Bunin is a unique creative personality in the history of Russian literature of the late 19th - first half of the 20th century. His genius talent, skill as a poet and prose writer, which became classic, amazed his contemporaries and captivates us living today. His works preserve the real Russian literary language, which is now lost.
Works about love occupy a large place in Bunin’s work. The writer has always been worried about the mystery of this strongest of human feelings.
I'm looking for combinations in this world
Beautiful and secret, like a dream.
I love her for the happiness of merging
In one love with the love of all times!
I. Bunin “Night”
Bunin is sure of the existence of true love. She is real for him, in all its manifestations: happy, mutual (which is extremely rare in Bunin), and unrequited, and destructive. But whatever it is, it exists. Moreover, for Bunin, she is the only thing that is the meaning of life, its driving force. How can you live without the most important thing in life?
What is in you exists.
Here you are, dozing and in your eyes
So lovingly the soft wind blows -
How is there no Love?
I. Bunin. “In a country chair, at night, on the balcony...”
Love in Bunin’s depiction amazes not only with the power of artistic representation, but also with its subordination to some internal laws unknown to man. They rarely break through to the surface: most people will not experience their fatal effects until the end of their days. Such a depiction of love unexpectedly gives Bunin’s sober, “merciless” talent a romantic glow.
Bunin's love lyrics are not great in quantity. It reflects the poet's confused thoughts and feelings about the mystery of love... One of the main motives of love lyrics is loneliness, inaccessibility or impossibility of happiness. For example, in the poems “How bright, how elegant spring is!..”, “A calm gaze, like the gaze of a doe...”, “At a late hour we were in the field with her...”, “Loneliness”, “Sadness of eyelashes, shining and black …" and etc.
Bunin's love lyrics are passionate, sensual, saturated with a thirst for love and are always filled with tragedy, unfulfilled hopes, memories of past youth and lost love.
Tomorrow he will come out again at dawn
And again he will remind you, lonely,
I feel spring and my first love,
And your image, sweet and distant...
I. A. Bunin “The sunset has not yet faded away in the distance...”
The catastrophic nature of existence, the fragility of human relationships and existence itself - all these favorite Bunin themes after the gigantic social cataclysms that shook Russia were filled with a new and formidable meaning. The proximity of love and death, their conjugation were obvious facts for Bunin and were never subject to doubt.
I take your hand and look at it for a long time,
You timidly raise your eyes in sweet languor:
here in this hand is your whole existence,
I feel all of you - soul and body.
What else do you need? Is it possible to be happier?
But the angel is rebellious, all storm and flame,
Flying over the world to destroy with mortal passion,
It's rushing above us!
I. Bunin “I take your hand...”
It has long been and very correctly noted that love in Bunin’s work is tragic. The author is trying to unravel the mystery of love and the mystery of death, why they often come into contact in life, what is the meaning of this. The author does not answer these questions, but through his works he makes it clear that this has a certain meaning in human earthly life.
As a rule, in Bunin we see two ways of developing love relationships. Either the happiness of love is followed by separation or death. Intimacy leads to separation, death, murder. Happiness cannot last forever.
Hours, the last for them! -
The dunes glow more and more brightly.
They are the bride and groom
Will they ever meet again?
I. A. Bunin “Separation”
Or, initially, the feeling of love turns out to be unrequited or impossible for some reason.
You are obedient and modest
She followed him from the crown.
But you bowed your face -
He didn't see the face.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
You don't even know how to hide
That you are alien to him...
You won't forget me
Never ever!
I. A. Bunin “Alien”
Bunin's love does not go into the family channel and is not resolved by a happy marriage. Bunin deprives his heroes of eternal happiness, deprives them because they get used to it, and habit leads to loss of love. Love out of habit cannot be better than lightning-fast but sincere love. However, despite its short duration, love still remains eternal: it is eternal in memory precisely because it is fleeting in life.
“Love is beautiful” and “Love is doomed” - these concepts are finally
having come together, they coincided, carrying in the depths the grief of Bunin the emigrant.
Exceptions are extremely rare, but they do occur. And then the ending of the story becomes either a wedding crown:
Golden willow, stars
The burdened one bows,
With the betrothed Alisaphia
Gathering in God's church.
I. Bunin “Alisaphia”
Or a feeling of complete all-encompassing happiness:
I'm happy only with you alone,
And no one will replace you:
You are the only one who knows and loves me,
And one understands why!
