Thus they would remain all day, only occasionally flying on to another spot, there to continue their quiet lives in beauty and happiness (ShP, p. 169). Stresnev thinks of "the railway station far away, on the gleaming rails, the smoke pouring from the south-bound train" (ShP, pp. 168-169). Stresnev, unlike the light-hearted, careless finches, is enclosed in his narrow world of worries, in a world which seems so significant to him and which is actually so unimportant, so ridiculously vain and ugly in comparison with the grandeur of the outer world. Stresnev is the prisoner 12

Ju. Bondarev, "O nastroenii, sjuzete i jazyke", Voprosy literatury, 11 (1959), 81.

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of his passions. And "the south-bound train", "the great Russian steppe", the happy finches — all these make us think of and hear Stresnev's unspoken thoughts: ... flaBaft yneTHM! MM BOJIBHUE imiubi; nopa,

6paT,

nopa!

(... Let us fly away! We are free birds; it's time, brother, it's time!) This stanza from Puskin's poem "The Prisoner" echoes the secret desire of Stresnev. Like "The Cricket", "Kazimir StanislavoviC" treats the theme of paternal love. But that is the only similarity between these two stories. Kazimir Stanislavovid is from the educated class, a gone-to-seed inveterate drunkard. The whole story is told by a third-person narrator. Kazimir StanislavoviS learns from the newspaper about the wedding in Moscow of his daughter, with whom he has lost all contact. He travels by train from Kiev to Moscow, takes a room in a second-rate hotel, spends the night in a Moscow restaurant, visits a brothel, sleeps in his room, and in the evening watches the ceremony in the church: "And close to him there passed — her veil touched him, and breath of lily-of-the-valley — she who did not know even of his existence in the world; she passed, bending her charming head, all flowers and transparent gauze, all snow-white and innocent, happy and timid, like a princess going to her first communion..." ('GSFr., 1923, p. 98). This is all we learn about his daughter. Kazimir StanislavoviS is an alcoholic, a weak character, in whom, however, there is still burning dimly one human feeling —- the love for his daughter. On returning to the hotel, he resolves to hang himself, but "he was old, weak — and he himself was well aware of it.... No, it was not in his power to die by his own hand!" (GSFr., 1923, pp. 100-101). Instead he goes to the railway station and begs the passers-by for a few kopecks for his return fare. Meanwhile, back in the hotel, during the cleaning of his room, his torn note is swept away — the note on which he wrote: ' " I beg no one be accused of my death. I was at the wedding of my only daughter who...'" (GSFr., 1923, p. 102). Bunin, the passionate traveler, knew and loved the life 'on wheels'. He vividly represents Kazimir Stanislavovid's journey from Kiev to Moscow and here and there adds casual details about his protagonist, thus completing the characterization. Kazimir Stanislavovifi's few days' stay in Moscow makes Bunin emphasize this wretched man's loneliness on a spring evening in the strange, crowded city, with its rush, night life, and,

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most important, with the indifference of its inhabitants to their fellow men. To convey this mood of indifference Bunin uses his never-failing method: he scatters seemingly unimportant sentences, phrases, and words throughout the story. And, with these lumps of plaster, which deceivingly appear to have been thrown at random, he creates his little monuments among Russian short stories. Kazimir StanislavoviC had known Moscow as a student. Now he is back. But, alas, how different is everything around him on his return, and how different is he himself! He wonders if his cabman used to drive him in Moscow many years before. The non-talkative coachman answers dryly: '"Perhaps I did. There are lots of people in the world; one can't remember all of you'" (GSFr., 1923, p. 86). Then, again, a prostitute writes a letter and weeps. Why? Who cares about her worries? And Bunin repeats the cabman's words, changing them slightly: "There are lots of people in the world; one can't know everything..." (GSFr., 1923, p. 91). In Moscow, Kazimir StanislavoviC stays in a hotel of the kind in which Dostoevskij lodges his heroes who come from the provinces to St. Petersburg. It is a bad hotel. The gold braid on the porter's cap is greasy with age, and the lustre of the mirror is gone — it is now 'silvery', 'milky'. At four o'clock in the morning, Kazimir StanislavoviC returns to his hotel room and walks down "the long, stinking tunnel of a corridor which was lighted only at its entrance by a little lamp smoking sleepily. Outside every room stood boots and shoes — all of strangers, unknown to one another" (GSFr., p. 92). "Kazimir Stanislavovifi" demonstrates that Bunin is as at home in urban surroundings as in his beloved 'fields of rye, oats, and grasses', which are again the setting of another fine story of this period, "Pri doroge" [By the Road]. Sometimes it is difficult to classify this or that story of Bunin as a story about love or death or crime. "By the Road" contains a combination of many themes which supplement one another, but the dominant one seems to be love which results in blood and insanity. And the love in "By the Road" is of a quite different kind from the love in the stories we have just discussed; here is a thorough analysis of the awakening of sexual feeling in a peasant girl, with all its implications. Unlike the preceding 'love' stories, "By the Road" has a more elaborate dramatic structure. A wealthy peasant, Ustin, is a widower. He lives in a secluded house outside the village, 'by the road'. A farmhand, Volodja, and Ustin's pretty fourteen-year-old daughter, Parasa, are the only members of his household. Ustin does not work on the soil but is a money lender. He is often

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away on business, and "the taciturn Parasa grew up in solitude" (i rosla molcalivaja Parasa odinoko) (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 127). One day a flock of sheep passes by the Ustin house. An old man on foot and a young mescanin, Nikanor, on horseback stop at the house and ask Parasa for matches. The contents of the first chapter of the story are the conversation between these men and Parasa. This conversation is very significant because it completes the characterization of Parasa and immediately establishes the mescanin as an important figure in the story. The old man addresses Parasa as "beauty" and repeates this epithet each time he speaks to her. Good-naturedly he recites a folksong and alludes to Parasa as to a lonely "little quail". But the mescanin looks quite differently at the young, pretty girl: he glances at her "attentively". Parasa, on the other hand, "forever has fixed in her memory his dusty jacket", and she is struck by the "power of his hard eyes". The old man, having apparently noticed the mescanirCs interest in the girl, addresses to her as he bids good-by, the following portentous words: '"And remember what the terrible old vagabond is saying to you: this thiefmescanin may ruin your life. Don't look at such sort of people..."' (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 129). After they have left, Parasa thinks of the old man's warning while watching the bonfire in the distance: "The bonfire threw a red light — and he, this black-eyed mescanin, who was able to ruin her, was still there, still near..." (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 129). Late in the night Parasa tells her father about the visitors and wonders why the mescanin's horse had some bloody spots on its body. Finally Parasa falls asleep thinking of "how the young mescanin would ruin her, would take her somewhere into the unknown..." (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 130). Two years pass after this little episode, Parasa grows up into a pretty young maiden. She is very attached to her father, whom she loves "with that bashful, oversensitive love which is often inherent in the daughters of widower-fathers" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 130). She has some traits in common with her father in both her appearance and her inner motivations. Her father tells her that he, as a child, once ran away from home with the gypsies: "And what then? Did you make up your mind?" Parasa asked. "Yes, I did. It must be so, daughter", said Ustin, this time without a smile. "One shouldn't make hasty decisions...". "What shouldn't one do?..." "Anything", he answered after some lapse of time and looked aside. "Otherwise the blood comes to one's head and brings troubles...". She understood him, grew timid, and stopped talking (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 131).

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Parasa has learned early about sex. She has often heard that her father had and still has a paramour; the songs she knows are all about love; all the time she has heard around her talk about marriage and married life, and on one occasion she eavesdrops on Volodja's meeting with her married, elder sister, whose husband had been called to service. Here is how Bunin writes about this in 1913 : Parasa rushed to the door, put her ear to it, and stood stock-still. Minutes after minutes passed, somebody was throwing more and more nocturnal dusk into the room, but no sound could be heard behind the door. But, it seemed as if Parasa saw everything, heard everything... (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 132).

But the thoughts about the mescanin never fade from Parasa's memory. Even in a flow of tenderness toward her father, whom, as she says, she would not change for anyone else, "she recalled the mescanin, who was escorting the sheep, that distant and beautiful summer night, his fiery old Kirghiz horse with yellow teeth and breast covered with wales of dry blood on them... (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 133). Sexual drive is steadily growing in her, but she still finds enough strength to reject Volodja's attentions. One day Nikanor comes to see Ustin on business, and his appearance stirs up Parasa's passion anew. A few months later he repeats his visit and, finding Parasa at home all by herself, 'declares' his love for her. Nikanor's next call is fatal for the girl. The fifth chapter ends in Parasa's fall: "I'm out of my mind because of you! I'll drive you to Rostov, we'll get married there, we'll go to the steppes... we'll make thousands on horses alone.... You'll be better dressed than any modiste!" She recalled him as she had seen him for the first time, — amidst sheep and dogs, horseback on his branded Kirghiz, — she embraced him with her arm around his neck, trembling with her whole body from happiness and tenderness, and hid her face on his chest. He lifted her and put her on the straw (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 140).

Parasa suffers her fall keenly. Her virgin dreams about pure love vanish into thin air, and her love for the mescanin changes to hatred: Having done his awful deed, Nikanor killed both her and himself. He, this short-legged thief, suddenly became for her alive, real, and a deeply hated man. She could not love him, and she had never loved him. Now she could not think of him without shame, disgust, and despair. The prophecies of the old vagabond came true. She felt as if she were infected by some shameful, incurable disease and as if she were now separated from her father by a bottomless abyss (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 142).

Another heavy, unexpected blow falls upon Parasa: One night, when

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her father, smelling of vodka, leans over her asking what is wrong with her, she is almost ready to confess him the whole, bitter truth. But he, a lecherous old Karamazov, has intentions quite different from just caressing his daughter. She screams with indignation and chases him away. In contrast to "Ignat", the ending of "By the Road" is full of rapidly developing action. Virtually every line increases the tension. Next day Parasa awakens very late. The day is very hot. The description of it tells of the lack of air, shows a suffocating atmosphere, conveys the impression of a terrible sultriness. Even the ripening fields of rye seem in Parasa's eyes to come closer to the house. In short, everything indicates the oncoming catastrophe, everything points toward the ripening crisis in the girl's mind. Nikanor arrives to steal Ustin's high-bred horses and to take Parasa with him. The stable is locked. Nikanor picks up an axe and knocks off the lock, which Parasa catches up in the air and grips firmly in her "little sun-burnt hand". When Nikanor enters the stable, Parasa, "having taken a big step, clumsily, but with all her might hit with the lock on his temple. He stumbled shortly and fell to the ground, and his head came to rest against the manure" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 148). Running away, she turns and sees Nikanor standing near the gate "without his hat, his whole face and shirt covered with scarlet blood" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 148). Screaming wildly, Parasa runs into the thickness of the rye field. And here is the concluding paragraph of the story: Many people who drove that day on the field roads saw her running across the countryside, through the rye fields, avoiding the highways. Sometimes she squatted and looked around — and then ran again, her white shirt and uncovered head flashing amidst the yellow ears of rye.... She was caught on the fifth day. And fighting fiercely, she displayed an unbelievable strength; she bit the three muziks who tied up her hands with new reins (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 148). This last phrase in the sentence, the "new reins", is a brilliant example of Bunin's facility of finding the right words in a given situation. Is it possible to stress better the strength of a raving lunatic than by saying that "new reins" have to be used to keep her secure? Or, are not the two verbs — "she squatted, looked around" — fully sufficient to depict the self-preservation instinct of a hunted animal? And is not the changing of the black-and-white picture to a multi-colored one — mentioning Parasa's white shirt, the yellow ripening rye, and her uncovered head — one of those fine, subtle painter's strokes that complete the picture before it leaves the atelier? In the entire story there is not the slightest indication of the author's personal feelings. Is he sympathetic with the

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poor peasant girl? Is he indignant at the horse-thief? Does he show his contempt for Ustin's lasciviousness? Bunin keeps his ego out of the story. In a calm, almost solemn tone he narrates in an impassive Flaubertian style an event in the life of an unknown peasant girl, her first love, and her tragic end. 4.4 "THE CUP OF LIFE" AND OTHER STORIES

"The Cup of Life" is a story of small town intelligentsia. It is a story of romantic love, hatred between two men, two deaths, and the enunciation of the principle of longevity. Bunin departs in "The Cup of Life" from his normal pattern: the story involves a score of people and has no principal character. The span of time is long, about thirty years, but it is telescoped under Bunin's pen. This tale about the life of a few people in a county town, Streleck, is divided into twelve short chapters, some but half a page long. Bunin starts the narration looking backwards to the time of the youth of his characters. Sanja is a young and attractive girl attended by the three suitors: two are seminarians and the third is an employee of the local curia. Although one of the seminarians, Iordanskij, is the only one dear to her heart, the local dandy Selixov is destined to become her husband. After their marriages Selixov and Iordanskij are lifelong enemies. The first attains wealth on usury, and the second becomes an archpriest. Both despise their wives, and Selixov is jealous of his wife's love for the priest. Aleksandra Yasil'evna Selixova's only dream is to own her husband's house after his death, but Selixov is reluctant to name her his heiress. They have no children; their lives are monotonous; Selixov pays no attention to his wife; and she is left entirely to herself, to her thoughts. Father Kir (Iordanskij), whose wife dies during the tenth year of their marriage, becomes a terror of the town. He addresses everybody as thou, is rude to the merchants and sharp-tongued with his superiors, and he keeps his house tightly closed and inaccessible to guests. Although he drinks heavily, he is adored by the town people for his "unusual mind and uncommon erudition" (Sobr. soc., 1956, p. 113). Strange as it may be, only the water-carrier 2olud' is on a free footing with Father Kir, and he even wins the priest's regard. Nevertheless, one day, "having learned that Zolud' also delivered a barrel of water to Selixov, Father Kir refused to give him his blessing and chased him forever from his house" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 116). By describing various actions of Father Kir, such as his forbidding a poor Serbian to entertain the public

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with his monkey, Bunin extends the characterization of Iordanskij. Only once do the enemies meet and briefly converse: "Selixov! Think of that hour — not a single living being can avoid it: it is I, you hear me, Selixov? — It is I, dressed in the mourning gown, who will render you my last earthly kiss, encircle you with smoke from my censer and cover your face with the earthly dust". "Who knows, perhaps it is I who will stand by you? Don't forget, you're a drunkard, Father Kir" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 116). Fate decides in favor of Father Kir, who indeed sings the funeral service over Selixov. And Aleksandra Vasil'evna's dream of owning a house is realized. At about this time, Bunin brings into closer range the third male protagonist, Horizontov, a retired teacher. He is of Herculean strength and size, has a tremendous appetite, and for reasons of health swims every day in spring, summer, and fall. His life philosophy consists of the idea that the strength of every man should be exclusively directed to the prolonging of his life, and therefore the following is required: a complete abstention from relations with women, who are vain, evil, mentally underdeveloped beings; a complete relaxation in all possible circumstances in life; the most exact fulfillment of one's intelligent and well-thought-out habits; and the strictest care of one's body — first of all in the sense of feeding it and refreshing it with water (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 118). Horizontov is the man from whose lips we hear the expression "the cup of life". Father Kir asks him his idea of the purpose of existence: "Longevity and its enjoyment". "And do you really enjoy it?" "As much as I can. I hold strongly and carefully the precious cup of life in my hands". "The cup of life?" — Father Kir interrupted him brusquely. "Of the life here? In this street? I can't talk calmly with you! You are worthy of your shameful nickname!" "In the earth you can't tell the difference between the bones of man and the bones of an animal". Horizontov replied and slowly went along the street, leaning on his stick {Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 119). Aleksandra Vasil'evna is rapidly aging. On the fortieth day after her husband's death, during the memorial service, she is hit by a light stroke from which she recovers: "for there was still a drop of honey in her cup of life" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 123). But this drop is apparently very poor in vitamins. A few weeks later she drives in a cab to the railway station to watch the welcoming of some important dignitary and is crushed to her death by the crowd. Her death passes unnoticed:

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No one cried during the funeral service except the modiste who, incidentally, had known the deceased very little.... There was neither sorrow nor serenity in the house. The children enjoyed themselves, the flies and bumble-bees flew in and out of the living room through the open window behind which there was a hot day and into which a joyous light was pouring {Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 124, passim). The first sentence of this quotation is close to Puskin's description of the funeral service of the old countess in The Queen of Spades. Characteristically Puskin's sentences are shorter than Bunin's. But the general tone of both writers and their observations about those who survive, attend the funeral services, and are indifferent to the deceased are very similar. In Puskin's novelette only the countess's old maid sheds some sincere tears. Thus, both Selixovs die and Father Kir is seriously ill. Horizontov travels by train to Moscow on rather strange business: he goes to Moscow to negotiate the sale of his bones to the university after his death. He sees nothing wrong with such a transaction because it improves his present well-being and causes him no harm. Besides, as he puts it to one of the passengers, he thinks that Moscow University will have to wait some time to use its acquisition, because he hopes that, due to his excellent health, he will live at least to the age of ninety-five. Horizontov cuts a comic figure, if one can speak about humor in Bunin's work. A. Huxley's Fifth Lord of Gonister ( A f t e r Many a Summer, 1939) is, to our mind, a close relative of Horizontov. Two lines from Lermontov's The Demon would summarize the contents of "The Cup of Life": H t O JUOflH? H t O HX 5KH3HB H Tpyfl?

