Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (October 10, 1870 – November 8, 1953) was the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The texture of his poems and stories, sometimes referred to as "Bunin brocade", is one of the richest in the language. His last book of fiction, The Dark Alleys (1943), is arguably the most widely read 20th-century collection of short stories in Russia.

Emigration

Bunin left Moscow after the revolution in 1917, moving to Odessa. He left Odessa on the last French ship in 1919 and settled in Grasse, France. There, he published his diary The Accursed Days, which voiced his aristocratic aversion to the Bolshevik regime. About the Soviet government he wrote: "What a disgusting gallery of convicts!"

Related Topics:
1917 - Odessa - 1919 - Grasse - Bolshevik

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Bunin was much lionized in the emigration, where he came to be viewed as the eldest of living Russian writers in the tradition of Tolstoy and Chekhov. Accordingly, he was the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1933. On the journey through Germany to accept the prize in Stockholm, he was detained by the Nazis, ostensibly for jewel smuggling, and forced to drink a bottle of castor oil.

Related Topics:
Nobel Prize for Literature - 1933 - Stockholm - Nazis

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In the 1930s, Bunin published two parts of a projected autobiographic trilogy: The Life of Arsenyev and Lika, which were "neither a short novel, nor a novel, nor a long short story, but . . . of a genre yet unknown." Later, he worked upon his celebrated cycle of nostalgic stories with a strong erotic undercurrent and a Proustian ring. They were published as the Dark Alleys in 1943.

Related Topics:
Proust - 1943

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Bunin was a strong opponent of the Nazis and reportedly sheltered a Jew in his house in Grasse throughout the occupation. To the end of his life, he became interested in Soviet literature and even entertained plans of returning to Russia, as Aleksandr Kuprin had done before. Bunin died of a heart attack in a Paris attic flat, while his invaluable book of reminiscences on Chekhov was still unfinished. Several years later, his works were allowed for publication in the Soviet Union.

Related Topics:
Nazis - Grasse - Aleksandr Kuprin - Paris - Chekhov - Soviet Union

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External link

• Biography in English