Французское эссе Г.В. Адамовича «La vie et l’oeuvre d’Ivan Bunin» («Жизнь и творчество Ивана Бунина», 1969)

Abstract

This work is dedicated to the essay “La vie et l’oeuvre d’Ivan Bunin” (“The life and work of Ivan Bunin”), written by Georgy Adamovich in French for a French reader and published in 1963 (republ. in 1967, 1969, 1970, 1971) in the “Collection of the Nobel Prizes in Literature Laureats”. This twenty-eight page text is rather little known, it is not mentioned either in L. Livak’s bibliographic book, or in “Classics without Retouching. The Literary World about the Work of Ivan Bunin” collection. The analysis of the text “La vie et l’oeuvre d’Ivan Bunin” is coupled with its translationreconstruction into Russian, based on the theoretical views Adamovich had on the practice of translation expressed in the essay “In Memory of Baudelaire”, in the preface to the translation of “The Stranger” novel by A. Camus and in the essay “About us and the French. A few comments on the translation of ‘Anabasis’, the poem by Saint-John Perse”. In the French essay, it is possible to find many references to key moments in the history of Russian literature (Russian classics of the 19th century, literature of the early 20th century, the fundamental figures of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky). It is worth noting that Pushkin’s heritage is not mentioned in the French text. The essay especially touches upon the image of Bunin as a poet and at the same time mentions Alexander Blok, a signature name for the poetry of the beginning of the 20th century. The French article will be compared with other texts of Adamovich about the work of Ivan Bunin: essays from the collection “Loneliness and Freedom” (“Bunin”, “More about Bunin”), “Bunin as a poet”, “Memories”.