Ohh nponijm, ohh npofiflyT... (What are men? What are their lives and toil? They passed, they will pass...). Each of the protagonists of "The Cup of Life" has his own worries. Thus Selixova dreams about the house and her love for Iordanskij; Selixov is busy making money and is concerned with his hatred for Iordanskij; Horizontov's ideal is longevity; and Father Kir enjoys despotism. And the old muzik, Avdej Zabota ('worry'), from the story "The Worry" (1913) has his own problem. Nay, more than that: he has 'grief' (u nego gore)I "Recently he has been tortured by the thought: should he sell his sheep or not?" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 73). Finally, he decides in favor of selling it. He is so nervous about this that everybody in his family feels the tension in the air: "His grief makes him indifferent to everything —

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he is like a sick man" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 75). Actually he has no reason to worry. Avdej is a wealthy peasant: "Tell me something of interest from your life", the young landowner asked him one day. "Thank God, there was nothing of that kind in my life. I'm almost seventy, but, thank God, there has been nothing of interest" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 76). In "The Archives" is a very Gogolian personality, an old clerk, Fisun, nicknamed Charon. Old records are his life, his soul, his love; the rest of the world hardly exists for him. He is over eighty and has been working in the archives since he was fourteen. From the very first lines Bunin emphasizes the grotesqueness of the old man: This funny little man.... He saw nothing ridiculous in that outmoded word "archivist".... With a mocking smile of a Ukrainian the doorman of the office looked at his waxen ears which were big and always cold.... But more than that, — in addition to such funny outward appearance, his character was funny too (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 201, passim; italics mine, S.K.). There are two worlds in the office: in the upper part there is daylight, and members of the new generation perform their duties and enjoy life in their own way; in the lower part, in the basement, in the dark kingdom of Edam rule Fisun and his helper, a Ukranian, Lugovoj. Fisun firmly believes that not a single human can dispense with archives: "'And if information is needed?' — he used to say — and was firmly convinced that this sentence was irrefutable" (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, p. 202). Like Makar Devuskin, Akakij AkakieviS, and Cexov's Cervjakov, Fisun is one of those underpaid, downtrodden, exploited clerks; he works from six in the morning till late in the night for thirteen and one half rubles a month — a big sum of money, he believes. (He started his career with two rubles pay.) Having described the life of 'our' young, carefree generation and that of the people from the archives, Bunin quite unexpectedly informs the reader that the little old man has died. His death as any death, of course, could not have been funny (potesnaja), — after all, his little old woman wept on the threshold of her hut in the suburb when she again polished the heavy soldier boots in the hope that their owner would stand up again and would drag himself to the office of the archives, — but this death was in no way stranger than Fisun's whole life; with this, I hope everybody would agree (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 205). A great deal of irony and Gogolian 'laughter through tears' are included in the presentation of the causes of poor Fisun's death. It was the time

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of the famous 'spring dreams', i.e., the dreams about a constitution and other civil liberties. A big meeting was held 'upstairs' with a fiery speech by Aleksej Alekseevic Stankevifi himself — a well-known orator and representative of the local 'liberal' circles. And it happened that Fisun felt a certain physical urge and walking as far as the end of a corridor stopped before the door which was meant only for the chairman, town-councillors, and some clerks of higher rank; then, without hesitation, he took hold of the door handle and, having locked the door with a hook, he stayed for a long, long time inside (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 207). The trouble with Fisun lay in the fact that he was old, slow, and deaf, so that he could not possibly hear a knocking at the door. And when he finally opened it, he saw in front of him StankeviC himself! And the two old men are paralyzed with astonishment and stand stock-still in front of each other: one from consternation and indignation, the other struck with terror. "How dare you?" — the first spelled out slowly, rolling his eyes and leaning. "Why? Is it you, the scoundrel, you were sitting there?" "By no means", the second wanted to say, also rolling his eyes, — but he could not do it: both for fear and for that simple reason, of course, that it would not ring true if he had given an answer. "How? How did you dare to get into the gentlemen's wash room?" — the first spoke still slower, approaching, his blood pouring into his snow-white head. "By no means", — smiling inanely mumbled the other, turning deadly pale and leaning against the wall, sinking into his boots with his paralyzing legs. "After all, who are you?" — the first furiously bawled at him, madly stamping with his shoes. But the second, goggling and looking like a hare because of the projecting ends of the kerchief which covered his head, was not even able to babble... (Sobr. soc., 1956, III, 207-208). Cervjakov died after he had sneezed over a bald-headed dignitary who had sat next to him in the theater. Cexov's petty clerk's mind could not overcome such a 'terrible' incident, just as Bunin's Fisun's life comes to an end after he has been caught in his excellency's washroom. Nevertheless, the general tone of the tale has more affinity to Gogol' 's "Overcoat": the long, elaborate sentences, the detailed descriptions of the outer appearances of both protagonists, the externally amusing tone of narration, and the tragic end of these two 'little' men are common to both stories. "The Archives" was initially titled "Svjato5nyj rasskaz" [A Christmas Tale] and appeared on December 25, 1914, in the newspaper Novoe slovo. It can be called a classical story if 'classical' indicates such qualities as balance, measure, and lucidity.

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4.5 EXOTIC AND URBAN STORIES

That he was not limited to Russian settings Bunin proved in his travelogues. His visit to the Orient inspired him to write a few stories of 'international' character with a wide thematic range, revolving, however, around his basic topics of love, death, and the sense of existence. It has been already said that in The Temple of the Sun Bunin was overtaken by 'meditations'. Extensions of these 'meditations' are to be found in his stories with exotic and tropical backgrounds and seemingly simple plots. Literally on the eve of the First World War Bunin wrote "Brethren", a story which echoed his journey to Ceylon. In Bunin's archives there are a few lines about the origin of "Brethren": "Our [Russian] consul had, as I heard, a young Singhalese mistress. The whole story of the rickshaw I invented myself".13 In regard to stories such as "Brethren" and "The Gentleman from San Francisco", in which Bunin presents socially different worlds (especially in the first story), there is a tendency among the critics, both Soviet14 and western,15 to regard Bunin as almost a revolutionary, an author whose chief purpose is to expose the evils of capitalistic society and colonial policy and "to hasten the barricades and the Coming Revolution against capitalism".16 Such an approach tends either to promote a special purpose or to recognize only those facts of the story which lie on the surface. The late Poggioli took a very sober and sound view in interpreting Bunin's "Brethren". According to him, "even exotic backgrounds and tropic settings are used by Bunin for the purpose of expressing with sober objectivity the cruelty of life and the absurdity of the world".17 The story is divided into two parts. One tells of a rickshaw boy and unfolds around the city of Columbo; the other concerns an Englishman whom we meet first as a fare of the rickshaw boy and later as he tells his life story to the captain of a Russian freighter bound for Europe. In "Brethren" Bunin aims, as R. Poggioli wrote 18

Bunin, op. cit., p. 5. N. Burlakov, G. Pelisov, I. Uxanov, Russkaja literatura XX v. (Moscow, 1961), p. 190. 16 Brooks, Purser, and Warren, An Approach to Literature (New York, 1946), p. 24. These authors write: "In the background of the story there is the idea of a struggle between those who have economic power and those who have not". 14 W. D. Jacobs, "Bunin's 'The Gentleman from San Francisco'", The Explicator, 17 (1948), item 42. W. Jacobs denies such an interpretation, and takes issue with the opinion of the authors of An Approach to Literature. 17 R. Poggioli, The Phoenix and The Spider (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), p. 140. 14

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at an effect of symmetrical parallelism and of symbolic contrast; the meaning of the story lies in the juxtaposition of two episodes which are related only by chance and by a common but negative trait: the mutual indifference of two sufferers.18 The contents of "Brethren" are extremely simple. A thirteen-year-old Singhalese boy becomes a rickshaw boy right after his father's death, or as Bunin expresses it, when "the little old man was done with his running" (! HafleRb c b o k ) mam» h KanoT... C m o t p h — M e » HepHeiomax coceH K a n 6 y f l T o noacap BoccTaeT...

(What a cold autumn! Put on your shawl and your cloak... Look — it seems a fire is rising Through the darkening pine trees...) Kissing her good-bye, he says: " 'Well, if they kill me, I shall wait for you there. You should live, find joy on the earth, then come to m e ' " (DA, p. 183). The concluding paragraph of the story, written in 1944, nine years before the author's death, reflects the pessimism of the aging writer; the narrator reveals not only her but also his thoughts: "But I have faith, ardent faith, that somewhere he is still waiting for me — with the same love and freshness as on that evening. 'You should live, find joy on the earth, then come to me...' I lived, found joy, now I shall soon go to him" (DA, 185). Fet's poem sets the tone of the narration; the author employs the simplest possible words and because of this very simplicity achieves considerable effect. "Cold Autumn" is a powerful story; its greatness lies in the fact that it goes beyond just the sad and nostalgic reminiscences of a homeless refugee. The symbolic fire rising through the darkening pine trees which the young couple saw on that cold autumn evening ruined not only theirs but many lives, on many continents, and among many nations. The story, though limited on the surface to a few persons in two families, is not local but universal in its implications. Another group of stories is interesting because of the unusual feminine characters whom Bunin introduces. In "Cistyj ponedel'nik" [Ash Wednesday], for example, the narrator is in love with a young girl of strange mentality. Outwardly very mundane, rich and pretty, she occupies a two-room flat in Moscow and receives her admirer in it frequently, without being really intimate with him. They visit Moscow's fashionable restaurants, drink champagne, eat exquisite foods, and listen to gypsy music, and at the same time she is pensive, enigmatic, and enraptured with Old Russia, its ancient culture and monasteries. O n Ash Wednesday, after a cabaret show at the Art Theater, she unexpectedly invites the narrator to her apartment and spends the night with him (the love scene is not described); she enjoins him to leave her alone toward morning and promises to write him about their future. About two years later the unhappy lover sees her as a nun marching in a religious procession in a

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church. Again Bunin's longing for Russian antiquity, expressed so many times in his works, is repeated by this strange woman (her name remains unknown). She says: ' " I so adore Russian chronicles, Russian folklore, that I go on reading over and over again everything that really appeals to me till I know it by heart'" (DA, p. 216). We meet another strange female character in the person of Musa Graf ("Musa"). She is a girl who comes to a painter's studio, and though the painter has never seen her before, she behaves as if she were an old intimate, kisses him and declares her love for him. They live together as husband and wife and move to his country estate. Before Christmas, Musa runs away from her 'husband' to a certain Zavistovskij, a poor lonely landowner, a "red-haired, timid and slow-witted man — but a passionate musician" (DA, p. 45). The painter, surprised by Musa's desertion, walks to Zavistovskij's estate to reason with her, but she remains adamant in her decision. The painter had considered her sudden coming to his studio a year before 'sudden happiness'; now this new and extravagant step comes as a heavy blow to him. In "Visiting Cards" Bunin describes a casual love affair between a well-known, handsome young writer and a married woman no longer youthful, who, unhappy in her life, looks forward eagerly to making "use of this unexpected happiness, which came suddenly to her through meeting this strong, handsome and well-known man" (T.a., p. 97). Her unnatural, even arrogant behavior which is so unfitting to her general appearance serves to stress the determination of a woman striving for her goal. This is her only chance, if even for a few hours, to break the monotony of her unappealing life. Her outward appearance discloses her poverty. She wears "a gray shabby overcoat", "a cotton dress", "cheap gray stockings with simple garters", and "cheap black shoes". Her naked figure, though still attractive, evokes pity and stresses still more her poverty: Her body turned out to be better, younger than one could have supposed. Her lean collar bones and ribs matched her lean face and thin shins. But her lips were quite large. Her belly with its small navel was hollow and the protuberant triangle of dark pretty hair under it matched the abundance of dark hair on her head. She pulled out the hairpins, and her hair fell feavily on her lean back with its projecting vertebra. She bent in order to pick up her falling stockings, and her small breasts with the cold, wrinkled nipples hung like skinny pears, beautiful in their poverty (T.a., p. 98). Because of this everlasting poverty and the desire to break the monotony of her depressing life, this strange woman wishes to spite fate by having

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some extravagant adventure, just as in her youth, while still a student, she dreamed of ordering some visiting cards: "Then we became completely impoverished, sold the last lots on our estate and moved to town, and I had no chance to give them to anybody, but how I dreamed about them! I was terribly foolish!" (T.a., 97). "Visiting Cards" is a variation of "Sunstroke", and, although the heroine is unrestrained by the strict rules of the Philistines, the story cannot be regarded as a mere 'travel adventure', because this woman, like the 'beautiful stranger' in "Sunstroke", leaves a deep imprint on the memory of her partner: He kissed her small cold hand with that sort of love which would stay hidden somewhere in the heart throughout his whole life, and she, without looking back, ran down into the rough crowd on the pier" (T.a., 99). Her returning to the "rough crowd" stresses her sensitive nature and that momentous spark of love, which is probably the only happy moment in her life. Bunin's love stories almost always have a tragic aspect. The last story in Dark Alleys, "tasovnja" [A Chapel], a miniature one-half page long, summarizes Bunin's philosophy. On a sunny summer day children are playing in a cemetery near a burial vault. They know that "over there, in the iron boxes, lie some grandmothers and grandfathers, and also an uncle, who shot himself 'Why did he shoot himself?' — 'He was very much in love, and those who are very much in love always shoot themselves'..." (T.a., p. 325, passim). This is the way one of the children reasons. And the reader witnesses the truth of this statement in the story "The Caucasus" in which the husband, who passionately loves his unfaithful wife and is unable to locate her in the Caucasus resort where she has run away from him with her lover, shoots himself "through the temples with two revolvers" (DA, p. 21). In "Nataly" the beautiful redhaired heroine unites after many years with the man she loves but is unable to enjoy her happiness for long: "In December she died in Geneva after a premature childbirth" (DA, p. 158). In "Dubki" [The Oak Trees], a peasant-bailiff who suspects his wife of having a romance with the young landowner hangs her after a violent struggle. The punishment is severe: "He was flogged with a lash, and deported to Siberia to work in mines" (DA, p. 173). "The Oak Trees" is written in the old vein Bunin employed in his best stories in his last period in Russia. Another story, "Ballada" [A Ballad], is very similar in mood to "Ioann the Weeper". The female wanderer Masen'ka tells a squire the

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story of the cruel and powerful old prince whose unsatiated lust was punished by the will of God: while chasing his own son's young bride, for whom he reaches out "with greedy lecherous desire", the prince is killed by an "enormous extraordinary-looking wolf with red eyes like fire and a halo around his head" (DA, p. 29). As in "Ioann the Weeper", the prince in "A Ballad", before he dies of wounds caused by this wolf, issues a strange order: that "the wolf should be painted over his tomb in the church — to edify his princely descendants" (DA, p. 30). In connection with "A Ballad" Bunin left an extremely interesting testimonial in which he evaluated himself as a writer and singled out this story as an example. Here is what Bunin says: At any rate my life will end soon. And putting in order all my writings as far as possible and hoping, rather weakly, that they will be decently edited sometime, I read all of them over and saw that I did not appreciate them before as they deserve. In many ways my writings are remarkable because of their originality, variety of themes and tonalities, their compactness, force, lucidity of the depicted human characters, landscapes, etc. I speak about it without shame, without any ambition (cestoljubie), but only as an artist; some of them are especially dear to me and seem especially delightful: "A Ballad" belongs to their number. And, by the way, the need of money forced me to write it as well as many other stories in the past. Sometime around the beginning of February, 1938, in Paris, I decided to write something for the Poslednie novosti, to concoct something. I began to recall Russia, the estate on which I often lived during various seasons of the year; I saw in my thoughts a wintry evening in the old house on the eve of some big holiday.... And God helped me to invent something absolutely beautiful (with the fictitious woman-wanderer, Masen'ka — the pivotal charm of the story — with her lovely night watch, wonderful manner of speaking)....13 This statement supplements the letter to Wasiolek and proves that Bunin estimated his Dark Alleys very highly; this brief analysis of some of its stories aims to show that, contrary to Wasiolek's opinion, they are not mere lasciviousness and pornography. The subject of few stories is love between peasant women and squires. These relationships are deeper than that, for instance, in Tolstoj's "The Devil" in which Irtenev meets Stepanida only in order to satisfy his carnal instinct. In Bunin's stories such liaisons, at the start quite casual, grow gradually into a real love with the subsequent complication of the impossibility of marriage, for, as P. Henry writes, "our social origin and position, it is implied, have a greater hold over our actions than a youthful love ever could, or should, for that matter". 14 An example is the title 13 14

I. Bunin, "Proisxozdenie moix rasskazov", Novyj zurnal, 53 (1958), pp. 8-9. Introduction by P. Henry in I. Bunin, Rasskazy (London, 1962), p. 27.

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story of "Dark Alleys". Written in the tradition of Turgenev, the story, though simple in content, is deep in meaning. A middle-aged officer stops at a coach house whose owner is, by odd coincidence, his former mistress. She has never forgotten him, has loved him throughout all the years since he broke their relationship, and she has never forgiven him his estrangement from her. She reminds Nikolaj AlekseeviC of the time when he, then young and passionately in love with her, recited to her something about "dark alleys": Ebuia nyAecHax BecHa, Ohh Ha 6epery caaeim, Bo iiBeTe tot 6buia oHa, Ero yew e^Ba rep Herat... KpyroM umnoBHHK ajn>r0 UBeji MoJiiaJia TeMHbix rain ajuiea... (It was a wonderful spring, They sat on the bank, She was in the prime of life, His moustache began to blacken.... The crimson wild rose flowered all round, The dark lime tree avenue was silent...) This excerpt, taken by Bunin from N. P. Ogarev's poem, The Common Story, is essentially the epigraph for not only the first but for all the stories in the collection that contain memories of the heroes' youths and their search for happiness against the background of "dark alleys" or "shadowed paths" or "birch growths" or old parks on impoverished estates. Social conventions and egoism win over youthful and spontaneous love. Nikolaj Alekseevic admits that his affair with Nadezda was the best moment in his life: "But my God, what would have happened afterwards? Imagine if I had never abandoned her? Oh, what rubbish! That same Nadezhda, not the proprietor of a posting station guesthouse, but as my wife, hostess in my Petersburg home, the mother of my children!" And closing his eyes, he shook his head (DA, 15). The same motif sounds again in "Tanja" when the male protagonist exclaims to himself: "My God, what should I do! Again those hot childish tears and the flushed childish face.... She doesn't even suspect the whole strength of my feeling for her! But what can I do? Take her away with me? Where? To what kind of life? And what would be the result? To bind oneself, ruin oneself for ever?" (DA, 86).

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But the problem with Tanja is solved without the protagonist having to make a decision. His promise to her to come back in the spring for the whole summer is not realized: "That was in February of that terrible year 1917. He was staying there in the country for the last time in his life" (DA, p. 87). When uncontrolled sex or "impersonal sex", as F. Stepun calls it, wins over pure love, it leads usually to a crime: In "Miss Klara" a Georgian, Iraklij Meladze, kills a prostitute; in "Henry" Elena Genrixovna is shot dead by an Austrian writer under mysterious circumstances; in "The Oak Trees" a peasant-bailliff kills his pretty wife in a most cruel way. F. Stepun rejects the widely accepted notion that Dark Alleys is "some kind of collection of erotic situations".15 He writes: The cosmic music of sex flows through all the stories in the collection. With a tremendous power and suddenness it bursts into human souls, male and female: it extinguishes their consciousness, breaks their willpower, kills their conscience, elevates their souls onto the summits of inexpressible bliss, and then, the retreating wave throws them into despair and death, into nocturnal abysses, onto the rails of trains. There is a lot of cruelty and ecstasy in the book, but there is also a great deal of pity and tenderness.16 Shortly after the appearance of Dark Alleys, in expectation of unfavorable criticism, one of the Parisian Russian newspapers wrote: Some people will probably say that the range of Bunin's creative writing is getting narrow. But such an impression is deceptive and superficial. Bunin returns persistently to only one theme because it appears to him the most significant, important, and most enigmatic in the world. Any love, even without requital, is a great happiness. Therefore Bunin's book breathes with happiness and, besides, with gratitude to the world and to life, in which, despite its imperfection, this happiness occurs.17 Even S. Kastorskij, while giving preference to Bunin's early works with their "special implications" (i.e., social background as in The Village) admits that from the point of view of style the stories and sketches in Dark Alleys are samples of artistic perfection. There is not a single superflous word in them; the masterful choice of colors results in a marvelous plasticity of images: everything lives, is easily remembered, stands vividly before the reader's eyes.18 And, finally, the British critic, A. Colin, commenting briefly on Dark Alleys, praises the collection for Bunin's keen psychological insight: " "

17 18

F. Stepun, "I. A. Bunin i russkaja literatura", Vozrozdenie, 13 (1951), p. 174. Ibid., p. 173. Russkie novosti (January 3, 1947). S. Kastorskij, "Gor'kij i Bunin", Zvezda, III (1956), 153.

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clearly shows that Bunin, even at the advanced age at which he wrote these pieces, had still the youthful temperament necessary to give realistic and vivid colouring to his narrative. Dark Avenues reminds us once more that Bunin was a great psychologist, and in this fact lies the unquestionable merit of this collection of his late stories.19 Dark Avenues

6.3 THE LIFE OF

ARSEN'EV

We began this monograph with a discussion of The Life of Arsen'ev, saying that it can be considered an inexact and not strictly chronological artistic autobiography. As an autobiographical work of art it is very helpful in the reconstruction of Bunin's life and facilitates the understanding of this complex writer. In closing our discussion of Bunin's prose with The Life of Arseríev, we are now concerned with showing its literary value and not with whether the young Arsen'ev is Bunin himself. Although Bunin began to publish The Life of Arsen'ev in installments in Sovremennye zapiski in 1928, and Lika, which is now the fifth 'book' of The Life of Arsen'ev, appeared as a separate work in 1939, we believe that The Life of Arsen'ev was not actually completed until 1952. This book which appeared at that time, as stated plainly on the cover, was 'the first full edition', corrected and supervised by the author himself, and had the new title, The Life of Arsen'ev: Youth. The late M. Aldanov reported about this last book of Bunin: Ivan Alekseevic worked hard on The Life of Arsen'ev, he corrected it a great deal, made additions and cuts. The great success of this book, its second edition by the Cexov Publishing House, pleased him immensely.20 It is also very fitting to read this book of Bunin as his last, knowing his previous works, themes, style, and life. Without questioning its indisputable literary value, we can state clearly that there is nothing new either in themes or in style to surprise the student of Bunin. There are many pages in The Life of Arsen'ev which make one think of "Antonov Apples", Dry Valley, and dozens of episodes in Bunin's other earlier works. For the purpose of this monograph, The Life of Arsen'ev can be considered an excellent 'summing up' of Bunin's literary career as a prose writer. A French critic wrote about it in 1933: Mais la Vie d'Arseniev prime toutes les autres oeuvres de son auteur par l'importance de son sujet qui est en somme le sujet de toutes ses nouvelles.21 19

A. G. Colin, "Ivan Bunin in Retrospect", The Slavonic and East European 34 (1955), p. 173. 20 M. Aldanov, "O Bunine", Novyj zurnal, 35 (1953), p. 132. 81 I. Mandelstamm, "Ivan Bounine", La Revue de France, 6 (1933), p. 707.

