The artistic world of I. Bunin

Even during the life of I. A. Bunin, they started talking about him as a brilliant master of not only Russian, but also world level. In 1933, the first of our compatriots was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In what ways did Bunin remain faithful to the artistic principles of Russian classics? How does he develop and update domestic literary traditions, what features of his work allow us to speak of him as a prominent master of literary expression of the 20th century, a writer of pan-European and world scale?
Let's consider the most important semantic constants of I. Bunin's artistic world.
The author’s narrative is almost always based on a flow of memory, which for him exists in the form of ancestral memory as a feeling of his own inextricable connection with “All-Being” (the term used by Bunin), with ancestors, as a recollection of his previous lives. To exist without memory is the greatest tragedy. Only the past, fixed by memory, constitutes a subject of high art for Bunin. In one of his letters he notes: “While you live, you do not feel life.” Therefore, I. Bunin’s favorite heroes are not people of reason and logic, but those who carry within themselves the primitive wisdom of instincts, not reflective, but integral and plastic individuals.
It is impossible to simultaneously appreciate and understand the moment being experienced. Thus, the delay in our awareness is perfectly conveyed by Bunin in the story “Sunstroke.” Life is just material from which the human soul, with the help of memory, produces something aesthetically valuable. Bunin dislikes the category of the future, which promises nothing but death. The writer is trying to regain "lost time." This is exactly what is manifested in his autobiographical novel "The Life of Arsenyev."
In Bunin’s artistic world, the feeling of loneliness is most clearly manifested - eternal, universal loneliness, as an inevitable and irresistible state human soul. The unknowable world secret gives rise to both “sweet and sorrowful feelings” in the writer’s soul. The feeling of joy and delight in life is mixed with a languishing feeling of melancholy. The joy of life for Bunin is not a blissful and serene state, but a tragic feeling, colored by melancholy and anxiety. That is why love and death always go hand in hand with him, unexpectedly connecting with creativity.
Bunin’s work constantly contains motifs of love, death and the transformative power of art.
Perhaps Bunin's main passion in life is the love of changing places. In the 1880-1890s. He traveled a lot in Russia, then traveled around Europe, traveled through the Middle East and Asian countries. Sometimes, as material for his works, Bunin used not only impressions of what was happening in the Russian outback, but also his foreign observations.
In relation to Russian reality, Bunin’s position looked unusual. To many of his contemporaries he seemed dispassionate, “cold,” although a brilliant master, and his judgments about Russia, Russian people, Russian history were too detached. Bunin tried to distance himself from fleeting social anxieties, avoiding journalisticism in his pre-revolutionary work. At the same time, he felt unusually keenly that he belonged to Russian culture, “the family of his fathers.” To assess Russian reality, Bunin always needed distance - chronological and sometimes geographical. For example, while in Italy, Bunin wrote about the Russian village, while in Russia he created works about India, Ceylon, and the Middle East.
Bunin showed himself equally clearly as a prose writer, as a poet, and as a translator. Back in 1886-1887. Before the publication of his first poems and stories, he enthusiastically worked on translations of Hamlet. His poetic translations of Petrarch, Heine, Verhaeren, Mickiewicz, Tenisson, Byron, Musset and others appeared in print. The pinnacle of this period was the translation of “The Song of Hiawatha” by G. Longfellow, which was published in 1896.
The school of poetic translation, with its search for the only possible word, greatly helped the writer to perfectly master the form of classical Russian verse. The huge number of books he read contributed to the enrichment of his poetic storehouse.
Bunin had unusually sharp eyesight, allowing him to see stars visible to others only through a telescope, and amazing hearing - interestingly, he could determine who was riding by the sound of bells.
Bunin was extremely strict about the accuracy of the image. Everyone who knew the writer was repeatedly convinced of how carefully he treated every printed word, to the point that even an incorrectly placed comma could seriously upset him.
Right up to the publication of the book, he did not stop making amendments and clarifications to the text until the last minute.
Bunin's more than sixty-year journey in literature can be chronologically divided into two approximately equal parts - pre-October and emigrant.
Bunin's youthful, mostly imitative poems are of interest only insofar as they characterize his mood at that time (dreams of happiness, a feeling of the unity of happiness and suffering, etc.). The author’s early prose contains features that later disappeared from Bunin’s other works: humor (in the essays “Small Landlords”, “Landowner Vorgolsky” Gogolian notes are visible), A. P. Chekhov’s characteristic depiction of the vulgarity and melancholy of bourgeois life (“Tarantella”, “Day” day after day").
Bunin’s true worldview was manifested in such stories as “On the Farm”, “On the Donets”, “Pass”, “Antonov Apples”, “Skeet”, “Pines”, etc. Already in the story “On the Farm” (1895) there is and regret about transience human life, and the sudden thought of the inevitability of death, and the loneliness of a person.
In his depiction of the village, Bunin was initially far from idealizing the peasantry. This is shown especially clearly in the story "Fedoseevna", main character of whom is a poor, sick old woman, kicked out of the house by her daughter. Bunin is not interested in social conflicts, but in the relationship between man and nature, which gives saving peace. In many of the author’s works, the chirping of insects and the singing of night cicadas will become a permanent symbol of the inexhaustible and mysterious power of life.
Bunin builds his stories not on a chronological sequence, but on the technique of associations. His comparisons are based on visual, sound and taste associations: “like fox fur of the forest”, “silks of the sands”, “fiery red lightning snake”. The story "Pines" reveals one of the most remarkable features of Bunin's work - the redundancy of bright, expressive, but seemingly superfluous and unnecessary details. This fascination with detail is explained by the author’s desire to capture the unique diversity of the world.
Simultaneously with “Antonov Apples,” Bunin wrote the autumn poem “Falling Leaves.” In this first poetic masterpiece of the author, one can trace all the features of Bunin’s mature poetry: simplicity, calm intonation without false pathos, deliberate traditionalism of the verse, deliberate prosaism that brings poetic speech closer to colloquial speech.
Almost all Bunin's stories of the beginning of the century are plotless and lyrical ("Fog" - a description of the feelings of the lyrical hero on a foggy night on a ship, "Dawn All Night" - the experiences of a girl on the eve of the wedding, etc.); The drama of his stories lies not in the plot conflict, but in the very atmosphere of the story. The beginning of the action is often preceded by autonomous and seemingly redundant pictures, and the end of the action is often followed by a “postscript” that unexpectedly opens up a new perspective (“Red General”, “Klasha”, “Easy Breathing”). Incompleteness and understatement increase the activity of the reader's perception. Bunin's various descriptions and digressions destroy the consistent course of the action, and the action itself seems to fall apart into separate blocks-segments ("The Old Woman" is a set of independent scenes and paintings, "Brothers" is several heroes independent from each other).
Bunin never comments on his impressions and attitude towards what he portrays, but tries to convey to us in a direct form the feeling itself, to infect us, to hypnotize us with a feeling. Understanding the spontaneity of thinking and its insubordination to conscious volitional effort determines the unusual behavior of Bunin’s heroes, illogical for traditional psychologism. For Bunin, a specific life situation does not contain a moral problem, because the most important problem is life, governed by eternal laws unknown to us. For Bunin, man is far from being the pinnacle of creation, but a pitiful, perhaps the least perfect creature.
Connected with a deep understanding of the psyche is Bunin’s interest in the state of sleep, delirium, hallucinations (the dying visions of a land surveyor in “Asthma”, “Chang’s Dreams”, “The Dream of Bishop Ignatius of Rostov”, Mitya’s dream in the story “Mitya’s Love”) - this is a kind of opportunity to get out beyond the boundaries of our “I”, transcending the boundaries of individual consciousness.
A significant place in Bunin’s work was occupied by his reflections on the mysterious Russian soul, which were fully embodied in the story “The Village,” which caused a sensation in reader circles with its ruthlessness, courage and challenge to generally accepted opinion. One of the most amazing features of the Russian character, which Bunin never tires of being amazed at, is the absolute inability to live a normal life and aversion to everyday life (“they are disgusted with life, its eternal everyday life”). Everyday work with such a feeling of life is one of the most severe punishments. However, apathy in everyday life gives way to unexpected energy in emergency situations. For example, one of the characters in “The Village,” Gray, is too lazy to fix holes in the roof, but is the first to respond to a fire.
The desire to free themselves from a dreary existence pushes the heroes either to an unexpected act or to an absurd and senseless rebellion. So, the rebellious men threaten to kill Tikhon Krasov, and then, as before, they respectfully bow to him. Describing the rudeness, envy, hostility, and cruelty of the peasants, Bunin never allows himself an accusatory tone; he is extremely truthful and objective. However, this is not a cold statement of the terrifying reality, but pity and compassion for the “thrashing and unfortunate” and even self-flagellation.
And in the story "Sukhodol" the main theme is the Russian soul, which is developed using the example of the nobility. It is in the similarity of Russian peasants and nobles that Bunin sees the main reason for the degeneration of the village; the nobility is still affected by the same disease - Russian melancholy, absurdity, irrationality of actions. The theme of the Russian soul is presented in "Sukhodol" in a completely different artistic key than in "Village", where the smallest details are carefully depicted. “Sukhodol” is a work where the emotional atmosphere is created by the interweaving and development of repeating motifs, that is, “musical” principles of composition are used. Sukhodol is not real object, but only memories of him. Sukhodol no longer exists - only remnants of antiquity live, reflected by the unsteady light of the past.
The October Revolution forced the writer to leave Moscow in 1918, and at the beginning of 1920 to part with his homeland forever. In Bunin's diary of these years, published in exile under the title "Cursed Days", the reasons that prompted the writer to leave the country are especially vividly and extremely clearly revealed. Bunin's notes are distinguished by a high concentration of passionate hostility towards Bolshevism, which is not only moral, but also aesthetic in nature. This revealed his main feature - to see at the heart of the tragedy of the world not the contrast of good and evil, but the contrast of beauty and ugliness, to serve “beauty and truth.” Bunin describes the bloody orgies of the Bolsheviks in Odessa, which they captured, and the disgusting morals of the “red aristocracy.”
During the emigrant period, Bunin's prose becomes emotional, musical and lyrical. In a new round of creativity, poetry and prose merge into a completely new synthetic genre. Teme historical memory The stories “Mowers”, “Rus”, “The Saint”, “Tree of God” are dedicated to it, where Bunin again returns to the theme of the Russian soul. In emigration, Bunin felt even more keenly the mysterious life of the Russian word, reaching linguistic peaks and revealing an amazing knowledge of folk speech. Even greater skill is manifested in the musical organization of his prose.
The theme of love begins to occupy an increasing place in Bunin’s work, which will become the main one in his last book, “Dark Alleys,” which the writer himself considered his most perfect creation. What is especially striking about this book is its freshness and youthful strength of feeling.
The completely new character of Bunin's prose found its expression in his creation of a new literary genre - miniatures, when the detail itself became a story. Some of them were written for the sake of one single phrase or one word ("Tears", "Ogress", "Roosters"). They are extremely specific, there are no allegories in them, and in fact there is no metaphor. Miniatures are perceived as poetic text; they are permeated with a system of lexical and sound repetitions.
Bunin's most remarkable book in exile is his novel "The Life of Arsenyev." In the novel, the author recreates his perception of life and the experience of this perception. This work is about the “perception of perception” or the memory of memory. According to Bunin, memory cleanses the past of everything unnecessary and superficial and reveals its true essence, making visible the aesthetic in the everyday. The novel contains time of the past and time of the present narrative; there are frequent “transfers” from one time to another, and sometimes violations of the time sequence. However, this is not an objective reconstruction of the past, but the creation of a special world, a different reality thanks to the author’s consciousness, where “insignificant and ordinary things” become mysteriously beautiful. “The Life of Arsenyev” is a unique work in Russian literature, striking in its internal psychologism, referencing the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
Shortly before his death, Bunin was working on a book about Chekhov. He never managed to complete it. The book was published after Bunin's death in New York.

