Film Adaptations

John Middleton Murry compared Bunin’s art to that of a “cinema where the camera is old-fashioned; [the pictures] jump and flicker, they alternate between brilliancy and dullness, and they are sometimes tiring to the eyes”. Although this is hardly a compliment, there are indeed certain pictorial qualities in Bunin’s works, comparable to a collection of eye-catching stills. Bunin liked cinema (incidentally, the news about the award of the Nobel Prize arrived when he was at the pictures), and in 1938 he even planned to write a film script about Leo Tolstoy’s life, in collaboration with Mark Aldanov and Tolstoy’s daughter Tatyana. However, it was not until the times of perestroika that Bunin started attracting filmmakers’ attention on a fairly regular basis. Unfortunately, not all the Bunin film adaptations reached a wide audience. The eponymous full-length film version of his story ‘The Eternal Spring’ (which includes several of his other stories, such as ‘Rusya’ and ‘The Caucasus’ from Dark Avenues, as well as ‘Dry Valley’), directed by Vladimir Tolkachikov at the Belarusfilm studios in 1989, was banned after the first public screening. In 1994, a sixteen-minute student short The Cricket, based on a 1911 story of the same name, about a harness-maker’s son freezing to death in the woods, was made at the All-Russia State Institute for Filmmakers by the director Alexander Panov, but did not receive a commercial release. The same year, however, saw the release of an eighty-minute-long TV film Initiation to Love (Posviashchenie v liubov’) – an adaptation of the stories ‘A Cold Autumn’, ‘Rusya’ and ‘The Swing’ from the Dark Avenues collection – directed by Lev Tsutsulkovsky at the Lentelefilm studios.

Stories from Dark Avenues have proved to be the most popular choice for film adaptations. In 1995, at the Vremya studios, the director Boris Yashin turned the stories ‘Natalie’, Tanya’ and ‘In Paris’ into a feature film called The Mescherskys (Meshcherskie). In the same year, a Polish Belorussian coproduction brought out yet another film version of ‘Natalie’, entitled The Summer of Love (Lato milosci, directed by Feliks Falk). In 1999, a modern version of the stories ‘Pure Monday’ and ‘The Chapel’, under the title of Pure Monday, was filmed as an All-Russia State Institute for Filmmakers graduation project by the first-time director Marina Migunova. In 2000, Bunin himself became the subject of the biopic His Wife’s Diary (Dnevnik ego zheny, directed by Alexei Uchitel at the Rok and Lenfilm studios). The film focuses on the complicated relationship between Bunin, his wife Vera, Galina Kuznetsova and Margarita Stepun. Regardless of its controversial nature, it has made Bunin a member of an exclusive group of Russian writers of exceptional standing, such as Lomonosov, Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, whose lives have been deemed worthy of a feature film.

– Andrei Rogatchevski, 2008

Select Bibliography

Standard Edition

There is still no standard edition of Dark Avenues. A complex history of the various (in some instances, yet unpublished) versions of its constituent parts has been related in Hella Reese’s Ein Meisterwerk im Zwielicht: Ivan Bunins narrative

Kurzprosaverknüpfung Temnye allei zwischen Akzeptanz und Ablehnung: eine Genrestudie (München: Sagner, 2003).

Biographies and Additional Background Material in Russian:

Bunina, Vera, Zhizn’ Bunina: 1870–1906 (The Life of Bunin; Paris, [s.n.], 1958)

Kuznetsova, Galina, Grasskii dnevnik (The Grasse Diary; Washington: Victor Kamkin, 1967)

Grin, Militsa (ed.), Ustami Buninykh (As Spoken by the Bunins; Frankfurt/Main: Posev, 1977–82; in 3 vols)

Bakhrakh, Alexander, Bunin v khalate (Bunin in a Dressing Gown; Bayville: Tovarishchestvo zarubezhnykh pisatelei, 1979)

Burlaka, D.K. (ed.), I.A. Bunin: Pro et contra: Lichnost I tvorchestvo Ivana Bunina v otsenke russkikh i zarubezhnykh myslitelei i issledovatelei: Antologiia (St Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Russkogo Khristianskogo gumanitarnogo instituta, 2001)

Baboreko, Alexander, Bunin: Zhizneopisanie (The Life of Bunin; Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2004)

Biographies and Additional Background Material in English

Heywood, Anthony J., Catalogue of the I.A. Bunin, V.N. Bunina, L.F. Zurov and E.M. Lopatina Collections (Leeds: Leeds University Press, 2000)

Kryzytski, Serge, The Works of Ivan Bunin (The Hague: Mouton, 1971)

Woodward, James B., Ivan Bunin: A Study of His Fiction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980)

Connolly, Julian W., Ivan Bunin (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1982)

Marullo, Thomas Gaiton, (ed.), Ivan Bunin: Russian Requiem, 1885–1920: A Portrait from Letters, Diaries and Fiction (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1993)