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Nevertheless, while getting acquainted with Arsen'ev's external and internal world, the reader may still inadvertently continue to think of the author himself. The classification of The Life of Arsen'ev as to genre is a problem. K. Paustovskij, an ardent admirer of Bunin's art, writes that The Life of Arsen'ev is "neither a long story (povesf), nor a novel (romari), nor a short story (rasskaz). This book is of a genre not yet known".22 To define this book as a story would be conventional, superficial, and inexact. It lacks the necessary characteristics of a story or novel: the inner unity is built not on the unity of plot (beginning of action — development — denouement) but exclusively on the unity of the hero. The most accurate definition of The Life of Arsen'ev would be contrived biography or curriculum vitae of a contrived person. This kind of theoretical definition is important because it facilitates the understanding of the book's purpose, the how and why the book was 'made'. In The Life of Arsen'ev Bunin achieves that goal about which the young Arsen'ev dreams when he is seized by the desire to write something but does not know what. Bunin achieves the simplest and, at the same time, the most profound picture which art can provide by showing the very process of seeing, the process of intellectual contemplation, rather than by philosophizing about facts as seen by the author. The Life of Arsen'ev weaves together three basic themes: the theme of life and death, the theme of love, and the theme of Russia. In The Life of Arsen'ev the reader will not find the old Russia used as an embellishment, or arguments for the restoration of her old regime, or curses aimed at the Revolution. The book is a gigantic canvas (Paustovskij thinks it recalls to a certain degree Nesterov's picture of "Holy Russia"),23 which "is founded on the principle of differential calculus and through a fine calculation stresses infinitely the great importance of infinitely small magnitudes".24 Relying on his memory, Bunin again employs the old method which he successfully used in "Antonov Apples": I remember... Little Arsen'ev's memory is limited, of course, to small and insignificant things which are great and important in the formative years of the child. Every season of the year, especially the happy, sunny summer, is reflected through the child's experience. His vision of the world enlarges as Arsen'ev grows. 22

Introduction by K. Paustovskij in Povesti, rasskazy, vospominanija (Moscow, 1961), p. 13. 88 Ibid., p. 9. 24 Stepun, op. cit., p. 172.

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Starting from his room, he explores farther and farther around the estate, visiting the cattle yard, barns, stables, orchard, and that terrible ravine in which his peasant friend, the boy Sen'ka, found his death and from which young Arsen'ev learned about the existence of death in the universe. In addition to the 'I remember' method, Bunin develops the theme through a series of rhetorical questions of philosophical import: Are we not born with the sense of death? And if not, if I have not suspected it, should I be so fond of life as I am, and as I used to be? And should I have devoted my life as I have done, almost without reserve, to my craft of letters, to the realization and animation of my things and deeds, a tendency which perhaps arises merely from the dread of that sepulchre of oblivion? (WD, 3-4). Hearing about Sen'ka's 'dead body', Arsen'ev believes that we are indeed born with "the sense of death": "Why were they so terrible, these words, quite new to me, and not even quite comprehensible? Does it mean that I had already known them sometime?" (WD, p. 35). Bunin fully realizes his unusual preoccupation with death when his Arsen'ev writes: Men are unequally sensitive to death. In the life of the most, it plays after all but a small part. But there is a category of people who live their whole life through under its sign, who have from early childhood an acute sense of death (most often by reason of the equally acute sense of life). The Archpriest Avvakum speaking of his own childhood says: "And I saw once at a neighbour's a dead beast, and having risen that night I wept fairly long about my soul before the holy image, recalling death since I also was to die...". Well, I am also one of these men. (WD, p. 36). Acknowledging his sensitivity to death, Arsen'ev exploits every opportunity not only to mention its existence in the world but also to linger over the description of a dead body, its transformation, the impression which it makes upon the living, and the burial rituals. The corpse of his younger sister, Nadja, is the first which Arsen'ev sees with his own eyes: I saw, lying still on the table in the hall in the sepulchral light of the ikon-lamp, a dainty doll with bloodless, inanimate face, and black eyelashes almost shut; and already there was in her something that called churches to mind, something saintly.... Never in my life had there been a more terrible, a most magical night (WD, p. 66). Nadja's death, because it weighs upon the boy's mind, calls forth the question of God's choice — why should God have chosen just Nadja, the sinless infant girl, the joy of the whole house? Nadja's death also makes Arsen'ev realize that he too is mortal and that this strange and terrible thing which happened to Nadja might happen at any moment, and that, generally speaking, all earthly, living material, bodily

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things are very unreliable, unfailingly subject to death, to putrefaction, to that purplish blackness which had covered Nadja's lips by the time her body was taken from the house (WD, 66-67). The death of Arsen'ev's grandmother, which occurs in May, a few months after Nadja's, does not make such a terrible impression on the boy, since "us, the children, thank God, they [the parents] did not take with them..." (WD, p. 66). These instances of death look like short preludes when they are compared with the long and elaborate description of the sudden death of Pisarev (a relative of Arsen'ev) of a heart attack on the first day of Easter; we witness his dead body exposed to public view and follow the funeral ceremonies and repast. As if wishing to have death everywhere in The Life of Arsen'ev, Bunin ends "Book Two" with Pisarev's death and extends it through the three chapters of "Book Three", although this break seems to be artificial and thematically unjustified. Since the narrator is now recalling his adolescence (Arsen'ev is already in love with Annchen), his observations are more acute, and this gives Bunin an opportunity to present Pisarev's death with all those details which Bunin often has employed in his previous works. The first thing which strikes Arsen'ev is the suddenness of death (cf, Bunin's earlier stories "The Devouring Fire", "Aleksej AlkseeviS"): He lay offering the usual sight of a dead man just laid on the table — the sight which as yet merely struck me by its oddity — in that very hall where a fortnight ago he was standing smiling on the threshold, screwing up his eyes against the light of the evening sun and of his cigarette (WD, 166). Then the young Arsen'ev, during the course of several requiems, observes the changes in Pisarev's body. A few hours after his death, Pisarev "lay with his eyes closed — I still can see their dark purple bulge — but still quite like a living man". By the evening, however, the picture that met the protagonist's eyes "was indeed terrible" (WD, p. 166). In the morning, Arsen'ev, after a sleepless night, is terrified by the sight of "the new, dark violet lid of the coffin" (cf, "Passing Away"). On the second day Arsen'ev observes with horror the dead man's "blackened eyelids, showing metallically lustrous through the warm, sultry smoke and the hot, trembling glitter" (WD, p. 167). And during the night which Arsen'ev spends in his former study and next to him (Bunin italicizes these pronouns), he becomes so frightened that he is seized by hallucinations in which he sees the deceased "rising to his full height, with eyes shut, and clothed in all his sepulchral array" (WD, p. 169). The climax is reached on the third day when Pisarev's body is carried to its eternal rest. While still in the

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church, Arsen'ev looks at the "cadaverous face" of the deceased, "with its sharpened nose, its black transparent beard and moustache under which gleamed the flat clotted lips" (WD, p. 179. C f , "The Gentleman from San Francisco", "To One's Forefathers' Kin"). Then follows the inserting of the "absolution" between Pisarev's "rigid fingers with blackened nails", and giving him "the last kiss". This last kiss is the most terrifying experience for Arsen'ev: "Lord! What cold and stench blew up at me in that terrible moment, and how upset I was by the icy hardness of the dark-lemon frontal bone under that wreath" (WD, p. 180). As in many other works of Bunin, Pisarev's death is contrasted with the indifference of nature: The morning was quiet, warm and clear; the sun was warming up the dry porch, the courtyard with its bright, new, tender green, the garden, still bare of foliage, yet gleaming tenderly and already turning soft grey in a springlike way" ( WD, 167). And those who survive are also quite indifferent to the deceased. Young Arsen'ev is in love with Annchen, looks at her during the requiem and thinks of their rendezvous in the evening. The others speak in clichés while consoling the young widow and hurry to take part in the funeral banquet in the room where, just a while ago, the coffin stood. Arsen'ev, having entered the room, "was at once met by that dreadful smell unlike anything in the world which had been irritating him throughout the morning near the coffin" (WD, p. 183). The wake seems to Arsen'ev a real blasphemy: Yet how horrible that protracted and coarsely plentiful dinner was, interrupted now and then by the already inharmonious, drunken voices of the choirmen, who rose up and with feeling sang the eternal memory of the incomprehensible being whom they just buried behind the church (WD, 183). Before the 1952 edition, The Life of Arsen'ev ended with Arsen'ev attending the funeral of the Grand Duke of Russia who died in southern France (now the ending of "Book Four"). The purpose of inserting this scene was not only to exploit an opportunity to describe a dead body but also to show Arsen'ev's link with the past, with Russia, with his youth. By a mere coincidence, while still a correspondent for the Golos in Orel, Arsen'ev, waiting for his train on the platform at the railway station, witnesses the passing of a certain funeral train of 'extreme importance'. The body of the deceased man is escorted by the Grand Duke, then in his prime years: A young giant with bright fair hair, in red hussar's uniform, with sharp regular

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features and fine nostrils, curved vigorously and as it were slightly contemptuously, with a rather too prominent chin.... Could I have thought on that hot spring day how and when I was to see him once more!... A whole life has passed since then. Russia, Orel, spring.... And, here, now, France, the South, Mediterranean winter days (WD, 301-302. Passim). Bunin never fails to render new surroundings correctly, which here are so different from those on Pisarev's estate in the spring, far away in Russia. The rising mistral, the rustling of the palms, and the glitter of the western sky during the southern winter transport the reader immediately into a foreign atmosphere. But the internal atmosphere of the old Russia is instantly created by just one stroke of the pen: All of a sudden I, Arsen'ev, notice on the porch a thing which I have not seen for full ten years, and which strikes me like the whole of my former life suddenly and miraculously resuscitated before my eyes: a Russian officer, cleareyed and with ruddy moustache, wearing a tunic with shoulder-straps... (WD, 301-302). The royal richness of the "yellow oaken sarcophagus", the splendor of the room where the Duke's body lies, the last guard of honor — all these, official and impersonal, are marvelously 'softened' by one small detail: Right in the corner, behind the head of the coffin, an ikon-light burns on a small table before an ancient ikon, timid and tender as in a nursery (WD, 302-303). Feeling the solemnity of the moment, Arsen'ev observes the dead person but restrains himself from making remarks about the ugliness of the dead face or the odor which he noticed so acutely at Pisarev's coffin. On the contrary, there is something rather pleasant in that old man's head, no longer fair, but grey, yet still imperious and proud... this head now looks large — so childlishly thin and narrow have his shoulders become... his hands are those of an old man, too, though still powerful, striking one by their woodenness and by the fact that with one of them he clasps in his fist, with menacing firmness, like a sword, an old cypress cross from Mount Athos, blackened with age... (WD, 302-303. Passim). The mature Arsen'ev listens attentively now to the solemn words of the requiem which he has heard so many times since Pisarev's death. The passages in which Bunin describes the blowing mistral are inseparable from the general picture; they are an essential part of it and create that mood of which Bunin is an absolute master. The last chapter of "Book Four" is eighteen lines long and is a miniature story by itself. It is perhaps the most powerful piece in Bunin's works concerning death. It lacks realistic detail, but it contains the symbolic mixing of the mistral with

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the mystery of death; it weaves together nature, death, and the author's feeling and reflections; it strikes with simplicity of syntax; and it attracts the reader by an exquisite choice of words: During the night, on my hilltop, the mistral sets everything booming, roaring, raging. Suddenly I wake up. In a dream I have just seen, or fancied, that during the leavetaking after the requiem, a tall slim girl was the last of those near to him to take leave of him. Dressed all in black, with a long mourning veil, she approached him so simply, bent over him with such womanly love, and for an instant the fluttering end of her veil hid at once the coffin's edge and the old, yet childlike, uniformed shoulder.... The mistral rushes on and on; the branches of the palm trees, rustling in stormy confusion, seem also to be rushing somewhere.... I rise, and with difficulty push open the door onto the balcony. The cold strikes me in the face, and overhead a jet-black sky opens wide, covered with blazing stars, white and blue and red. Everything is rushing somewhere, on and on. Slowly I make the sign of the Cross, gazing up at that baleful, sable-hued thing which blazes above my head (WD, 306). Even in "Book Five", which is mainly devoted to Lika and Arsen'ev's love affair, Arsen'ev's wanderings through Russia, and his striving to become a writer, Bunin cannot refrain from writing about death. In a kind of a diary which Arsen'ev begins to write there is a passage on the theme of death. Arsen'ev describes the frightening experience of seeing a dead child in a coffin when he enters a little old church on a dark, overcast evening: I saw the lights of candles flickering in the darkness close to the pulpit, very low down, and coming closer. I froze to the spot: three wax candles on the edge of a bier, shed their faint and melancholy light into the pink coffin that was trimmed with paper lace on the sides, and illuminated the dark, roundfaced child lying in it. You might have thought he was asleep but for the porcelain glaze on his face, the tinge of lilac on his round, closed eyelids and the triangle of his mouth, but for that infinitely calm eternal alienation from everything in the world that was imprinted on his features (ShP, 342-343). At one point Bunin's obsession with death reaches the point of almost absurd exaggeration. Tired of Lika, Arsen'ev has a casual love affair with a simple and quite vulgar peasant girl. While looking for a secluded place in the vicinity of a railway station, Arsen'ev pulls the girl into a box car with open doors which stands on a siding: I struck a match to see where we were, and recoiled in horror: the light of the match revealed a long cheap coffin in the centre of the floor. She streaked out like a wild goat, I sprang out after her. Once out of the car she kept falling down in the darkness, choking with laughter, and kissing me with a wild abandon, while all I wanted was to get away from there. After that, I never showed myself in the village again (ShP, pp. 413-414).

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Bunin writes so vigorously about death because he loves life, and, since love is for Bunin the highest manifestation of life, it is as important as death in all of Bunin's works and particularly in The Life of Arsen'ev. As in Mitja's Love, the awakening of sex in Arsen'ev goes back to his childhood. One day young Alesa begins to wonder why his elder brother goes almost every day to see a certain Saska: Only because for some reason he liked her kind, modest face, the nice circular cut of the white calico shirt round her neck, her tall figure and bare feet.... That cut I also liked, and it also called forth something languorous and insoluble: one wanted to do something with it, but what in particular, or why, one could not understand (WD, 50-51). Then as a high school boy, Arsen'ev is introduced to a girl of a higher form and he became so vividly and sensuously aware of all that peculiar and terrible something which lurks in the lips of a laughing woman, in the child-like intonation of a woman's voice, in the roundness of a woman's shoulders, in the slimness of a woman's waist, in that inexpressible something which there is even in a woman's ankle... (WD, 128). Perhaps an even more frank statement about the power of sex appears in the confession of Bunin through his mouthpiece, Arsen'ev, when the latter has been invited to attend a dance at the women's high school: "Welcome to the ball!" — troubling one by that full clear tone, rousing in me the first feeling for something which lay behind those fur coats, galoshes, and bonnets, in those tender excited faces, in the long frosted eyelashes and quick ardent glances — the feeling that was afterwards to possess me with such force... (WD, 123). Undoubtedly this quotation explains Arsen'ev's love first for Annchen, which is still rather innocent, youthful infatuation, and then for his common-law wife, Lika, which will be passionate and unbridled. It explains why so many stories of Bunin deal with love in many different aspects and why so many critics notice Bunin's eroticism. Even while Arsen'ev was in love with Annchen and the latter would sit on his knees and embrace him, he "would hear the beating of her heart, for the first time in [his] life feel the blissful weight of a woman's body... (WD, p. 187). At the age of sixteen Arsen'ev is the double of the somewhat older Mitja in Mitja's Love. Notwithstanding Arsen'ev's love for Liza Bibikov, he, like Mitja, is attracted by the power of the peasant women and girls who, while washing linen in the water by the shore, expose "their knees — large, red and yet tender, womanly..." (WD, p. 209). Arsen'ev hastens,

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away because it is hard for him "to see their bare knees". In the fall when Arsen'ev works with a group of peasant girls on a threshing machine, one of them, a long-legged, red-haired wench, who used to sing most dashingly and most skillfully of all, and at the same time, nothwithstanding all her apparent roughness with a peculiar sad soulfulness, openly hinted that she would not refuse anything, for, say, a pair of new scissors... (WD, 215). This indicates not only Arsen'ev's desire for sexual relations (only by chance he misses on this occasion), but, since it shows the standard of morality among the peasants, explains why Stepanida in Tolstoj's "The Devil" and Alenka in Mitja's Love are easily susceptible to bargains. The first 'fall' of Arsen'ev, his first sexual experience, is with Tan'ka, a married, twenty-year-old woman whose husband is absent from home on his itinerant work as a saddler (cf.'., Alenka's husband in Mitja's Love). One evening Arsen'ev enters the house and sees Tan'ka, who sits on the floor and gazes at the burning stove, "straddling her bare legs, their tibias shining against the light with their smooth skin". After a short exchange of words Arsen'ev approaches her. The love scene is only partially described: I squatted on the floor, looking at her bare legs and at her head, already full of inward tremors, but laughing and pretending also to admire the embers and their dark-crimson glow.... Then suddenly I sat beside her, embraced her, and threw her on the floor, catching her reluctant lips, hot because of the fire. The poker rattled, some sparks flew from the stove... (WD, 229-230). As in many other similar situations Bunin again uses his favorite adverb 'suddenly', stressing the momentous flow of passion which is beyond human control. Unlike Mitja, Arsen'ev does not feel disappointment, although he is seized by a deadly anguish that something irreparable has just happened to him. However, the next morning he reasons that he is already seventeen and that "what happened is only that natural, necessary thing which had to happen" (WD, p. 231). Moreover, he is proud of it. He believes he is a man now, has a mistress, and is in love with her. Arsen'ev's affair with Lika brings forth more of the erotic element in the book. Arsen'ev and Lika's first, voluntary parting indicates that 'the last barrier' will be soon crossed. Lika sends Arsen'ev a telegram imploring him to come back to her: "'I can bear it no longer. Come'". Naturally, Arsen'ev responds to her call. His passion for her is growing. He admits: "There were times when I could not look at her calmly.... Her clean body relaxed loosely and comfortably in an armchair, while her cat, silky white with pink eyes, purred on her plump and slightly

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spread knees" (ShP, p. 274, passim). Their "frightening intimacy", their happiness "which was exhausting both mentally and physically" (ShP, p. 280), takes place in the railway car while Lika is going home from Orel: "We were already far away; it was the middle of the night.... Everything happened without our volition, or our consciousness. She got up with a flaming face that saw nothing, smoothed her hair and, closing her eyes, sat unapproachably in a corner..." (ShP, p. 279). Then Arsen'ev jots down in his notes his ever growing desire for Lika: "I, with a feeling that was tormenting and already habitual, gazed at her ankle laced into the tall boot, at her grey-stockinged leg revealed by her short grey skirt — even the sight of that thick woolen cloth alone tormented me with desire..." (ShP, p. 281). Even at social gatherings Arsen'ev, watching Lika and filled with an unjustified jealousy, cannot abstain from his thoughts about her: "But then, how I yearned for true intimacy with her, and how I suffered when I failed in this" (ShP, p. 284). While wrapping her fur coat round her shoulders, he checks with difficulty his "impulse to suddenly kiss this terribly close bare flesh and this fragrant, waved hair..." (ShP, p. 328). After not seeing each other for a time, the lovers meet again in their home town and Arsen'ev leads Lika to a hotel: I knelt down before her, hugged her knees, kissed them through the cloth and wept. She lifted my head, and once again I felt her clear, unutterably sweet lips on mine, and heard our tremulous hearts dying to a blissful standstill. I jumped up, turned the key in the door, with icy hands drew the white puffed-up curtains down on the windows — outside a black, leafless tree swayed in the wind, and a rook screamed in alarm and swung on a branch drunkenly (ShP, 364). This quotation is almost at the end of the fifteenth chapter. F. Stepun calls it a "powerful ending" (potrjasajuscij konec): It is wonderful. Instead of passion Bunin describes the wind and the rook, but, reading this description, one experiences the interlude in one's heart. It is impossible to tell more briefly of the swoop and cosmic element of passion, about its power which sways the soul.26 The ending of the twenty-first chapter is a simple outburst of passion: "I caught and kissed her naked shoulders, her legs.... The contrast in the hot and cool parts of her body moved me most of all" (ShP, p. 380). In spite of Arsen'ev's love for Lika, the sight of peasant women and the naked women bathing in the river stirs him "with the hot smell of their bodies". On the train he sees "some Ukrainian women sleep flat on 26

Ibid., p. 174.