I. A. Bunin “The stars are more tender at night in spring”
I. Bunin's love lyrics have a number of features. In it, the author avoids deliberately beautiful phrases:
I went to see her at midnight.
She was sleeping - the moon was shining
In her window - and blankets
The lowered atlas glowed.
I. A. Bunin “I entered her at the midnight hour...”
For Bunin, nature is not a background, not a decoration, but one of the characters; in love lyrics, in most cases it plays the role of a dispassionate observer. Whatever happens, whatever the situation described by Bunin, nature in most cases retains a serene expression, which nevertheless differs in nuances, since through them the author surprisingly accurately conveys feelings, moods and experiences.
The author's favorite season is spring. Bunin associates it with the feeling of love; it itself symbolizes love. Moreover, love is completely different: happy, mutual, “living” love (as for example in the poem “The stars are more tender on a spring night...”), and past love, almost forgotten, but still stored in the depths of the heart:
How bright, how elegant spring is!
Look into my eyes, as before,
And tell me: why are you sad?
Why did you become so affectionate?
But you are silent, weak as a flower...
Oh, be quiet! I don't need confession:
I recognized this caress of farewell, -
I'm lonely again!
I. A. Bunin “How bright, how elegant spring is...”
And love, in which the separation has just taken place:
And she nodded to me affectionately,
She tilted her face slightly away from the wind
And disappeared around the corner... There was...
She forgave me - and forgot.
I. A. Bunin
Oddly enough, a certain sign of the authenticity of love for Bunin is, one might say, immorality in love, since ordinary morality turns out, like everything established by people, to be a conventional scheme into which the elements of natural, living life do not fit.
The intimate lyrics of I. A. Bunin are tragic; they contain a protest against the imperfections of the world.
When describing risky details related to the body, when the author must be impartial so as not to cross the fragile line separating art from pornography, Bunin, on the contrary, worries too much - to the point of a spasm in the throat, to the point of passionate trembling:
She was lying on her back
Naked split breasts...
And quietly, like water in a vessel,
Her life was like a dream.
I. Bunin “I entered her at the midnight hour...”
For Bunin, everything connected with gender is pure and significant, everything is shrouded in mystery and even holiness.
Love is a mysterious element that transforms a person’s life, giving his destiny uniqueness against the background of ordinary everyday stories, filling his earthly existence with special meaning.
Yes, love has many faces and is often inexplicable. This is an eternal mystery, and every reader of Bunin’s works seeks his own answers, reflecting on the mysteries of love. The perception of this feeling is very personal, and therefore someone will treat what is depicted in the book as a “vulgar story,” while others will be shocked by the great gift of love, which, like the talent of a poet or musician, is not given to everyone. But one thing is certain: Bunin’s poems, telling about the most intimate things, will not leave readers indifferent. Each person will find in Bunin’s works something consonant with their own thoughts and experiences, and will touch the great mystery of love.
I.A. Bunin is one of the few realist writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, famous not only for his prose, but also for his poetry. His first collection of poetry was published in 1891, followed by Falling Leaves (1901) and New Poems (1902).
Both in prose and poetry, Bunin adhered to the realistic traditions developed by Pushkin, Fet, and Polonsky. From them he learned respect for the word, simplicity, classical clarity and clarity.
Bunin's poetic heritage is heterogeneous in subject matter. Bunin's early poetry is characterized by landscape lyrics. Later, he increasingly turns to philosophical lyrics, continuing Tyutchev’s problematics.
Bunin expressed the same thought in different versions: “No, it’s painful for me to live in the world! Everything torments me with its charm.” The word “beauty,” according to the writer, has always referred to something that seems beyond human expression: flowers, trees, the sea. An intense attraction to eternal beauty and harmony is what dominated Bunin’s early lyrics.
This artist was obsessed with a passionate desire to understand the eternal, to touch the elusive, to unravel the “tread of higher powers.” Specific elements of space and time (field, forest, steppe, southern countries or night, morning, day, evening, winter, spring, summer) appear in their usual appearance, and at the same time - as part of the universe, as bearers of the unknown secret of universal existence.
Gradually, the “star theme” is growing in Bunin’s work. Distant luminaries are chosen here as a symbol of “eternal beauty and unearthly truth.” A contrast appears between this beautiful world and the “lost” earth:
Only one starry sky,
One firmament is motionless,
Calm and blissful, alien
To everything that is so dark underneath.
