Analysis of Bunin's poem “The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole…. Presentation on the topic: “The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole

3 874 0

After the October Revolution, many famous writers left Russia, among whom was. The famous Russian poet and writer took the change of power and the beginning very painfully. civil war, so I decided to leave the country for a while. In the depths of his soul, he understood that he might be parting with Russia forever, and very soon this assumption was confirmed. However, from the first days, the bitterness of separation from his homeland haunted Bunin, and in 1922 he wrote a poem.

The first lines of this work indicate that the author envies the inhabitants of the forest who have their own home, albeit such an unreliable one, not equipped and devoid of attractiveness from a human point of view. However, it is there that they feel completely safe and are probably happy in their own way, something that Bunin himself lacks. He notes that it was extremely difficult for him to make the decision to emigrate. “How bitter it was for the young heart when I left my father’s yard.”, notes the author. For him, farewell to Russia became the second tragic event in his life. After all, once, as a 17-year-old teenager, he had already left his father’s house to prove to the whole world his own independence. Memories and fresh sensations were layered on top of each other, becoming the cause of Bunin’s rather deep and prolonged depression, as well as the reason for writing a whole series of works, both in prose and in rhyme, which the author dedicated to his experiences.

Trying to describe in words what he feels, Bunin notes: “How the heart beats sadly and loudly”. He is oppressed not only by a feeling of longing for his home, but also by a feeling of hopelessness, his own worthlessness and uselessness. After all, the author found himself in a foreign country with virtually no means of subsistence, and he is unable to call his own the rented furnished rooms in which he is now doomed to live for many years. The poet admits that every time he experiences a whole range of conflicting feelings when he enters “to someone else’s rented house with my already shabby knapsack”. The author will retain this feeling of doom in his soul until the end of his life and will make attempts to return to his homeland, if only in order to once again feel part of the land on which he was born. However, Bunin’s dreams will not come true, since after the revolution Russia will become a forever lost country for him, that cradle of joy and tranquility that every person loses sooner or later due to various circumstances.

If this material does not have information about the author or source, it means it was simply copied on the Internet from other sites and presented in the collection for informational purposes only. In this case, the lack of authorship suggests accepting what is written as simply someone’s opinion, and not as the ultimate truth. People write a lot, make a lot of mistakes - this is natural.

“The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole...” Ivan Bunin

The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole.
How bitter it was for the young heart,
When I left my father's yard,
Say goodbye to your home!

The beast has a hole, the bird has a nest.
How the heart beats, sadly and loudly,
When I enter, being baptized, into someone else's rented house
With your already shabby knapsack!

Analysis of Bunin's poem “The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole...”

After the October Revolution, many famous writers left Russia, among whom was Ivan Bunin. The famous Russian poet and writer took the change of power and the beginning of the civil war very painfully, so he decided to leave the country for a while. In the depths of his soul, he understood that he might be parting with Russia forever, and very soon this assumption was confirmed. However, from the first days, the bitterness of separation from his homeland haunted Bunin, and in 1922 he wrote the poem “The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole...”.

The first lines of this work indicate that the author envies the inhabitants of the forest who have their own home, albeit such an unreliable one, not equipped and devoid of attractiveness from a human point of view. However, it is there that they feel completely safe and are probably happy in their own way, something that Bunin himself lacks. He notes that it was extremely difficult for him to make the decision to emigrate. “How bitter it was for the young heart when I left my father’s yard,” notes the author. For him, farewell to Russia became the second tragic event in his life. After all, once, as a 17-year-old teenager, he had already left his father’s house to prove to the whole world his own independence. Memories and fresh sensations were layered on top of each other, becoming the cause of Bunin’s rather deep and prolonged depression, as well as the reason for writing a whole series of works, both in prose and in rhyme, which the author dedicated to his experiences.

Trying to describe in words what he feels, Bunin notes: “How my heart beats sadly and loudly.” He is oppressed not only by a feeling of longing for his home, but also by a feeling of hopelessness, his own worthlessness and uselessness. After all, the author found himself in a foreign country with virtually no means of subsistence, and he is unable to call his own those rented furnished rooms in which he is now doomed to live for many years. The poet admits that every time he experiences a whole range of the most contradictory feelings when he enters “someone else’s rented house with his already dilapidated knapsack.” The author will retain this feeling of doom in his soul until the end of his life and will make attempts to return to his homeland, if only in order to once again feel part of the land on which he was born. However, Bunin’s dreams will not come true, since after the revolution Russia will become a forever lost country for him, that cradle of joy and tranquility that every person loses sooner or later due to various circumstances.

The main theme of the work is the poet’s reflections on separation from his native land in emigration.

The poem is narrated on behalf of lyrical hero, whose feelings are imbued with sadness and melancholy, built on the basis of the leitmotif of loneliness, containing personal and social drama.

The storyline of the work consists of the lyrical hero’s awareness of his difficult fate in the form of eternal wandering in order to find his home, nostalgically recalling his childhood spent in his father’s house.

The compositional structure of the poem consists of two stanzas that carry a huge semantic load, emphasized by the use of constant repetitions, creating the feeling of the lyrical hero’s reasoning spoken out loud, and also emphasizing important details of the events taking place, while the initial quatrain has shades of lyrical hope, and the second has a sad motif of severe hopelessness.

A distinctive feature of the poem is the use of interesting and unusual images in the form of birds, animals, their homes, father’s yard, someone else’s house and an old knapsack, which have a certain symbolism. The image of an old knapsack is presented by the poet not only as a repository of the material objects of the lyrical hero, but also as a haven for accumulated life experience and wisdom. Recalling the old knapsack, the poet emphasizes the poverty of the lyrical hero not only materially, but also spiritually, focusing on the lack of wealth, happiness, as well as hope for a better, joyful future, which consists in the poet finding a home, represented in the form of the Russian land .

