Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (Ива́н Алексе́евич Бу́нин) (October 22 [O.S. October 10] 1870 – November 8, 1953) was the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The texture of his poems and stories, sometimes referred to as "Bunin brocade", is one of the richest in the language. In the words of Soviet-era writer K.G. Paustovsky, the 1930 novel Life of Arseniev is not only an apical work of written Russian, but also "one of the remark...
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Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (Ива́н Алексе́евич Бу́нин) (October 22 [O.S. October 10] 1870 – November 8, 1953) was the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The texture of his poems and stories, sometimes referred to as "Bunin brocade", is one of the richest in the language. In the words of Soviet-era writer K.G. Paustovsky, the 1930 novel Life of Arseniev is not only an apical work of written Russian, but also "one of the remarkable occurrences of world literature."
Bunin was born on his parents' estate in Voronezh province in central Russia. He came from a long line of landed gentry and serf owners, but his grandfather and father had squandered nearly all of the estate.
He was sent to the public school in Yelets (Lipetskaya oblast) in 1881, but had to return home after five years. His brother, who was university-educated, encouraged him to read the Russian classics and to write.
At 17, he published his first poem in 1887 in a Saint Petersburg literary magazine. His...
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