Or:
I see the night: sands among silence
And starlight over the darkness of the earth.
The traditional contradiction (light-darkness) is associated with complex human feelings. “Unearthly beauty” is infinitely expensive, but difficult to achieve. And therefore, communion with it is always a rebirth: “... the soul, fluttering like the wings of a free bird, Touched the sunny singing height!” Beautiful feelings are accompanied by the radiance of the luminaries: “And I will not forget this starry night, When I loved the whole world for one.”
The poet touches on the problems of good and evil, love and hate, the meaning of life. Take, for example, these lines:
And I’ll forget everything - I’ll only remember these
Field paths between ears and grasses -
And from my sweet dreams I won’t have time to answer,
Falling to the merciful knees.
Indeed, the last hours of earthly life await each of us. Moments will come when you need to remember and sum up: “Is this how you lived?” Bunin's lyrical hero refuses fame, money, ranks... He only remembers “field paths between ears of corn and grass.” A living connection with nature turned out to be the most important and necessary in life. Someone may challenge this conclusion and find the meaning of life in something else. But the fact that the poet encourages the reader to think about the meaning of existence is very important.
In terms of his holistic worldview, Bunin is close to Pushkin - in his ability to feel light sadness, light sadness. Although these feelings have different beginnings. Pushkin’s “heart burns again and loves because it cannot help but love” (“On the Hills of Georgia”). Bunin sees saving energy in the very flow of existence:
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.
Yes, Bunin constantly hears the call of spaces, times, his own destiny, his knowledge. And he hastens to convey: “in the distance there are pearls and opals”; “to tell someone what draws you into this blue”; warn: “When you walk over an abyss, you must look straight into the azure and light.” In a greedy, unstoppable movement towards the unknown, Bunin’s lyrical hero experiences admiration both from unexpected shades of feelings and from the mysteries of nature that suddenly appear to the eye.
The philosophical lyrics of the mature Bunin noticeably crowd out the landscape ones. The landscape itself remains, but its functions become different. The poet’s focus is on church monasteries and graveyards, the description of which sets readers up for a connection with their departed ancestors (“Fence, cross, green grave...”, “The grave grass grows, grows,” “The day will come - I will disappear...”, “Tombstone”, “Death”, etc.). In general, the idea of a continuity between the past and the present, but not in the real, but in some spiritual sense, runs through many of Bunin’s poetic works. For example, in the poem “Grave in the Rock,” talking about how “in Nubia on the Nile,” in an abandoned cave, “they found a living and clear footprint,” Bunin writes:
I, a traveler, saw this. I'm in my grave
Breathed the warmth of dry stones. They
The hidden was kept for five thousand years...
That moment was resurrected. And for five thousand years
Multiplied the life given to me by fate.
Thus, Bunin’s works are deeply personal, gravitate toward philosophical generalizations of the meaning of being, life and death, not
Nobel Prize laureate Bunin began his creative career as a poet. He was greatly influenced by poets such as Nikitin, Koltsov, and partly Nekrasov. They glorified Russian nature, the countryside, poeticized the peasantry, and in this way they were close to Bunin. Bunin was not tempted by experiments in search of a new technique of versification.
The themes of Bunin's poetry are not very diverse. Basically these are poems about nature. There are almost no poems on a peasant theme, except for “The Village Beggar,” in the center of which is the image of a homeless old man, tormented by poverty. Civil motives are also rare (“Giordano Bruno”, “The Poet”, “Over the grave of S. Ya. Nadson”).
Landscape lyrics occupy a leading place in Bunin's poetry. In it he reflected the signs of the nature of the Oryol region, which the poet passionately loved. Poems about nature are written in gentle, soft colors and resemble the picturesque landscapes of Levitan. A striking example of a verbal landscape is the poem “Russian Spring”. The poem “The full moon stands high...” is remarkable for its observation and faithfulness in conveying light, smell, and color. Bunin's landscape lyrics are in the traditions of Russian classics (“Autumn”, “Autumn Landscape”, “In the Steppe”).
Bunin's early poems are full of a feeling of the joy of being, one's own connection, oneness with nature. The poem “From the Warm” conveys the harmony of the poet and the world:
And, reveling in beauty, Only in it breathing more fully and wider, I know that everything alive in the world Lives in the same love with me.