By depicting images of animals and birds, the poet conveys the mood of his character, who feels melancholy and sadness at the inability to find peace in his father’s house, in contrast to his smaller brothers, who have both a hole and a nest.

In the image of a stranger, a rented house, depicted in the poem, the poet imagines a foreign country, and remembering his father’s courtyard, he thinks about his abandoned homeland. At the same time, using means of artistic expressiveness in the form of epithets, as well as changes in the ordinal position of words, the poet demonstrates a plaintive cry and a wailing groan combined with sorrowful protest and anger.

The poem is filled with doom and uselessness, in which the lyrical hero does not see a possible way out.

Analysis 2

Bunin is one of the emigrant writers who, soon after the October Revolution, went to other countries away from new government and the new state of affairs. It must be said that the theme of emigration and parting with one’s own home, that is, the homeland, is one of the central themes for the work of this author.

Bunin vividly experienced parting with his own home, although in fact his emigration was not overly difficult and harsh, he had the means, a fairly decent position in society and origin. Therefore, he could settle down in the new land and could also join other communities that left the country. Nevertheless, for him the change of habitat was not as important as the change of eras.

The revolution became for the poet synonymous with the destruction of the old way of life. Of course, to some extent he was attached to the luxurious life of the landowner, but this was not what his longing was mainly about, and he gives a typical example in the story Antonovsky Apples. Bunin saw how his country was shrinking, how a strict and majestic way of life was being replaced by something worthless and insignificant, and of course he was outraged to a certain extent by the creation of a society in which the proletarians (with all possible merits, a class for that period that was poorly educated and did not have any outstanding merits) receive privileges and become an ideological basis.

In the poem The Bird Has a Nest... he writes exactly about how he left the country, how he ended up in a new home. Of course, the entrance to a new rented house, where he stays with an “old knapsack” is an artistic device; we repeat, the poet was not in poverty, but that’s not the point. What is important here is the image of a traveler who has taken his old belongings from his home and comes to a stranger’s house.

Was he able to take away something worthwhile from his former home? Not likely. He can no longer preserve the foundations of Tsarist Russia; this way of life has sunk into oblivion and will now remain only in memories.

Therefore, the poet himself truly becomes like an animal without his hole or nest. And therein lies his fundamental melancholy. After all, every living creature in this world has some kind of home, a home in a global sense.

Analysis of the poem The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole according to plan

You might be interested

• Analysis of the poem Despair by Andrei Bely

  Despair is a poem very rich in images, unusual epithets, and comparisons. Although it is not so large in size (only five stanzas of four lines), after reading it, what remains is not only saturation

• Analysis of Fet's poem In vain!..

  The poem belongs in genre to love lyrics poet, and the main theme is a love feeling for a woman.

• Analysis of the poem Fantasia Fet

  It is impossible to imagine the lyrics of A. A. Fet without a combination of the themes of nature, love and man in their harmonious unity. Another proof of this is his poem “Fantasy”.

• Analysis of the poem Dawn says goodbye to the land Feta

  The theme of death at one point becomes key in the stories of Afanasy Fet, especially after the 50s in the 19th century. The reason for this topic is the pessimistic mood of the author

• Analysis of the poem Tishina Nekrasova

  Nekrasov's work is one of bright examples expressing patriotic feelings and love for one’s people through poetic means. The author unfolds a picture of his native land, calling on readers to share his admiration for it.

Comparative analysis of poems by I.A. Bunin

“That star that swayed in the dark water...” and

That star that swayed in the dark water

Under a crooked willow tree in a dead garden, -

To the village where the young years passed,

Where I waited for happiness and joy in my youth,

The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole.

When I left my father's yard,

Say “sorry” to your home!

The beast has a hole, the bird has a nest.

How the heart beats, sadly and loudly,

When I enter, being baptized, into someone else's rented house

With your already shabby knapsack!

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin... It was the poet Alexander Tvardovsky who called him “in time the last classic of Russian literature.” And he was, of course, right: Bunin matched his great predecessors with the discovery of new spheres of the world, the secrets of human existence, the power of words and the harmony of form.

Bunin is a prose writer and Bunin is a poet... They cannot be opposed, because both the prose and the artist’s poetry, with equal beauty and power, allow the reader to “embrace” life as an instant: from blooming youth to the tragic losses of old age, from reckless aspirations for happiness and love to comprehension of the most intimate, making the best strings of the heart tremble.

You can’t help but think about the most complex problems of existence when reading Bunin’s artistically perfect poetry. How was he able to combine the heat of feeling and the magnificent cold of skill in the crystal of poetry? The key to the solution, apparently, is that Bunin has a rare nature of feeling, a rich “palette” of flowers and inflorescences, a unique range of sounds.

Already in the nineties of the 19th century, Bunin was developing his own poetic style, constantly looking for fresh touches, bold comparisons, following the traditions of Russian classical poetry. He is alien to the modernist influences of the beginning of the century.

Its landscape and philosophical lyrics To early XIX century acquires amazing specificity, accuracy of designations; the poet chooses combinations of words that, despite their simplicity, evoke a wave of associations in the reader.

Bunin's thematic poems are different: the beauty and harmony of nature; man, his fate, hopes and disappointments; human memory, at any time of the year and at any age, capable of reviving the past; Russia, “eternal” values ​​of life.

In the endless cycle of time, in the joyful renewal of nature, in the beauty of Russia and his native land, Bunin draws colors for his poems.

A unique charm emanates from the poems, which convey sad thoughts about the past, bright memories of small homeland and sorrow for abandoned lands.

Among such works, two works stand out: and “The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole...”

The first poem was written in 1891. Due to the financial difficulties of his family, Ivan Alekseevich was forced to leave a place dear to his heart - the small estate of Ozerki in Yeletsky district in the Oryol region.

