Ivan Bunin: Collected Stories [Paperback]

Why has Bunin fallen by the wayside? In his introduction, translator Graham Hettlinger speculates that his style -- with its notoriously long, richly descriptive sentences -- has proven impossible to reproduce in English. My theory is that the reasons for his current obscurity have more to do with literary politics (after all, Gogol is no translator's picnic, either). For much of his own lifetime, Bunin was the most celebrated and successful of the Russian emigre writers. He was seen as the rightful heir to Tolstoy and Chekhov. But times changed, the emigres (Bunin's main audience) dispersed and died off, Bunin himself was financially destroyed by the failure of his last story collection ("Dark Avenues"), and not long after his death in 1953, the West had become fascinated by dissidents like Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn. Beyond that, once Bunin's moment in the spotlight had passed, his own loudly proclaimed opposition to modernist literature and the nostalgic, melancholy tone of much of his work began to seem un-hip.

Fortunately, the tide seems to be slowly turning back in his favor. This collection of 35 stories spans Bunin's entire career, and, though not all of the stories are at the same level, the best of them are clearly the work of a master. Hettlinger opens the collection with the early "The Scent of Apples", a plotless series of seemingly inconsequential images and evocations; here Bunin suggests, as he does in many of his later stories, that the simplest, most trivial experiences are the ones that stay with us the longest. The story is also a good example of Bunin's passionately intense nature writing. No other writer makes the natural world seem so alive. "Sukhodol", the 1911 novella which follows, has been described as "one of the supreme masterpieces of modern fiction". That may sound overwrought, but it's hard to disagree. Here Bunin goes far beyond the simplistic nostalgia of "The Scent of Apples", evoking the life of a minor Russian gentry estate in all its beauty and horror. The lushness of nature is deceptive here -- it masks a world of tragedy and appalling brutality. The central character, the serf Natalya, is Bunin's most heartbreaking female portrait. Her dreams and hopes are wrecked beyond repair, but her innate generosity and selflessness aren't -- nor, Bunin seems to tell us, could they ever be.

I don't think anything else Bunin wrote quite approaches this level, but he wrote plenty that comes close enough. "The Gentleman from San Fransisco", his most famous story, is a powerful symbolic parable about death. Its most obvious influence is Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych", but its uncanny, dreamlike atmosphere also reminds me a little of Poe"s "The Masque of the Red Death" (I have no idea whether Bunin knew Poe's story). "Light Breathing" is probably his most touching exploration of one of his favorite themes: how sex and death walk hand in hand. The novella "Mitya's Love" also explores this territory, while evoking the moodiness and irrationality of young love with marvelous immediacy, and not a trace of condescension. "Sunstroke"is the ultimate one-night stand story: Here, the emotional after-effects of a seemingly casual encounter become a physical sensation in themselves.

Hettlinger ends the book with roughly half the "Dark Avenues" collection, which Bunin considered his masterpiece. These stories are united by the aforementioned theme of sex's relationship to death, which Bunin treats here with much more explicit eroticism than he had before. That aspect certainly has its appeal (no point in denying it), but I think that too many of these stories rely on crude melodrama to make their points, and that Hettlinger might have been done better to include more of Bunin's earlier work instead. The best of them, though, are marvelous. "Styopa" is a disturbing tale of sexual domination. "Late Hour" and "Cold Fall" are about people whose memories dominate their existence to such an extent that they almost literally live in the past. "In Paris" tenderly evokes loneliness and longing for connection. In "Calling Cards", a purely animal sexual urge turns into something unexpected once it's been satisfied. "Cleansing Monday", told in a slow, hypnotic style, is about the insurmountable barriers that lie between those who care deeply for one another. "Tanya" is a wonderful depiction of first love. "On One Familiar Street" is as fleeting and brief as the unforgettable affair it describes. "Wolves" is simply the most beautiful three pages you'll ever read.

Hettlinger does a fine job with all these stories, breaking up Bunin's long sentences where needed and avoiding the pitfalls of literalism. True Bunin fanatics will also need to add Robert Bowie's collection Night of Denial: Stories and Novellas (European Classics) and "The Life of Arseniev", his only novel: The Life of Arseniev: Youth (SRLT). Do yourself a favor, and get to know this writer.

Since more Bunin is by definition good, I was inclined to give this 5 stars right off the bat, but the reader should be warned about false advertising -- the title is "Collected Stories" and it isn't. There are some missing, including "An Unknown Friend" , maybe his best story ever. Bizarre. There are one or two odd things in the translation as well, though it reads generally quite fine. For example, in "Light Breathing" the shocking moment is muted -- it should be "shot her dead", not just "shot her". We have to wait another two paragaphs to learn that she is dead.

But otherwise, go for it

Bunin is reputed to be notoriously difficult to translate. Some of his work in English seems stilted and stunted, lacking nuance and sensitivity. Not this translation. The prose is poetic. The translator is either a great author or a great translator, the latter no doubt.
Buy this book if you want to understand why Bunin won the Nobel Prize.