Bunin’s external description is not distinguished by bright colors, but is rich in internal content. Man is not an observer, a contemplator of nature, but, in the words of Tyutchev, a “thinking reed,” a part of nature:
No, it’s not the landscape that attracts me, It’s not the colors that the greedy eye will notice, But what shines in these colors: Love and the joy of being.
Bunin is attracted not by the static, frozen state of the landscape, but by the eternal change of state. He knows how to capture the beauty of a single moment, the very state of transition. Moreover, in this separate moment the poet glimpses the eternity and indestructibility of nature (“The lightning face is like a dream...”, poem “Falling Leaves”),
Love for nature is inseparably linked with love for the homeland. This is not an open, declarative patriotism, but a lyrically colored feeling, poured out in descriptions of pictures of native nature (“Motherland”, “Motherland”, “In the Steppe”, the cycle “Rus”).
In later poems, a feature characteristic of Bunin’s poetry clearly emerges:
... in my joy there is always melancholy, in my melancholy there is always a mysterious sweetness.
This longing for beauty and harmony, which are becoming less and less in the life around us. Images of the darkness of the night, the melancholy of autumn slush, the sadness of abandoned cemeteries are constant in the poems, the theme of which is the destruction of noble nests, the death of noble estates (“And I dreamed…”, “The world is empty… The earth has cooled…”). Material from the site
Not only nature, but also ancient legends, myths, and religious traditions nourish Bunin’s poetry. In them Bunin sees the wisdom of centuries, finds the fundamental principles of the entire spiritual life of humanity (“Temple of the Sun”, “Saturn”),
Bunin's poetry has strong philosophical motives. Any picture - everyday, natural, psychological - is always included in the universal, in the universe. The poems are permeated with a sense of wonder at the eternal world and an understanding of the inevitability of one’s own death (“Loneliness”, “Rhythm”).
Bunin's poems are short, laconic, these are lyrical miniatures. His poetry is restrained, as if “cold,” but this is a deceptive “coldness.” Rather, it is the absence of pathos, poses that outwardly express the “pathos of the soul.”
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- Bunin's lyrics - Rass
Ivan Alekseevich spent a lot of time reading the literature of foreign and domestic writers, whose work inspired the young poet, who was looking for his own style in this craft. He absolutely loved the poetic works of Nekrasov, Koltsov and Nikitin. The works of these authors openly poeticized the peasantry, which was very close in spirit to Bunin.
Already in the first creative works of the great writer and poet, an original manner, a unique writing style and intriguing themes that attracted the reader were visible. His lyrics were smart and calm, comparable to the sincere conversation of loved ones. Ivan Alekseevich's poems reflected the rich and subtle inner world of the young writer.
Critics admired the artistry and high technique observed in Bunin's lyrical works. The poet felt every word and beautifully conveyed his thoughts, masterfully honing each fragment of the poetic work.
The main lyrical motives of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
Ivan Alekseevich's poetry cannot boast of particular diversity. But the poet did not need this. Most of his poems have themes related to nature. Some creations are dedicated to peasant life and civic motives. Much space was devoted to the theme of love and relationships.Landscape lyrics, written in soft and gentle colors, are clearly visible in the leading place. The poet loved the Oryol region very much, he was delighted with the picturesque views of natural nature, so in many of Bunin’s poems there is a flattering description of these wonderful places.
Bunin clearly followed the tradition of Russian classics, which can be seen in the bright and rich poem “Autumn Landscape”:
Autumn has come again
And only to her I listen,
The leaves are falling quietly,
Stroking the damp earth.
Autumn has come again -
Graying pale sunsets,
A blue flower
Asks the stingy sun...
The wind is a dull flute
It sounds dejected in the branches,
The rain is hiding somewhere
Hiding it like a sieve blew.
People burn bonfires
Leaves, raked into heaps,
And the wind is catching up
There are thick clouds in the sky...
The sun broke through for a moment,
Warming the soul again,
As if goodbye forever -
It's sad to listen to nature...
And in the poem “The Full Moon Stands High,” the poet harmoniously conveyed observation and fidelity to his favorite theme:
In the skies above the misty land,
The pale light silvers the meadows,
Filled with white mist.
