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Chekhov, Bunin, and Nabokov
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[EDNOTE. Sandy Klein sends this link to Eric Ormsby review, in the New
York Sun, of a new volume of Ivan Bunin's fiction, in which Ormsby
compares Bunin to Chekhov and Nabokov. -- SES]
"There are writers who are overshadowed as much by their predecessors as
by their successors. This has been the perverse fate of Ivan Bunin, the
first Russian author to win the Nobel Prize (in 1933). He languishes in
the improbable interim between Chekhov, his older friend and mentor, and
Nabokov, whom he inspired. Chekhov admired Bunin's fiction. Just before
his death in 1904, he urged a friend to tell Bunin "to keep on writing
and writing. He's going to be really big someday." But he also saw the
younger man as the most gifted continuator of the Chekhovian manner.
Nabokov, coming from a similar landed-gentry background as Bunin and,
like him, forced into exile by the Revolution, regarded Bunin to some
extent as a model, though he faulted his "brocaded prose" (a fine
instance of the samovar calling the kettle black). Among modern Russian
writers, Chekhov and Nabokov divide the world between them while Bunin
has been relegated to the shadowy limbo of the transitional.
This isn't only unjust but mistaken. Bunin is, at his best, an
astonishing writer whose work cries out for rediscovery. This is now
possible, thanks to "Night of Denial: Stories and Novellas"
(Northwestern University Press, 720 pages, $24.95), translated by Robert
Bowie. Every genre is represented in this plump compilation, from
evocative two-page tales to expansive novellas, as is every mood, from
bitter nostalgia to otherworldly mysticism. . . ."
http://www.nysun.com/article/42239
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
York Sun, of a new volume of Ivan Bunin's fiction, in which Ormsby
compares Bunin to Chekhov and Nabokov. -- SES]
"There are writers who are overshadowed as much by their predecessors as
by their successors. This has been the perverse fate of Ivan Bunin, the
first Russian author to win the Nobel Prize (in 1933). He languishes in
the improbable interim between Chekhov, his older friend and mentor, and
Nabokov, whom he inspired. Chekhov admired Bunin's fiction. Just before
his death in 1904, he urged a friend to tell Bunin "to keep on writing
and writing. He's going to be really big someday." But he also saw the
younger man as the most gifted continuator of the Chekhovian manner.
Nabokov, coming from a similar landed-gentry background as Bunin and,
like him, forced into exile by the Revolution, regarded Bunin to some
extent as a model, though he faulted his "brocaded prose" (a fine
instance of the samovar calling the kettle black). Among modern Russian
writers, Chekhov and Nabokov divide the world between them while Bunin
has been relegated to the shadowy limbo of the transitional.
This isn't only unjust but mistaken. Bunin is, at his best, an
astonishing writer whose work cries out for rediscovery. This is now
possible, thanks to "Night of Denial: Stories and Novellas"
(Northwestern University Press, 720 pages, $24.95), translated by Robert
Bowie. Every genre is represented in this plump compilation, from
evocative two-page tales to expansive novellas, as is every mood, from
bitter nostalgia to otherworldly mysticism. . . ."
http://www.nysun.com/article/42239
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm