Translated material
Alexander Bakhrakh. Bunin in a robe.
Sergey Gandlevsky
M.: Consent, 2000
At the wake of K., my close friend, as usual, speeches were made. The deceased was a remarkable woman: kind, intelligent, took up a lot of space, passionate and biased, malicious... But from the words heard at the funeral table, one could get the impression that an hour ago they buried a blissful quiet woman. On the way from the wake, someone said: “After this, trust the memories of many years ago, if you managed to compose three boxes in one day.”
Memoirs, even the most conscientious ones, are always deceptive: memory is selective, in addition, literary processing leads away from protocol accuracy. And how many secondary, purely personal considerations and reasons do each memoirist have! Nevertheless, interest in literature of this kind is constant, directly proportional to the significance of the hero (or author) of the memoirs. It happens that you are amazed at the cheeky style and obvious self-interest of the writings of some casual acquaintance of a genius, but you still end up reading to the end. Fortunately, the notes about Bunin by the well-known emigration critic and memoirist Alexander Bakhrakh (1902 - 1985) belong to the successes of the genre. Bachrach witnessed the last - Grasse and Paris - years of the classic's life. The author of the memoirs loves and appreciates Bunin, but love and respect do not turn into blind adoration. The memoirist found the right tone, the golden mean: decency does not allow him to rummage through someone else's underwear, but at the same time, for the sake of modesty, Bakhrach does not bring a “textbook gloss” to his hero. (For example, it is the varnish of exaltation that blinds the eyes when reading the biography of Tolstoy, compiled in 1928 by N. N. Apostolov, where the “giant of Yasnaya Polyana” appears as a sort of Lenin at the Christmas tree in Sokolniki.) In addition, Bunin seems to be one of the writers who for whom the gap between everyday and literary images is not very significant. For my taste, “sins” only add to the charm of this personality. What is it that the reader of the memoirs learns that is particularly shocking, that goes against the ideas that have developed about Bunin the man from his work? Bunin the atheist, Bunin the Don Juan, Bunin the foul-mouthed Bunin, terribly afraid of death, bilious Bunin... Humanly, very understandable “vices” are the flip side of spirituality, love of life, attention to language, and common sense. Bunin has a reputation as an evil writer. Intelligence and observation do not get along well with complacency, however, Bunin does not need excuses. If some details of the private life of Gogol or Lermontov may offend, then bad things do not stick to Bunin (as, by the way, to Pushkin). Apparently, the initial reserve of purity and spiritual grace was very large.
Bakhrakh is an average writer, so pages with a lengthy account of ancient events are noticeably inferior in liveliness and authenticity to notes made under the fresh impression of conversations with the old writer. In these monologues, Bunin is recognizable. For example, he recalls a village guy he knew: “I gave him some books to read. I gave him The Death of Ivan Ilyich.”
- Have you read it?
- I read it.
- Well, did you like it?
“I really liked it, the guy at the bar was raking in a lot of money there...” “Village” is heard.
Autumn of Bunin's days: awkward life, poverty, heightened sense of personal and professional dignity, old age is not a joy, work day after day. All this is very touching and inspires even more love and respect for Bunin, and for literature in general.
The memoirs are preceded by a good article by Waclaw Michalski; the book is well published.