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their backs with arms flung out, lips parted, breasts outlined by their blouses, heavy hips in tight skirts..." (ShP, p. 411). All these quotations show not only Bunin's notion of love and the importance that he attaches to it but also that there is a great deal of eroticism in The Life of Arsen'ev. If one has to judge the value of this or that work solely on the ground of prudery — the yardstick that E. Wasiolek and others use for Dark Alleys — then The Life of Arsen'ev too should be discarded as a 'lascivious and pornographic' book. Many passages which have been quoted in this monograph demonstrate that Bunin's realistic approach to love and sex has no parallel among nineteenth century writers, and, although his clarity of expression and thought are on a level with his great predecessors, such as Turgenev, GonSarov, and Tolstoj, his frankness of expression does not fit within the framework of their writing. Even though some works of Tolstoj touch upon physical love, he carefully avoids descriptions of sexual relations and does not infringe upon the conventions of the time. Besides the themes of death and love Bunin develops another significant theme in The Life of Arsen'ev, the theme of Russia. Indeed, like a huge crowd in Nesterov's picture, in The Life of Arsen'ev a countless number of people go by before the reader's eyes, and dozens of small events and episodic figures flash across the pages of the book. Arsen'ev's unstable and restless nature urges him to wander through Russia and thus enables him to observe his country from Sebastopol to St. Petersburg, from Moscow to Poltava. The wintry landscape of Vitebsk and Smolensk is contrasted with the hot summer days in the Ukraine, and the warm spring drizzle with the frost that "splits the earth several feet down". Arsen'ev's range of interest is wide — now he examines eagerly a "little russety cornbeetle, entangled in the spikes", now he pauses to describe a Roman Catholic church which he visits in Vitebsk: I walked in and saw rows of benches in the half-light and up in front a semicircle of little lights on the communion table. And all at once I heard the slow and pensive sounds of the organ overhead, flowing smoothly and softly, gaining volume, growing higher, harsh and metallic; there was a quavering and grinding noise as though the sounds were fighting free of something that was smothering them, and, suddenly, they tore away and swelled in glorious, heavenly canticle. In front of me, where the lights wereflickering,a muttering rose and fell, voices intoned in Latin with a nasal twang. In the dusk I made out some armour-clad figures on pedestals, ranged like black ghosts on both sides of the stone pillars that vanished into the darkness overhead. High above the altar a large stained-glass window was gloomily fading away (ShP, pp. 357-358).

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Although many characters among the peasants, the small bourgeois, and the intelligentsia are familiar to the reader from Bunin's previous works, nevertheless one feels in this work more warmth, more consideration for their human weaknesses, and a more humane attitude toward them. Positive traits appear along with the negative, and, therefore, their portraits are more objective than those drawn in the period of 'gloom'. K. Zajcev exclaims emphatically: Oh, Lord, how this Russia [as it is described in The Life of Arseriev] differs from that which is known to us from Bunin's early works! Gloom reigned almost without relief over that Russia. Now the light flows gently from her image which is resuscitated by the poet's genius. Where is the truth?26 As if repeating the Marxist critic Vorovskij, K. Zajcev writes that in Bunin's early works there was "ne vsja pravda" ('not all the truth') and in The Life of Arseriev he "imprinted Russia's image, not temporary and distorted, but eternal, metaphysically illuminated". 27 The most important aspect of this last book of Bunin's is the inner, spiritual world of Arsen'ev, because it is through his hero's meditations and thoughts that Bunin reveals his own perception of the world. Arsen'ev's cherished dream is to become a writer. His struggles to write about the simplest event or the most common thing, to write without falsity and stiffness, out of his heart, runs through the entire book. In Vejdle's opinion, The Life of Arsen'ev "excites one both by the presentation of unceasing, demanding, painful creative efforts (to write something) and by the picture of an accomplished work". 28 "Book Five" describes Arsen'ev's passion for Lika and shows how the young man is seized by "another secret torment, another bitter and elusive dream", that is, his desire to become a writer. He wants to create something different from the stories he has published before which seem to him unpleasant and false: One is about some starving peasants, whom I have never seen [cf, "News from Home" and "Away from Home"] and really cannot pity, the other follows the trite theme of a landowner faced with ruin which is equally unreal [cf, "The Lazy Ones"], whereas all I wanted to write about was the huge silvery poplar... (ShP, p. 343). Arsen'ev's thoughts are not concerned with what he has written, but, as he admits, 26 27 26

K. Zajcev, I. A. Bunin: zizn' i tvorcestvo (Berlin, n.d.), p. 227. Ibid., p. 227. V. Vejdle, "Na smert' Bunina", Opyty, 3 (1954), p. 90.

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I was tormented by the desire to write something different, not at all what I could and did write: something that I could not write. I thought what rare happiness it must be, what spiritual endeavour to develop within yourself, from sources life had given you, something truly deserving of being a writer. And so my life became more and more a struggle with this elusive desire, a search and capture of that new and equally elusive happiness, pursuit of it and incessant brooding on it (ShP, p. 315). As he does nowhere else, in The Life of Arsen'ev Bunin chooses various quotations from his favorite writers, both Russian and western. While still a child, Arsen'ev was fascinated by Puskin's "wizardly prologue to Ruslan and Ludmila", by "this priceless evocation of circling, continuous movements ('by day, by night, the learned cat keeps walking round upon his chain')" (WD, pp. 54-55, passim). Later, under the influence of his tutor, Baskakov, the young boy falls in love with Gogol', whose "OldWorld Landowners and A Terrible Revenge turned out to be among those most important things which went in the making of his vital substance (to use Gogol"s own expression)" (WD, p. 56). While boarding as a high school boy with the Rostovcev family, Arsen'ev recites a poem of Kol'cov of whom the mescanin Rostovcev is so immensely proud because this poet is "'an ordinary decent man of our class — a countryman of our own'" (WD, p. 100). A lovely, frosty moonlit night on the Baturino estate brings to his mind Derzavin's "lordly-proud lines": H a TeMHo r o j i y 6 o M 3npe 3jiaTaa n n a B a n a J i y n a . . . CKB03b OKHa flOM m o h 0 3 a p j u i a H naneBHM CBOHM j i y i o M 3jiaTHe creKJia pHcoBana H a jiaKOBOM n o j i y MoeM...

(Amid the dark-blue ether There swam the golden moon, Through windows shining on my house, And with its pallid ray Painted golden window-panes Upon my lackered floor...) During Arsen'ev's infatuation with Annchen, he is captivated by Goethe's Faust, which stirs his emotion: Now up, now down I speed, In life-flow, stormy deed, Rush hither or recede! Although Arsen'ev admits that all his youth "passed with Pushkin",

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Lermontov becomes for him inseparable from Puskin. M. Aldanov supports Bunin's statement: During our last conversation we began to speak about literature. — "I always thought that our greatest poet was Pu§kin", said Bunin, and continued: "No, it is Lermontov. One cannot even imagine how far he would have gone if he had not died at the age of twenty-seven".29 Arsen'ev's impoverishment is compared with the state of Puskin's house in Mixajlovskoe which, in Jazykov's description, "presented a picture far from prosperous": OSOHMH XYFLMMH K o S - r f l e nprncpbiTa« CTeHa IIOJI HenraeHHBift, A s a M

flBepb

oKHa

cTeKJMHHafl M e »

HHMH,

XlHBaH nofl 06pa30M B yrny JXa napa C T y j n > e B . . . (Walls miserably papered here and there; a battered floor; two windows; between them a door of glass; a sofa in the corner under the ikon; and a pair of chairs...). Arsen'ev's love for southern Russia, her immense steppes, the historic names, the spirit of ancient times — all these make him confess: "The Tale of the Campaign of Igor fired my imagination" (WD, p. 228). (Cf, "Ash Wednesday"; also the poem "Kovyl'" — [The Feather Grass]). One of the purposes of this monograph is to show that in many instances Arsen'ev is Bunin himself. The few critics who do not agree with this prevailing opinion (e.g., K. Zajcev, M. Aldanov, F. Stepun) should find it hard to prove the contrary. The Life of Arsen'ev is the artistically presented life of a real hero, its author. In a short story, "The Book" (1924), Bunin expresses the credo of a writer — the credo to which he faithfully adhered in The Life of Arsen'ev. Why is it necessary for a writer to invent? Why are heroes and heroines necessary? Why must one necessarily write a novel or a story with plot and denouement? Oh, this eternal fear to appear insufficiently learned, insufficiently like the celebrities! And that eternal suffering — to be silent all the time, not to speak about just that which is truly yours and really genuine, which most lawfully demands expression, that is, which leaves the imprint, embodiment and preservation in the word at least! (Sobr. soc., IV, p. 88). 2

* Aldanov, op. cit., p. 133.

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Thus, in 'the word' Bunin faithfully presents in The Life of ArserCev in one place not only his early life and the longing of his old age, but also the threads of all the themes which he had dealt with in earlier compositions: the decline of his own class, and his defence of it; his pondering, philosophizing on life and death; his preoccupation with love and sex; and his intense dislike of contemporary civilization. It is rare indeed, that an author succeeds in condensing and crystallizing all his works in one novel. Ivan Bunin, one of the greatest of the Russian writers of the twentieth century, made the attempt and was eminently successful.30 In 1929 Bunin wrote a short story, "Bernard", about an old sailor on Maupassant's yacht, Bel Ami. This sailor is a man truly devoted to his vocation, keeps the boat impeccably clean, and loves deeply his deceased master. Shortly before the sailor dies he says to himself : " 'Je crois bien que j'étais un bon marin'". Bunin interprets these words of Bernard as follows : God gives everybody this or that talent and makes us responsible for not wasting it.... Bernard knew and felt that. All his life long he had fullfilled the modest task which God had charged him with diligently, honestly, and faithfully (Sobr. soc., Berlin, IX, 243-244. Passim). In 1952 Bunin, mortally ill and bed-ridden, reworked the story and placed it as the last one in the first part of the collection In Spring in Judea: Jericho's Rose. It is considered Bunin's last story. In the new variant Bunin speaks not only about Bernard, but also about himself : I think that as an artist (xudoznik) I deserve the right to say about myself, in my last days, something similar to what Bernard said before his death (Sobr. soc., TV, 422). Bunin was a professional writer and, working "diligently, honestly, and faithfully" throughout his long life, earned the right to quote Bernard's words, "un bon marin", in evaluating his own literary achievements. 31

ao

C. H. Bedford, "The Fulfilment of Ivan Bunin", Canadian Slavonic Papers, 1 (1956), p. 44. 81 G. Adamovic ends his essay on Bunin on the same note (c/., Odinocestvo i svoboda). We could not restrain ourselves from not using his idea in this monograph.

7 BUNIN'S POETRY

7.1 GENERAL TENOR

Seven years before Bunin's first story was published ("Tan'ka", 1894), his poem "A Country Beggar" appeared in the journal Rodina [Fatherland] of May, 1887. In his "Autobiographical Note" for Vengerov the young poet wrote about this important event in his life: "I shall never forget that morning when I walked with this issue home from the post office in Ozerki, picked up the dewy lilies-of-the-valley in the woods, and read and reread my poem every minute". 1 This poem, written in the spirit of Nekrasov, is a pitiful picture of the village poor: B cropoHe OT .aoporH, n o « ay6oM I l o a jiynaMH najwnuiMH CITHT B 3HnyHHinKe, 3anrronaHHOM rpy6o, Crapbift HHUUIH, cefloii HHBajmfl; TpycTHO BHfleTb, KaK MHoro CTpaaaHbfl H TOCKH H Hyac/iw HA Pycn! (At the roadside, under an oak tree, Under the burning sun rays, Clad in a shabby, roughly mended coat Sleeps an old beggar, the gray haired invalid. It is pitiful to see, how much suffering And sadness and poverty there are in Russia!)

Typically, after this description of the beggar's appearance, the poem ends on a truly populist note — the sad sight of Russia's countryside. The subject matter is not representative of Bunin's later poetry. 1

I. Bunin, "Avtobiograficeskaja zametka", Russkaja literatura XX veka, ed. by S. A. Vengerov (Moscow, 1915), p. 336. Bunin's first printed poem, "Over S. Ja. Nadson's Grave", appeared two months earlier in Rodina (8, 1887).

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Having started his literary career as a poet, Bunin wrote poetry throughout his life and completed his last poem, "The Night", shortly before his death. Early critics who were hostile toward 'modernism' evaluated Bunin's poetry favorably because of its conservative character and paid more attention to it than to his prose — e.g., the critics of the Russian Imperial Academy, such as Count Goleniscev-Kutuzov and F. Batjuskov, and the critics of the conservative camp outside of the Academy, represented by Konstantin Romanov. The later critics took the reverse view: Bunin's prose, especially after his The Village and Dry Valley, attracted their primary attention and his poetry was treated as a stepchild. And while in both émigré and Soviet criticism one occasionally finds a few lines or pages about Bunin's poetry, western criticism disregards it almost entirely. The majority of authoritative writers in the field of Russian literature do not share the opinion of Nabokov, who says without any additional comments that he has always "preferred his [Bunin's] little known verse to his celebrated prose".2 Mirsky, for example, without denying his talent as a poet says that Bunin belongs to the old, pre-symbolist school.... Though by no means so important a poet as he is a novelist, he is a genuine poet, the only significant poet of the symbolist age who was not a symbolist.8 R. Poggioli, paying lip service to Bunin's poetry, writes that "Bunin's lyrics can be hardly compared, from the viewpoint of both quantity and quality, to his novels and tales".4 Bunin himself regarded his poetry very highly. In a letter to Sedyx, of early 1950, he wrote: I appreciate your praising of my poems. They are unusually brilliant— what a naturalness of language, what rhymes! So far nobody has written so well! Mercil

Merci\b

This remark, full of irony and bitterness, requires some explanation which Sedyx supplies immediately after quoting Bunin's letter: I have intentionally quoted this letter, — one of the few in which Bunin speaks about his poems. The ironical opinion which he held sounded at that time like some sort of challenge and self-defense. Bunin valued his poetry hardly less and perhaps even more than his prose, and when he almost ceased writing 8

V. Nabokov, Conclusive Evidence (New York, 1915), p. 214. During my conversation with Nina Berberova I asked her about the motivation of Nabokov's statement. Her answer was: "Just to be different". ' D. S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature (New York, 1960), p. 391. Passim. 4 R. Poggioli, The Poets of Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), p. 113. 6 Quoted by A. Sedyx, Dalekie, blizkie (New York, 1962), p. 233.

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poems during his last years, it was, it seems to me, due to the oskomina ("unpleasant taste") left in his mouth by the tremendous success of Esenin whom Bunin did not understand. And the Parisian "young" poets, already far from being young, regarded Bunin's poetry as old fashioned and "out of keeping with present day life".6 We have commented on Bunin's hostility toward the Symbolist movement and his irreconcilable attitude to all 'modern' trends in poetry and prose. And yet, paradoxically, his first serious steps in literature were associated with this movement. At the beginning of the careers of some of the most prominent Symbolists, such as Belyj, Blok, and I. Ivanov, Bunin was already cooperating with the Znanie group. Somewhat earlier, in the 1890's, we find Bunin in the company of Brjusov, Bal'mont, and Baltrusajtis. There is no concrete evidence to explain their initial alliance — — it remains solely a matter for conjecture. It seems to me that Bunin approached Brjusov and his associates for two reasons: first, because of their common distrust, weariness of, and antipathy toward 'civic' trends (Bunin's "Country Beggar" is not representative), which, with exception of the late work of Nadson and Minskij, prevailed at the time in Russian literature; and second because of their mutual literary advantage. Brjusov sent some of his poems to Bunin which were published in the Juznoe obozrenie (No. 727, 1899), with which Bunin was connected at that time. On the other hand, Bunin sent his translation of Hiawatha to Brjusov and asked for his opinion: Find some free time to read it. I would like to know your opinion. Although you cannot compare it with the original, I think you will feel whether there is the smell of virgin woods in it or not.' Even much later, when he was established as a writer and his friendship with Gor'kij was at its height, Bunin offered to Brjusov's Russkaja mysV a story of 'two sheets' (dva lista) in length for 500 rubles per sheet. Bunin's price was high, because the normal honorarium for contributors did not exceed 100 rubles per sheet, as is evident from Brjusov's letter to Bunin of February 15, 1912.8 Most important, Bunin's first collection of poems, entitled Listopad [Leaves Fall], was published by the Scorpion in 1900 under Brjusov's supervision. However, the break with the Symbolists came soon on Bunin's initiative. He admits: 4

Ibid., p. 233. The letter of February 23, 1899. See "Perepiska V. Ja. Brjusova s I. A. Buninym", publication of N. Vinokurova, Novoe russkoe slovo, December 29, 1963. e Loc. cit. 7

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I parted with it [Scorpion] very soon, having no desire to play with my new friends at Argonauts, demons, and Magi and talk all sorts of high-flown nonsense, although some of the critics had already begun to speak about my "infatuation with the decadents".9 For the Symbolists it was a period of violent literary campaigning; the whole environment was rigidly divided into two camps: friends and enemies. The fact that the Symbolists published Bunin's poetry on the eve of his break with them indicates that they still hoped to retain him in their ranks and believed that the cleavage between them was not too wide and ought to shrink. According to Mirsky: One of the principal effects of the symbolist movement was to multiply a hundredfold the number of poets and to raise in an almost equal degree the average level of their workmanship and the social position in the estimation of the public and the publishers.10 Already in 1895, shortly after Bunin and Brjusov had met, the latter wrote in a note to Bal'mont: "Although Bunin is not a Symbolist, he is a genuine poet." 11 In the light of such favorable evaluation, it would have been a real asset for Brjusov and his confreres to have this 'genuine poet' with them. But Bunin felt the unnaturalness of this alliance and looked for a chance to discontinue it. In all probability, Bunin, one of the last products of the gentry culture, felt a stranger among the Symbolists, the first-born sons of Russian urbanism 12 and the representatives of the fin-de-siecle atmosphere. Bunin, who still felt close bonds with the soil, saw the shortcomings of Symbolism. Its decadence, its cultivation of abnormal, artificial, and neurotic subjects, was for Bunin its most obvious and unbearable trait. And this caused the break. Bunin was the only well-known poet of that era (Gor'kij's contributions to poetry are rather insignificant) who had courage to declare war on Symbolism. He did not oppose it as a literary theoretician; but neither did he limit himself to a passive 'nonacceptance' or to simply defending the pre-Symbolist literary positions. His active struggle against Symbolism is evident not in his theories but in his poetic practice. After 1900 Bunin's poetic career of fifty years is characterized by a consistent 9

