THE VILLAGE
THIS AUTHORISED TRANSLATION HAS
BEEN MADE FROM THE ORIGINAL
RUSSIAN TEXT BY ISABEL HAPGOOD
THE VILLAGE
By Ivan Bunin
LONDON: MARTIN SECKER
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI
LONDON: MARTIN SECKER (LTD.) 1923
CONTENTS
| PART ONE | 15 |
| PART TWO | 131 |
| PART THREE | 203 |
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Dear Publisher:—
You have asked me to furnish you with data concerningmy life and literary activities. Permit meto repeat what I have already told my French publishersin answer to a similar request.
I am a descendant of an ancient noble family whichhas given to Russia a considerable number of prominentnames, both in the field of statesmanship andin the realm of art. In the latter, two poets are especiallywell-known, Anna Petrovna Bunina and VasiliZhookovski, one of the shining lights of Russian Literature,the son of Afanasi Bunin and a Turkish captive,Salma.
All my ancestors had always been connected withthe people and with the land; they were landed proprietors.My parents were also land-owners, who possessedestates in Central Asia, in the fertile fringe ofthe steppes, where the ancient Tsars of Moscow hadcreated settlements of colonists from various Russianterritories, to serve as protectors of their Kingdomagainst the incursions of the Southern Tartars.Thanks to this, it was here that the richest Russianlanguage developed, and from here have come nearlyall the greatest Russian writers, with Turgenev andTolstoy at their head.
[8]I was born in 1870, in the town of Voronezh, andpassed my childhood and youth almost entirely in thecountry, on my father’s estates. As a boy, I wasdeeply affected by the death of my little sister, andpassed through a violent religious crisis, which left,however, no morbid traces whatsoever in my soul.
I also had a passion for painting, which, I believe,has manifested itself in my literary works. I beganto write both verse and prose rather early in mylife. My first appearance in print was likewise at anearly date.
When publishing my books, I nearly always madethem up of prose and verse, both original and translatedfrom the English. If classified according to theirliterary varieties, these books would constitute somefour volumes of original poems, approximately two oftranslations, and six volumes or so of prose.
The attention of the critics was very quickly attractedto me. Later on my books were more thanonce granted the highest award within the gift of theRussian Academy of Sciences—the prize bearing Pushkin’sname. In 1909 that Academy elected me one ofthe twelve Honorary Academicians, who correspondto the French Immortals, and of whom Lyof Tolstoywas one at that ti