5. In the work of I. A. Bunin, poetry occupies a significant place, although he gained fame as a prose writer. He claimed to be first and foremost a poet. It was with poetry that his path in literature began.
When Bunin was 17 years old, his first poem “The Village Beggar” was published in the Rodina magazine, in which young poet described the state of the Russian village:

6.
It's sad to see so much suffering
And longing and need in Rus'!

7. From the very beginning of his creative activity, the poet found his style, his themes, his original manner. Many poems reflected the state of mind of young Bunin, his inner world, subtle and rich in shades of feelings. Smart, quiet lyrics were similar to a conversation with a close friend, but amazed contemporaries with high technique and artistry. Critics unanimously admired Bunin's unique gift for feeling the word, his mastery in the field of language. The poet gleaned many precise epithets and comparisons from his works folk art- both oral and written. K. Paustovsky greatly appreciated Bunin, saying that each of his lines was as clear as a string.
Bunin started with civil lyrics, wrote about the difficult life of the people, with all his soul he wished for changes for the better. In the poem “Desolation,” the old house says to the poet:

8.
I'm waiting for the cheerful sounds of the axe,
I'm waiting for the destruction of daring work,
Mighty hands and brave voices!
I'm waiting for life, even in brute force,
Blossomed again from the ashes of the grave.

9. In 1901, Bunin’s first poetry collection “Falling Leaves” was published. It also included a poem of the same name. The poet says goodbye to childhood, the world of dreams. The homeland appears in the poems in the collection in wonderful pictures of nature, evoking a sea of feelings and emotions. The image of autumn is the most frequently encountered in Bunin’s landscape lyrics. The poet’s poetic creativity began with him, and until the end of his life this image illuminates his poems with a golden radiance. In the poem “Falling Leaves,” autumn “comes to life”:

10.
The forest smells of oak and pine,
Over the summer it dried out from the sun,
And autumn is a quiet widow
Enters his motley mansion.

11. A. Blok wrote about Bunin that “few people know how to know and love nature,” and added that Bunin “claims one of the main places in Russian poetry.” The rich artistic perception of nature, the world and man in it has become distinctive feature both poetry and prose of Bunin. Gorky compared Bunin the artist with Levitan in terms of his skill in creating landscapes.
Bunin lived and worked at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when modernist movements were rapidly developing in poetry. Many poets were engaged in word creation, looking for unusual forms to express their thoughts and feelings, which sometimes shocked readers. Bunin remained faithful to the traditions of Russian classical poetry, which were developed by Fet, Tyutchev, Baratynsky, Polonsky and others. He wrote realistic lyric poetry and did not strive to experiment with words. The riches of the Russian language and the events of reality were quite enough for the poet.
In his poems, Bunin tried to find the harmony of the world, the meaning of human existence. He affirmed the eternity and wisdom of nature, defined it as an inexhaustible source of beauty. Bunin's life is always inscribed in the context of nature. He was confident in the rationality of all living things and argued “that there is no nature separate from us, that every slightest movement of air is the movement of our own life.”
Landscape lyrics gradually become philosophical. In a poem, the main thing for the author is thought. Many of the poet’s poems are devoted to the theme of life and death:

12.
My spring will pass, and this day will pass,
But it's fun to wander around and know that everything passes,
Meanwhile, the happiness of living will never die,
While the dawn brings out the dawn above the earth
And young life will be born in its turn.

13. It is noteworthy that when revolutionary processes had already begun in the country, they were not reflected in Bunin’s poems. He continued the philosophical theme. It was more important for him to know What, A Why something or other happens to a person. The poet correlated the problems of our time with eternal categories - good, evil, life and death. Trying to find the truth, he turns to history in his work different countries and peoples. This is how poems about Mohammed, Buddha, and ancient deities arise. In the poem "Sabaoth" he writes:

14.
The ancient words sounded dead.
The spring glow was on the slippery slabs -
And a menacing gray head
Flowed between the stars, surrounded by fogs.

15. The poet wanted to understand the general laws of development of society and the individual. He recognized earthly life as only a segment of the eternal life of the Universe. This is where the motives of loneliness and fate arise. Bunin foresaw the catastrophe of the revolution and perceived it as the greatest misfortune. The poet is trying to look beyond the boundaries of reality, to unravel the riddle of death, the gloomy breath of which is felt in many poems. His feeling of doom is caused by the destruction of the noble way of life, impoverishment and destruction of landowners' estates. Despite his pessimism, Bunin saw a solution in the merging of man with wise mother nature, in her peace and eternal beauty.

In what ways did Bunin remain faithful to the artistic principles of Russian classics? How does he develop and update domestic literary traditions, what features of his work allow us to speak of him as a prominent master of literary expression of the 20th century, a writer of pan-European and world scale?

Let's consider the most important semantic constants of I. Bunin's artistic world.