Bunin, op. cit., p. 339. Mirsky, op. cit., p. 472. V. Brjusov, Dalekie i blizkie (Moscow, 1912), p. 155. 12 Of course, not all the Symbolists were drawn from the urban middle class. Blok, like Bunin, was born into a gentry family. However, Blok belongs to the 'second generation' of the Symbolists. His Verses about the Lady Beautiful were published in 1904. when Bunin was already with the Znanie. 10 II

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resistance to Symbolism. This was indeed a spectacular struggle, since Bunin was waging it alone. He tried hard to free his poems of everything reminiscent of, or related to, Symbolism. Rejecting it in toto, Bunin renounced some of its positive possibilities. An important criterion for the presentation of reality is the poet's relation to landscape, and it is not at all surprising that Bunin challenged vigorously the Symbolists' approach to nature as merely rough material to be reworked. Bunin strove to attain maximum objectivity in his presentation of nature; his greatest fear was to see nature 'transformed'. He perfected his sensory apparatus to a degree that none of the Symbolists could have challenged. In depicting the world, the Symbolists first of all presented themselves. This led, of course, to an intense lyricism, the strongest element in their creativity, but, also to one of their greatest weaknesses. While granting poetry unlimited rights to delve deeply into the fathomless realm of feeling, some of the Symbolists could not keep themselves aloof from the pose and exaggeration which they carried over from 'decadence'. Bunin went to the other extreme. He replaced the poetic licence of the 'decadents' by traditionalism, striving for 'unusualness' by stressing simplicity, making paradoxes with statements which sometime bordered on banality. The more unusual the subject matter of Symbolist poetry became, the more persistently Bunin sought the usual in his. Ultimately, fearing the exclusiveness and exaggeration that come with the expression of feelings, Bunin condemned himself to a certain self-imposed impassivity. This is evident in the following critical evaluation of him as a poet: He is a restrained poet, he does not foist his own mood on nature, he likes it as it is.... He does not dissipate his lyricism in vain.... His poetry is calm, without extravagance, without happenings....13 Emotions in Bunin's poetry are well hidden. Only occasionally are they expressed in fleeting remarks, in distant allusions, or more often in lyrical endings to purely descriptive poems. At times Bunin's poems lack even such endings and lyricism itself is totally absent from his lyrics. And here lies the cause of his deceptive 'coolness' — a word which became an epithet among those few critics who wrote about Bunin's poetry ("Bunin's poetry is a cool poetry; it looks as if it were hardened...". 14 ) Actually there is no coolness in the poet himself. There is rather a sort of 15

Ju. Ajxenval'd, Siluety russkix pisatelej (Moscow, 1913), pp. 134-135. Passim. Evg. Ljackij, "Voprosy iskusstva v sovremennyx ego otrazenijax", Vestnik evropy, II (1917), p. 282. 11

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excessive modesty. One can assume almost with certainty that Bunin's poetry would be quite different if it were not for his hatred for 'decadence'. From time to time, however, his emotions are beyond his control, and we see that even they can be strong, deep, and spontaneous. Nevertheless, the intentionally simple and consciously neutralized form he has chosen suppresses the feelings of the poet. Bunin's traditional poetry shows disinterest in poetic technique. He did not introduce new meters into Russian versification. He ignored Brjusov's experimentation with form and such prosodic innovations as doVnik\ he never "checked harmony through algebra" as Brjusov did. The difference between Bunin and the Symbolists lies primarily in his aloofness from the Symbolist Weltanschauung, from Bal'mont's and, mutatis mutandis, Blok's, vaguely emotive 'music'. 7.2 THEMES

Many themes in Bunin's poetry are concurrent with those of his prose; some of the latter, however, are completely absent in his poetry. Strange as it may seem, there are only a few poems about the Russian peasant — the theme so frequent in his stories. The 'civic' notes are as scarce as they are in his prose (e.g., "Cernozem"). The Soviet critics like to adduce his poem "Giordano Bruno", which he wrote during the 1905 Revolution and which, in their opinion, is both proof and result of Gor'kij's 'beneficial' influence. The next to the last stanza is supposed to bear a 'progressive' message (Bunin's italics): H MajieHbimft TpeBoacHbiii nejioBeie C 6 n e C T « m H M B 3 r j M f l O M , HPKHM H XOJIOflHMM

HFLET B orom.. " y M e p u t u u e paScKuu een EeccMepmueM eemaemcn — e ceododnoM". (And a little, worried man With a shining, clear, and cold glance Walks to the stake. He who died in the slave age Is crowned with immortality in the free one.)

Indeed, only after a strained interpretation can one read this historical poem as a revolutionary manifesto. The same can be said about another poem, "Zapustenie" [Desolation], which was written at about the same time and which develops the theme of the impoverishment of the gentry. Bunin never had any illusions about the fact that the comfortable country living belonged to the past. On a fall day the poet walks along the Oka river in his native region and enters an old 'gentlefolk nest' —a house

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which is attended now by a lonely old servant. The poet realizes that the time which demands change is already here: Ho OT«rero MOH AOMHK npn orae Cran h 6eflHefi H Memnie? O, 3Haio a — O H CJIHIIIKOM cTap... Ilopa poflHOMy Kpaio OvieHHTh xo3fleB B Harnett CTopoHe. HaM »cyTKO 3flecb. M M Bee B TOCKC, B TpeBore... Ilopa CBecra nocjiefltme HTora. (But why is my little house become both Poorer and smaller at the light? Oh, I know it — It is too old.... It is time for my native country To change owners in our region. We feel awe struck. We all feel depression, sadness.... It is time for the final summing-up). The whole poem is written in the first person — a rare device in Bunin's verse. The narrator reveals his feelings to the extent that he tells about his likings in the past: ocem> nosflHioio B POCCHH. jiecoK 6arpam.iH Ha rope, IIpocTop nojiefi H cyMpaioi rjiyxne, JIK>6HJI CTaJitHyio, cepyio Oicy... JIIOSHJI A

JIK>6HJI

(I loved the late autumn in Russia. I loved the little woods on the hill-side, The open fields and silent twilight, I liked the steel-like, gray Oka...). Notwithstanding all this, the poet exclaims in the last stanza: H amy Becentix 3ByKOB Tonopa, )Kfly pa3pyniem.Hflep30CTH0apa6oTM, Morynax pyK H cMejn>ix ronocoB! SI ymjsy HTO6 «H3Hb, nycTbflaaceB rpy6oii crnie, BHOBB pacuBejia H3 npaxa Ha MorHJie... (I'm waiting for the gay sounds of the axe, I'm waiting for the bold work of destruction, For mighty arms and courageous voices! I'm waiting for these things so that life, even in its brute force, Would again bud from the dust on the grave...). "One cannot avoid", writes S. Kastorskij, "seeing here the anticipation of the oncoming Revolution of 1905".15 Clearly, this is a very biased interpretation. Actually, the axe most likely belongs to the mescanin "

S. Kastorskij, "Gor'kij i Bunin", Zvezda, 3 (1956), p. 146.

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whom Bunin despises profoundly, to urban newcomers, to the nouveaux riches of Lopaxin's sort. In this case anyone who tears down the dilapidated house and cuts down the 'cherry orchard' would certainly be the last to think of revolution. Thus, with the absence of peasant themes and 'civic' motives in Bunin's poetry, there remain all the other subjects which occupied his attention in his prose. A poem by Igor Severjanin (pseudonym of I. V. Lotarev, 1887-1942), entitled "Bunin" (1925), characterizes almost perfectly the contents of Bunin's poetry: ero CTHxax — Becenaa xanenb, OTKOCM rop, 6jiecTaiime cmofloio, M cneTaa 6epe30it MOJIOAOK) IlecHb c o j i H t n m c y . H BCUIHHX BOA Kynem». B

npoipaneH CTHX, Rax ceBepHbift anpejib, To OH 6e«HT npoToiHoro BOAOIO, T o TennHTCfl CTyaeHoio 3Be3fl0K>,

B HeM ecTb KaKoft-To 6o.api.ift xMejib. YIOT ycaae6 B nopy HHCTonaaa. Bnarafl OOTHOiecTBa OTpafla. Pyacbe. Co6aKa. Cepaa OKa. H B03,nyx CKOBAHBI B KpucTanjie. KAMIIH. BHHO. Ilepo m MHTKO3 cTajra. flyma

I T o 0Tiy3KaeHH0H weHiiiHHe T o c x a .

(In his poems there are joyful dripping of snow, The hill slopes, which shine with mica, And the song that the young birch Sings to the sun. And there is also a font of spring water [in them]. The verse is transparent like April in the North. Now it flows like running water, Then it glimmers like a cold star. There is something cheerful and sober in it. The coziness of the estates in the time of fallen leaves. The happy delight of solitude. The shotgun. The dog. The gray Oka. Soul and air are welded together in crystal. The fireplace. The wine. The pen of soft steel. Grief for an estranged woman.)16 16

I. Severjanin, Severnye medal'ony (Belgrade, 1935), p. 18. This poem was sent to me by Alexis Rannit, Curator of the Slavic Department of Yale Library, with the following remark: "It is a wonderful poem by Severjanin dedicated to Bunin".

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In music there are works which are variations on a theme from another composer's music. They are often equal, if not superior, to the original works. In poetry this method is also common, as exemplified by Severjanin's poem. He describes not only the themes of Bunin's poetry but also imitates aptly his style, communicating informally, with slowly flowing words, the poet's longings. The last stanza of Bunin's "Solitude", written at the beginning of this century, served as a prototype for Severjanin's poem: Ho fljia aceHiiiHHbi npouiJioro HCT : Pa3juo6HJia — H craji eft nyacoft. HTO JK! KaMHH 3aToimio, 6ypy KynHTb.

Xoporno 6bi co6aKy

nHTb...

(The past does not exist for woman: Once she ceased loving me I became a stranger for her. So what! I shall light up the fireplace, I shall drink.... It would be a good idea to buy a dog). In "Desolation" Bunin calls Oka "gray"; in "The Sky" the first two lines show the spring thaw in April: B nepeBHe KanajiH KaneJiH, EMJI TermbiH conHeHHbift anpeiib.

(The dripping snow dripped in the country, It was a warm, sunny April). In one untitled poem Bunin proclaims: "I'll never get tired of singing of you, stars!" In another he writes that "the stars of the autumn night, the cold stars" speak about eternal sadness, about eternal night. Undoubtedly Severjanin identified very felicitously the general elements of Bunin's poetry. Let us add a few more and discuss them at some length. Love and death, of which Bunin speaks so frequently in his prose, are also the subject of some of his poems, but the tone of the poetry is different. The love poems recollect past love' rather than describe the present. Furthermore, with a few insignificant exceptions, Bunin's poems about love lack that erotic element which is often present in his stories. The reader does not find any love scenes, outburts of passion, and unexpected and fatal meetings. Everything looks as if it were in a distant, very distant past, as if it were the product of pure memory. The reminiscences of "her", of "first love", and of a "beautiful woman" are associated with nature. The new moon, for example, evokes in the poet the recollection of his first love:

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bunin's poetry 3aBTpa oh 3apeio BbiilzjeT bhobi> H onjrrt HanoMmrr, OflHHOKHir, MHe BecHy h nepByio juo6oBb H TBOtt o6pa3 MHJIHH H flaJieKHH... (Tomorrow it will rise at the evening dawn, A n d again it, the lonely one, will remind me O f spring and my first love A n d your dear and distant image).

Sometimes the rain — 'glass-like, thin, and bracing' ("stekljannyj, redkij ijadrennyj") — evokes the poet's memories of his casual love episode: EflBa jiHinb ao6e3KHM #o qauui, Bee craxHeT... O pochctmh KycT! H B30P CHaCTJIHBHft H 6neCTamHH, H x0Ji0fl0K noKopHbix ycT! (As soon as we reach the thicket Everything will calm down. O h , dewy bush! O h , happy and shining eyes, A n d coolness of submissive lips!)

The love poems are limited to Bunin's early period (approximately up to the turn of the century) and are not numerous. To the reader's surprise, and, we dare say, relief, the theme of death is almost not represented. Bunin the poet speaks about death proper, i.e., about the mystery of human existence or nonexistence after death. But the microscopic and physiological examination of the chests, hands, and faces of dead bodies is excluded from his poems. Human life is but a short insignificant episode in the ever beautiful and eternal world: HacTaHeT aem. — HC*ie3Hy a,

b 3Tofi KOMHaTe nycTofi Bee to ace 6yaeT: ctoji, cxaMta fla o6pa3, apeBHHft h npocroft. A

H Tax xe dyaer 3ajieTaTb LjBeTHaa 6a6oHKa b rneJiKy IIopxaTb, niypmaTb h TpeneTaTb IIo rojiy6oMy noTOjncy. H TaK ace 6y/ieT He6a aho CMOTpeTb B OTKpblTOe OKHO, H Mope POBHOH CHHeBOft MaHHTb b npocTop nycTbiHHbili cboh. (The day will come — I'll disappear. A n d everything will be just the same In this empty r o o m : the table, the bench, A n d the ancient and simple ikon.

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The colored silky butterfly Will fly in here in the same way as before; It will flit, rustle, and quiver On the blue ceiling. And the sky's bottom will gaze Into the open window in the same way as before, And the even, bluish sea Will lure one into its deserted open space). Ever present, vigilant Death (with a capital D) appears in the image of the cum (a Siberian word meaning 'nomad tent'), or rather in the phantom that stands by this tent somewhere in the icy, semi-dark, cold land: CBOH JXZKH& HyM cpeflH cHeroB H jibfla Bo3flBHTJia CMepTb. Has nyMOM Hoib nonrofla. H 6jieflHan IIojiapHafl 3Be3fla TOPHT He^BiixcHo B 6e3flHe He6ocBoaa. BrjWflHCb B TyMaHHbitt npmpaie. 3TO CMepTb. OHa cHflHT 6JIH3 nyMa, ycTpeMHua He3pjpmfi: B3op B noJiyHcmyio TBepflb — H HaBcer^a 3Be3fla Hafl Heft 3acThiJia. (Death pitched up its strange tent Amidst the snow and ice. And the pallid Polar Star Burns motionlessly in the abyss of the heavens. Look at the misty phantom. It is Death. It sits near the tent and fixes its blind eyes Into nocturnal firmness — And the Star froze forever above it). In another poem of 1907 (without title) Bunin depicts Death in the traditional image of a woman (without the scythe, though) who sits on a burial mound overlooking the highway and a distant strip of flowering flax. The old woman offers the passersby a hearse-cloth made from flax for a reasonable price: H roBopHT CaByp-KypraH: "He Kapicafi! M caBaH — npax. H caBaH o6peieH HcTjieTb B 3eMJie, HTO6 cHOBa Btipoc apicHfi He6ecHO CHHHH JICH!"

(And Savur-burial mound says: "Don't croak! The shroud, too, is dust. And the shroud is doomed To rot in the soil in order that the new Sky-blue flax would again grow up). The oblivion associated with death frightens Bunin as much as physical

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death. Bunin's "gloomy, Calvinistic desperation" and his "trembling in front of the lid of the coffin" is increased by his fear of "the coffin of oblivion".17 The poem, "Bez imeni" (n.d.) [Without Name], supports this statement. An ancient warrior who holds a sword in his hand sleeps an eternal sleep in a burial mound. The people sing lovely sagas which glorify his deeds, but his name remains unknown. Ho JIHK coKpwT — onymeHo 3a6pano, Ho nnani HCTJien Ha pacaBJieHHOH 6poHe. EMJI BOHH, BOJKflb. Ho HMH CMepTb 3a6pajia H yMiajiacb Ha nepHOM cxaKyHe. (But his face is hidden — the visor is down, His cloak rotted on his rusty armor. There was a warrior, leader. But Death stole his name And rode away on its black horse).

And while physical death is beyond human control, the 'oblivion' of death is in human hands — the way of escaping it lies in the ability to preserve the past, to imprint it in the memory, and to safeguard the images of life against a time in which they may perish forever. Memory and reminiscences should not be confused. The latter always try to "revoke the irrevocable" — the former "never argues with time, because it governs time".18 Writing on the theme of memory — one of the oldest and deepest themes in mystical and religious literature — F. Stepun says that for memory in its lowest depth it does not matter whether something dies in time or not, because everything is resurrected in it. Rising high above the time, it rises, naturally, above all its measurements: above the past, the present, and the future. This is why memory combines easily all incompatible phenomena. This memory is silence and peace.19 n 0 3 3 H H H e B TOM, COBCeM H e B TOM, HTO CBeT

Ilo33Heii 3 0 B e T . OHa B M o e M H a c n e f l C T B e . HEM H 6orane KM, TeM 6ojibme n no3T. H roBopio ce6e, nonyjiB T e M H b i f t cjiefl Toro, HTO npamyp MOH B O c n p H H H j i B « p e B H e M JJETCTBE: — HeT B MHpe pasHbix ayrn H BpeMeHH B HeM HeT. (Poetry is not that, not that at all, what the world Calls poetry. It is in my heritage. The richer it is, the more of a poet I am. I say to myself, having felt that dark trace 17 18

"

F. Stepun, "Iv. Bunin", Sovremennye zapiski, 54 (1934), p. 206. Ibid., p. 207. Loc. cit.

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Which my forefather apprehended in his ancient childhood: There are no different souls in the world and there is no time in it).

The pre-revolutionary critic, P. Kogan, noticed that In the infinity of the past Bunin searches for the links that emphasize unity and harmony, which are not abstract and foreign elements in this world but are its great, real possibilities. Traces of these possibilities Bunin finds everywhere, and he does not expect any unknown forces to appear in order to transform them into reality.20

In the poem "An Inscription" Bunin states the alpha and omega of his credo as an artist in life and letters. The poet finds an ancient chalice on the seashore, in an old grave mound. He labors hard putting together the fragments so that at last he can decipher the inscription on it: BeiHo jiaiixb Mope, 6e36pe»cHee Mope H He6o, Berao N U M B cojiHiie, 3 E M I M H ee KpacoTa, BeiHO JIHIIIb TO, HTO CBH3yeT He3pHMOK> CBH3BK) fly my H cepaue HCHBBIX c TeMHOfi aymoio Monw. (Eternal are only the sea — the shoreless sea — and the heavens; Eternal are only the sun, the earth, and the earth's beauty; Eternal is only that which binds with a band that the eye cannot compass, The soul and the heart of the living with the dark soul of sepulchres).

Seeing beauty everywhere, the poet says with emotion: Bee MTHOBEHHO, Bee HCKPBI, HO HCKPM EflHHoro, BeiHoro, H BO BceM — KpacoTa, KpacoTa! (Everything is momentary, everything is sparks, but these are sparks of the Unique, of the Eternal// And everywhere there is Beauty, Beauty!)

