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This is what happens when your coaches tell their players to get themselves physically ready for a grueling, spring softball season and hit at least 500 balls each week, but it's cold outside with no place to hit,you can turn your garage into your private and makeshift workout area and batting cage.
Interstate 26 (I-26) is a nominally east–west (but physically more northwest–southeast diagonal) main route of the Interstate Highway System in the Southeastern United States. I-26 runs from the junction of U.S. Route 11W (US 11W) and US 23 in Kingsport, Tennessee, generally southeastward to US 17 in Charleston, South Carolina.[2] The portion from Mars Hill, North Carolina, east (compass south) to I-240 in Asheville, North Carolina, has signs indicating FUTURE I-26 because the highway does not yet meet all of the Interstate Highway standards. A short realignment as an improvement in the freeway was also planned in Asheville, but has been postponed indefinitely due to North Carolina's budget shortfalls.[3] Northwards from Kingsport, US 23 continues to Portsmouth, Ohio, as Corridor B of the Appalachian Development Highway System, and beyond to Columbus, Ohio, as Corridor C. In conjunction with the Columbus–Toledo, Ohio, corridor formed by I-75, US 23, and State Route 15, I-26 forms part of a mostly high-speed four-or-more-lane highway from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Coast at Charleston, South Carolina. There are no official plans for extensions north of Kingsport, Tennessee.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_26
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...
+ AWESOME GOD (Worship Forever 2021) - Michael W. Smith: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEZDuMGp3WY&list=RDsEZDuMGp3W...
+ Indian Guru Tries To Convince Gordon Ramsay To Be Vegetarian | Gordon's Great Escape (INFJ Male & ENTJ Male) (that’s some gay shit!): www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTmqHh28raI
+ Will Demps - Sensual Seduction (ENTP Male & INFJ Male [Snoop Dogg]): www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMC-1ai8-sI&list=RDLMC-1ai8-s...
[are you sure about that?]
+ my parents are broke. we barely have enough money to fill our fridge with food, but my mom thought it’d be a good idea to decorate the shit out of my room.
+ my parents are rich, we have a ton of money. my mom thinks this room could be bigger and she doesn’t think i have enough stuff in here. we need more stuff!
+ i have such a nice room, i wish we could travel more!
+ we travel a whole bunch, i still can’t stand my parents. all they do is bicker and argue. god, they need to fuck! (what if your parents aren’t actually physically, emotionally, or mentally attracted to eachother?)
+ i hate this room, i wanted the walls to stay white. why the hell did they paint it blue?
+ our housekeeper doesn’t give a shit, she wants her paycheck and leaves.
+ did the housekeeper steal my toy and give it to her kid? where did my cash go?
+ my housekeeper is like my mom (grandma). She’s always cared for me in a deep way. She’s easy to talk to and spends more time with me, than mom. Mom’s always at work, gossiping with “friends,” and busy shopping.
+ our housekeeper is sleeping with my dad. our gardener and pool boy is sleeping with mom.
+ my mom is filing for a divorce. he hits her, takes their money and gives it to others, lies to everyone that she does nothing for the family, kicks her out of the house [new pussy will take your place], doesn’t give her any credit [you don’t work], yells derogatory comments towards her, and is hypercritical. i wonder why she’d want to divorce such a fine gentleman? good thing she has a prenup!
+ why would your dad want to file for a divorce? it’s usually women who want a divorce.
+ my dad is filing for a divorce because he found a hotter, younger, thinner, lighter skinned female. they’re coworkers! they are going to run off into the sunset and live happily ever after. that’s fine, i’ll just stay here with our daughter while you make sweet love with your new partner. let’s see how long the honeymoon phase lasts? pagl. (obviously dad is horny as hell, the grass is greener on the other side, and comparison trap. my dad (ENTP African American) and step mom (ESTJ Caucasian) think they are going to be a power couple. that looks great on the outside, but it’s only a matter of time until they have an explosive fight too.)
+ imagine giving your husband 4 hours of sex one day and then 2 more hours of sex, the next day. AND he still wants new pussy. how do you keep your dick hard for that long? how does your vagina take that much dick?
+ how many dicks have you taken? have you ever taken 2 dicks at once?
+ how many vaginas have you fucked? have you ever had more than one female at one time?
+ if you’ve been married for 10 years, your marriage is considered safe. the likelihood of a divorce is reduced.
+ my parents have been married for 25 years and got a divorce.
+ all my dad does is laugh, he doesn’t take anything seriously. he’s at work again (at least the bills are paid on time).
+ did i mention as of July 3, 2025, the U.S. National Debt stands at $36.2 trillion. Not saying it’s any one persons fault. Maybe it’s time we stop blaming eachother and take a good look at ourselves. what can we do now? (make your bed or don’t)
+ i pretend to like mom’s and try to make mom’s feel important. in reality, i hate my mom and want revenge!
+ i pretend to like my dad and try to make dad’s feel important. in reality, i hate my dad and want revenge!