In the whiteout, in the wide meadows,
On deserted river banks
Only black dried reeds
Yes, you can distinguish the tops of the willow trees.
And the river is barely visible on its banks...
Somewhere a mill makes a dull noise...
The village is sleeping... The night is quiet and pale,
When reading this magnificent poem, a special motive is heard, and the work itself sounds like a calm and pleasant melody. Such masterpieces seem to merge the reader’s consciousness with real nature, and one feels a noble reunion and the insane joy of being...
The poem “The Thaw” has a special richness of internal content, conveying the unshakable harmony of the great poet with the beautiful nature of the surrounding world.
Ivan Alekseevich was always attracted by landscape rigidity and the state of transition from one static state to another. He knew how to capture individual moments of these changes and clearly conveyed what he saw in his lyrical poetry.
Love for nature was closely intertwined with a tender feeling and deep respect for one’s homeland. Bunin wrote several poems on patriotic themes, colored by a lyrical celebration of Russian nature.
The last years of his life, the great Russian writer and poet Ivan Alekseevich Bunin spent in France. Longing for his native land was clearly visible in his poems written far from his homeland.
The poet also wrote on other topics, although there are few such works, but they also attract the reader with their unusual plot line. Poetry based on religious traditions, myths and ancient legends is very interesting.
Six golden marble columns,
Boundless green valley,
Lebanon in snow and blue sky.
I saw the Nile and the giant Sphinx,
I saw the pyramids: you are stronger
More beautiful, antediluvian ruin!
There are blocks of yellow-ash stones,
Forgotten graves in the ocean
Naked sands. Here is the joy of young days.
Patriarchal-royal fabrics -
Longitudinal rows of snow and rocks -
They lie like motley tales in Lebanon.
Below are meadows and green gardens
And sweet, like mountain coolness,
The sound of fast malachite water.
Below it is the site of the first nomad.
And let it be forgotten and empty:
The colonnade shines like the immortal sun.
Her gates lead to the blissful world.
Philosophical lyrics of the great Russian poet
The main creative feature of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is versatility, because he showed himself excellently not only as a talented poet and writer. He was a skilled prose writer and an excellent translator. His works are ingenious and grandiose, which is why the famous realist gained massive popularity all over the world!How was a Russian writer able to master the form of classical verse so maneuverably? Many experts believe that these achievements were achieved thanks to professionalism in working as a translator. The exceptional skill of the great writer is based on the amazing search for the only possible word that forms a classic rhyme with deep meaning. His poems flow like a beautiful song, filled with life and honest emotions.
The pessimistic tradition is clearly heard in his prose works. Bunin was greatly fascinated by the philosophical work of Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev, based on the eternal source of the beautiful and harmonious. This inspiration was reflected in the lyrical work of Ivan Alekseevich, distinguished by the utmost precision of words and sharp, prosaic details.
Bunin's philosophical lyrics are based on Russian nature, on the theme of love, intertwined in unique contrast. Later, the poet often traveled in his memories, and these thoughts inspired him to create new creations related to mythology.
These works convey a sincere recognition of earthly existence as part of an eternal story. The writer boldly aggravated the fatal outcome of human life, the feeling of loneliness and doom. Some of Ivan Alekseevich’s poetic works make us think about what was always there, but was not noticed.
The wonderful author has always stood out for his individuality, unique philosophical view of everyday phenomena, sincerity and honest recognition of his own ideas and thoughts, expressed in such a beautiful and sounding form.
"Dog"
Dream dream. Everything is already dimmer
You look with golden eyes
To the blizzard yard, to the snow stuck to the frame,
On the brooms of echoing, smoky poplars.
Sighing, you curled up warmer
At my feet - and you think... We ourselves
We torment ourselves with the longing of other fields,
Other deserts... beyond the Permian mountains.
You remember what is alien to me:
Gray skies, tundras, ice and plagues
In your cold wild side.
But I always share my thoughts with you:
I am a man: like a god I am doomed
To experience the melancholy of all countries and all times.
The artistic originality of Bunin's lyrics
A distinctive feature of Bunin's lyrical poetry was its artistic originality, skillful perception of the surrounding nature, man and the whole world. He masterfully honed the landscape and miraculously transferred it into his lyrical works.Ivan Alekseevich’s creative activity occurred in the era of modernism. Most authors of the 19th-20th centuries tried to express their thoughts and feelings in unusual forms, indulging in fashionable word creation. Bunin did not strive for this direction; he was always devoted to Russian classics, and recreated his poetry in the most traditional forms, similar to the lyrical works of previous poets such as Tyutchev, Polonsky, Pushkin, Fet.