The Ozerkov years of his life brought the writer a lot of happiness and a charming feeling of freedom and spiritual uplift. “I remember that at that time everything seemed charming to me: people, nature, the old house with colored windows, the neighbors’ estates, hunting, and books...” Bunin later wrote.

That's why " days gone by charm" and the loneliness of current days with such artistic power sound in the poem.

And three decades later (1922) the famous appears. Addressed as if to distant years, it is perceived as a mournful farewell to the homeland, as a longing for one’s native nest, and is associated with the loneliness and homelessness of the lyrical hero. It was such a tragic coincidence for Bunin: entering the second half of his life (he had just turned a little over fifty) and leaving Russia to emigrate. Painful experiences about the combination of twists of fate are reflected in this short poem, written in a foreign land.

Both works are united by one theme - the theme of love for the homeland and the bitterness of separation from it.

The relatedness of the poems is not only internal, but also external: they are similar in form (each consists of two quatrains), they have the same number of poetic lines, and the same method of rhyming.

The complex system of visual means in Bunin's poetics is determined primarily by the subject of the image. Longing for his native places and the sad spiritual mood of the lyrical hero, caused by memories of his native places and years of youth, give the poem "That star that swayed in the dark water...", individual paintings and images, romantic and realistic coloring at the same time. This is evidenced by the poet’s favorite “star” picture: a distant star - an integral part of the overall picture of the world - emphasizes the inner meaning of what is happening.

And a purely Bunin technique - the reflection of stars in the depths of water - is associated with the human condition, with the feelings of the lyrical hero (in this context, with sad reflections about the native land abandoned forever):

The light that flickered in the pond until dawn -

Now I will never find it in heaven.

In the second quatrain, the tragic sensations of the lyrical hero increase: from the enchanting beauty of the night landscape, the author moves on to specific images: a village, old house, the first songs, a description of happiness and joy in youth, which did not come true. And how much despair and pain there is in the last line of the entire poem:

Now I will never, ever return.

First quatrain of the second poem "The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole..." reveals the painful power of memories over the human soul. They give rise to bitterness and pain in the young heart of the hero. Father's yard, home... A sad farewell to the past...

How bitter it was for the young heart,

When I left my father's yard...

The second quatrain is also a memory, but of recent times. Before the reader are succinct pictures and images depicting the loneliness and loss of a Russian person in a foreign land.

...When I enter, being baptized, into someone else's rented house

With his already old knapsack.

Understanding internal state The soul of the lyrical hero of these two poems is helped by such an artistic device as a comparison of the past with what he is experiencing now: tenderness for his father’s home, dreams of happiness before and disappointment, melancholy, restlessness in the present:

Bunin's poetics are characterized by specific components of space and time. Firstly, they leave no doubt about the authenticity of what is being described, and secondly, these same realities also appear as carriers of various emotional experiences of the hero.

In the first poem you can see specific places of action: “under a crooked willow tree in a dead garden”, “an old house”, “in the sky”, “in a pond”. Time is indicated by words such as "before dawn", "now", "never".

These categories are represented in the second work with the words “nest”, “hole”, “father’s yard”, “someone else’s house”. Time is indicated in a peculiar way: by tenses of verbs (I left - I entered, it was - it beats).

A chain of tropes stretches through Bunin’s stanzas, detailing and deepening pictures and images, enhancing the sound of the lyrical “I”.

In a poem "That star that swayed in the dark water..." the metaphor “...a star that swayed in the dark water” helps to see the beauty of the night, and the author - to create the experience (sadness) of the lyrical hero. The purpose of including the second metaphor “...where the young years passed...” in the text is to emphasize the elusive passage of time in the life of every person.

Bunin's gift of rare imagery also manifested itself in the second poem: complex and strong human feelings are conveyed using the metaphor “... how bitter it was for the young heart.”

The individuality of Bunin's poetic mastery was also manifested in the selection of epithets, lyrical and metaphorical. They are few in number in these works, but they carry a double artistic load.

In a poem "That star that swayed in the dark water..." in the first stanza, the epithets create romantic pictures of a beautiful night: “a light flickering in the pond”, “in a dead garden”, “under a crooked willow tree”, “old house”, “first songs” and at the same time emphasize the sadness of the lyrical hero from charm native places and the need to leave them.

In the second poem, the epithets are chosen to emphasize the suffering of the lyrical hero: “... the young heart was bitter,” “father’s” (yard), “stranger, hired” (house), “old” (knapsack).

In the figurative system of the analyzed poems, it is necessary to note such a trope as periphrasis. In a poem "That star that swayed in the dark water..." in the first quatrain, in the first line the word “star” is found, and in the third line this word is replaced by a descriptive phrase “... a light that flickered in the pond until dawn.”

In the second poem "The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole..." The author uses a technique such as allegory: “to someone else’s rented house” and “with an old knapsack.” Having a hard time experiencing his departure from Russia, Bunin does not accept a country that is foreign to him, the bustle of Paris. All of his former life remained in his homeland, his native graves, valuables and shrines, without which the artist could not exist, and the burden of the years he had lived. Here it is, “an old knapsack!”

The aesthetic impact on the reader is achieved thanks to the expressiveness and completeness of syntactic and intonation solutions inherent in Bunin’s poetics.

The artistic expressiveness of each figure used in both poems helps the remarkable master of words achieve the musicality and rhythm of the verse. Frequent repetitions can be noted individual words and expressions that enhance the internal tension of the verse.

So in the poem "That star that swayed in the dark water..." The word “never” is repeated three times. It preserves the rhythmic harmony and discipline of the lines - each like a string - and conveys the dramatic collision of the lyrical hero, who is no longer destined to admire starry skies native village, and separation from them is forever.

A technique used was repetition - a junction in the second quatrain of the same poem:

…To the old house where I composed my first songs,

Where did I wait for happiness and joy in my youth...

With its help, the artist conveys the details of the past that meant so much to the lyrical hero.