+ i love my mom, she’s always been there for me. she my biggest supporter. she’s kind, gentle, knows how to budget, listens well, sticks up for me, believes in me, and is very generous. is it ok to have thoughts about having sex with her? (YES!)
+ i love my dad, he’s always protected, provided, made me laugh, is detail oriented, caring, kind, respectful to all, keeps his boundaries (knows when to draw the line). is it ok to have thoughts about having sex with him? (YES!)
+ NO, you cannot date that Black, Latino, Indian, Asian, African, Middle Eastern, or White man! I rather you date women! or me, your Mom! (which makes sense because you are more compatible)
+ NO, you cannot date that Black, Latino, Indian, Asian, African, Middle Eastern, or White man! I rather you date men! or me, your Dad! (which makes sense because you are more compatible)
+ my parents are very important people. their idea of taking care of me is throwing money at my face (not literally) (i’ll later become a stripper for a couple of months, in which then cash will be thrown at my feet).
+ my parents are never satisfied. my mom thinks her next degree will make her smarter and deserving of more respect. my dad has bought more properties than we can count. he believes he will get more respect for that.
+ we have too many cars at our house. i’m not sure when my dad will be happy? the upkeep is crazy. i swear he spends more time at the car mechanic shop, than with us. you can only drive one car at a time. the other cars just sit there and start breaking down. (unless your filthy rich and can get someone to start each car and put some miles on it.)
+ i’m gay!
+ i’m straight!
+ i’m fat!
+ i’m fat and gay!
+ i’m fat and straight!
+ i’m fat, gay, and a female!
+ i’m fat, gay, and a female! i’m a CEO of my own company. (no you cannot touch my tits, ass, or thighs) (who does he or she think he or she is?)
+ i’m a male CEO, show some respect. (no you cannot touch my tits, ass, or thighs) (who does he or she think he or she is?)
+ i hate that everyone calls me gay, i’m not fucking gay. shut the fuck up all of you!
+ i hate that everyone calls me straight, i’m not fucking straight. shut the fuck up all of you!
+ just because my parents are in a heterosexual marriage and have kids, doesn’t mean they’re straight.
+ just because my parents are in a homosexual marriage and have kids, doesn’t mean they’re gay. one of my dad’s needs better insurance and is going through some financial difficulties right now.
+ my parents tell me i’m fat every fucking day, i’m going to eat a damn cheeseburger right now. wanna come?
+ my parents tell me i’m fat every fucking day, i’m going to go on a diet. i may even throw up on purpose to loose weight faster. (the acid will come up and burn your esophageal lining, it’s a good idea not to do that) (says the person who watches porn) (you are beautiful, beauty comes from within. but i can’t convince you of that, you have to believe in yourself. You are worthy of love and positive attention. that love doesn’t necessarily come from another human being, because we are all flawed. what you love about someone one day, may be the very thing you can’t stand the next. no one person can COMPLETE you. you are already complete, someone can walk beside you and compliment you.)
+ my parents tell me i’m a slut every fucking day, i’ll eat that burger with you fatty, then i gotta go. i have an appointment with a dick and/or vagina that needs sucking and fucking.
+ um, i’m married now. i don’t do that shit anymore. i found JESUS and i’m a changed person God damn it! i don’t even know why i need to convince you of anything, y’all are stupid as fuck 😂. i don’t care about what you think of me. does this dress make me look fat?
+ my mom is broke and has no class.
+ my mom is broke but willing and ready to learn. she wants to learn manners, become more cultured, educated, understanding, kind, is curious, questions everything (starting with herself). she’s still a whore! (i USED to be a whore God damn it!) (fine, if you’re going to call me a whore at least call me a GOOD FOR NOTHING FAT WHORE)
+ did i tell you i was a big time whore but then found Jesus and now i’m straight! Jesus healed me! my family was broke for awhile but then we worked our asses off and saved money. we have no debt! [we didn’t need Dave Ramsey, we’re just Chinese like that] [side note: not all Chinese people know how to save money]. we’re not as broke as we used to be. but it depends who asks. we don’t give handouts! (unless you are a NEW PUSSY, then maybe my husband will fuck you) (i’ll be filing for a divorce in a few years).
+ my mom is broke but willing and ready to learn. she wants to learn manners, become more cultured, educated, understanding, kind, is curious, questions everything (starting with herself). she’s still acts like a NUN! (look, i wear designer name brand dresses ok!) (fine, i’ve only had one partner my whole life, sue me!) (maybe 2 partners?, don’t tell your husband. he may get pissed that you weren’t a virgin when he fucked you on your marriage night.)
+ my mom is an attention whore. if anything is remotely about her, she freaks out. she thinks she is the center of the universe.
+ my dad is always showing off. he’s insecure as fuck. he thinks because everyone claps for him, they are truly on his side. as soon as he can’t perform anymore, watch how many of his “fans” head for the hills. (fine, i guess we’ll never do anything significant. we’ll all just sit on our asses and watch TV all fucking day! [it’s called YouTube now]) (make me a sandwich bitch, bring me a beer, clean the house, why are you so damn slow?, am i getting some tonight or not?, have you cooked anything yet?)
