Bunin Reincarnate

Abstract

SEER,Vol. 8o,Noo. 3, July 2002 Review Article BuninReincarnate ANDREI ROGACHEVSKII Marullo,Thomas Gaiton. If You SeetheBuddha: Studies intheFiction ofIvan Bunin. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, I998. Xii + 208 pp. Notes. Index. $54.95. Roshchin, M. IvanBunin.Molodaia gvardiia, Moscow, 2000. 329 pp. Illustrations.Appendices. Priceunknown. Heywood, Anthony J. Catalogue oftheBunin,Bunina,Zurov andLopatina Collections. Edited by Richard D. Davies, with the assistance of Daniel Riniker. Leeds University Press, Leeds, 2000. xxxiv + 393 pp. Index. fio.oo. Filmonvideo Title:Dnevnik egozheny (His Wife's Diagy) Directed by AlekseiUchitel' Companies and Studios: Roskino and TPO Rok, with Lenfilm and A. M. Studio (Bulgaria) Producers:AleksandrGolutva andAlekseiUchitel' Screenplay:Dunia Smirnova Director of Photography:IuriiKlimenko Music:Leonid Desiatnikov Leading Actors: Andrei Smirnov, Galina Tiunina, Ol'ga Budina, EvgeniiMironov, Elena Morozova Language and Duration: Russian, French, German and English; I04 minutes Videorelease:PyramidHome Video Price:905 roubles THERE is a lamentable discrepancy between Russia's reverential attitude to its firstwinner of the Nobel Prize in literature,Ivan Bunin (I870-I953), and his reputation in the West, of which the following statement is somewhat characteristic:'the award of [the Nobel Prize] to the relativelypaltry emigre Bunin in 1933 was commonly regarded at the time, and rightly,as a despicableact of political expediency." It Andrei Rogachevskiiis Lecturer in Russian in the Department of Slavonic Studies, Universityof Glasgow. I G. S. Smith,D. S.Mirsky, ARussian-English Life,i890-i939, Oxford,2000, p. I 9 I. 488 ANDREI ROGACHEVSKII is rather unfortunate that Bunin's trademark'unnarrative'2fiction is significantly responsible for making him a writer in the quiet taste, especially abroad, as the beauty of his style cannot always be satisfactorilyrecreatedin translation.In Russia, however, his superior statuswas sealedin i 909, when Bunin,who had not finishedsecondary school and had never gone to university, was elected an Honorary Member of the Russian Academy. His consistently fervent antiBolshevikstand ,both beforeand afterhis 1920 emigrationto Francein the wake of the Russian revolution, earned him additional respect in the opinion of all those who did not succumb to the communist propaganda. During the Thaw, the ban on his writings in the Soviet Union was partiallylifted,which renewed active interestin Bunin'slife and work. This interest was further strengthened in the years of perestroika,when the last ideological obstacles to the reprints of his most vitriolic anti-communist non-fiction were removed. It is hardly surprising that in Bunin's home country the re-emergence of his previously suppressed and/or hitherto obscure emigre publications3 has finally resulted in the discussion and re-evaluation of the writer's legacy as a whole.4 One of the most recent attemptsat re-assessmentis IvanBuninby the well-known Russian playwright Mikhail Roshchin, the author of Valentin i Valentina (I970), Stargi ovyi god(7heOld Newrear,I973) and other comedies and dramas. Regrettably, this book proves to be little more than a compilation of lengthy extractsfrom Bunin's fiction and publishedcorrespondence,his and his wife's diaryentriesas originally reproducedin MilitsaGreene'sthree-volume Ustami Buninykh (AsSpoken by theBunins, Frankfurt-am-Main,I977-82), the diary of the writer Galina Kuznetsova (with whom Bunin was romantically involved),5 various memoirs and occasional press cuttings. Some quotations run into severalpages, and, as the book unfolds, one graduallyacquiresa feeling that this 'cut and paste' technique borders on copyright 2 D. S. Mirsky, A HistogyofRussianLiterature, London, I949, p. 392. 3 See, for instance, 0. B. Vasilevskaia (ed.), I. Bunin, Velikiidurman:Neizvestnye stranitsy, Moscow, I997, and idem., Publitsistikai9i8-i953 godov,ed. 0. N. Mikhailov, Moscowv, I998; incidentally, none of these collections seems to have obtained the reproduction rights from the Bunin Estate. 4 Various aspects of it have also been covered in Alexander F. Zweers, Vpoiskakh utrachennoi garmonii:Proza I. A. Bunina ig3o-I94o-kh godovby AVI. S. Shtern,Omsk, I997, and The Narratology oftheAutobiography: AnAnalysisoftheLiterary DevicesEmployed inIvanBunin's'TheLife of Arsen'ev',New York, I997; I. P. Karpov, Proza Ivana Bunina, Moscow, I999; T. A. Nikonova (ed), I. A. Bunin:Dialogs mirom, Voronezh, I999 and other publications. For earlier views of Bunin, unencumbered by Soviet censorship, see Serge Kryzytski, The Works ofIvan Bunin,The Hague, 197 I; James B. Woodward, IvanBunin:A StudyofHis Fiction,Chapel Hill, NC, i980; Julian W...