On the French perception of Ivan Bunin in 1933

Abstract

The receipt of the Nobel Prize in Literature by Ivan Bunin (the first of the Russian authors) in 1933 not only became an important event in the writer’s fate and Russian émigré life, but also was widely responded in the European (primarily French) press. This issue has long been the subject of research attention, but has not been fully studied yet due to the active discussion of the Nobel campaign, possible candidates for the prize and, finally, the figure of the winner in the contemporary press. In French literary circles, Bunin was not considered a favorite from major Russian writers, being inferior in popularity to M. Gorky and D.S. Merezhkovsky; reporters began to seek meetings and interviews with great interest. The article is supplied with the most revealing newspaper articles and Bunin’s interviews, and, by contrast, two Merezhkovsky’s interviews, previously not translated into Russian. They show the main paradox — the magical transformation of the author, unknown to French journalists and readers before, into an international celebrity and equally rapid psychological change of Bunin himself.

Keywords

• ivan bunin
• nobel prize in literature
• russian émigré literature
• russian-french cultural relations