Ivan Bunin (1870–1953)

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… (more)

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.… (more)

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.… (more)