Marullo, Thomas Gaiton, (ed.), Ivan Bunin: From the Other Shore, 1920–1933: A Portrait from Letters, Diaries and Fiction (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1995)

Marullo, Thomas Gaiton, (ed.), Ivan Bunin: The Twilight of Emigré Russia, 1934–1953: A Portrait from Letters, Diaries and Memoirs (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002)

Zweers, Alexander F., The Narratology of the Autobiography: An Analysis of the Literary Devices Employed in Ivan Bunin’s The Life of Arsen’ev (New York: Peter Lang, 1997)

Appendix

In Spring, in Judaea

“Those distant days in Judaea that left me lame, a cripple, for the rest of my life, were in the happiest time of my youth,” said the tall, elegant man with a yellowish face, shining brown eyes and short, tightly curled silvery hair, who always walked with a crutch because of a left leg that did not bend at the knee. “I was then taking part in a small expedition which had as its aim the study of the eastern shores of the Dead Sea, the legendary sites of Sodom and Gomorrah, and I was living in Jerusalem, waiting for my companions, who had been delayed in Constantinople, and paying visits to one of the Bedouin camps on the road to Jericho, to Sheikh Ayid, who had been recommended to me by archaeologists in Jerusalem, and who had undertaken to provide all the necessary equipment for our expedition and to lead it in person. I went to him for the first time to negotiate with a guide, the next day he came to me in Jerusalem himself; then I started going to his camp by myself, having bought from him a wonderful filly to ride – I even started going excessively often… It was spring, Judaea was awash with the joyous brilliance of the sun, and the Song of Songs would come to mind: ‘The winter is past, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell…’ There, on that ancient path to Jericho, in the stony Judaean desert, everything was, as always, dead, wild, bare, the torrid heat and the sands were dazzling. But even there, in those radiant spring days, everything seemed to me endlessly joyous, happy: I was then in the East for the first time, I saw a completely new world before me, and in that world, something extraordinary – Ayid’s niece.

“The Judaean desert is an entire country, descending steadily right as far as the Jordan valley: hills and passes, now stony, now sandy, in places overgrown with coarse vegetation, inhabited only by snakes and quails, sunk in eternal silence. In winter, as everywhere in Judaea, it pours with rain there, and icy winds blow; in spring, summer and autumn there is the same sepulchral tranquillity, monotony, but there is the intense heat from the sun, the sleep from the sun. In depressions where wells are to be found, the traces of Bedouin camps can be seen: the ash of campfires, stones piled in circles or squares on which tents are secured… But the camp to which I went, where the sheikh was Ayid, presented a picture like this: a wide, sandy gully between hills, and in it a small gathering of tents made of black felt, flat, rectangular and quite gloomy in their blackness against the yellowness of the sands. As I was arriving I would constantly see little smouldering heaps of pressed dung in front of some of the tents, and amidst the tents, cramped conditions: everywhere there were dogs, horses, mules, goats – to this day I don’t understand how and where they all got fed – a multitude of bare, dark-skinned, curly-haired children; women and men, some looking like gypsies, others like Negroes, although not thick-lipped… And it was strange to see how warmly, in spite of the heat, the men were dressed: an indigo shirt down to the knees, a wadded jacket, and on top an abaya, that is, a very long and heavy, broad-shouldered chlamys made of two-toned wool, striped in two colours – black and white; on their heads a keffiyeh – a yellow headscarf with red stripes, spread out over the shoulders, hanging down by the cheeks, and gathered twice at the crown by a similarly two-toned, two-coloured woollen braid. All this presented a complete contrast to the women’s clothing: the women have indigo headscarves thrown over their heads, their faces are exposed, and on their bodies is a long indigo shirt with pointed sleeves falling almost to the ground; the men wear crude shoes with iron pieces attached to the soles, the women go bare-footed, and all have wonderful feet, flexible and so suntanned as to be quite like coal. The men smoke pipes, the women too…

“When I arrived at the camp for the second time, without a guide, I was received already as a friend. Ayid’s tent, which had its flaps raised for entry, was the most spacious, and inside it I found a whole collection of elderly Bedouins sitting around its black felt walls. Ayid had come out to meet me and performed a bow and the placing of the right hand to the lips and the forehead. On entering the tent in front of him, I waited for him to sit down on the rug in the middle of the tent, and then did what he had done for me upon meeting me, what is always required – the same bow and placing of the right hand to the lips and the forehead – and I did it several times, reflecting the number of seated people; then I sat down beside Ayid and, seated, did the same thing again; I was, of course, answered in the same way. Only the host and I spoke – briefly and slowly: it was custom too that required it to be this way, and I was not then very well versed in conversational Arabic either – the others smoked and remained silent. But meanwhile, outside the tent, refreshments were being prepared for me and the guests. Usually Bedouins eat khibiz – flat maize cakes – and boiled millet with goat’s milk… But the essential refreshment for a guest is kharuf: a sheep which they roast in a hole dug in the sand by heaping layers of smouldering pressed dung upon it. After the sheep they give you coffee, but always without sugar. And so everyone sat and ate as though nothing were out of the ordinary, although in the shade of the felt tent it was hellishly hot and stuffy, and looking out of its wide-open flaps was simply terrifying: the sands in the distance were glittering so, they seemed to be melting before your eyes. After every word the sheikh would say to me: khavádzha, sir, and I to him: most esteemed sheikh bédavi (that is, son of the desert, Bedouin)… Incidentally, do you know what Jordan is called in Arabic? Quite simply: Shariyat, which all in all means watering place.