Like his favorite poet Saadi, Bunin desires to travel and see the beauty of the world. Many of his poems deal with Near and Far East themes. The poet is attracted by the historical names, by antiquity, myths, ruins, and the cult of the sun. Looking at the statue of Aeschylus, Bunin says that "time is powerless" against Aeschylus's legendary fame, which has survived twenty-five centuries; Ormuzd, the mythical head of good spirits, is dear to the poet for his love of Light and Fire ("Ormuzd"); the poet kisses humbly the white tunic of Sappho, whose name became immortal throughout the centuries ("Sappho's Tomb"); Baalbek's ruins are for Bunin prettier than the Nile and "Sphynx-the-Giant" ("The Temple of the Sun"). Bunin loves the East, because there are many graves 20

P. Kogan, Ocerkipo istorii russkoj literatury (Moscow, 1910), III, p. 118.

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and ruins there — the sign of men's eternal striving toward the Light. He wanted to entitle his travelogues The Fields of the Dead because Baalbek and Palmyra, Babylon and Assyria, Judea, Egypt, and Constantinople are continuous fields of the dead, endless cemeteries. The poet likes all these places of eternal rest because the East is the kingdom of the sun and all the temples of the East — beginning with the oldest which was erected by the fratricide Cain — were dedicated to the sun. Bunin wrote five Biblical poems. In one of them, "The Torah", he announces to the world that the Torah of Christianity was lit from the Torah of Judaism and that, therefore, the Jew must be respected. He prophetically announces in another poem that out of wilderness the Jew will once more be led by Jehovah back to the promised land. Along with the poems based on historical, biblical, and mythological themes, there is a rich collection of Bunin's poems about his own country, Russia. It is in these poems that Bunin delineates clearly his relationship to Russia. In his prose, more specifically in The Life of Arsen'ev, Bunin confesses he was wrong about his early sympathies with foreign culture, as for example, his infatuation with the Catholic church: No, it is not true, what I said about Catholic cathedrals, about the organs: I never wept in those cathedrals as I did in the tiny church of Elevation of the Cross (WD, 210). In his poetry, as early as 1891 ("To Fatherland"), he compares his country to a poor mother who visits her son in the city: OHH rjiyMjrrcfl aaa TO6OK>,

OHH, O pOflHHa KOpflT Te6a TBoeio npocroToio, Y6orHM BHflOM nepHMX xaT... Tax CHH, cnoKotabifi H HaxanbHufi, CTBWHTCH MaTepa cBoeii — ycTanofi, po6Kofi H neiajitHOH

Cpeflb ropoflCKHX ero apy3efi.

rjiiMHT c yjn>i6Kofi cocTpaaaHtfl Ha Ty, HTO COTHH BepcT 6pena M w i s Hero, KO a m o CBH^AHBA

IIocjieflHHfi rpommc 6eperjia.

(They scoff at you, They reproach you, oh fatherland, With your simplicity, With the poor appearance of your black huts.... Thus, the son, calm and arrogant,

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Is ashamed of his mother — Tired, shy, and sad — Among his city friends. And he looks at her with a compassionate smile, At her, who walked hundreds of versts And saved for him, for the day Of their meeting, her last penny.) Psychologically this is a very fortuitous comparison. A few decades earlier, for instance, Dostoevskij used it in A Raw Youth in the scene in which Dolgorukov's mother visits her son in Touchard's boarding school in Moscow. Despite the scarcity of lyrical expression in his verse, Bunin discloses his attachement to Russia in the last stanza of one poem: H He jno6nio, o Pycb, TBoeft HecMejioli, TucjwejieTHeft, pa6cKofi HumeTM. H o 3TOT KpeCT, HO 3TOT KOBHTHK 6eJIHH... CMHpeHHbie, poflHMwe MepTbi! (I do not like, oh Russia, your bashful, One-thousand-year-old, slavish destitution. But — this cross, this little scoop.... These are her humble, native traits). These small, insignificant objects — a birch bucket over the water spring and the little blackened icon of a cheap popular print — betray Bunin's "Russian nostalgia" and prove that he "also carries that spiritual obligation toward his country, which is shared by all those who are consciously concerned with its fate". 21 Russia looks in Bunin's verbal picture like Levitan's Russian landscape, which is drawn with the most gentle, pastel colors. The sadness of the Russian countryside corresponds to the general mood of Bunin's poetry; pecal\ toska, grust', and other Russian nuances of 'sadness' are the key words, and because of his frequent use of these words Bunin gained the reputation as a poet of 'twilight mood': Ho A JIK>6JIK>, KOHyromne IITKUM, PoflHwe creim. BeflHtie ceneHbn — Moa OTHH3HA; a BepHynca K Hefi, ycrajILlfi OT CKHTaHHft OFLHHOKHX, H noHHJi KpacoTy B ee nenajm H cnacTbe — B neiantHoft xpacoTe. (But I love, you migrant birds, My native steppes. The poor settlements are 41

Ljackij, op. tit., pp. 285-286.

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My country; I came back to it Tired of my lonely wanderings, And I recognized its beauty in its sadness, And happiness — in its sad beauty). Bunin felt bitterly the loss of his country after the Revolution and expressed this in 1922: y nTHiibi ecTb rHe3.no, y 3Bepa eCTb Hopa. KaK roptKO 6HJIO cepflny M 0 J i 0 f l 0 M y , Koraa h yxoflHJi c OTuoBCKoro ^Bopa, CKa3aTb npocra POFLHOMY FLOMY! y 3Bepa ecTb Hopa, y nTnuti ecTt rHe3#o. KaK 6beTca cepnue ropecTHO H rpoMKO, Koraa Bxoacy, Kpecract, B lyKoil, HaeMHbiii /IOM C CBoett yac BeTxoio KOTOMKO2! (The bird has its nest, the beast has its den. How bitter it was for a young heart, When I was going away from my paternal estate, To say good-by to my native house. The beast has its den, the bird has its nest. How bitterly and loudly beats my heart, When I enter, making the sign of the cross, into a strange, rented house And carry my knapsack which is already old). Nature occupies a pivotal place in Bunin's poetry. As early as 1907 Blok observed: "There are not many people who know and love nature as well as Bunin does".22 As we have seen, in Bunin's stories nature is not an ornamental background but an absolutely essential element. In his poetry this unity of man and nature is not always present, since often the description of nature is the poet's only goal. When the first collection of Bunin's poems, Under the Open Sky, appeared in 1898, Gor'kij praised Bunin for his "excellent feeling for nature" and for his simplicity and truthfulness of expression: "These are good poems, really! Fresh, sonorous, there is something of a childish purity in them...". 23 The majority of poems in this collection are fine nature lyrics. They distinctly show traits of the Puskin tradition — clarity of idea and strict consistency in the development of theme. Although all seasons are richly represented in Bunin's poetry, autumn seems to be the most appealing to him. His best-known poem, "Listopad" [Leaves Fall] (1900), which he dedicated to Gor'kij, was preceded by a M

A. Blok, "O lirike", Zolotoe runo, 6 (1907), p. 45. M. Gor'kij, Sobranie socinenij (Moscow, 1955), XXVIII, 431. (Letter to Bunin of February, 1899). 83

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number of individual short poems that were preparatory sketches for this extended "autumnal poem". In one that begins "Tainstvenno sumit lesnaja tisina..." (The silence of the forest rustles enigmatically....) Bunin provides a variation on TjutSev's motive "Esf v oseni pervonacaVnoj..." (There is in the early autumn...). He ends in the manner of both Puskin and TjutCev, but with his own typical nuance: M aajieico eme 6e3MOJiBHan 3HMa... Ayma roTcma bhobi> BOjmeHbSM npeflaBaTtca, H cnaflKO eit rpycTHTb h rpycrwo ynHBaTbca, He BHeMJia ronocy yMa. (But the silent winter is still far away.... The soul is again anxious to give itself to emotions, And it is delighted to be sad and to intoxicate itself with sadness, And not listen to the voice of reason...). In "Listopad" Bunin follows Puskin's tradition. The poem begins with a variation on the theme of Puskin's famous poem, "Autumn" — "Ljubljti ja pysnoe prirody uvjadarfe..." (I love nature's sumptuous fading...). JTec, tohho TepeM pacnncHoii, — JlHJioBbiii, 30Ji0T0ft, 6arpflHbiM, — Becenoft necrpoio CTeHoii Ctoht nan cbctjioio nonHHOH. (The forest, like a colorfully painted chamber — Lilac, golden, dark-red — Stands like a gay colorful wall Over the clear glade). The image of Autumn is rendered in the person of a beautiful Russian widow. In the portrayal of the features of autumn, the first signs of its coming and its triumphant appearance, emphasis is put on the silence in the forest on a clear, sunny day. The last little butterfly comes to a standstill on a cobweb, and one can hear the rustling of a small leaf because the forest "stands as if it were bewitched by silence"; it is disturbed only once in a while by a bird and then "everything again is quiet". rjiy6oKHii h HeMoft noKoli — IlpeflBecTHHK flonroro HeHacTba. (Deep and silent calm — Harbinger of winds and weather). The silence of a moonlit night in the forest frightens Autumn — "the silence is of a different kind now".

246

BUNIN'S POETRY J l e c 6ejn.IM CBCTOM 3ANHTOTT,

CBoefi 3acTWBniefi KpacoTott Kaic 6yffro CMepTt ce6e npopoiHT... (The forest is flooded with white light, And its petrified beauty Seems to predict death for it). The morning is foggy and rainy. Autumn hides in its "chamber": Jlec, TOHHO TepeM 6e3 npH3opa, Becb noTeMHen H nojurawi, CeHT«6pb, xpyacacb no namaM 6opa, C Hero MecTaMH Kptimy CHHJI

H Bxofl cwpofi jiHCTBoft ycbmaji. (The forest, like an unattended chamber, Darkened and faded; September, whirling through the forest's thicket, Tore off its roof in places And filled up the entrance with wet leaves). The sounds of horns in the distant fields announce that the hunting season has opened. Autumn, spending her last days in the forest, walks to the porch and sees that birds are already migrating to the south: M rycH fljiHHHtiM KapaBaHOM

Has necoM aepacaT nepejieT. (And the geese in a long string Keep flying over the forest). One feels unmistakably Puskin's spirit in this description (c/., Evgenij Onegin: "Gusej kriklivyx karavanj/Tjanulsja k jugu...") (The string of noisy geese was moving to the south...). The identical vocabulary — the use of such words as zarja ('down') nivy ('fields'), karavan ('caravan') — makes the reader think of Puskin. The last portion of "Listopad" is written in the future tense. Bunin describes what will happen soon, in a few days, when winter comes. In his description of winter Bunin differs from Puskin's almost crisp simplicity and reminds one rather of the splendor of Derzavin's style (c/., "Autumn during the Time of the Siege of Ocakov"). It is curious to note that Bunin's description of autumn is not limited to European Russia. The presence of ermines and sables as well as northern winds from the tundra indicates that the picture encompasses Siberia. Writing in iambic tetrameter, Bunin occasionally breaks the monotony of the rhyme from the pattern ABAB to ABBA or ABBACC. "Listopad" is not typical of Bunin's poetry. It is a purely

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descriptive poem about the fall from its early to its late stages. It is completely impersonal. It even lacks the attributes which Bunin usually connects with this time of the year, such as grust' and pecaV. The archaisms — zlato ('gold'), srebristyj ('silverish'), vo/c'i oci ('wolf's eyes'), krylami instead of kryVjami ('with wings'), dymy with the first syllable stressed instead of the last as it is in modem Russian ('smoke': nominative plural in Russian) — are very common for Bunin. A pseudonymous critic wrote about Bunin's poetry in 1908 that "one can always recognize Bunin's verse among a thousand even if it is not signed and, first of all, because of the language".24 This critic stresses the "dryness" of his style which reminds him of Puskin's prose and of Lermontov's Tamari. Further he observes that some of Bunin's poems are entirely devoid of adjectives and "throughout dozens of pages there is not a single epithet (i.e., a poetical epithet), not a single simile, not a single metaphor". 25 This is a fairly accurate evaluation of the majority of Bunin's poems, but it is not applicable to "Listopad". In the opening stanza (Les tocno terem raspisnoj...) there are seven adjectives among fourteen words and one comparison introduced by tocno ('like'). The birches shine in the blue azure kak vyski ('like towers'), the gaps in the sky through the foliage are growing blue cío okonca ('like the little windows'), the cobweb glitters kak set' iz serebra ('like a silver net'), the little butterfly is tocno belyj lepestok ('like a white petal'), the brassy tone of the hunting horns sounds kak grustnyj vopV ('like a sad scream'); and the winds from the tundra burst into the 'naked' taiga kak bujnyj pijas samana ('like the shaman's wild dance'). Bunin also employs some similes when he uses the instrumental case of comparison: Les stoit pestroju stenoj ('the forest stands like a gaudy wall'), vetry zavyvaja v pole zverem ('the winds howling like beasts in the fields'). Another phrase Osen' tixoju vdovoj ('Autumn like a silent widow') combines two figures of speech at one time — simile and personification. Autumn, once personified, walks, thinks, reasons (uz znaet Osen' — 'Autumn already knows'), washes its face (umyvsi blednoe lico... vyxodit Osen' na kryl'co — 'having washed its pale face, Autumn walks to the porch...'). Bunin's critics repeating one after another ready-made clichés about the simplicity of his language, automatically find these qualities also in "Listopad". Here is what S. Kastorskij has to say about it: "Bunin's poetic style is distinctively expressed here — with a precise, fine design, "

26

M. G., "Ivan Bunin", Vestnik evropy, 3 (1908), p. 842. Loc. cit.

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terseness, simplicity, and an exquisite choice of colors". 26 However, the following quotation from "Listopad" — one of the many which can be cited — shows its rather rich language. The northern winds knock down the sumptuous foliage in the forest and Ha 3TOM ocTOBe nycTOM IlOBeCHT HHeH CKB03Hbie, H 6yflyT B He6e rojiy6oM CuflTb nepTora Jie/ymbie H xpycTaneM H cepe6poM. (They will hang the translucent Hoar frost on the empty framework, And the icy palaces will shine Like crystal and silver In the blue sky).

Bunin wrote many short poems which are equivalents, perhaps, to his ''miniatures' in prose and in which he depicts animate and inanimate nature. Almost all of them have a common link and betray unmistakably their author. Just as one little picture replaces another in a movie camera, so before the eyes of the spectator pass the quickly changing seasons of the year, the south and north of Russia, her flora and fauna. The common link is the general mood of these poems — the devotion of the poet to the world's beauty, his sadness at life's rapid flowing, and the feeling of loneliness. Blok praises Bunin for his descriptions of Russian landscape and finds in them "less of external variety, but more of internal riches and meditations". 27 But he adds, rightly we believe, that it is tiring to read the whole book at one time. This can be explained partly by the limitations of the Weltanschauung and by the absence of those passionate quests which are the exciting ingredients of the "Symbolists'" books. 28

The reader can open a book of Bunin's verse almost at random and see that the concluding stanzas of his poems in which he describes nature stress one of those feelings mentioned above: PacKpwjiocb He6o rojiy6oe Me*: 06jiaK0B B anpejibCKHH fleHb. B jiecy Bee cepoe, cyxoe H nayTHHM najia TeHb. mypnia JIHCTBOH fly6oBoft, 3ameBejrajiaca B aynne 3MCH

M

"

28

S. Kastorskij, op. cit., p. 145. Blok, op. cit., p. 46. Ibid., p. 47.

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M B Jiec nonma, 6necTH JIHJIOBOS, IlHTHHCTOfi Ko»eii no 3eMJie.

Cyxne JIHCTBH, 3anax npaHtifi, ATjiacHbiS 6jiecK 6epe3Hiuca... O MKT CHaCTJIHBblft, MHI- oSMaHHblfi,

CTOKpaT 6na»eHHaa Tocxa.

(The blue sky opened On an April day amidst the clouds. Everything is gray, dry in the woods And the cobweb's shadow fell. The snake, rustling through the oak leaves, Moved in the hollow of a tree And went into the woods, shining with its purple, Spotty skin on the ground. Dry leaves, a spicy smell, The velvety glitter of the birch growth.... Oh, joyous moment, deceptive moment, Hundredfold blessed longing). A simple setting, yet not without details — naming the month, mentioning the sky, recognizing the smell of the leaves, using onomatopeia in describing the crawling snake (s, s, z sounds), and stressing the poet's "blessed longing" — all these are indeed typical of Bunin. The snake appears quite frequently in the fauna of Bunin's poems, in both its symbolic meaning (iscad'e prokljatoe v raju — 'the fiend which has been cursed in paradise') and as an object for description. In one two-stanza poem, "The Snake", Bunin employs a very unusual device: at the end of the third line he uses as a metaphor, the Arabic numeral 2 to show the snake in the standing position. 3 a m e J i e c T e j i a TOHKaa T p a B a ,

Grpyeio TeMHoft Ha6e»cajia

—

H B f l p y r B3BHJiacb H CMOTPHT um}>pa 2 ,

KaK BOJIOCOK TpenemHT acano... (Thin grass rustled, It ran near like a dark stream And the number 2 rose suddenly and gazed, The sting quivers like a tiny hair...). Bunin's love for detail — observing life not only with his keen 'naked' eye but also almost with the help of a microscope, hearing buzzing insects, smelling field flowers — is a distinctive feature of his poetry. Bunin's range of observation is very wide. Puskin's words about GnediC can be easily applied to Bunin:

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Tiii juo6miib rpoM He6ec, a TaKKe BHeMJieinb TH JKyaofcaHtio men Hafl p030fi anoii. (You love the thunder of the heavens, and you also hearken To bees' buzzing over a scarlet rose). More than once Bunin describes the raging elements of nature in his stories, of which "The Sacrifice" was quoted as an example. In his poetry, never departing from classical form, Bunin surprises the reader with an unusual use of adjectives, which render, for example, the color of lightning very precisely: B renHOTpoiiOBOM CBeTe MOJIHHS jieTynnx Ha HeSecax pacKptmajmcbfltiMHtieTyIBH0 ryzyimHfi neByneii CTpyHoii,

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3aneTaeim> B XCMIBE NEJIOBEIBE H KaK 6yflTO TOCKyemb co MHO0?

TBI 3AIEM

3a OKHOM CBCT H 3HOii, nOflOKOHHHKH flpKH, Be3MHTe5KHti H apKH nocneflHHe mm, nojieTafi, noryan —EB 3arjioxmefi TaTapxe, Ha noflymeiKe KpacHoii, ycHH. He flaHo Te6e 3HaTb nejiOBeiecKOii ayMbi, HTO AaBHO onycTejm nona, HTO y» CKopo B 6ypi»HH cayeT BeTep yrproMwft 30Ji0T0r0 cyxoro uiMena. (The black velvety bumblebee, with the golden guise over its shoulders, Buzzes dolefully like a singing string. Why do you fly into man's dwelling And, as it seems, share my sadness? Behind the window there are light and intense heat. The window sills shine. The last days are untroubled and hot, Fly and buzz, and go to sleep On the red pillow of a dry thistle. You are not destined to know human thoughts, That the fields have become empty, And that the sullen wind will soon blow away The golden dry bumblebee into the weeds). "The Last Bumblebee" is one of Bunin's watercolor pictures in which the reader enters the sensuous world of the poet; he participates in it fully, because the image of the bumblebee is fresh, vivid, and precise. Zolotoe oplec'e, v zasoxsej tatarke, na podusecke krasnoj are not worn counters of expression. They are sharp, concrete, arresting sensuous impressions which communicate quite unforgettably. In one respect at least — in describing the sensuous world — Bunin resembles Emily Dickinson. Bunin, like the American poetess, uses the whole power of his senses to register the qualities of the object described, be it a large animal such as a camel: Bep6jnoa, PeByT, y p i a T 6oica CKOTHHM. CIIHT H HE BCTAET

(The camel sleeps and does not rise to its feet. The beast's sides roar and grumble). — or an ox drinking water (c/. "Kastrjuk"): COCeT H

CMOTpHT CBeTJlblMH TJia3aMH

3aKHHyB XBOCT H a CBOFI KOCTJIABWIL

3afl,

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Kax

BAOJib

6yrpa,

B n y c T o f i He6ecHbiii cxaT,

E p e a y T x o x j i b i 3 a TJBKKHMH B 0 3 a M H .

