Ivan Bunin: Rare photos of Russia’s last classic author

October 22 marks the 140th anniversary of the birth of Ivan Bunin, dubbed “Russia’s last classic author.” Photo: Ivan Bunin, 1937

“No Russian poet can match Bunin’s painterly precision,” the literary and political magazine Vestnik Yevropy (Europe Bulletin) once said in a review. Photo: Ivan Bunin, 1928

Bunin was born into an impoverished aristocratic family in Voronezh but spent most of his childhood and youth in the neighboring Orel province. His childhood memories were filled with “fields and peasant cabins.”
Photo: Ivan Bunin in 1904

Bunin began writing poetry at the age of 7, imitating the style of Russian poets Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov and Semyon Nadson. At the age of 17, he published his first poem, and his first book of poetry was released four years later.
Photo: Ivan Bunin in 1891

In the late 1890s, Bunin became friends with Maxim Gorky, who invited him to collaborate on the magazine Znaniye (Knowledge).
Photo: Yalta, 1900. Maxim Gorky, Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak, Nikolai Teleshev, and Ivan Bunin (standing)

Before emigrating, Bunin traveled abroad extensively. The author once said that his perception of the Russian village was partly an emotional reaction to the “hard slap in the face” he received abroad. Bunin claimed to have developed “a kind of philosophy” of traveling.
Photo: Ivan Bunin in 1906

“Bunin became the darling of the émigré community,” said Vladislav Khodasevich, a contemporary Russian poet and literary critic.
In fact, Bunin never intended to leave his native Russia for good. While he loathed the Soviet regime, he only abandoned his plans of returning once and for all after learning how fellow authors Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Zoshchenko were harassed by the state.
Photo: Ivan Bunin in 1933

Bunin was married twice. His first wife was the daughter of Nikolai Tsakni, a Russian-born Greek publisher. The couple married in 1898, but the relationship was troubled and lasted only two years. Their son, Kolya, died in 1905.
Photo: Ivan Bunin’s first wife, Anna Tsakni

Bunin met his second wife, Vera Muromtseva, in Moscow in 1906, but they did not get married until after they emigrated to France in 1922, as Anna Tsakni had long refused to grant her estranged husband a divorce.
Vera Bunin’s literary legacy includes two memoirs about her life with her husband, “The Life of Bunin” and “Conversations with Memory.”

In 1933, Bunin was awarded a Nobel Prize for his “strict artistry with which he has carried on the classical Russian traditions in prose writing."

The Bunin family lived in southern France throughout WWII. Following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, they returned to the French capital, Paris.