Ivan BuninCritiques

Ishte shkrimtari i parë rus që u laureua me çmimin “Nobel” në vitin 1933, novelist, poet dhe shkrimtar i mirënjohur.

Ivan Bunini ishte mjeshtër i fjalës, i përshkrimit të natyrës, shkrimtari që krijoi tablo të ashpra dhe të vërteta të jetës së fshatit në të kaluarën, krijoi një sërë figurash të Rusisë së pararevolucionit.

Mjeshtëria e fjalës, përsosmëria e formës së tregimeve, pasuruan thesarin e letërsisë ruse.

Njohja me Çehovin ka qenë e rëndësishme për Buninin, nga i cili mësoi lakonizmin, aq sa tregimet e fundit arritën gjysmë faqe. Ka shkruar romanin: “Jeta e Arsenjevit”; tregimet “Goditje dielli”; etj. Bunini la një trashëgimi të madhe edhe si poet

Zwei Geschichten sind in diesem schmalen Büchlein mit nur 70 Seiten vereint.
In "Ein unbekannter Freund" schreibt eine Leserin an einen Autor.
In "Nobelpreis-Tage" schildert Bunin vom "Anruf aus Stockhom" bis zur Verleihung wie es für ihn, den Exilanten, war, als er 1933 den Literaturnobelpreis bekam.
Das Buch ist sehr schön und edel aufgemacht, mit Leineneinband, Lebenslauf und einem schönen passenden Photo von Wera Bunin auf dem Cover. Ein Photo von Iwan Bunin findet sich im Buch.
Ich muss zu meiner Schande gestehen, dass ich bis gestern nicht wusste, dass Iwan Bunin den Literaturnobelpreis bekommen hat. Das habe ich also durch das Buch gelernt. Insgesamt habe ich das Büchlein gern gelesen.½

I racconti di Bunin, scrittore russo dell’inizio del Novecento, premio Nobel per la letteratura, sono dolci, lo stile appare bucolico, ispirato ai ricordi di un mondo destinato a cambiare. Dal primo racconto lungo, “L’amore di Mitia”, si passa ai racconti brevi, in quest’edizione vengono proposte dieci prose, con una costante nello stile che accarezza, letteralmente, il lettore. La trama è debole, tranne che nel racconto “L’affare dell’alfiere Elaghin”, contano i particolari della quotidianità, le grandi storie, gli intrighi, le passioni non fanno parte della cifra stilistica dell’autore russo. La lettura non è, per quanto sinora detto, mai appassionante, ma come tutte le letture va contestualizzata sia sotto il profilo temporale che sotto quello geografico. Bunin è stato un autore russo che ha prodotto la sua opera in un’epoca storica particolare, a ridosso della rivoluzione bolscevica, di cui era oppositore, ma si stava in un limbo culturale tra il futuro dell’alba che sarebbe risorta e i fiumi di sangue della dittatura comunista. Rimane una lettura piacevole che senza questa bella raccolta della Medusa difficilmente mi sarei goduta.

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La novela transcurre a principios del siglo XX, en una pequeña aldea rusa, lugar de nacimiento del propio Bunin, durante la Revolución de 1905. Los protagonistas son Tijon y Kuzma Illich, dos hermanos campesinos, uno, pequeño comerciante borrachuzo, y otro aspirante a escritor, son el reflejo de la Rusia de la época. A través de estos hermanos, Bunin retrata de forma bella e implacable los tiempos convulsos por los que pasaban millones de habitantes del Imperio Ruso, y de las tremendas dificultades para sobrevivir en una tierra fía y dura.

Иван Алексеевич Бунин е руски писател, поет и преводач. Той е първият руски автор, получил Нобеловата награда за литература през 1933. Първоначално пише публицистика и поезия, по-късно проза, най-вече къси разкази. Емигрира от Русия през 1919 и се установява във Франция.

Най-значимите му творби са повестите „Село“ (1909 – 1910), „Суходол“ (1911), които образуват своеобразна дилогия, обединена от обща тема – съдбата на Русия и руския национален характер. Последната му художествена книга „Тъмни алеи“ (1943) е смятана за най-четения сборник с къси разкази в Русия през 20 век.