In the second poem "The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole..." anaphora carries a special semantic load - the unity of command of the first and second quatrains (a slight rearrangement of words increases the tension):

The beast has a hole, the bird has a nest...

The dynamics of the lyrical hero’s experiences are conveyed by the second anaphora (the second line of the first stanza and the second line of the second stanza):

…How bitter it was for the young heart...

…How the heart beats sadly and loudly...

The intonation and vocabulary richness of Bunin's verse emphasizes the dimensions. In the first poem there is an anapest tetrameter, in the second there is Bunin’s favorite classic iambic six-meter. The last line in the same poem is written in iambic tetrameter with spandex

IN "The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole..." the rhyme in the first quatrain is cross, masculine, open; in the second it is also cross, but inaccurate. For example, “hole - yard” and “nest - house”, “loudly - knapsack”.

And the first poem was written using also cross rhyme, masculine, open “water - pond”, “garden - I won’t find it”. The second quatrain is a ring rhyme (encircling): the first - fourth lines “year - never”, the second with the third “laid - waited” and a masculine, closed rhyme.

The connection between these poems is unconditional: they reveal the same feeling - love for the homeland and separation from it. They are written in Bunin’s amazingly expressive language. But some differences in content and form should be noted.

“Can we forget our homeland? She is in the soul. I am a very Russian person. This does not go away over the years,” these words of Bunin are confirmed by the lines of the analyzed poems.

Both poems are perceived as the creations of a great, original Russian poet, a singer of Russian nature, of the Russian land.

References

Afanasyeva V. About the work of Ivan Bunin // Literature at school. - 1995.

Mikhailov O. Poetry of I.A. Bunin // Fiction. - 1990.

Smirnova L.A. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin. Life and creativity. M., 1991.

The childhood of the future writer took place in the conditions of a dwindling noble life, a completely ruined “noble nest” (the Butyrka farmstead of the Yeletsky district of the Oryol province). He learned to read early, had imagination since childhood and was very impressionable.

Having entered the gymnasium in Yelets in 1881, he studied there for only five years, since the family did not have the funds for this, he had to complete the gymnasium course at home (his older brother Julius, with whom the writer had the closest relationship, helped him master the curriculum of the gymnasium and then the university ). A nobleman by birth, Ivan Bunin did not even receive a high school education, and this could not but affect his future fate.

Central Russia, where Bunin spent his childhood and youth, sank deeply into the writer’s soul. He believed that it was middle lane Russia gave the best Russian writers, and the language, the beautiful Russian language, of which he himself was a true expert, in his opinion, originated and was constantly enriched in these places.

Literary debut

In 1889, an independent life began - with a change of professions, with work in both provincial and metropolitan periodicals. While collaborating with the editors of the Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper, the young writer met the newspaper's proofreader, Varvara Vladimirovna Pashchenko, who married him in 1891. The young couple, who lived unmarried (Pashchenko's parents were against the marriage), subsequently moved to Poltava (1892) and began to serve as statisticians in the provincial government. In 1891, Bunin's first collection of poems, still very imitative, was published.

1895 was a turning point in the writer’s fate. After Pashchenko got along with Bunin’s friend A.I. Bibikov, the writer left his service and moved to Moscow, where his literary acquaintances took place (with L.N. Tolstoy, whose personality and philosophy had a strong influence on Bunin, with A.P. Chekhov, M. Gorky, N.D. Teleshov, whose “environments” the young writer became a member of). Bunin was friends with many famous artists, painting always attracted him, it’s not for nothing that his poetry is so picturesque. In the spring of 1900, while in Crimea, he met S. V. Rachmaninov and the actors of the Art Theater, whose troupe was touring in Yalta.

Climbing the literary Olympus

In 1900, Bunin’s story “Antonov Apples” appeared, which was later included in all anthologies of Russian prose. The story is distinguished by nostalgic poetry (mourning over the ruined noble nests) and artistic precision. At the same time, “Antonov Apples” was criticized for the incense of the blue blood of a nobleman. During this period, wide literary fame came: for the poetry collection “Falling Leaves” (1901), as well as for the translation of the poem by the American romantic poet G. Longfellow "The Song of Hiawatha"(1896), Bunin was awarded Russian Academy Sciences Pushkin Prize (later, in 1909 he was elected an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences). Bunin's poetry was already distinguished by its devotion to the classical tradition; this trait would later permeate all of his work. The poetry that brought him fame was influenced by Pushkin, Feta, Tyutcheva. But she possessed only her inherent qualities. Thus, Bunin gravitates towards a sensually concrete image; The picture of nature in Bunin’s poetry is made up of smells, sharply perceived colors, and sounds. A special role is played in Bunin’s poetry and prose by the epithet, used by the writer as if emphatically subjective, arbitrary, but at the same time endowed with the persuasiveness of sensory experience.

Family life. Traveling in the East

Bunin's family life with Anna Nikolaevna Tsakni (1896-1900) also turned out unsuccessfully; their son Kolya died in 1905.

In 1906, Bunin met Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva (1881-1961), who became the writer’s companion throughout his subsequent life. Muromtseva, possessing extraordinary literary abilities, left wonderful literary memories of her husband (“The Life of Bunin”, “Conversations with Memory”). In 1907, the Bunins went on a trip to the countries of the East - Syria, Egypt, Palestine. Not only the bright, colorful impressions of the trip, but also the feeling of a new round of history that had arrived gave Bunin’s work a new, fresh impetus.

A turn in creativity. Mature master

If in his earlier works - the stories in the collection “To the End of the World” (1897), as well as in the stories “Antonov Apples” (1900), “Epitaph” (1900), Bunin turns to the theme of small-scale impoverishment, nostalgically tells about the life of the poor noble estates, then in works written after the first Russian Revolution of 1905, the main theme becomes the drama of Russian historical fate (the stories “Village”, 1910, “Sukhodol”, 1912). Both stories were a huge success among readers. M. Gorky noted that here the writer posed the question “... to be or not to be Russia?” The Russian village, Bunin believed, was doomed. The writer was accused of giving a sharply negative reflection of village life.