The author’s narrative is almost always based on a flow of memory, which for him exists in the form of ancestral memory as a feeling of his own inextricable connection with “All-Being” (the term used by Bunin), with ancestors, as a recollection of his previous lives. To exist without memory is the greatest tragedy. Only the past, fixed by memory, constitutes a subject of high art for Bunin. In one of his letters he notes: “While you live, you do not feel life.” Therefore, I. Bunin’s favorite heroes are not people of reason and logic, but those who carry within themselves the primitive wisdom of instincts, not reflective, but integral and plastic individuals.

It is impossible to simultaneously appreciate and understand the moment being experienced. Thus, the delay in our awareness is perfectly conveyed by Bunin in the story “Sunstroke.” Life is just material from which the human soul, with the help of memory, produces something aesthetically valuable. Bunin dislikes the category of a future that promises nothing but death. The writer is trying to regain "lost time." This is exactly what is manifested in his autobiographical novel "The Life of Arsenyev."

In Bunin's artistic world, the feeling of loneliness is most clearly manifested - eternal, universal loneliness, as an inevitable and irresistible state of the human soul. The unknowable world secret gives rise to both “sweet and sorrowful feelings” in the writer’s soul. The feeling of joy and delight in life is mixed with a languishing feeling of melancholy. The joy of life for Bunin is not a blissful and serene state, but a tragic feeling, colored by melancholy and anxiety. That is why love and death always go hand in hand with him, unexpectedly connecting with creativity.

Bunin’s work constantly contains motifs of love, death and the transformative power of art.

Perhaps Bunin's main passion in life is the love of changing places. In the 1880-1890s. He traveled a lot in Russia, then traveled around Europe, traveled through the Middle East and Asian countries. Sometimes, as material for his works, Bunin used not only impressions of what was happening in the Russian outback, but also his foreign observations.

In relation to Russian reality, Bunin’s position looked unusual. To many of his contemporaries he seemed dispassionate, “cold,” although a brilliant master, and his judgments about Russia, Russian people, Russian history were too detached. Bunin tried to distance himself from fleeting social anxieties, avoiding journalisticism in his pre-revolutionary work. At the same time, he felt unusually keenly that he belonged to Russian culture, “the family of his fathers.” To assess Russian reality, Bunin always needed distance - chronological and sometimes geographical. For example, while in Italy, Bunin wrote about the Russian village, while in Russia he created works about India, Ceylon, and the Middle East.

Bunin showed himself equally clearly as a prose writer, as a poet, and as a translator. Back in 1886-1887. Before the publication of his first poems and stories, he enthusiastically worked on translations of Hamlet. His poetic translations of Petrarch, Heine, Verhaeren, Mickiewicz, Tenisson, Byron, Musset and others appeared in print. The pinnacle of this period was the translation of “The Song of Hiawatha” by G. Longfellow, which was published in 1896.

The school of poetic translation, with its search for the only possible word, greatly helped the writer to perfectly master the form of classical Russian verse. The huge number of books he read contributed to the enrichment of his poetic storehouse.

Bunin had unusually sharp eyesight, allowing him to see stars visible to others only through a telescope, and amazing hearing - interestingly, he could determine who was riding by the sound of bells.

Bunin was extremely strict about the accuracy of the image. Everyone who knew the writer was repeatedly convinced of how carefully he treated every printed word, to the point that even an incorrectly placed comma could seriously upset him.

Right up to the publication of the book, he did not stop making amendments and clarifications to the text until the last minute.

Bunin's more than sixty-year journey in literature can be chronologically divided into two approximately equal parts - pre-October and emigrant.

Bunin's youthful, mostly imitative poems are of interest only insofar as they characterize his mood at that time (dreams of happiness, a feeling of the unity of happiness and suffering, etc.). The author’s early prose contains features that later disappeared from Bunin’s other works: humor (in the essays “Small Landlords”, “Landowner Vorgolsky” Gogolian notes are visible), A. P. Chekhov’s characteristic depiction of the vulgarity and melancholy of bourgeois life (“Tarantella”, “Day” day after day").

Bunin’s true worldview was manifested in such stories as “On the Farm”, “On the Donets”, “Pass”, “Antonov Apples”, “Skeet”, “Pines”, etc. Already in the story “On the Farm” (1895) there is and regret about the transience of human life, and the sudden thought of the inevitability of death, and the loneliness of a person.

In his depiction of the village, Bunin was initially far from idealizing the peasantry. This is shown especially clearly in the story "Fedoseevna", the main character of which is a poor, sick old woman who was kicked out of her house by her daughter. Bunin is not interested in social conflicts, but in the relationship between man and nature, which gives saving peace. In many of the author’s works, the chirping of insects and the singing of night cicadas will become a permanent symbol of the inexhaustible and mysterious power of life.

Bunin builds his stories not on a chronological sequence, but on the technique of associations. His comparisons are based on visual, sound and taste associations: “like fox fur of the forest”, “silks of the sands”, “fiery red lightning snake”. The story "Pines" reveals one of the most remarkable features of Bunin's work - the redundancy of bright, expressive, but seemingly superfluous and unnecessary details. This fascination with detail is explained by the author’s desire to capture the unique diversity of the world.

Simultaneously with “Antonov Apples,” Bunin wrote the autumn poem “Falling Leaves.” In this first poetic masterpiece of the author, one can trace all the features of Bunin’s mature poetry: simplicity, calm intonation without false pathos, deliberate traditionalism of the verse, deliberate prosaism that brings poetic speech closer to colloquial speech.