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With this sturdy collection of short stories, it is easy to get the feel for the darker side of Bunin’s work. In it are a slew of great short-short pieces of sexual epiphany so startling and real that they each seem like gems of experience, encapsulated in brief encounters.

Bunin is a master of description like his predecessors, but he does it in his own way. He does not shy away from showing people as they are. One gets a sense of place from his work that makes all of his characters feel real. His mastery lies in the details he builds up around these miserable and joyous people. Many of the characters bleed into one another – one gets a sense of an aristocratic man, engaging in many many fateful encounters with prostitutes and other women of good faith, falling in and out of love over and over again, and carrying away a tremendous burden of having betrayed them all.

Bunin, it seems was a man overburdened with love. He must have loved women and loved the world, to depict them both with so much devotion and splendor. Of course there are real women characters in his fiction too, I think, and not just the stock of the genre trade. They breathe and live their own lives and enact their form of revenge on the male characters, and entice and speak their minds. All in all a lot of them are more engaging than the male counterparts. But in the end the perspective is old-fashioned and male.

The whole collection is infused with energy – even though there is very little explicitness in its pages, it steams and is steeped in this tension throughout. It goes to show that Ivan Bunin uses these scenarios as a canvas for his immaculate skill as a painter of words, that he cooks up these shallow schemes and semi-plots as a mere ploy to get to the beauty and the livid imagery he has stored up in his head. One cannot help but admire the way he has transcended the confines of Chekhov’s strict guidelines of short story writing. The starkness of Chekhov’s descriptions becomes all too evident. But you cannot really emulate Bunin successfully. His resemblance to Chekhov is like a Melville’s to Hemingway.

Novelistas de ayer y de hoy

Good but repetitive. Maybe I'd have been better spacing the stories out once a year for the next twenty to get more enjoyment out of it.

Энциклопедия очень жестокой, беспощадной, изломанной и трагичной любви...
После прочтения этой книги возникает лишь один вопрос: "Есть ли на свете счастливая любовь?". Та, про которую можно сказать "Жили они долги и счастливо, и умерли в один день."?
Для себя могу выделить четыре рассказа, после которых я откладывала книгу и размышляла о том, что же именно я сейчас прочитала: "Кавказ", "Галя Ганская", "Генрих", "Часовня".

La saison de l'amitié :-)

Interesting individually, these stories, and some will stay with me but many will be forgotten. Quite atmospheric.

England D H Lawrence France Guy de Maupassant Russia

n deel 3 van de Verzamelde werken van Ivan Boenin neemt de grotendeels autobiografische roman Het leven van Arsenjev de meeste plaats in. Hierin wordt de sfeer van Rusland van vóór de revolutie opgeroepen. Hoofdpersoon Aleksej Arsenjev vertelt over zijn jeugd op het platteland, zijn schooljaren in de stad, het opkomen van de revolutionaire beweging en zijn groei naar volwassenheid. De eerste vier hoofdstukken verschenen in 1929, het vijfde en langste hoofdstuk verscheen afzonderlijk in 1933, het jaar waarin Boenin als eerste Russische schrijver de Nobelprijs voor literatuur kreeg. Daarnaast bevat dit deel de verhalen uit de periode 1937 - 1953. Boenin reageerde verontwaardigd op ‘vileine zielen’ die een aantal ervan als erotisch bestempelden. Zelf rekende hij deze latere verhalen tot zijn beste werk.

Deel 2 van Ivan Boenins Verzamelde werken bevat 59 korte en langere verhalen uit de periode 1913 - 1930. Vertellingen over het Russische platteland worden nu afgewisseld met verhalen die zich afspelen in exotische landen, die Boenin bezocht na zijn definitieve vertrek uit Rusland in de zomer van 1918 als gevolg van de Russsiche revolutie, die hij verafschuwde. Beroemde verhalen Mitja's liefde, Een heer uit San Francisco en De zaak Kornet Jelagin en ultrakorte verhalen zoals De roos van Jerichoen en het aangrijpende De kraanvogels wisselen elkaar af.