The “merciless truth” of Bunin’s letter was noted by a variety of writers (Yu. I. Aikhenvald, Z. N. Gippius etc.). However, the realism of his prose is ambiguously traditional: with conviction and force the writer depicts the new social types that appeared in the post-revolutionary village.

In 1910, the Bunins traveled first to Europe, and then to Egypt and Ceylon. The echoes of this journey, the impression that Buddhist culture made on the writer, are palpable, in particular, in the story “Brothers” (1914). In the fall of 1912 - spring of 1913 again abroad (Trebizond, Constantinople, Bucharest), then (1913-1914) - to Capri.

In 1915-1916, collections of stories “The Cup of Life” and “The Mister from San Francisco” were published. In the prose of these years, the writer’s understanding of the tragedy of the life of the world, of the doom and fratricidal nature of modern civilization expands (stories “The Gentleman from San Francisco”, “Brothers”). This purpose is also served by the symbolic, according to the writer, use in these works of epigraphs from the Revelation of John the Theologian, from the Buddhist canon, literary allusions present in the texts (comparing the hold of the steamship in “The Gentleman from San Francisco” with the ninth circle of Dante’s hell). The themes of this period of creativity are death, fate, and chance. The conflict is usually resolved by death.

The only valuables that survived in modern world, the writer considers the love, beauty and life of nature. But the love of Bunin’s heroes is also tragically colored and, as a rule, doomed (“Grammar of Love”). The theme of the union of love and death, imparting the utmost poignancy and intensity to the feeling of love, is characteristic of Bunin’s work until the last years of his writing life.

The heavy burden of emigration

He perceived the February revolution with pain, anticipating the upcoming trials. The October revolution only strengthened his confidence in the approaching catastrophe. The book of journalism “Cursed Days” (1918) became a diary of events in the life of the country and the thoughts of the writer at this time. The Bunins leave Moscow for Odessa (1918), and then abroad, to France (1920). The break with the Motherland, as it turned out later, forever, was painful for the writer.

The themes of the writer’s pre-revolutionary work are also revealed in the work of the emigrant period, and in even greater completeness. The works of this period are permeated with thoughts about Russia, about the tragedy of Russian history of the 20th century, about the loneliness of modern man, which is only broken for a brief moment by the invasion love passion(collections of stories “Mitya’s Love”, 1925, “Sunstroke”, 1927, “ Dark alleys", 1943, autobiographical novel "The Life of Arsenyev", 1927-1929, 1933). The binary nature of Bunin's thinking - the idea of ​​the drama of life associated with the idea of ​​the beauty of the world - imparts intensity of development and tension to Bunin's plots. The same intensity of being is palpable in Bunin’s artistic detail, which has acquired even greater sensory authenticity in comparison with the works of early creativity.

In 1927-1930 Bunin turned to the genre short story(“Elephant”, “Calf’s Head”, “Roosters”, etc.). This is the result of the writer’s search for the utmost laconicism, the utmost semantic richness, and the semantic “capacity” of prose.

In emigration, relations with prominent Russian emigrants were difficult for the Bunins, and Bunin did not have a sociable character. In 1933 he became the first Russian writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize. This was, of course, a blow for the Soviet leadership. The official press, commenting on this event, explained the decision of the Nobel Committee as the machinations of imperialism.

During the centenary of death A. S. Pushkina(1937) Bunin, speaking at evenings in memory of the poet, spoke about “Pushkin’s service here, outside the Russian land.”

Didn't return to homeland

With the outbreak of World War II, in 1939, the Bunins settled in the south of France, in Grasse, at the Villa Jeannette, where they spent the entire war. The writer closely followed events in Russia, refusing any form of cooperation with the Nazi occupation authorities. He experienced the defeats of the Red Army on the eastern front very painfully, and then sincerely rejoiced at its victories.

In 1927-1942, Galina Nikolaevna Kuznetsova lived side by side with the Bunin family, who became the writer’s deep, late affection. Possessing literary abilities, she created works of a memoir nature, most memorably recreating the appearance of Bunin (“Grasse Diary”, article “In Memory of Bunin”).

Living in poverty, he stopped publishing his works, and was seriously ill a lot, but in recent years he nevertheless wrote a book of memoirs and worked on the book “About Chekhov,” published posthumously (1955) in New York.

Bunin repeatedly expressed his desire to return to his homeland, the decree of the Soviet government in 1946 “On the restoration of USSR citizenship to subjects of the former Russian Empire..." called "a generous measure." However, Zhdanov’s resolution on the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad” (1946), which trampled A. Akhmatova and M. Zoshchenko, forever turned the writer away from his intention to return to his homeland.

In 1945 the Bunins returned to Paris. The greatest writers of France and other European countries highly appreciated Bunin's work even during his lifetime (F. Mauriac, A. Gide, R. Rolland, T. Mann, R.-M. Rilke, J. Ivashkevich, etc.). The writer's works have been translated into all European languages ​​and some Eastern languages.

He was buried in the Russian cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois, near Paris.