Almost all Bunin's stories of the beginning of the century are plotless and lyrical ("Fog" - a description of the feelings of the lyrical hero on a foggy night on a ship, "Dawn All Night" - the experiences of a girl on the eve of the wedding, etc.); The drama of his stories lies not in the plot conflict, but in the very atmosphere of the story. The beginning of the action is often preceded by autonomous and seemingly redundant pictures, and the end of the action is often followed by a “postscript” that unexpectedly opens up a new perspective (“Red General”, “Klasha”, “Easy Breathing”). Incompleteness and understatement increase the activity of the reader's perception. Bunin's various descriptions and digressions destroy the consistent course of the action, and the action itself seems to fall apart into separate blocks-segments ("The Old Woman" is a set of independent scenes and paintings, "Brothers" is several heroes independent from each other).

Bunin never comments on his impressions and attitude towards what he portrays, but tries to convey to us in a direct form the feeling itself, to infect us, to hypnotize us with a feeling. Understanding the spontaneity of thinking and its insubordination to conscious volitional effort determines the unusual behavior of Bunin’s heroes, illogical for traditional psychologism. For Bunin, a specific life situation does not contain a moral problem, because the most important problem is life, governed by eternal laws unknown to us. For Bunin, man is far from being the pinnacle of creation, but a pitiful, perhaps the least perfect creature.

Connected with a deep understanding of the psyche is Bunin’s interest in the state of sleep, delirium, hallucinations (the dying visions of a land surveyor in “Asthma”, “Chang’s Dreams”, “The Dream of Bishop Ignatius of Rostov”, Mitya’s dream in the story “Mitya’s Love”) - this is a kind of opportunity to get out beyond the boundaries of our “I”, transcending the boundaries of individual consciousness.

A significant place in Bunin’s work was occupied by his reflections on the mysterious Russian soul, which were fully embodied in the story “The Village,” which caused a sensation in reader circles with its ruthlessness, courage and challenge to generally accepted opinion. One of the most amazing features of the Russian character, which Bunin never tires of being amazed at, is the absolute inability to live a normal life and aversion to everyday life (“they are disgusted with life, its eternal everyday life”). Everyday work with such a feeling of life is one of the most severe punishments. However, apathy in everyday life gives way to unexpected energy in emergency situations. For example, one of the characters in “The Village,” Gray, is too lazy to fix holes in the roof, but is the first to respond to a fire.

The desire to free themselves from a dreary existence pushes the heroes either to an unexpected act or to an absurd and senseless rebellion. So, the rebellious men threaten to kill Tikhon Krasov, and then, as before, they respectfully bow to him. Describing the rudeness, envy, hostility, and cruelty of the peasants, Bunin never allows himself an accusatory tone; he is extremely truthful and objective. However, this is not a cold statement of the terrifying reality, but pity and compassion for the “thrashing and unfortunate” and even self-flagellation.

And in the story "Sukhodol" the main theme is the Russian soul, which is developed using the example of the nobility. It is in the similarity of Russian peasants and nobles that Bunin sees the main reason for the degeneration of the village; the nobility is still affected by the same disease - Russian melancholy, absurdity, irrationality of actions. The theme of the Russian soul is presented in "Sukhodol" in a completely different artistic key than in "Village", where the smallest details are carefully depicted. “Sukhodol” is a work where the emotional atmosphere is created by the interweaving and development of repeating motifs, that is, “musical” principles of composition are used. Sukhodol is not a real object, but only memories of it. Sukhodol no longer exists - only remnants of antiquity live, reflected by the unsteady light of the past.

The October Revolution forced the writer to leave Moscow in 1918, and at the beginning of 1920 to part with his homeland forever. In Bunin's diary of these years, published in exile under the title "Cursed Days", the reasons that prompted the writer to leave the country are especially vividly and extremely clearly revealed. Bunin's notes are distinguished by a high concentration of passionate hostility towards Bolshevism, which is not only moral, but also aesthetic in nature. This revealed his main feature - to see at the heart of the tragedy of the world not the contrast of good and evil, but the contrast of beauty and ugliness, to serve “beauty and truth.” Bunin describes the bloody orgies of the Bolsheviks in Odessa, which they captured, and the disgusting morals of the “red aristocracy.”

During the emigrant period, Bunin's prose becomes emotional, musical and lyrical. In a new round of creativity, poetry and prose merge into a completely new synthetic genre. The stories “Mowers”, “Rus”, “Saint”, “Tree of God” are devoted to the theme of historical memory, where Bunin again returns to the theme of the Russian soul. In emigration, Bunin felt even more keenly the mysterious life of the Russian word, reaching linguistic peaks and revealing an amazing knowledge of folk speech. Even greater skill is manifested in the musical organization of his prose.

The theme of love begins to occupy an increasing place in Bunin’s work, which will become the main one in his last book, “Dark Alleys,” which the writer himself considered his most perfect creation. What is especially striking about this book is its freshness and youthful strength of feeling.

The completely new character of Bunin's prose found its expression in his creation of a new literary genre - miniatures, when the detail itself became a story. Some of them were written for the sake of one single phrase or one word ("Tears", "Ogress", "Roosters"). They are extremely specific, there are no allegories in them, and in fact there is no metaphor. Miniatures are perceived as poetic text; they are permeated with a system of lexical and sound repetitions.

Bunin's most remarkable book in exile is his novel "The Life of Arsenyev." In the novel, the author recreates his perception of life and the experience of this perception. This work is about the “perception of perception” or the memory of memory. According to Bunin, memory cleanses the past of everything unnecessary and superficial and reveals its true essence, making visible the aesthetic in the everyday. The novel contains time of the past and time of the present narrative; there are frequent “transfers” from one time to another, and sometimes violations of the time sequence. However, this is not an objective reconstruction of the past, but the creation of a special world, a different reality thanks to the author’s consciousness, where “insignificant and ordinary things” become mysteriously beautiful. “The Life of Arsenyev” is a unique work in Russian literature, striking in its internal psychologism, referencing the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

Shortly before his death, Bunin was working on a book about Chekhov. He never managed to complete it. The book was published after Bunin's death in New York.