Het proza van Ivan Boenin (1870 - 1953, waarin de ondergang van de Russische aristocratie een terugkerend thema is, bestaat voor een belangrijk deel uit verhalen. Deel 1 van zijn vierdelige Verzamelde werken bevat 32 verhalen uit de periode 1892 - 1913.

This book kills you a little.

Efter ett boktips av Horace Engdahl blev jag nyfiken på boken. Tyvärr nådde den inte riktigt upp till mina förväntningar. Delvis beroende på att jag förmodligen hade lite för höga förväntningar, men delvis också på att den saknade det där lilla extra i detaljer och beskrivningar, i personbeskrivningar och platser, som jag har kommit att nära nog förvänta mig av ryska författare.

Stundtals påminde den mig lite grann om Proust, men tyvärr inte med samma kvalitet. Väl värd att läsa dock.

Li alguns contos de Búnin há alguns anos, em uma coleção de laureados pelo prêmio Nobel, mas só me interessei por ele quando li Insolação na Antologia do Conto Russo. Não só os contos mais famosos, como O Cavalheiro de São Fracisco, mas outros, como Cáucaso ou em Paris, tem descrições de força e beleza incríveis. Os contos de Búnin são impressionantemente evocativos.

Although only a short read (135 p.) I found it hard to plough through this one. There's no real plotline, rather it's a snapshot of brutal rural Russian life in the lead-up to the Revolution. The cold and the hunger; the ignorant and superstitious conversations of the peasants; the landowners starting to be afraid of their workers...

Certainly the descriptions bring this era to life:
'After the blizzards, harsh winds blew across the hardened, grey, icy crust on the fields and tore away the last brown leaves from the shelterless oak thickets in the gullies...icy, slippery mounds grew up around the ice holes; paths were trampled through the snowdrifts- and the humdrum life of winter set in. Epidemics began in the village: smallpox, fever, scarlatina...Around the ice holes from which the whole of Durnovka drank, above the stinking, dark, bottle-coloured water, peasant women stood for days on end, bent over and with their skirts tucked up above their grey-blue, bare knees...It was getting dark at three o'clock, and shaggy dogs sat on roofs that were almost the same level as the snowdrifts.'

Sometimes our lead characters -two brothers in their fifties- muse on the meaning of life:
'My life ought to be described. But what was there to describe? Nothing. Nothing or nothing worthwhile. After all, he himself remembered almost nothing of that life. He'd completely forgotten his childhood, for example; just from time to time some summer's day would come to him, some episode...Ask him now: do you remember your mother? - and he'd reply: I remember some bent old woman...she dried dung, stoked the stove, drank in secret, grumbled...And nothing more.'

Perhaps should be evaluated more as a piece of poetry in prose form than a narrative

Iván Bunin fué un escritor ruso laureado con el Premio Nobel de Literatura, en Una Aldea nos presenta un cuadro sombrío y deprimente de la vida campesina en Rusia

I gave up about 3/4 of the way through this collection of short stories, because they were just getting to be too much the same. Bunin, a Russian writer who fled after the revolution, wrote this collection in the south of France during the Nazi era "to escape to a different world" as the interesting biographical and critical notes at the end of this edition say. The stories, which mostly take place in the prerevolutionary era (although some take place post-revolution, in French exile), all focus on love, mostly the loss of love, some purely "romantic," others more physical; some trite, some moving, some irritatingly sexist. But what kept me going was Bunin's wonderful depictions of the varied beauties of the Russian countryside, and the often decaying houses and estates within it. Apparently he first set out to be a poet, and these sections are the highlights, for me, of the stories.

Ved et lykketreff kom jeg over den lille novellesamlingen, og det må ha vært tittelen på samlingen som gjorde at boka ble lest nokså umiddelbart etter at den var anskaffet.

Novellene varierer fra en til rundt tredve sider, og det var slett ikke de lengste novellene som nødvendigvis gjorde sterkest inntrykk på meg. Kanskje var det den bitte lille novellen "En skjønnhet" som bet seg sterkest merke i meg - den om den lille gutten som blir forstøtt av sin far etter at kone nr. 2 er kommet i hus ...