E. V. Stepanyan

BUNIN, Ivan Alekseevich - Russian writer. Born into an old impoverished noble family, in which the love of Russian literature, the cult A. S. Pushkina, V. A. Zhukovsky, M. Yu. Lermontova, Ya. P. Polonsky combined with class prejudices, constant memories of the former greatness of the pillar noble family. Bunin spent his childhood on the family estate - on the Butyrki farm in the Oryol province, among “a sea of ​​bread, herbs, flowers”, “in the deepest silence of the field.” In 1881 he entered the Yelets gymnasium, but without completing four classes, he continued his education under the guidance of his older brother Julius, an exiled Narodnaya Volya member. Poverty, knocking on the estate, forced Bunin to leave the family nest in 1889. He worked as a proofreader, statistician, librarian, and plunged into newspaper day labor (“Orlovsky Vestnik”, “Kievlyanin”, “Poltava Provincial Gazette”). He appeared in print in 1887 (poem "Over Nadson's grave"). In 1891, the collection “Poems” was published in Orel, where among the imitations, landscape lyrics, full of impressions from the native Oryol region, stand out. Bunin, deeply poetic and with genuine knowledge inherent in a person who grew up in the village, reproduced the natural world. Collections “Under open air"(1898) and received the Pushkin Prize "Falling Leaves" (1901) - an example of the improvement of verse in its "old" classical forms, continuing traditions A. A. Feta, Ya. P. Polonsky, A. K. Tolstoy. Bunin's poetry is a song about his homeland, its “poor villages,” vast forests in the “satin shine of the birch forest.” In the same thematic vein, Bunin’s early stories were written about a hungry, impoverished village (“Tanka”, “To the End of the World”, “News from the Motherland”), about half-abandoned estates where noblemen live out their days (“On a Farm”, “In field"). Bunin's acquaintance with A.P. Chekhov dates back to December 1895, and to M. Gorky in 1899, who attracted Bunin to collaborate with the publishing house "Knowledge", promoting the growth of the young writer's democratic views. And if the best stories of this time include “Antonov Apples” (1900), “Pines” (1901), “ New road"(1901) - Bunin's social indifference is still noticeable, then the later "Chernozem" (1904) was written in the best traditions of "Knowledge" and is full of social issues. Elevated and strict rhythm combined with plastic external imagery, unexpected metaphors, a real celebration of aromas and colors, unique artistic laconicism - these are the main features of Bunin’s innovative poetics. “...He began to write prose in such a way,” Gorky sums up in one of his letters, “that if they say about him: this is the best stylist of our time, there will be no exaggeration.” Bunin's pre-revolutionary work reflected the collapse of patriarchal landowner-peasant Rus' in the conditions of rapidly developing bourgeois relations. The story “Sukhodol” (1911) chronicled the degeneration of the estate nobility. Beginning with the story “The Village” (1910), the writer turns to broad social themes. He perceives the fate of Russia as the fate of the Russian peasantry (stories " Ancient man", "Night Conversation", "Merry Yard", "Ignat", "Zakhar Vorobyov", "Thin Grass"). With great artistic force, dark, backward Rus', the tragedy of a poor, spiritually destitute people are captured in Bunin’s stories. Episodes of wild and cruel village life sometimes acquire a naturalistic character in Bunin. Unable to see anything new in the village, Bunin, with his depiction of the inert peasant environment in the time after the defeat of the revolution of 1905, gave, however, in the words of V.V. Vorovsky, “... a kind of study about the causes of memorable failures.”

By this time, Bunin's outstanding talent was receiving universal recognition. In 1909, the Academy of Sciences elected him an honorary academician. In the 900s, Bunin traveled a lot. The result of his trip to the East was a series of essays “Temple of the Sun” (1907-1911). In the 10s, Bunin’s realistic method was improved, a new and varied theme invaded his work: the suffocating life of the philistinism (“Good Life”), the city bottom with taverns and cheap rooms (“Loopy Ears”), penetration into the “dark alleys” of human passion ("Chang's Dreams") Bunin's pre-revolutionary prose is permeated with a hostile attitude towards capitalist civilization ("The Gentleman from San Francisco", 1915) and colonialism ("Brothers", 1914). Only in closeness to nature, to simple life does the artist find a source of cleansing influence on man. Bunin's pre-revolutionary legacy, which reflected the diverse influence of the traditions of L. N. Tolstoy, I. S. Turgenev, N. V. Gogol, is a significant contribution to the realistic literature of the 20th century. At times Bunin approached the line beyond which the creation of self-sufficient images begins, but he never moved to the aesthetic positions of modernism. A master of “small” forms - stories, short stories, short stories, Bunin was a subtle stylist who created a special “brocade” (multicolored, dense, patterned) language. Picturesqueness and severity, musicality and expressiveness of the rhythmic pattern are characteristic of Bunin's prose. He is also known as a master of poetic translations, among which "Song of Hiawatha"(1896, 2 edition 1898) G. Longfellow, J. Byron's philosophical dramas “Cain” (1905), “Manfred” (1904), “Heaven and Earth” (1909) and others.

Having met the October Revolution with hostility, Bunin emigrated to France in 1920 and subsequently published his works mainly abroad. He published articles directed against Soviet Russia. A crisis was brewing in Bunin's work in the 1920s. Isolation from his homeland limited the artist’s range and deprived him of connections with modernity. Bunin turned to intimate, lyrical memories of his youth. The novel “The Life of Arsenyev” (separate publication 1930, Paris; included in the one-volume edition of Bunin’s works, published in Moscow in 1961) seemed to close the cycle of artistic autobiographies related to the life of the Russian landed nobility. Bunin painted the beauty of Russian nature and Russian people (stories “Mowers”, “Lapti”, “God’s Tree”), resurrected the charm of old Moscow (“Distant”, “Benevolent Participation”). The theme of death sounded more and more insistently in his works, acting as the resolver of all contradictions in stories about fatal passion (“Mitya’s Love”, 1925; “The Case of Cornet Elagin”, 1927; cycle of short stories “Dark Alleys”, New York, 1943). The heroes of these stories are people of tragic temperament, but their intolerance to vulgarity manifests itself only in withering, destructive love-passion. In his later works, Bunin more often uses symbolism; The concrete sensual form in his prose acquires an almost plastic tangibility. At the same time, everything social dissolves; What remains is love, suffering, longing for the ideal. In exile, Bunin created a purely pessimistic book about L.N. Tolstoy (“The Liberation of Tolstoy”, Paris, 1937), wrote “Memoirs” (Paris, 1950), which contained attacks against figures of Soviet Russian culture - M. Gorky, A. Blok, V. Bryusova, A. Tolstoy, as well as a book about A.P. Chekhov (New York, 1955). In 1933 Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Bunin's largely controversial legacy has great aesthetic and educational value. He belonged to those realist artists who, in the words of M. Gorky, “felt with amazing strength the meaning of the everyday and depicted it beautifully.” As a successor to the traditions of Russian literature of the 19th century, Bunin was one of the last major representatives of critical realism in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century.