(It sucks and looks with its clear eyes, With its tail on its bony back, At the Ukrainians, who walk by their carts Alongside the hillock against the empty celestial slope). — or a wild flower such as the one in "The Lily-of-the-Valley" which emits: Bjia>KHO-CBe3KHfi, BOflflHHCTbiii

KHCJiOBaTbiK 3anax... (Moist, watery, fresh, Sourish smell...). — or a reptile, as in "The Night Snake", which is a snapshot of the invisible life of the forest on a dark July night — a snapshot so exact and unusual in Russian poetry that it must be quoted in its entirety: T j i a 3 a K03MJ1H, M e a n e H H o n o J H y m e f t K CBOeft H o p e HOHHOIO c o m i o f t n y m e f t , T o p s T Kax yrjiH. C y M p a i H a a M r j i a CTOHT B K y c T a x — H BOT o H a 3 a a c r n a flBa

HOHHHica, HTO 3 a » c H r a T b a a H O e i i

J l m i i b fleBHTb p a 3 , H n o f l K o j u o n e t i x B o e f l B n a H H T CBOTT a c r y T TaK THXO, HTO c o B a , I I j i b i B H 3 a H e f t , cJieflHT e / i B a - e f l B a I l I y p m a H b e MXOB. A HOML T e M H a B m o j i e ,

A Bpar

B e 3 f l e — H c T p a m e H OH K03K)jie

B HOHHOM 6 o p y , RAE CMOJIK O6WMHWH

rnyM:

OHA c o c p e f l O T O H H J i a BECB y M , BCK> cHJiy 3Jia B CBOCM r o p a m e M B 3 r j i a f l e , H a a a c e HX, e a c e f t , H f l y u m x c 3 a f l H , I l y r a e T a f l , K o r / i a OHa B n y r a r i o M e f l J i H T , MTO6 n p e r p a a y O6OMTH, T o j i o B K y n p r n i o f l b i M e - r , BOAHT a c a n o M

Hafl MyXOMOpOM,

CMOpmeHHbIM H a j I b I M ,

T u a f l H T H a nHH, T o p n a m j i e H3 XM,

H cBeTHT nojiycoHHHM MypaBbsiM. (The eyes of the snake, which crawls slowly To its hole during the night through the sleepy forest, Burn like charcoal. The dusky fog Hangs in the bushes — and so, the snake lit Two night lamps, which it can light Only nine times, and drags its plait So silently under the sharp pine needles that the owl,

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Gliding behind it, watches just the rustling of the moss. And the night is dark in July, and the enemy is everywhere — And it is dangerous for the snake in the forest in the night, When the usual noise dies out: Its concentrates its whole wits, Its whole evil power in its burning gaze, And even the hedgehogs, which walk behind it, Are afraid of its poison, when it slows down In its forward movement in order to detour an obstacle, Lifts its small head, moves its sting Over a wrinkled and scarlet fly agaric, Looks at the stumps, which stick out of the holes, And lights up for the half asleep ants). "The Night Snake" could almost be used as an article for a popular encyclopedia. Kozjula is a regional word for the better known gadjuka, a common species of poisonous snake in European Russia. Once past the rather worn-out simile "the eyes burn like charcoal", Bunin employs a felicitous verb to depict the owl's noiseless flight, plyt' ('to float'), and a noun which he gives to the snake's elastic body — zgut ('a plait'). The number of present active participles is striking: the consonant sc as part of their suffix adds to the effect of onomatopeia (the snake's hissing) along with such words as pusca ('big forest'), zazigaf ('to light'), nocnik ('the night lamp'), zgut ('plait'), koljucaja xvoja ('sharp needles'), tixo ('silently'), sursan'e mxov ('rustling of the moss'), sum ('noise'), strasen ('frightening'), daze ('even'), ezi ('hedgehogs'), and zalo ('sting'), in addition to s which occurs eighteen times, once in a cluster with z in the adverb szadi ('behind'). In Bunin's descriptions of nature the reader is struck by the vividness and accuracy; the poet reproduces contours, colors, tones, nuances, sounds, and smells. However, it would be incorrect to interpret these features of his poetry by ascribing them to his inborn talent. Not only his keen ear and eye but also his peculiar relationship to nature distinguish him from contemporary poets. Bunin the poet perceives nature so acutely, draws it so clearly and at the same time so pictorially, because it is dear to him precisely in this material, 'earthly', 'fleshly' aspect. Each metaphor, each epithet and simile, at times bold, fresh, and original, serve Bunin in unveiling nature in an unexpected and very new poetic shortcut. At times he sees it through the prism of a magic fairy tale: Bee Jiec h nee. A flem> TeMHeeT: Hh3M C H H e i O T h TpaBa CeziOH pocoli B Jiyrax 6eneeT... IlpocHyjiacb cepaa coBa.

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Ha 3ANAFL COCHBI Bepeiaiueii HflyT, KaK paTt CTopo*eBux. H conmie MyTHoe }Kap-ITnmefi TOPHT B HX Ae6pax BCKOBHX. (The forest is all around. And the day is darkening: The valley is getting blue, and the grass is whitening With its gray dew in the meadows.... The gray owl woke up. The rows of pine trees spread to the west Like a detachment of the guards. And the turbid sun, like a Fire Bird, Burns amidst their centuries-old thickets).

In many poems about nature, Bunin's description fascinates the reader by its natural and simple spontaneity. Nature, which the poet sees in all the beauty of its transformation, stimulates in him a thirst for life, a belief in life and in the unsophisticated joys of existence: paflyra... Beceno HCHTB H Beceno «yMan> o He6e, O conHue, o 3peiomeM xjie6e, H cnacTbeM npocTWM flopoaam,.

BOH

(Here is the rainbow. What a joy it is to live, What a joy it is to think about the sky, About the sun, the ripening rye, And appreciate simple happiness).

It would be unjust to Bunin the poet to limit him by calling him "the master of the landscape", although this expression has been often heard.89 As in his prose, the man in Bunin's poems is not an outsider who only contemplates nature and plays the role of a supernumerary; he is rather an organic part of it. The gloomy mood which so often characterizes Bunin's stories gives way to a manifestation of the joy of existence. As early as 1901 Bunin, as if he were arguing with his future critics, said decisively: HeT, He ne03aw BJieneT Meiw, H e KpacKH acaflHMfi B3op noAMeTHT, A TO HTO B 3THX KpaCKaX CBeTHT: JIK>6OBL H

paflocTb

6HTHS.

(No, it is not the landscape that attracts me. My anxious eye does not sear for colors, But for that which shines in these colors: The love and the joy of existence). "

S. Glagol, "Pott russkogo pejzaza", Kur'er, 305 (1901).

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Of course, the landscape too attracts the poet, whose eyes absorb tirelessly all the colors of the world. But all this he understands differently during the various periods of his creativity. In the early years of his apprenticeship, Bunin still remains under the influence of the poets of the 1880's, but he soon succeeds in overcoming their worn out expressions and their banal perception of nature. It was a struggle with standardization, with the leveling of human personality. To rediscover nature meant for Bunin to rediscover man in new guises, because the life of nature is unseparable from man's life — it corresponds to his feelings, moods, and experiences. This is why Bunin could not accept the Symbolists' approach to nature, their indifference to its ever-changing life, to its complex diversity, to its infinite space, to all that which calls forth "the joy of existence" in man. The poetry of Brjusov, F. Sologub, Z. Gippius, and other poets of Russian modernism confirms their desire to escape nature and shows their struggle with it, even their attempts at rejecting it. The young Bijusov, for instance, expressed clearly his attitude toward nature in his well-known poem from the cycle Wanderings: TafiHwx MEITAX Map HfleajibHoft npupoflu, — H T O nepefl H H M 3TOT npax: Glenn, H CKajiBi, H BO/IM! CO3FLAJI H B

(In my dreams I created The world of an ideal nature. Everything else is dust in comparison with it: And the steppes, and the rocks, and the waters). F. Sologub too often repudiates a 'mere' nature: OT MecTa K MecTy H nay, IIpnpofly cTporo ncnbrryio, Toro, HTO C K P U T O , B E I H O amy, H c TEM, HTO HBJIEHO, Bpaxcflyio... (I walk from place to place, And I severely test nature, I wait for that which is hidden, And I'm at war with that which is evident). Bunin also walks from 'place to place', acquires new sensations, discovers new phenomena, and scrutinizes the world around him, but he is never at war with that which is 'evident'. And nature compensates him for his sincere approach toward it and provides him with faculties to see all which is not visible to a poet who is hostile toward it, who refuses to see the real, material world which surrounds man. Before Bunin's eyes

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appears dolina seraja, kak pax osla ('a valley which is gray and naked like a groin of an ass'), he recalls that pustynnyj mys byl sxoz s kovrigoj xleba ('the deserted cape was similar to a loaf of bread'), he notices how s proscaVnoj grusfju zakat ugaseat na kosyx parusax korablja ('the sunset dies away with a farewell sadness on the fore and aft sails of a boat'), and he knows that budut v lunnom svete fonari glazami utomlennymi kazat'sja ('in the moonlight the street lamps will look like tired eyes'). The split between Bunin's Weltanschauung and that of the modernists deepened with the passing of time. The object of argument grew and began to encompass the poet's attitude not only toward the landscape of the earth where man dwells but toward the whole universe. Some poets saw only some sort of repellent, hostile, and very narrow world, limited to a cell, for instance, as Z. Gippius sees it: H B TecHoft Rente — B 3TOM MHpe. A KeJibfl r e c H a a HH3Ka, A B l e r a p e x y r n a x neTwpe HeyTOMHMbix nayica.

OHH

JIOBKH, JKHpHBI,

rpjOHbl

H Bee njieTyT, iuieTyr, ruieTyT H C T p a m e H HX o i m o o 6 p a 3 H t m

HenpepMBaiomHftcH

Tpya...

(I'm in a narrow cell in this world. And the narrow cell is low, And there are four tireless spiders In all four corners. They are dexterous, well-fed, and dirty; And they weave, weave, and weave all the time, And their monotonous and continuous work Is frightening). Such approach to the world was, according to Gor'kij, an attempt to prove "the cosmic senselessness of human existence". Bunin leads the human soul from the province of a shocking commonness, from the narrow world of trivial human affairs, not into a world of mystical phantoms but into the realm of cosmic spheres. Bunin leads the human soul from a limited, enclosed little world of earthly existence into the open space of the universe, toward the endless celestial spaces.

7.3 POETIC TECHNIQUES In discussing the technical devices in Bunin's poems one should not

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assume that he altogether disregarded form and that a contempt for it was the principal property distinguishing his poetry from that of the Symbolists. Bunin was conscious of form, but to a smaller degree than the Symbolists. However, there is a touch of quiescence, impassiveness, 'sobriety' (c/. Severjanin's poem, "Bunin"), and some kind of monotony not only in the content but also in the form of Bunin's lyrics. In a critical article V. Brjusov calls many of Bunin's poems "impeccable" and describes his craftmanship as "of a clean and precise coinage", but, he adds, this is, if one may say so, "Old Testament" (vetxozavetnyj) verse. The whole metric life of Russian prosody during the last decade went past Bunin — the innovations of K. Bal'mont, the discoveries of A. Belyj, the seeking and striving of A. Blok.... His poems, which are devoid of a real melodiousness (riapevnosf), remain alive exclusively because of their imagery, and if such images are absent, they turn into tedious prose.30 What Brjusov considered a shortcoming in Bunin's poetry some present day critics regard as a special merit. This is particularly clearly stated by the contemporary Soviet critic, Tarasenkov: I. A. Bunin's poetical creativity developed without regard for the so-called newest "achievements" in the literary techniques of the Symbolists. Thus, for example, Bunin never resorted to euphony. He shunned the rhythmical innovations of the Symbolists. The great majority of Bunin's poems have been written in so called regular (A. T. Tvardovskij's terminology) meters — iamb, trochee, anapest, amphibrach, and dactyl.31 The assertion that Bunin's poetic techniques are "antiquated" is not always justified. The poetic experiments of Brjusov, Belyj, and Blok did not pass entirely unnoticed by Bunin, although he declared persistently that he did not see any novelty in the work of his contemporaries and that their 'innovations' were but grimaces. Bunin's poem, "Golden Net", dissipates the statement that he "never resorted to euphony": BojiHa yiujia — 6necTflT, KaK 30Ji0Thie, H a c o j i H u e BanyHLi.

BonHa HfleT — KaK H3 CTeKJia nHTtie,

MflyT 6yrpM

BOJIHBI.

N O HUM CKOJ1B3HT, KOJTBUneTCH M e f l y 3 a , 3CHBOA MOpCKOH U B e T O K . . . H o BOT BOJiHa H 3 H e M o r j i a OT r p y 3 a H n a n a Ha necoK. 30 81

Brjusov, op. cit., p. 155. Quoted by B. Kosteljanec in I. Bunin, Stixotvorenija (Leningrad, 1961), p. 65.

258

BUNIN'S POETRY 3EPKAM>HOH 3BI6BK) 6nemnT H APO6HTCH, A conHiie HA« BOJIHOH Ilo BanynaM CKOJIB3HT H meBemrrcH,

KaK HeBOfl 30noTOfi.

(The wave receded — the boulders, as of gold, Glitter in the sun. The wave rolls — the knolls of the wave, as of glass, Are rolling on. The medusa, a live sea fl6wer, Glides and rocks on them And there, the wave fainted under the weight And fell on the beach sand. The wave breaks and glitters with the mirror-like ripples, And the sun glides and moves Over the water on the boulders Like a golden net).

The quiet play of the sea in the shining sun is rendered by a clear and subtle perception in the changing images, and these images are reenforced by the instrumentation: the liquid consonant I, leisurely and flowing, dominates the whole poem and supplements visual and phonetic impressions. Of course, in this poem as well as in others, Bunin employs euphony within reasonable artistic limits. He does not overload his poems with alliterations as, for instance, Bal'mont does. The urbanist Brjusov in one of his poems in the book Urbi et Orbi (1903) confessed that city life was dear to him: JIK»6JIK> 0FLH0: 6POFLHT 6E3 ue.NN Ilo myMHBiM YRAMAM OAHH. .. (I love one thing: to stroll all by myself And without purpose along the noisy streets...).

And Bunin, true to himself, faithful to his unfading attachment to country life and to the memories of his childhood, disclosed in a poem of 1906 his tastes, which were, quite obviously, different from those of Brjusov: JIK>6JIK> UBeTHbie CTeKJia OKOH, H cyMpaK OT CTOJieTHHX mm, 3BEIMME0 JitocTpbi neciptiit KOKOH H HOJIOBHU nporHHBnmx cKpm... (I love the colored glass of the windows And the dusk shed by hundred-year-old lime trees, And the brightly colored cocoon of a ringing chandelier And the squeak of rotten floor boards).

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A more detailed study of the similarity and dissimilarity between Bunin and the Symbolists is beyond the limits of this monograph. And while one of the main achievements of Symbolist poetry was the disruption of the old forms of versification, the hallmark of Bunin's poetic craft was the continuation of the classical metrical forms which the Russian poets of the nineteenth century had inaugurated, solidified, and perfected. As a result of his efforts to continue traditional forms of poetry, we find in his poems numerous examples of established metrics. To quote just a few: 1. The two-foot anapest with alternating masculine and feminine rhymes. The first line has an extra stress on the first syllable which is, however, deemphasized in the sentence intonation. The scheme: — w — I yj — j W

—

j^

V-> —

HOHB HFLET — H TEMHEET

EjieflHO-CHHHH BOCTOK... OT OFLEAYI ee BeeT

Ilo nojwM BeTepoK.

(Night is coming and The pale-blue East is darkening.... A little breeze blows From night's garments along the fields). 2. Alternating five-foot and three-foot anapests in which the five-foot lines have an extra stress in the first syllable. In the longer lines there is a caesura after the second foot. The scheme: — —j^ jj w ^ j u w - ^ u w —

—

—

-

B o p o x jracTbeB cyxnx Bee CHJIBHCH, Beceneft pa3ropaeTCfl,

H TpemHT h m.maeT KOCTep.

IlbnneT rmaMa B JIHUO; Teiun>IFI «MM Ha BETPY PA3BEBAETCH, 3aT»Hyn Becb jiecHoft Kocorop.

(A heap of dry leaves flames up more joyfully and stronger all the time, And the bonfire cracks and burns. The flames are blazing into the face; the wind spreads the warm smoke Which covers the whole woody hill-side). 3. A three-foot anapest, but one foot is missing in the first line, slowing down the movement. There are extra stresses in the first syllables in the first two lines. The scheme: as in # 2 , second line. CHHHS BOPOH OT naflanH AJIM& KJIIOB noflHHMan H rjuweji.

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BUNIN'S POETRY

A flpyrne KOCHJIHCI. H npaTajiH, A KycTapHHK uiyMen, ineJiecTen. (A navy blue raven raised His scarlet beak from the carrion and gazed. And the others looked sideways and hid their beaks, And the bushes made a noise and rustled). 4. Three-foot trochees with alternating masculine and feminine rhymes. The scheme HOHB Hflam»ceaaa — B HHee jieca 3Be3flaMn Mepuaa CBeTflT He6eca. (The night and the gray distance — The woods are covered with the hoar frost. The sky shines Withflickeringstars). 5. A three-foot trochee with constant anacrusis. This is a popular imitation of folk meter. The scheme Ha necoK y Mopa cimero 3onoTaH Bep6a KJIOHHTCH. Ajmcai. BOT ONFLTB:

EnecK — h nepHOfi nnamemmM IUHpb H maflb. (The night and scarlet summer lightning. There it is again: The glitter — and the wide expanse and the glassy surface Of the black cerement). "Black cerement" is Bunin's favorite metaphor for the sea (cf. "The Dreams of Gang").

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7. A trochaic-dactylic hexameter with a caesura in the third foot and alternating feminine and masculine rhymes. The scheme: — J — w KJ j — H kj I — u u ^ — y-/ y-f I — Hainy c TeMHMM bhhom no,nana MHe 6onma neiajm. ThXO BtlTOIB BHHO,flB CMepTeJIbHOfi HCTOMe nOHHK. H cKa3ajia 6eccTpacTHO, c xonoflHOit yjitiGicoii 6oriiHH: "CjiaflOK SSJS, MOlt XMeJIbHOlt. 3T0 JI03BI C MOrHJIH jiio6bh". (The goddess of sadness served me a chalice with a dark wine. Having silently drunk the wine, I drooped in mortal languor. And the goddess said impassionately, with a cold smile : "My intoxicating poison is sweet. These are wines from the grave of love"). 8. Three-foot dactyls with anacrusis in the second and fourth lines. The scheme wi — i — i — CnyHHO b jiomjiHax 6epe3aM, — TyMaHHaa MyTt Ha nojwx. Kohckhm pa3MOKnriiM HaB030M B TyMaHe lepHeeTCH numx. (The white birches feel tedious in the hollows. A foggy turbidity spreads in the fields, The road which is covered by soaked horse manure Blackens in the fog). 9. Two-foot dactyls. The scheme as above in # 8 . iyTb BHflHBIH paccBeT, Cepane urecTHazmaTH jieT. CHOBaflpeMOTHaaMrjia JImiOBbiM UBeTOM Teruia.

PaHHHfi,

(An early, barely visible daybreak, And a sixteen-year-old heart. And a sleepy fog is again warm With the lime tree blossom). 10. Four-foot iambics with an inversion in the first foot of the second line. The scheme: ^ - / w - / ^ - / ^ — u ^ u —! — i — IHyMeJiH jihctm, oSjieTaa, Jlec 3aBOflnji oceHHHH boK... KaKHx-TO cepBix hthhck CTaa KpyaoiJiacb no BeTpy c jihctboS.