Objectives: 1) determine Bunin’s place in the historical and literary context of the turn of the century; 1) determine Bunin’s place in the historical and literary context of the turn of the century; 2) study the works of literary scholars and identify the features of the writer’s artistic world; 2) study the works of literary scholars and identify the features of the writer’s artistic world; 3) based on the work of researchers of the structure of art. text, 3) based on the work of researchers of the structure of art. text, identify the features of the artistic world in the story “On the Farm”, identify the features of the artistic world in the story “On the Farm”

Hypothesis - Bunin is interested in the existence of a character in two worlds (external and internal), Bunin is interested in the existence of a character in two worlds (external and internal), the inner world of a person, in which there is a sphere of the past, is more significant for the writer, the inner world of a person, in which there is the sphere of the past is more significant for the writer, and external space serves only to express it. and external space serves only to express it.

Chapter 2 Part 3. Features of the plot in the story “On the Farm” and stories with similar plots. Part 3. Features of the plot in the story “On the Farm” and stories with similar plots. “On the farm” “Pass” “Kastryuk” “Fog” “The psychological state of the hero at a stressful moment and the image of the way out of this state

Part 4 Plot and compositional originality of the story “On the Farm” Memories and reflections Inner world hero Plot: a story about several evening hours of the small nobleman Kapiton Ivanovich, who received news of the death of his former lover and reflects on his place in existence.

CONCLUSION: Man is a small part in the world of existence; Man is a small part in the world of existence; A person is able to find inner harmony by accepting the natural course of life, merging with the natural world. A person is able to find inner harmony by accepting the natural course of life, merging with the natural world.

Subjective organization of the story 1 fragment: the narrator shows a broad picture of the world. 1 fragment: the narrator shows a broad picture of the world. Fragment 2: the social world created by the voices of others (the hero’s private life) Fragment 3: memories of Kapiton Ivanovich (the hero’s inner speech)

Subjective organization of the story, fragment 4: the hero’s search for an interlocutor (failed dialogue with the servants) - the hero is lonely by the will of fate. Fragment 4: the hero’s search for an interlocutor (failed dialogue with the servants) - the hero is lonely by the will of fate. 5 fragment: the hero’s thoughts about life, about the inevitability of death (the hero’s inner speech)

Conflict: the author confronts the essence of a person and its assessment by others, shows different states of the human personality: a state of confusion and a state of harmony. the author confronts the essence of man and its assessment by others, shows different states of the human personality: a state of confusion and a state of harmony.

Conflict: When a person is in conflict with himself, other people's voices predominate, When a person is in conflict with himself, other people's voices predominate, and when he finds harmony, and when he finds harmony, the main character has his own voice. the main character gets his own voice.

Conclusion: The features of the artistic world are determined both by the object of the image and the methods of creating it. The features of the artistic world are determined by both the object of the image and the methods of creating it, putting the essence of man in the center of attention. Bunin turns to a fragmented narrative, placing the essence of man in the center of attention. Bunin turns to fragmentary narration

I. Bunin’s paintings of nature are often accompanied by landscape sketches, designed to reproduce not only the psychological state, but also the social role of man in the world: to indicate his loneliness. I. Bunin’s paintings of nature are often accompanied by landscape sketches, designed to reproduce not only the psychological state, but also the social the role of man in the world: to indicate his loneliness

Bunin shows a person not in the context of his time, Bunin shows a person not in the context of his time, but in the context of natural existence, but in the context of natural existence, in which he is able to solve his personal problems. in which he is able to solve his personal problems.

The first youthful works bear the influence of ideological tradition. The mood of civil sorrow.

But Nadson’s motives in him already initially coexisted with the influence of Fet. The identity of the feelings of the lyrical hero and natural phenomena("Loneliness"). Bunin's Fet and Nadson are inseparable and unmerged. Plus a passion for Tolstoy. Almost all of Bunin's heroes undergo the test of death. Understanding life as fulfilling a duty to God in the early stories.

The beginning of the 1900s was a time of short contact with symbolism, which ended with a sharp rejection.

For some time, Bunin either chose between “Knowledge” and “Scorpio”, or believed that combining these camps was quite possible. If we trace the short history of his entry into the symbolist circle, then we should start with a personal acquaintance with Bryusov, their joint participation in 1895 in the collection “Young Poetry”. When the first symbolist publishing house “Scorpion” arose at the end of 1899, Bunin was one of the first authors to whom Bryusov and Polyakov approached with a request for cooperation. Bunin not only handed over to “Scorpio” in 1900 a book of poems “Falling Leaves” (published in 1901), but also own initiative tried to persuade Gorky and Chekhov to participate in the almanac “Northern Flowers”. However, very soon strange misunderstandings began in their relationship: having published the story “Late Night” in the first issue of Northern Flowers, Bunin was not included in the number of participants in the second issue. Bunin tried to offer Scorpio the second edition of the Song of Hiawatha and the collection To the End of the World, as well as a new book of poetry, but none of these books were published in Scorpio, and Already in 1902, Bunin suggested that Gorky buy “Leaf Fall” from “Scorpio” and republish it in “Knowledge”" In his review of Bunin’s “New Poems,” Bryusov disparagingly characterizes Bunin as “literature of yesterday.” The subsequent break in personal relationships looks quite natural.