Op.: Under the open sky. Poems, M., 1898; Listopad, M., 1901; Collection soch., vol. 1-5, St. Petersburg, 1902-09; Full collection soch., vol. 1-6, P., 1915; Collection cit., vol. 1-12, [Berlin], 1934-39; Dark Alleys, 2nd ed., Paris, 1946; Spring in Judea. Rose of Jericho, New York, 1953; Collection soch., vol. 1-5, M., 1956; Favorite works, M., 1956; Poems, 3rd ed., Leningrad, 1961; Stories. Stories. Memoirs, M., 1961.

Lit.: Vorovsky V.V., Bunin, in his book: Literary Critical. articles, M., 1956; Aikhenvald Yu. I., Silhouettes of Russian. writers, 3rd ed., v. 3, M., 1917; Batyushkov F.D., I.A. Bunin, in the book: Rus. literature of the 20th century. 1890-1910, ed. S. A. Vengerova, [book. 7], M., [b. G.]; Gorbov D., Here and abroad, [M.], 1928; Mikhailovsky B.V., Rus. literature of the 20th century. Since the 90s of the XIX century. before 1917, M., 1939; Kastorsky S., Gorky and Bunin, “Zvezda”, 1956, No. 3; Baboreko A., Youth novel by I. A. Bunin, almanac “Lit. Smolensk", 1956, No. 15; him, Chekhov and Bunin, in the book: Lit. inheritance, vol. 68, M., 1960; Mikhailov O., Prose of Bunin, “Vopr. Literary", 1957, No. 5; him, Bunin and Tolstoy, in the book: Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Sat. articles on creativity, [ed. N.K. Gudziya], [collection] 2, M., 1959; Muromtseva-Bunina V.N., The Life of Bunin, Paris, 1959; Nikulin L.V., Chekhov. Bunin. Kuprin. Lit. portraits, M., 1960; Sterlina I. D., Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, Lipetsk, 1960.

O. N. Mikhailov

Brief Literary Encyclopedia: In 9 volumes - T. 1. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1962

Ivan Alekseevich BUNIN is one of the greatest masters of the short story in modern Russian literature and an outstanding poet. Born in Voronezh, into the family of a small estate, but belonging to an old noble family. He appeared in print in 1888. In 1910–1911, Bunin created the story “The Village,” which secured his position in the forefront of literary artists. Since then, Bunin's skill as a short story writer has been on an ascending line.

