Грамматика любви

by Ivan Bunin, Иван Алексеевич Бунин

Рассказ, впервые опубликованный в 1915 году.

Genres: Russian Literature, Short Stories, Russia, Fiction, Nobel Prize

13 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 22, 2014

About the author

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (Russian: Иван Алексеевич Бунин) was the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was noted for the strict artistry with which he carried on the classical Russian traditions in the writing of prose and poetry. The texture of his poems and stories, sometimes referred to as "Bunin brocade", is considered to be one of the richest in the language.

Best known for his short novels The Village (1910) and Dry Valley (1912), his autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev (1933, 1939), the book of short stories Dark Avenues (1946) and his 1917–1918 diary ( Cursed Days, 1926), Bunin was a revered figure among anti-communist White emigres, European critics, and many of his fellow writers, who viewed him as a true heir to the tradition of realism in Russian literature established by Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov.

He died November 8, 1953 in Paris.

Reviews

[Liina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bunin's style is notoriously rich and descriptive. He uses words like brushstrokes, to paint beautiful little snapshots of young, naive Russian farm girls, self conscious women and most beautifully perhaps, of nature and different distinctive aspects of each season. Other authors do this memorably as well - Turgenev, Tolstoy, Nabokov - but Bunin does it best. For example, in "Ignat" he conveys the quintessence of Russian winter with mere few sentences. Whoever has experienced winter on the Northern hemisphere - proper, true minus degrees winter, will feel a warm familiar sensation, reading these paragraphs. The smells, the way the light changes - its all described so accurately, that you can almost feel your toes getting chilly.

His main subject throughout his work was love. It is of course prevalent in "The grammar of love" as well. Bunin's characters are often longing, nostalgic, saying goodbye, betraying, being jealous - always feeling the strongest and frequently negative aspects of loving someone. In this book the stories are somewhat more erotic than in his other work. But the girls described are the same - pale, with dark eyes, flushed cheeks, know nothing of life yet or know too much to ever be truly happy and trustful; and the men too often blindfolded with passion.

If you are familiar with Bunin before you won't be disappointed in this book. But if you want to read only one book from him or are just getting started with his books, then I would rather suggest "Dark alleys" - in my opinion, his best stories collection, or "Life of Arseniev" - a strongly autobiographical memoir.

[Juri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Für zwei Euro mitgenommen auf eine Zugfahrt. Besonders die Geschichten, welche in der Nacht spielen haben es mir, in dieser kurzen Sammlung, angetan.

[Kirill Lukashev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Любовь - это великая ценность. К сожалению, не каждый может пережить боль ее утраты

[Peter Allum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collection of short stories, melancholy and pessimistic, about lost love.

This translated collection, published the year following Bunin's 1933 Nobel Prize for Literature, contains stories from 1912-1931.

The earliest (and longest) stories, A Simple Peasant (1912) and On the Great Road (1913), present bleak images of peasant life, with love matches distorted by isolation, poor judgment, drunkenness, and faithlessness. Bunin, pessimistic by nature, did not idealize the peasantry, viewing them at as plagued by ignorance, disloyalty and greed.

The stories written in post-revolutionary exile tend to be more elegiac in tone, looking at young love (Meteor), a bitter-sweet one night affair (Sunstroke), and missed opportunities for love (Ida, and Stronger than Death). While the protagonists in the stories are typically better educated and economically more secure than in the peasant stories, their efforts to win love are just as prone to disappointment.

Bunin's prose is limpidly clear and he has a great talent for descriptive writing, especially about the Russian landscape and its flora and fauna. The stories call to be savored slowly, and one suspects that his prose (considered to be among the richest of Russian authors) loses in translation. That said, even a description of sheep is striking:

"In a dense, dirty gray mass the sheep slowly shuffled past her, making low indeterminate sounds by their movement and breathing, and exuding an odor of fleece and fodder, steppe grass, and wormwood."

While Bunin does not address the interior life of his characters in depth, he is very good on personal interactions, perfectly capturing fumbled communications and suppressed emotions.

Dates of the short stories:
Written in pre-revolutionary Russia: A simple Peasant (1912); On the Great Road (1913). Written in post-revolutionary exile: Meteor (1920); An Unknown Friend, A Night at Sea (1923); Comrade Dozorny (1924); Sunstroke, Ida (1925); Adventure with a Handbag (1931).

My Russian lit reviews, ranked

[Саша Попов · Rating 5 out of 5]

А какой пейзаж!

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Die Grammatik der Liebe" vereint in sich diverse Erzählungen des Nobelpreisträgers, darunter neben der Titelgeberin, "Suchodol", "Die Kupplerin" oder auch "Der Herr aus San Francisco". Bunins Erzählkunst ist so dicht und macht aus jeder Geschichte einen handlungsreichen Kurzroman. Die Themen sind tragödienreiche Schicksale im vorrevolutionären Russland, oder wie im Fall von "Sachar Worobjow" eine tragikomische Sterbenovelle. Der Band ist ein zuweilen bedrückender Lesegenuss!

[Olga · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love him...

[Ms. Caulfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love him..