Ivan Bunin gradually transformed landscape lyrics into philosophy, and his poems always contain the main idea. In the poetry of the great poet, special attention is often paid to the most important theme - life and death.
The philosophical direction and artistic originality were not overshadowed by the revolutionary processes taking place in the country. The poet continued his work in the chosen direction, and boldly attributed all the problems of humanity to eternal subtleties, among good, evil, birth and death...
Bunin always wanted to find the truth; he often turned to the world history of different generations. The poet recognized life on Earth as something temporary, a transitional period between eternal existence in the Universe. He always wanted to look beyond the boundaries of reality, to find the answer to human life and the doom of death at the end of the road. In many of his poems one especially feels gloom, pitiful breathing, fear of loneliness and unshakable fear of a tragic outcome, which cannot be avoided by anyone living on this Earth...
Bunin's lyrics are multifaceted and impeccable. His poetry inspires and pleases, directs the reader’s thoughts into the unconscious, but quite real and interesting. If you study the works of the great Russian writer and poet with care, you can discover a very important truth for your perception, which you did not want to notice just yesterday.
All children in our country are familiar with the work of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, as it is included in the compulsory study program in literature class. It is not possible to perceive his subtle thoughts and feelings immediately; only an in-depth awareness of each word will allow one to understand and reveal the main meaning of the lyrical work. That is why, in addition to the required stories, the teacher is allowed to choose several works at his own discretion.
Bunin is a magnificent writer and poet of the 19th-20th centuries, who left a memorable mark on the future generation, captured in amazingly beautiful lyrics...
A. Blok about Bunin: “few people know how to know and love nature…”
“Bunin claims to be one of the main places in Russian literature...”
"April"
Foggy crescent, unclear twilight,
The lead-dull shine of the iron roof,
The noise of the mill, the distant barking of dogs,
Mysterious bat zigzag.
And it’s dark in the old front garden,
Juniper smells fresh and sweet,
And sleepily, sleepily it glows through the spruce forest
Sickle greenish spot.
"Berezka"
On a distant pass, on the edge
Empty skies, there is a white birch tree:
A trunk twisted by storms and flat
Spread branches. I am standing,
Admiring her, in the yellow bare field.
It's dead. Where is the shadow, layers of salt
It's frosty. The sun's light is low
Doesn't warm them up. There's not a single leaf
These branches are brownish reddish,
The trunk is sharply white in the green void...
But autumn is peace. The world is in sadness and dreams,
The world is thinking about the past, about losses.
On a distant pass, on the line
Empty fields, the birch tree is lonely.
But it's easy for her. Her spring is far away.
"Treasure"
Everything that keeps traces of the long forgotten,
Those who died long ago will live for centuries.
In grave treasures buried by the ancients,
Midnight melancholy sings.
The steppe stars remember how they shone
The fact that they now lie in the damp earth...
It's not Death that's scary, but what's on the grave
Death guards the singing treasure.
Poetry occupies a significant place in the work of I. A. Bunin, 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 turned 17, his first poem, “The Village Beggar,” was published in the Rodina magazine, in which the young poet described the state of the Russian village:
It's sad to see so much suffering
And longing and need in Rus'!
From the very beginning of his creative activity, the poet found his own style, his own themes, his own 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 drew many precise epithets and comparisons from works of folk art - both oral and written. K. Paustovsky greatly appreciated Bunin, saying that each of his lines was as clear as a string.
Bunin began with civil poetry, writing about the difficult life of the people, and with all his soul he wished for change for the better. In the poem “Desolation,” the old house says to the poet:
I'm waiting for the cheerful sounds of the axe,
I'm waiting for the destruction of daring work,
I'm waiting for life, even in brute force,
Blossomed again from the ashes of the grave.
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”:
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.
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.” A rich artistic perception of nature, the world and the people in it became a distinctive feature of both Bunin’s poetry and prose. 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:
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.
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 not what, but why this or that 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, in his work he turns to the history of different countries and peoples. This is how poems about Mohammed, Buddha, and ancient deities arise. In the poem "Sabaoth" he writes:
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.
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.
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