Bunin's artistic and social figure is distinguished by exceptional integrity. The writer’s belonging to the once dominant, and at the time of his birth, fading noble class, which was unable to adapt to the capitalist situation in Russia at the end of the 19th and first decades of the 20th century, and even more so to the revolutionary, pre-October situation, determined all the features of Bunin’s work and his social behavior. In my own way artistic direction Bunin cannot be attributed entirely to any of the literary trends that dominated before the revolution. What separates him from the symbolists is his pronounced focus on realistic detail, on the everyday life and psychology of the depicted environment, and from the social realists - extreme individualism in the approach to the described phenomena and emphasized aestheticism in the interpretation of realistic images. The combination of these features forces Bunin to be attributed to the direction of the so-called “neorealism”, a literary school that emerged in the 1910s. and sought not only to continue the traditions of classical Russian realism, but also to rebuild them under a new angle of view, approaching symbolism. In his most mature works (starting with the story “The Village”, “Sukhodol” and ending with the short stories created in recent years - “Mitya’s Love”, “The Case of the Cornet Elagin” - and the novel “The Life of Arsenyev”) Bunin clearly reveals his literary genealogy : motives of Turgenev, Tolstoy, Lermontov-prose writer, partly Saltykov-Shchedrin (“Poshekhon Antiquity”) and S. Aksakov (especially in the linguistic and descriptive elements) are heard very clearly in Bunin. However, their focus is different. Bunin very clearly reveals a connection with his kindred noble culture, which gave rise to those classical literary examples from which he comes. The feeling of the death of one’s class and the associated intense longing for its passing culture lead to the fact that, under the pen of Bunin, these elements look by no means a simple repetition of what the classical period of Russian realism gave, but their independent reproduction, enlivened and intensified by a new, deeply intimate interpretation. The development of Bunin's artistic style as a short story writer went precisely in the direction of emphasizing the motive of death, on the one hand, and in the direction of gradually unloading the short story from realistic, everyday features, on the other. If in Bunin’s early short stories (for example, “Antonov Apples”, 1901) the picture of the impoverishment of the nobility is presented in objective, lyrically calm tones, then in “The Village” the motive for the death of this class and the peasant patriarchal world associated with it sounds tragic, and in “Sukhodol” he already appears painted in semi-mystical tones. A further step in this direction are such short stories by Bunin as “Mr. from San Francisco”, “Dreams of Chang”, “Brothers”, where the same motive of inevitable death and the associated motive of the futility and meaninglessness of existence are transferred to the plane of personal existence (and the class origin of these ideas is often obscured by the fact that the appearance of the characters is skillfully given external features representatives of other classes). Finally, in Bunin’s works of the emigrant period (“Mitya’s Love”, “The Case of Cornet Elagin”, “Transfiguration”) the motif of death appears in its most naked form, and the artist seems to bow before the inevitable end, openly proclaiming the value superiority of death over life and its “rough animality." The compositional, figurative and stylistic implementation of Bunin's short stories strictly corresponds to this thematic focus. If Bunin's works on the eve of 1905 are presented in the form of colorfully colored, descriptive psychological essays and sketches, then in the future more and more emphasis is placed on deepening the internal drama of situations and characters, emphasizing the integrity of the mood through the increasingly generous inclusion in the short story of mournful lyrical thoughts on behalf of the heroes or himself. author. During the emigrant period, this process culminates in the fact that the display of everyday life and psychology of a certain, clearly limited social environment finally gives way to mournful lyrics on the theme of life and death, and in those cases when the characters are nevertheless introduced, the author clearly pursues the goal of something less dramatic development of their characters, as much as the transformation of these individuals into bearers of a predetermined lyrical and philosophical theme. In a number of cases, this is accompanied by an extreme reduction in the number of characters, an exclusive concentration of attention on two heroes - participants in a tragic love affair, the meaning of which is the doom of genuine human feeling to a tragic end (“Mitya’s Love”, “The Case of Cornet Elagin”, “Sunstroke” , "Ida"). In a number of other short stories, Bunin acts as a pure lyricist, turning the short story into a prose poem on the same lyrical and philosophical theme about the beauty of human feeling and its doom in earthly conditions. Thinking about this theme as a universal one, Bunin increasingly unloads his images from the features of everyday life, seeks inspiration in images of the past, drawing them from religious and literary monuments of antiquity (the Bible, Vedas), as well as from memories of the past life of the Russian nobility, which In the last works of the writer he appears more and more idealized. This idealization of “heraldic” memories received especially complete expression in the autobiographical novel “The Life of Arsenyev,” where the material from the previous chronicle “Sukhodol” receives a new intimate and lyrical development. To what extent is this gradual advancement of Bunin’s work in the indicated direction in all its stages determined by the course of development of class relations of the revolutionary era? IN at the moment It is possible to state with certainty the fact of this dependence in rough terms. Thus, the influence of the revolution of 1905 and its defeat on Bunin’s work is undeniable: the victory of the reaction, instead of bringing cheerfulness to the consciousness of the nobility, which was under the direct blow of the revolution, in fact, even more sharply highlighted the doom of this class in its own eyes, since this victory did not may not have been perceived by the best representatives of the nobility as temporary; Moreover, it was won not by the nobility, which had lost its creative powers long before the struggle, but by the bureaucratic state, which relied on the big bourgeoisie, i.e., a social force to which the noble strata, represented by Bunin, were more or less harsh, although powerless opposition. All this emphasized in Bunin’s eyes the complete futility of victory and determined the deepening of pessimism that is observed in his inter-revolutionary short stories. Further, the revolution of 1917 and its victorious completion served as an obvious and final impetus for Bunin to completely break away from modernity and to retreat to the mystical positions that he occupies in the works of the emigration era. From this point of view, Bunin’s very transition to emigration, his sharply embittered attitude towards Soviet Russia, expressed in newspaper feuilletons, speeches, some short stories (for example, “Unurgent Spring”, “Red General”) and distinguishing Bunin even among emigrant writers, seem to be only a practical conclusion, which with fanatical consistency was made by Bunin from his entire worldview.

Bunin's place in the history of Russian literature is very significant. Bunin's sharply expressed reactionary ideology takes on the meaning of the characteristic features of the noble class, which found complete expression under Bunin's pen. On the other hand, the purity of language, outstanding even for the classical period of Russian prose, the clarity of the internal pattern in the images and the perfect integrity of the mood - all these features of high skill inherent in Bunin as the culmination of the classical period of Russian noble realism, make Bunin's short stories complete literary examples.

In the area of ​​verse, Bunin's importance is less. Belonging to the type of plastic poets ( best book Bunin's poems - the poem that received the Pushkin Prize of the Academy of Sciences belongs entirely to landscape poetry), Bunin was a conservative in the field of poetic form. Based on the lyrics Pushkin And Al. Tolstoy, Bunin did not try to introduce anything new into Russian verse and shunned new achievements made by others. The clarity of touch characteristic of Bunin, which constitutes the originality of Bunin’s short story, in poetry turned into a certain dryness that violates the depth of lyrical feeling. However, individual poems by Bunin (the poem and some recent poems) should be recognized as outstanding examples of pictorial lyricism.

Bunin translated some examples of world literature into Russian. Among them are Byron's poems "Cain" and "Manfred". He also owns the only poetic translation of Longfellow's poem in Russian literature. "The Song of Hiawatha".

Latest full meeting Bunin's works in six volumes were published by Marx in 1915 (appendix to the Niva magazine). Giz published a collection of Bunin's pre-revolutionary stories under the title "Dreams of Chang" (M. - L., 1928), and ZIF in 1928 - the same collection under the title "Thin Grass" (the contents of both collections are different). “Book New Products” in 1927 republished Bunin’s best short stories of the emigrant period: “Mitya’s Love” (separate edition) and the collection “The Case of Cornet Elagin” (where, in addition to the short story of this title, there are also “Sunstroke”, “Ida”, “ Mordovian sundress”, etc.).

Bibliography: Aikhenvald Yu., Silhouettes of Russian Writers, vol. III, M., 1910; Kogan P., Essays on the history of modern Russian literature, vol. III, c. II, M., 1910; Bryusov V. Distant and Close, M., 1912; Batyushkov F., Russian literature of the 20th century, ed. S. Vengerova, vol. VII, M., 1918, autobiographical there. note; Vorovsky V., Literary essays, M., 1923; Gorbov D., Here and Abroad, M., 1928 (articles “Dead Beauty and Tenacious Ugliness” and “Ten Years of Literature Abroad”); Vladislavlev I.V., Russian writers, L., 1924, His, Literature of the Great Decade, vol. I, M., 1928.

D. Gorbov

Literary encyclopedia: In 11 volumes - [M.], 1929-1939