From 1902 until the end of his life, Bunin invariably spoke disparagingly about the Symbolists. From time to time, Bunin still publishes in symbolist, although not “Scorpio”, magazines and almanacs (“ The Golden Fleece", "Pass"). His collections are reviewed quite sympathetically in symbolist periodicals. Blok, in his article “On Lyrics,” argued: “The integrity and simplicity of Bunin’s poems and worldview are so unique of their kind that we must, from his first poem “Falling Leaves,” recognize his right to one of the main places among modern Russian poetry.” Bunin's sharply negative assessments of the Symbolists can only be compared with his invariably vehement invective against Dostoevsky. Hidden rivalry with the luminaries of Russian literature always occupied a large place in his assessments. And yet neither Tolstoy nor Chekhov “disturbed” Bunin. But Dostoevsky interfered. Bunin considered the themes of irrational passions, love-hate, passion “his own,” and even more so he was irritated by the stylistic manner that was alien to him.

In the article “On Bunin’s Poetry,” Khodasevich argues that Bunin’s poetics “appears to be a consistent and persistent struggle against symbolism.” The uniqueness of this struggle lies in the mastery of the symbolist thematic repertoire by stylistic means that are fundamentally opposed to symbolism. In Bunin's lyrics of the 1900s. there is a noticeable predilection for historical exoticism, travel through ancient cultures - themes traditional for the “Parnassian” line of Russian symbolism. “Inscription on the Tombstone”, “From the Apocalypse”, “Epitaph”, “After the Battle”. In these poems, Bunin is least distinguishable from symbolist poetry: the same solemn descriptive style, the same balanced clarity of form, the same reflections on the connection between bygone and modern culture through love and beauty. But high style coexists with concrete natural or everyday details seen in detail.

What radically distinguished Bunin from the Symbolists was landscape poetry. Where the symbolist saw “natural signs” of another, truly real reality or a projection of his own mental state, Bunin “reverently steps aside, making every effort to reproduce the reality he idolizes as objectively as possible.”. He is afraid of somehow inadvertently “re-creating” her. In poetic practice, this leads to the almost complete elimination of the lyrical hero, in general - the lyrical “I”, replaced either by an impersonal narration from a third person, or by the introduction of a “role-playing” character, extremely alienated from the author. The earliest and most striking example is “Falling Leaves”. Mentions of it are usually accompanied by a demonstration of lush, rich in multi-colored epithets descriptions of the autumn forest from September to the first snow. The predominance of adjectives and words with the meaning of quality is characteristic precisely of symbolist poetics. But among the symbolists, the enumeration of signs serves to dematerialize the depicted world. With Bunin, all qualitative characteristics are objective and specific. Autumn in “Leaf Fall” is not only described, but is also a personified character in the Poem, and it is through its perception that the alternation of natural scenes is given. Bunin's feeling barely finds the opportunity to break through; it is indicated in a passing remark, in an allusion, in a lyrical ending. It is no coincidence in the mind modern reader those few poems by Bunin live where the lyrical hero’s right to exist (“Loneliness”) is not denied and where the future transformation of the story in verse, undertaken in the 1910s by post-symbolist poets, is anticipated. The lyrical consciousness of the narrator, reduced in Bunin's poetry, takes on a leading role in his prose.

Bunin had to go through all the most significant directions of philosophical and aesthetic thought for Russia, through the most important literary schools. At the same time, he does not become an adherent of any of the existing ideological systems, but at the same time masters and synthesizes the closest ones in his own artistic world. The formation of a new artistic system in Bunin’s work meant at the same time overcoming the boundaries between the principles of the poetics of those literary schools that, at the previous stage of development of the literary process, were perceived as antagonists.

Equally significant and original is Bunin’s poetry of the 1910s, which until recently was considered purely traditional.

Russia, history, peasant life; the uniqueness of national cultures; man, his spiritual heritage, place in the world; goodness, beauty, love; the enduring connection of times - such is the range of Bunin's poetry. The world appears more whole, spiritualized and joyful in it than in prose. Here his ethical and aesthetic ideals, ideas about art, and the purpose of the artist are more directly expressed.

Any picture - everyday, natural, psychological - does not exist in Bunin in isolation, they are always included in the big world. His poems are dominated not by a single detail, but by a collection of heterogeneous details, which is capable of conveying the diversity of the changing world and the significance of each phenomenon associated with the universal. Bunin reached such heights of depiction that made it possible to reveal the “pathos of the soul”, the attitude towards the world in an extremely concise, concrete form - “lyrics of facts”, and not “lyrics of words”.

Bunin creates short stories in verse, uses prose-narrative intonations and thereby enriches and expands the possibilities of his poetry. Prose influenced poetry, poetry enriched prose.

"Loneliness"

And the wind, and the rain, and the darkness

Above the cold desert of water.

Here life died until spring,

The gardens were empty until spring.

I'm alone at the dacha. I'm dark

Behind the easel, and blowing out the window.

Yesterday you were with me

But you are already sad with me.

In the evening of a stormy day

You began to seem like a wife to me...

Well, goodbye! Someday until spring

I can live alone - without a wife...

Today they go on and on

The same clouds - ridge after ridge.

Your footprint in the rain by the porch

It blurred and filled with water.

And it hurts me to look alone

Into the late afternoon gray darkness.

I wanted to shout after:

“Come back, I have become close to you!”

But for a woman there is no past:

She fell out of love and became a stranger to her.

Well! I'll light the fireplace and drink...

It would be nice to buy a dog.

"Night"

I'm looking for combinations in this world

Beautiful and eternal. In the distance

I see the night: sands among silence

And the finest hour above the darkness of the earth.

Like letters, they flicker in the blue firmament

Pleiades, Vega, Mars and Orion.

I love their flow over the desert

And the secret meaning of their royal names!