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BUNIN'S POETRY

(The leaves made a noise when they fell from trees, The forest started its autumnal howl.... The flock of some gray small birds Circled together with the leaves in the wind). 11. Four-foot iambics. The scheme as above in # 1 0 . Bee CHHTCH :flonbecib y

Meiw,

H BOT fl, C HeaCHOCTMO, C TOCKOft,

floxwancH paflocraoro jma, Koraa ee K Bemjy y6pajnr, H c a M , HeJiOBKOK) p y K o f i ,

IIonpaBHJi ra3 ee Byajm. (I've dreamt all the time: I've a daughter, And I've been waiting tenderly And sadly for this joyous day When she was dressed for her wedding, And I straightened personally the gauze Of her veil with my awkward hand). Thematically this poem is reminiscent of Bunin's story "Kazimir KazimiroviC". 12. Six-foot iambics (iambic hexameter) with a caesura after the third foot (note the difference: in classical — trisyllabic — hexameters the caesura very often cuts across the third foot, as in # 7 above, while in two-syllable meters it does not). The tendency to have pyrrhic feet in the fifth position is quite typical of this meter in Russian. The scheme: W— j — / w — // ^ — / W W / W — / ^ KaK cTapbiM MopsocaM, »CHBymjiM Ha

noKoe,

B e e CHHTCH n o H o n a M n p 0 C T p a H C T B 0 r o J i y 6 o e H C e r a 3Bl6KHX B a H T , — KaK B e p H T MOpflKH, H T O HX M o p a 3 0 B y T B n a c t i HOMUOH TOCKH, T a K KJIHIYT H MEHFL MOH BOCNOMHHAHHA...

(As old sailors, who are retired, Dream in the night about the blue open space And the nets of unstable shrouds, — as sailors believe That the seas call them in the hours of night anguish, So my memories call me...). In some way this poem is an epigraph to many works of Bunin in which his memories find their expression. 13. Two-foot paeons (second paeons, with a stress on the second syllable). The scheme AneHynnca B necy »cajia, AjieHynnca C M y r j i a 6biJia,

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263

TJia3a y Heft ropjrme,

Enecicyme, CTOHHHC, Mana, Mana AneHymica, A m.eT c OTIJOM AO flOHynnca.

(AlenuSka lived in the forest, AlenuSka was dark-complexioned, She had burning eyes, Shining and fixed, And though AlenuSka was young, young, She drank with her father down to the bottom). Actually, this meter is a three-foot iambic; four-syllable feet are a somewhat artificial measure, for they can always be reduced to two-syllable feet. The last two feet from this stanza scan as follows: ^ - / ^ - / ^ - / " Once a meter is established, the number of 'left over' unstressed feet at the end of the line is never taken into account. Consequently, the true scanning of this stanza (rather than in paeons) should be as follows: The second paeon was often used to imitate Russian folk meters. 14. An anapestic-iambic combination — two feet plus an extra syllable : The scheme: ^ - / ^ ^ajieico 3a MopeM floropaer Beiep... IloTeMHeJio He6o, IlOTeMHejIH BOJIHBI... TOJIBKO HA 3aicaTe CBeTHT THXHM CBCTOM

Ilojioca 3apn... (Far away behind the sea Evening is burning down... The sky darkened, The waves darkened... A strip of dawn Lights with quiet light At the sunset). Even this brief technical examination is sufficient to show that Bunin's poetry has very little, if anything, to do with that of his modern contemporaries. Neither the themes nor the prosodic techniques of the Symbolists had any serious or lasting influence on Bunin.

CONCLUSION

Bunin was, as Struve called him, "bilingual". By this he meant that Bunin was both poet and prose writer throughout his life. Such "bilingualism" was quite frequent during the first half of the nineteenth century, as exemplified by Puskin and Lermontov, but the second half is characterized by 'specialization' in one skill — either prose or poetry. Turgenev started as a poet and promptly switched to prose, and Nekrasov, the erstwhile prose writer, established his reputation in literature as a poet. Tolstoj and Dostoevskij devoted their literary gifts to prose, while Tjutcev, Fet, Polonskij, Kol'cov, and Nikitin became known as poets. In spite of the "bilingualism" of Bunin, the importance of the prose and poetry is unequal and preference has been given to the former in this monograph. Some dissonant voices have been raised in defense of Bunin's poetry, but they are not numerous, and are, in most cases, weak and unconvincing. 1 1 am not prepared to deny Bunin's poetic gifts or reject entirely his career as a poet, as R. Poggioli has done. In spite of his many interesting and vivid nature lyrics, I share the point of view of the majority, and, paraphrasing Nabokov's dictum, I must say that "I have always preferred Bunin's celebrated prose to his little known verse". As a poet, Bunin never approached the greatness of Puskin or Lermontov, although he strove hard to remain in their classical tradition. He bitterly opposed all modern trends in poetry, most of all those of the Symbolists. His fierce struggle against them, his almost blind hatred for all innovation had certainly a restricting effect upon his gift as a poet. 1

E.g., I. Tartak, "Bunin v potomstve", Novoe russkoe slovo, December 13, 1953. Tartak is one of those few 'Buninists' who is convinced that Bunin "will be discovered anew and recognized as a poet", although he admits that at present he has been almost forgotten as a poet. See also V. Rjazanov, "O Bunine — poète", Novoe russkoe slovo, December 27, 1953. He writes: "Contrary to the opinion of many people, though not necessarily of overwhelming majority, I consider Bunin great in his poetry and not in his prose". Further in the same vein cf. L. Rzevskij, "Pamjati Bunina", Gram, 20 (1953), and B. Narcissov, "Bunin — poèt", Grani, 24 (1955).

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Discarding all discoveries of the Symbolists, Bunin devalued his own poetry, mainly because of his lack of special concern with form (which was, in all fairness, overemphasized by his adversaries). Bunin's poems, in their deliberate exclusion of the 'music' of the Symbolists, do not strike us today as very exceptional. The high points in Bunin's poetry are reached in his descriptions of nature; they are certainly most suggestive and concentratedly saturated pictures. Classifying Bunin as a poet belonging to a group or movement is very difficult. In technique and thematic choice he is free from Symbolist influences and post-Symbolist trends. Nor can I find any significant influence on Bunin of poetry of the second half of the nineteenth century, be it the civic poetry of Nekrasov or that of the eclectic poets, the 'imagists' of the mid-nineteenth century, such as A. Majkov and N. Scerbina. Bunin as a poet is a classicist; his style is a skillful revival of the forms and fashions of the Golden Age of Puskin. Perhaps Bunin might be most accurately classified as a poet by saying that he followed the tradition of Puskin as it had been filtered through the nineteenth century. Ranking a writer among his contemporaries is usually a very precarious task. Bunin as a prose writer has been regarded quite consistently as one of the greatest Russian writers of the twentieth century. This opinion is shared not only by his admirers but also by many of his enemies — political and literary. The Soviet critics, scolding him severely for his 'reactionary' views, praise him without reservation as a great Russian stylist who writes 'impeccable' Russian. His literary adversaries, i.e., all the 'modernists' whom Bunin ridiculed so often and sometimes so unjustly, have never denied his great talent as a short story writer. Dividing Bunin's creative career into periods cannot be a hard-and-fast matter. The main themes of Bunin's writings recur from his literary debut until his death sixty-six years later. A justification for whatever division can be suggested is found in the intensity with which the author handles these themes and the choice of characters who are involved in the stories and thereby develop the themes. Love and death are Bunin's favorite themes. They run throughout his works and usually fuse inseparably, for love to Bunin is a blessed yet tragic phenomenon. Long-lasting love seems unattainable for his heroes; happy is he who catches a glimpse of it. Bunin loves youth, strength, and beauty — they are absolutely necessary elements for that love which is the happiest state in human life. Old age, weakness, and ugliness are impediments to love and are the last steps before that unknown, enigmatic, and horrible thing which is called death — the end of earthly human existence and hence the end of man's

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eternal pursuit for happiness, his striving for love. Bunin's fear of death is the logical consequence of his extraordinary attachment to life, which, in turn, can give man the happiest moment he can dream of, i.e., the blessed state of being loved and the propensity to love. And this is why so many of Bunin's stories deal with death. In dealing with both life and death Bunin is a great master of detail. He is shocked by the transformation of the human body after death. With anatomic precision he registers all the changes of the face, hands, and chest of a man already in the coffin. In some instances the reader is made to witness the dead corpse over a period of two or three days, from the hour oi death till burial. The subjects of his descriptions are both sexes, all ages, and members of various classes; they include people who have died under very dissimilar circumstances, people of diiferent countries, people who regard death as a transition to another world, who are not afraid of it, and people who tremble at the sight of a coffin. Almost parallel with these two themes in Bunin's works is the theme of the Russian peasants and squires. During his early period Bunin limited the background of his stories to the Russian countryside, and while writing on love and death he used either peasants or gentlefolk as characters. After the 1905 Revolution Bunin's stories took a pessimistic turn. His 'gloomy' view of the peasants, his starkly realistic approach in writing about them, his emphasis on their negative features — all these made some critics accuse him of misanthropy and of distorting the picture of the Russian village. Along with the depressing presentation of Russian peasants, Bunin depicted the fate of his own class of gentlefolk, which was already impoverished and on the verge of physical and moral disintegration. This class gave way to city dwellers, the newly rich bourgeois, the unscrupulous new generation of money makers, people without tradition and attachment to the past. Despite Bunin's attempts to be a strictly objective writer, he is not always able to control his emotions when he describes his own class. In some of his tales the longing for the past is stronger than the author's desire for objectivity, and his sympathy for the landed gentry comes to the fore. In the years preceding the First World War and the Revolution Bunin continues to write about love and death, but the setting of his stories ceases to be the Russian village exclusively and the persons involved in them cease to be peasants and squires. The range widens, and Bunin transports his reader to foreign countries and distant continents. The thirty-three years of life in voluntary exile were as productive as those in Russia. Bunin's literary output, unlike, say, Kuprin's, continued

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to grow until his death. Not only do the themes of love and death continue to dominate, but it seems that they increase in intensity. The peasants who from time to time appear in his stories acquire more human characteristics ; they lose some of their negative features and acquire more of the positive properties and thus appear more realistic. Mark Slonim writes: As an emigré Bunin added a nostalgic note to his stories. He became a poet of recollections, the seeker after things past and gone, and he compared his writings to the rose of Jericho — a dry withered plant that blossoms anew when put into the water.2

Or, as Bunin himself says: 1 sink the roots and stems of my past into the living water of my heart, into the pure moisture of love, grief, and tenderness — and my cherished plant wonderfully comes to life again (V. v. /., p. 100).

Bunin, like many other writers, is often autobiographical. Paustovskij remarks judiciously that "actually the work of any writer is his autobiography which he simultaneously transforms with the help of his imagination".3 At times when Bunin writes about himself, he departs from the real, accurately presented events of his life and invents episodes which never really happened. No matter how exact or inexact Bunin was in his autobiographical works, he knew the secret of how to make his readers experience that feeling which dominated him for many decades of his creative years — the feeling of the importance of our existence and the immense joy of earthly life. However, neither his themes nor his ability to offer keen psychological analyses make Bunin one of the greatest writers of our century. Many of Bunin's eminent predecessors wrote about love and death, about peasants and squires; many of them were both philosophers and 1ittérateurs; many of them, if I may say so, were cleverer than Bunin was; many of them were prolific writers and were able to combine quantity with quality in their works. And yet Bunin is unsurpassed by any of his contemporaries or even by the great writers of the nineteenth century in one thing — in his style and language and in his marvelous ability to create mood in his stories. In these Bunin is a unique and an indisputable master. In my reading and rereading of Bunin I have never found in his stories what Russians would label as pogresnosti ('lapses') of language, grammar, 2 3

M. Slonim, From Chekhov to the Revolution (New York, 1962), p. 169. K. Paustovskij, Povesf o iizni (Moscow, 1962), I, p. 3.

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and syntax. For this reason most of his critics call his language 'impeccable' . Bunin's language is by no means stilted—it is vivid, racy, and flexible, but always correct. "What kind of 'impeccable' Russian do I speak?" Bunin used to ask about himself and added: "I speak ordinary Russian and that's all". And this is the point — "ordinariness", care, and a naturalness without carelessness are the characteristic features of his language. Struve wrote about it: "Bunin's language is a marvel of richness and simplicity".4 A fastidious stylist, Bunin was never satisfied with his work. He worked and reworked his stories before they appeared in the 'final' version in the Berlin/Petropolis edition (1934-1936). Nonetheless, almost two decades afterwards, Bunin undertook another revision which was stopped by his death. In his youth Bunin wanted to become a painter. Bunin's critic, P. Henry, believes this is significant because his verbal imagery, his frequent use of colour and his magnificent nature descriptions are evidence of his visual talent transformed into language that is seemingly effortless, rhythmic and flexible, yet accurate and incisive. This command of an unusually wide range of Russian is apparent in his prose and verse alike. It is, however, in his prose writings, rather than in his poetry, that Bunin developed an idiom that bears his own unmistakable stamp. A precise and loving treatment of the language was perhaps to be the outstanding feature of this great literary craftsman. He was greatly concerned that the genuine, logical use of words should not be abused and showed a meticulous care for the proper stylistic use of the language, whether in dialogue modelled on peasant speech or in narrative writing in general, where he felt, standards had lamentably declined.5 When writing on his favorite themes, love and death, Bunin was able to create a special mood in each story and thus to avoid monotony. Although some repetition in minor descriptions is easily discernible, the general mood of each story varies considerably. Bunin not only presents to the reader, say, oriental setting or the coldness of Russian winter, but also makes him feel that atmosphere, which is often more important than the plot itself. Bunin is a master of creating a story out of nothing, with the plot playing rather a secondary role. The eifect of such a story is suggestive, evocative, and stimulating. Bunin's impassivite, coldness, and 'metallic' qualities have often been stressed by his critics. I have pointed out that these qualities are deceptive and, as Struve put it 4

G. Struve, "The Art of Ivan Bunin", The Slavonic and East European Review, 32 (1933), p. 425. 6 Introduction by P. Henry in I. Bunin, Rasskazy (London, 1962), pp. 14-15.

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the secret of his art lies in his capacity of stirring within us profound and untroubled emotions, of striking deep chords, while keeping cold and unperturbed on the surface.6 Love for detail is characteristic of Bunin. But the detail is never superfluous, annoying, and disturbing. It is an essential part of his realism. By the same token, his striving for perfection in form and style, in symmetry and logic makes him a classicist, and his preoccupation with love and death, his poetic conception of existence, the exoticism of his Oriental tales, and the sensuous beauty of his language makes us think of Bunin as a romantic. One can never overrate the role which nature plays in Bunin's works. Nature is not a mere background but an intrinsic part of his stories. In Bunin's works there is no ornamental imagery in the manner of Gogol', no rhetorical rhythm, and no splendid cadence. But the poet's hand is evident in the careful, varied, and unobtrusively perfect balance of phrases. Nature lives with the heroes of Bunin's narratives. Sometimes it follows their joys and griefs, their happiness and suffering, their love and hatred, but usually it is serene, unresponsive, and totally indifferent to man's microcosm. From the very beginning of his literary career, Bunin showed a tendency toward brevity and compactness — an exact antithesis of Gor'kij's style. In later years this endeavor for economy of words increased greatly and manifested itself in his "miniatures". Even his larger works, such as The Life of Arsen'ev, are about outwardly insignificant, infinitesimal happenings, which are loosely connected and resemble separate short stories. The young Soviet writer, Jurij Bondarev, ranks Bunin with Tolstoj and Cexov and calls him a remarkable Russian writer with a marvelous command of "magic" — the ability to find the single word which takes the place of an entire paragraph, an entire page.7 Bunin, with a few exceptions, kept aloof from politics. He never preached, seldom accused, did not rebel. In most cases he depicted life around him with objectivity and paid pivotal attention to the literary form of his stories. Even if there is room for disagreeing with him on some controversial issues, e.g., his assessment of political events in Russia, his attitudes toward his contemporaries, his approach to Russian peasants, etc., one 6

Struve, op. cit., p. 425. Ju. Bondarev, "O nastroenii, sjuzete i jazyke", Voprosy literatury, November, 1959. Quoted by Vera Alexandrova, A History of Soviet Literature, transl. by Mirra Ginsburg, (New York, 1963), p. 14. 7

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cannot deny his constant concern with the aesthetic values of his works. Although very consistent in his nonacceptance of the Soviet regime, Bunin found enough strength within himself not to become a political writer, and, after a short time following the Revolution, he "came back to literature". My sympathy, admiration, and love are with Bunin. I quote with pleasure the tribute paid to Bunin by such an unbiased critic as the Englishman, William Sanson, who believes that Bunin "should be elevated to a place beside Chekhov and Turgenev. His work is not the same as theirs, but it is of equal worth". 8 The same critic renders most efficiently, to my mind, the quintessence of Bunin's creativity: And it is part of what he is out to express, always, in his art: not a frisson, not a reformation, not anything in particular — but always the whole, a nostalgic wonder at the mystery of life in this world, of love, of the strangeness of beauty and the beauty of grief, and of death.9 The purity of language, outstanding even compared to that of the classical period of Russian prose, the sharpness of outline in the imagery, and the complete lack of didacticism — all these are attributes of the high mastery inherent in Bunin. He is the last product of the classical period of Russian realism. His stories are sublime models of Russian and world literature.

8 W. Sanson, "Ivan Bunin: The Harpstring Bröken", The London Magazine, II (March, 1954), p. 64. • Ibid., p. 68.

APPENDIX I

C O M M I T T E E (IN F O R M A T I O N )

for Honoring the 80th Birthday of the Russian Novelist

I V A N A. B O U N I N E (NOBEL PRIZE

1932)

COMMITTEE IN U.S.A. PEARL S. BUCK (Nobel Prize) Honorary Chairman

COMMITTEE IN FRANCE ANDRE GIDE (Nobel Prize) Honorary Chairman

GEORGE A. CASTLE Executive Director and Treasurer 903 Park Avenue. New York 21, N.Y. BUtterfield 8 - 4 1 3 2

ALEXANDRE ROGNEDOV Executive Director and Treasurer 11 bis, rue de I'Arcade, Paris 8e, Anjou 3 2 - 1 3

D e a r Mr.

June 12, 1950

Zwibak,

A c e l e b r a t i o n is being p l a n n e d for n e x t October to observe the 8 0 t h A n n i v e r s a r y of the great writer, Ivan Bounine w h o w o n the N o b e l Prize for Literature, in 1932. Mr. Bounine is in desperate straits and is v e r y ill. H e could v e r y easily improve his c o n d i t i o n if he w o u l d a c c e p t the invitation to go b a c k to Soviet R u s s i a where his royalties have accumulated for thirty years. Y e t he does n o t w a n t to go back. A s A n d r e Gide has said, he has " c h o s e n m i s e r y " i n order that he m a y keep h i s freedom. The c e l e b r a t i o n will take the form of a b a n q u e t at a h o t e l in New Y o r k a n d perhaps there w i l l b e a recital of R u s s i a n music. I w r i t e to ask if y o u w i l l j o i n me in b e i n g a sponsor for this dinner. I hope y o u will accept, for y o u r m e m b e r s h i p o n the Committee w i l l help a great deal to bring guests to the dinner. Yours sincerely, Mr. J. M. Zwibak, "Novoye Russkoye Slovo" 243 W. 5 6 t h St., N e w Y o r k 19, N. Y. PSB H S Bunin won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1933 — not in 1932 as Pearl S. Buck erroneously wrote it. (S.K.).

LA Pearl S . B u c k

APPENDIX

II

V. SfflMKIN, Publisher

M. WEINBAUM, Editor

Novoye Russkoye Slovo Oldest Russian Daily Est. 1910 243 West 56th Street New York 19, N.Y. Tel. Columbus 5-5500 27 ceHT«6pa 1963 r .

ANDREI SEDYCH City Editor

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