You have asked me to furnish you with data concerning my life and
literary activities. Permit me to repeat what I have already told my
French publishers in answer to a similar request.
I am a descendant of an ancient noble family which has given to
Russia a considerable number of prominent names, both in the field of
statesmanship and in the realm of art. In the latter, two poets are
especially well-known, Anna Petrovna Bunina and Vasili Zhookovski, 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 with the people and with the
land; they were landed proprietors. My parents were also land-owners,
who possessed estates in Central Asia, in the fertile fringe of the
steppes, where the ancient Tsars of Moscow had created settlements of
colonists from various Russian territories, to serve as protectors of
their Kingdom against the incursions of the Southern Tartars. Thanks to
this, it was here that the richest Russian language developed, and from
here have come nearly all the greatest Russian writers, with Turgenev
and Tolstoy at their head.
I was born in 1870, in the town of Voronezh, and passed my childhood
and youth almost entirely in the country, on my father’s estates. As a
boy, I was deeply affected by the death of my little sister, and passed
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 began to write both verse and prose
rather early in my life. My first appearance in print was likewise at
an early date.
When publishing my books, I nearly always made them up of prose and
verse, both original and translated from the English. If classified
according to their literary varieties, these books would constitute
some four volumes of original poems, approximately two of translations,
and six volumes or so of prose.
The attention of the critics was very quickly attracted to me. Later
on my books were more than once granted the highest award within the
gift of the Russian Academy of Sciences--the prize bearing Pushkin’s
name. In 1909 that Academy elected me one of the twelve Honorary
Academicians, who correspond to the French Immortals, and of whom Lyof
Tolstoy was one at that time.
For a long time, however, I did not enjoy any wide popularity, owing to
many reasons: for years, after my first stories had appeared in print,
I wrote and published almost nothing but verse; I took no part in
politics and, in my works, never touched upon questions connected with
politics; I belonged to no particular literary school, called myself
neither decadent, nor symbolist, nor romantic, nor naturalist, donned
no mask of any kind, and hung out no flamboyant flag. Yet, during
these last stormy decades in Russia, the fate of a Russian writer
has frequently depended upon such questions as: Is he an opponent of
the existing form of Government? Has he come from “the people”? Has
he been in prison, in exile? Or, does he take part in the literary
hubbub, in the “literary revolution,” which--merely in imitation of
Western Europe--went on during those years in Russia, together with
a rapid development of public life in the towns, of new critics and
readers from among the young bourgeoisie and the youthful proletariat,
who were as ignorant in the understanding of art as they were avid of
imaginary novelties and all kinds of sensations. Besides, I mixed very
little in literary society. I lived a great deal in the country, and
traveled extensively both in Russia and abroad: in Italy, in Sicily, in
Turkey, in the Balkans, in Greece, in Syria, in Palestine, in Egypt, in
Algeria, in Tunisia, in the tropics. I strove “to view the face of the
earth and leave thereon the impress of my soul,” to quote Saadi, and I
have been interested in philosophic, religious, ethical and historical
problems.
Twelve years ago I published my novel “The Village.” This was the first
of a whole series of works which depicted the Russian character without
adornment, the Russian soul, its peculiar complexity, its depths,
both bright and dark, though almost invariably tragic. On the part of
the Russian critics and among the Russian intellectuals, where “the
people” had nearly always been idealized, owing to numerous Russian
conditions _sui generis_, and, of late, merely because of the ignorance
of the people, or for political reasons,--these “merciless” works of
mine called forth passionate controversies and, as a final result,
brought me what is called success, success strengthened still further
by my subsequent works.
During those years I felt my hand growing firmer every hour; I felt
that the powers which had accumulated and matured in me, passionately
and boldly, demanded an outlet. Just then the World War broke out and
afterwards the Russian Revolution came. I was not among those who were
taken unawares by these events, for whom their extent and beastliness
were a complete surprise; yet the reality has surpassed all my
expectations.
What the Russian Revolution turned into very soon, none will comprehend
who has not seen it. This spectacle was utterably unbearable to any
one who had not ceased to be a man in the image and likeness of God,
and all who had a chance to flee, fled from Russia. Flight was sought
by the vast majority of the most prominent Russian writers, primarily,
because in Russia there awaited them either senseless death at the
hands of the first chance miscreant, drunk with licentiousness and
impunity, with rapine, with wine, with blood, with cocaine; or an
ignominious existence as a slave in the darkness, teeming with lice,
in rags, amid epidemic diseases, exposed to cold, to hunger, to the
primitive torments of the stomach, and absorbed in that single,
degrading concern, under the eternal threat of being thrown out of
his mendicant’s den into the street, of being sent to the barracks
to clean up the soldiers’ filth, of being--without any reason
whatever,--arrested, beaten, abused, of seeing one’s own mother, sister
or wife violated--and yet having to preserve utter silence, for in
Russia they cut out tongues for the slightest word of freedom.
I left Moscow in May, 1918, lived in the South of Russia (which passed
back and forth from the hands of the “Whites” into those of the “Reds”)
and then emigrated in February, 1919, after having drained to the dregs
the cup of unspeakable suffering and vain hopes. For too long I had
believed that the eyes of the Christian world would be opened, that it
would be horrified at its own heartlessness, and would extend to us a
helping hand in the name of God, of humanity and of its own safety.
Some critics have called me cruel and gloomy. I do not think that
this definition is fair and accurate. But of course, I have derived
much honey and still more bitterness from my wanderings throughout
the world, and my observations of human life. I had felt a vague fear
for the fate of Russia, when I was depicting her. Is it my fault that
reality, the reality in which Russia has been living for more than
five years now, has justified my apprehensions beyond all measure;
that those pictures of mine which had once upon a time appeared black,
and wide of the truth, even in the eyes of Russian people, have become
_prophetic_, as some call them now? “Woe unto thee, Babylon!”--those
terrible words of the Apocalypse kept persistently ringing in my soul
when I wrote “The Brothers” and conceived “The Gentleman from San
Francisco,” only a few months before the War, when I had a presentiment
of all its horror, and of the abysses which have since been laid bare
in our present-day civilization. Is it my fault, that here again my
presentiments have not deceived me?
However, does it mean that my soul is filled only with darkness and
despair? Not at all. “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so
panteth my soul after thee, O God!”