Like me now, myriads of eyes were watching

Their ancient path. And in the depths of centuries

Everyone for whom they shone in the darkness,

Disappeared in it like a footprint among the sands:

There were many of them, tender and loving,

And girls, and boys, and wives,

Nights and stars, transparent silver

Euphrates and Nile, Memphis and Babylon!

It's night again. Above the pale steel of Pontus

Jupiter lights up the skies

And in the mirror of water, to the horizon,

The strip shines like a glass pillar.

Coastal region, where the Tauro-Scythians roamed,

Not the same anymore - just the sea in the summer calm

Everything still pours affectionately onto the reefs

Azure-phosphorus dust.

But there is one thing that is eternal beauty

Connects us with the obsolete. Was

Such a night - and to the quiet surf

A girl came ashore with me.

And don’t forget this starry night,

When the whole world loved me for one!

Let me live a useless dream,

A foggy and deceptive dream, -

I'm looking for combinations in this world

Beautiful and secret, like a dream.

I love her for the happiness of merging

In the same love with the love of all times!

"Sapsan"

Ox ribs by the road

They stick out in the snow - and I slept on them

Peregrine falcon, space-footed vulture,

Ready to soar every moment.

I shot him. And this

Threatens disaster. And here's to me

The guest began to walk. He's up until dawn

He wanders around the house in the moonlight.

I haven't seen him. I heard

Just the crunch of steps. But I can’t sleep.

On the third night I went out into the field...

Oh, what a sad night it was!

Who was he, this midnight

An invisible guest? Where is he from

Comes to me at the appointed time

Through the snowdrifts to the balcony?

Or did he find out that I was sad,

Am I alone? what's in my house

Only snow and the sky on a silent night

Looking from the garden in the moonlight?

Perhaps he heard today

Now the moon was at its zenith,

A thick fog floated in the sky...

I was waiting for him - I was going to the broom

On the crust of snow glades,

And if my enemy were out of temptation

Suddenly he jumped onto a snowdrift, -

I'd fire a rifle without mercy

It pierced his broad forehead.

But he didn't go. The moon was hiding

The moon shone through the fog

The darkness fled... And it seemed to me

That Sapsan is sitting in the snow.

Frosty frost like diamonds

Shined on him, and he dozed,

Gray-haired, googly, round-eyed,

And he pressed his head into his wings.

And he was terrible, incomprehensible,

Mysterious as this running

Foggy haze and light spots,

Sometimes they illuminated the snow, -

Like a force incarnate

That Will, that at the midnight hour

Fear united us all -

And she made us enemies.

"Evening"

We always only remember about happiness.

And happiness is everywhere. Maybe it's -

This autumn garden behind the barn

And clean air flowing through the window

In the bottomless sky with a light white edge

The cloud rises and shines. For a long time

I'm watching him... We see little, we know,

And happiness is given only to those who know.

The window is open. She squeaked and sat down

There's a bird on the windowsill. And from books

I look away from my tired gaze for a moment.

The day is getting dark, the sky is empty.

The hum of a threshing machine can be heard on the threshing floor...

I see, I hear, I am happy. Everything is in me.

Black velvet bumblebee, golden mantle,

Mournfully humming with a melodious string,

Why are you flying into human habitation?

And it’s like you’re pining for me?

Outside the window there is light and heat, the window sills are bright,

Serene and hot last days,

Fly, sound your horn - and in a dried-up Tatar,

On a red pillow, fall asleep.

It is not given to you to know human thoughts,

That the fields have long been empty,

That soon a gloomy wind will blow into the weeds

Golden dry bumblebee!

"Word"

The tombs, mummies and bones are silent, Only the word is given life:

From ancient darkness, in the world graveyard, Only Letters sound.

And we have no other property!

Know how to take care

At least to the best of my ability, in days of anger and suffering,

Our gift is immortal speech.

Calm gaze, like the gaze of a deer

And everything that I loved so tenderly in him,

I still haven’t forgotten in my sadness,

But your image is now in the fog.

And there will be days when sadness will fade away,

And the dream of memory turns blue,

Where there is no longer happiness or suffering,

But only the all-forgiving distance.

And flowers, and bumblebees, and grass, and ears of corn,

And the azure and the midday heat...

The time will come - the Lord will ask the prodigal son:

“Were you happy in your earthly life?”

And I’ll forget everything - I’ll only remember these

Field paths between ears and grasses -

And from sweet tears I won’t have time to answer,

Falling to the merciful Knees.

We walked side by side, but towards me

You didn’t dare look anymore,

And in the wind of a March day

Our empty speech was lost.

The clouds were white with cold

Through the garden where the drops fell,

Your cheek was pale

And my eyes turned blue like flowers.

Already half-opened lips

I avoided eye contact.

But it was still blissfully empty

That wonderful world where we walked side by side

For everything, Lord, I thank you.! 1901

You, after a day of anxiety and sadness,

Give me the evening dawn,

The spaciousness of the fields and the gentleness of the blue distance.

I am alone now - as always.

But then the sunset spread its magnificent flame,

And the Evening Star melts in it,

Trembling through and through, like a semi-precious stone.

And I am happy with my sad fate,

And there is sweet joy in consciousness,

That I am alone in silent contemplation,

That I’m a stranger to everyone and I’m talking to you.

We sat by the stove in the hallway,

Alone, with the fire dying out,

In an old abandoned house,

In the steppe and remote side.

The heat in the stove turns sullenly red,

It's dark in the cold hallway,

And twilight, mixing with the night,

They look gravely blue out the window.

The night is long, gloomy, wolfish,

All around are forests and snow,

And in the house it’s just us and the icons

Yes, the terrible proximity of the enemy.

Of a despicable, savage age

It was given to me to be a witness,

And in my heart it’s so grave,

How frozen this window is.

The creative path of A. Kuprin