Volume 42, Number 13 · August 10, 1995
The Backward Look
By John Bayley
The Life of Arseniev: Youth
by Ivan Bunin, Books 1–4 translated by Gleb Struve, by Hamish Miles, Book 5 translated by Heidi Hillis, by Susan McKean, by Sven A. Wolf, edited, annotated and with an introduction by Andrew Baruch Wachtel
Northwestern University Press, 254 pp., $54.95; $17.95 (paper)
Ivan Bunin: Russian Requiem 1885–1920, A Portrait from Letters, Diaries, and Fiction
edited with an introduction and notes by Thomas Gaiton Marullo
Ivan R. Dee, 387 pp., $30.00
Ivan Bunin: From the Other Shore 1920–1933, A Portrait from Letters, Diaries, and Fiction
edited with an introduction and notes by Thomas Gaiton Marullo
Ivan R. Dee, 332 pp., $35.00
Except among students of Russian literature the name of Ivan Bunin is hardly remembered in the West today. The title of one of his most famous stories, 'The Gentleman from San Francisco,' may still strike a chord. The story survives well in translation, and once read is not forgotten. D. H. Lawrence, who was not at all given to praising other writers, greatly admired it, and helped to produce the English version; it could even be said to have influenced the technique of some of his own later stories, though its most obvious resemblance is to Tolstoy's nouvelle, The Death of Ivan Ilyich. A rich elderly American comes to Capri, has a heart attack, and dies. That is the whole story, but the way it is done is masterly; and the stark and yet richly poetical overtones of its style are powerful and disturbing.
Review, 3582 words
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