Bunins noveller er preget av tristhet og melankoli, og det er først og fremst beskrivelsen av ulike stemninger som preger novellene hans. Han er dessuten en mester i å beskrive naturen og vare mellommenneskelige relasjoner, særlig kjærligheten mellom mann og kvinne på ulike nivåer. Novellen "Tre rubler" er ganske enkelt fantastisk! Den handler om et møte mellom en mann og en prostituert ungjente. Jeg likte også veldig godt den lengre novellen "Ved landeveien" som ender nokså overraskende, etter at det har bygget seg opp en spenning mellom en helt ung og uerfaren jente og en mann som planlegger å flykte sammen.

For øvrig vil jeg fremheve oversettelsen til norsk. Selv om novellene, som ble skrevet i perioden fra 1900 til rundt andre verdenskrig, men som omhandler tiden før tsarveldets fall, er oversatt til norsk i nyere tid, har oversetteren forsøkt å bevare det litt gammelmodige språklige preget. Og det passer veldig godt til disse novellene.

Novellesamlingen er ganske enkelt mesterlig!

ZUM BUCH:
Nostalgische Chronik in Bildern des Niedergangs einer kleinadligen Familie, der Kruschtschews, Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts in ländlicher Gegend. Dahinter steht wohl vieles aus der Familiengeschichte Bunins. Natalia war/ist die Dienerin und „Chronistin“ der Familie, Pjotr Petrovitsch der Sohn, dann Hausherr und ihre geheime Liebe; Tante Tonja wurde nach einer Enttäuschung „irre“...

ZUM AUTOR:
* 10. Oktober / 22. Oktober 1870 in Woronesch; † 8. November 1953 in Paris) war ein russischer Schriftsteller, Lyriker und Übersetzer. Nach der Oktoberrevolution verließ Bunin 1918 Moskau und zog sich zunächst nach Odessa zurück, bevor er Russland 1919/1920 mit dem letzten Schiff Richtung Frankreich verließ und sich in Grasse ansiedelte. Bunin führte die Tradition der russischen Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts fort. Bekannt wurde er vor allem durch seine realistische Prosa, deren Hauptthema das Leben im ländlichen und provinziellen Russland vor der Oktoberrevolution ist. 1933 erhielt er als erster Russe den Nobelpreis für Literatur.

EINIGE EINDRÜCKE:
Durch manch andere russische Klassiker habe ich schon mal eine Ahnung bekommen von den Umwälzungen des 19./Anfang 20.Jahrhunderts: es ist – ähnlich wie es in anderen Kulturen zu eventuell anderen Zeiten der Fall gewesen ist – die Epoche der Veränderungen, des langsamen Niederganges alter Strukturen. Bunin erzählt hier eine Art Verfalls-/Verwaisungsgeschichte: die Enkel hören nur noch von den vergangenen Zeiten, vom alten Gut und der damit verbundenen Herrlichkeit… Und doch ist Bunin in all seiner Nostalgie und Wehmut nach dieser vergangenen Zeit scharfklar über all das, was da auch schief gelaufen ist: Im Verhältnis zwischen Herren und Dienern, Schein und Sein, Eltern und Kindern…

Ich finde es toll, wenn man dann wie er also eine Liebe zu den Wurzeln verbindet mit einem aufrichtigen Blick auf eventuelles Elend. Dass beides in gewissem Sinne nebeneinander existieren kann.

Darin und in anderen Apekten (die so starke Bindung an Mutter Erde; das Sich Einreihen in eine Geschichte bei aller Unwiederbringlichkeit; ein tragisch-wehmütiges Element; ein gewisser Fatalismus etc.) gibt uns der Autor sehr tiefgehende Einblicke in das, was man so “die russische Seele” nennt. Einige Gedankengänge dazu waren von mich ergreifender Schönheit, insbesondere in den einleitenden und abschließenden Seiten, die die manchmal etwas bilderhaft und nicht direkt einordbaren und nicht linear erzählten Episoden der Familiengeschichte umrahmen.

Deutsche Übersetzung
Ssuchodol
ASIN: B0000BQB62
Verlag Ellermann½