Ivan Bunin

Dmitry Olshansky

Ed. by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.2.00: Post-1917 Writing and Culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 1917-present.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Dates

Born 22 Oct 1870
Died 8 Nov 1953
Activity 1891-1953

Places

Born in Russia
Active in Russia; France

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Story-writer

Resources

Bunin's Works

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Like many earlier Russian classic authors, Nobel Prize-winner Ivan Bunin was interested in the depths of human experience: the relation between death and sexual drives was the main theme of his fiction and essays. But his talent was distinguished by the combination of sincerity in his description of human experience and the refinement of sensation. Unlike Gogol and Dostoevsky, Bunin was a researcher of sensibility rather than an ethical thinker, but he retained their focus on the tragedy of human desire that constitutes the encounter between social law and the passions of the soul. An aristocrat in literature, Bunin was a deep connoisseur of the discourse of love and, at the same time, an original investigator of death – a writer who can describe the tragic effects of impossibility in…

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3271 words

Citation: Olshansky, Dmitry. "Ivan Bunin". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 February 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12012, accessed 22 November 2024.]