“Ayid was about fifty, short, broad in the bone, thin and very strong; his face was a baked brick, his eyes – transparent, grey, piercing; a copper beard streaked with grey, coarse, small, trimmed, and a similarly trimmed moustache – Bedouins always trim the one and the other; he was shod, like everyone, in thick, metal-soled shoes. When he visited me in Jerusalem there was a dagger at his belt and a long rifle in his hands.

“I saw his niece that very day when I already sat in his tent ‘as a friend’: she walked past the tent, holding herself erect, carrying a small can of water on her head and supporting it with her right hand. I don’t know how old she was, I think no more than eighteen, but I subsequently learnt one thing – four years earlier she had been married, and in that same year had been widowed, without having had children, and she had moved into her uncle’s tent, being an orphan and very poor. ‘Return, return, O Shulamite!’ I thought. (After all, the Shulamite probably looked like her: ‘I am black and beautiful, O ye maidens of Jerusalem.’) And, passing by the tent, she turned her head slightly and cast her eyes over me: those eyes were extraordinarily dark, mysterious, the face almost black, the lips lilac, large – at that moment I was struck more than anything by them… But by them alone? I was struck by everything: the amazing arm, bared to the shoulder, holding the can on her head, the slow, sinuous movements of the body beneath the long indigo shirt, the full breasts lifting that shirt… And it just had to happen that soon after that I met her in Jerusalem by the Jaffa Gate! She was walking towards me in a crowd, and on this occasion was carrying something wrapped up in canvas on her head. On seeing me, she paused. I rushed over to her:

“‘You recognized me?’

“She patted me lightly on the shoulder with her free hand and smiled:

“‘I did, khavádzha.’

“‘What’s that you’re carrying?’

“‘I’m carrying goat’s cheese.’

“‘To whom?’

“‘To everyone.’

“‘To sell, you mean? Then bring it to me.’

“‘Where?’

“‘Just over here, to the hotel…’

“I was living right by the Jaffa Gate, in a tall, narrow building joined to other buildings on the left side of the small square from which runs the stepped Street of King David – a dark passage, covered here by pieces of canvas, there by ancient stone vaults, between equally ancient workshops and shops. And she set off in front of me without any shyness up the steep and cramped stone stairway of this building, leaning back slightly, easily tensing her undulating body, holding the round of cheese in canvas on her head under its indigo headscarf with her right arm so bared that the dense black hair of her armpit could be seen. At one turn of the stairway she paused: there, deep down below outside the narrow window, could be seen the ancient Waterhole of the Prophet Ezekiel, the greenish water of which lay, as in a well, in a square formed by the unbroken walls of neighbouring buildings with gratings at their little windows – the very water in which Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, had bathed and captivated King David with her nakedness. Pausing, she looked out of the window and, turning, glanced at me in joyful surprise with her amazing eyes. I could not restrain myself and kissed her bare forearm – she glanced at me enquiringly: kisses are not customary among the Bedouins. Entering my room, she put her package onto the table and reached out to me the palm of her right hand. I put a few copper coins into her palm, then, cold with excitement, I took out a gold sovereign and showed her. She understood and lowered her lashes, bowed her head submissively and covered her eyes with the inner bend of her elbow, and she lay down on her back on the bed, slowly baring her sun-smoked legs and jerking her belly up and down in invitation…

“‘When will you bring cheese again?’ I asked, seeing her out onto the stairway an hour later.

“She gave her head a light shake:

“‘Soon is not possible.’

“And she showed me five fingers: five days.

“A week or two later, when I was leaving Ayid’s and had already ridden quite a long way off, behind me there was the crack of a gunshot – and a bullet struck a rock in front of me with such force that the rock began giving off smoke. I roused my horse to a gallop, bending low to the saddle – there was the crack of a second shot, and something lashed me hard below the knee of my left leg. I galloped all the way to Jerusalem, looking down at my boot, over which the frothing blood was pouring… I wonder to this day how Ayid could have missed twice. I wonder too at how he could have found out it was I who had bought the goat’s cheese from her.

1946