+ my mom thinks being a dentist is the most important thing in life. we’re all secondary to her career. what will she do once she realizes her patients aren’t her friends? it’s a good thing she’s broke and homeless. did i mention she’s a bus driver now? [no gift card for you, my husband gave them all away to his mistresses].
+ my mom thinks all that matters is turning me into a MOM. i don’t want to get married and have kids. why the hell would i want to cook, clean, do laundry, talk to a dog all day [my dad], my mom is loud as hell and talks so much, all she does is gossip and give money to her family members when we barely have anything. she’s busy impressing the family and has high expectations of her children, while not doing a whole lot herself constructively as a Mom. Which then makes me not really appreciate motherhood. Growing up with my family was stressful as hell, there was never any peace. i still listened to my parents; got married and had kids. i like 2 of them (INTP girl [DDS] and INTP boy), but the FAT one can go to hell (she’s useless, talks a lot of nonsense, and i’m still wondering if she’s a DENTIST yet!).
+ my mom is a dentist and i work for her as a dental assistant. she says we don’t have enough money already [it’s never enough for her]. she encouraged me to go massage other dentists during my lunch breaks (she has a list of favorites). she knows dentists are very tired physically and says i’m still young and have plenty of energy [mei mei gives a hell of a massage, she’s got good hands!]. they give me cash for my services. [my dad yelled at her once he found out what she told me to do] [note: my mom is a good dentist but not the brightest in other areas of life].
+ we have a ton of money, big houses, nice cars, clothes, can get whatever the fuck we want to eat, can go on fancy vacations, have a ton of friends (we’re super POPULAR!), and i’m still stressed out. there is no peace or harmony here.
+ my name Jaslin Tsai and i very gentle and kind. i have size 4 waistline, nice hair, cute face, skin as white as snow, and I’m a virgin [at least my future husband will think so]. i vegetarian. i never scream, yell, or shout. i am perfect match for Bronson O. Johnson (African American ENTP). did i mention i come from Taiwan. i will make good wife for him, i am very submissive. (when reality hits and she’s a BIIIIIIITTTTTTTCCCCCHHHHHHHHHH) (my mother-in-law never really liked or accepted me)
+ my parents claim they don’t argue about anything, i would beg to defer. the house is a mess (literally and figuratively).
+ my mom is rich and still has no class. she’s ghetto as fuck! (that goes for Black and White people)
+ my mom is so dramatic and hypersensitive.
+ my mom hasn’t read a book in years, she’s stupid as fuck. (watch your mouth, young lady!)
+ my dad takes things too seriously, he’s such a clean freak. (he’s neat and organized)
+ my dad’s piss drunk right now, vomiting in the bathroom. i gotta go.
+ y’all have a dad? where can i get one of those? do they sell that at Target or Walmart?
+ my dad died, when i was 19 years old. my whole life changed. i’ve learned and grown a lot since then.
+ my dad passed away when i was a baby (INTJ). i wish i got to spend some time with him. i don’t have any memories with him. My mom raised my sister (INTP) and i for as long as possible. We’re Asian and our mom remarried a Caucasian man. he helped raise us.
+ i have a dad, but we’re still waiting on the DNA test results to see if he’s really my biological dad. my mom’s kinda a whore.
+ my dad is a male gigolo.
+ my mom is a stripper. she’s the bread earner of the house.
+ i’m being raised by a single mom.
+ i’m being raised by a single dad.
+ i have this room and i’m still wheelchair bound.
+ i have this room and i still have autism.
+ i have this room and i still have down syndrome.
+ i have this room and i still have MS.
+ i have this room and i’m still STUPID.
+ i have this room and i’m still USELESS.
+ i have this room and i still want pussy.
+ i have this room and i still want dick.
+ i have this room and i still want dick and pussy.
+ my mom's a perfectionist. our home is like a monastery/hotel. i hate and like that.
+ my dad's a perfectionist. our home is like a monastery/hotel. i hate and like that.
+ my mom's so messy. our home is disorganized. i hate and like that.
+ my dad's so messy. our home is disorganized. i hate and like that.
+ i have this room and did i ever tell you i watched a video of a dog fucking a woman! i also saw a video of a man fucking a female dog! WOW!
+ my parents gave all our money to the church, now we’re broke as fuck. they are big show offs. the church is still ungrateful. no matter how much we gave, they were never satisfied (discontentment). if we gave a little (members of the church would make fun of us for being cheap and poor). if we gave a lot (members of the church would make fun us for being show offs and acting too proud).
+ my parents are pastors, not sure why we need all these bells and whistles. in fact, they have multiple churches. it’s too much in my opinion. they never have any time for me and their relationship is like a business. it’s annoying watching all the women [men too] flirt with my dad (they are all OBSESSED with him). guys [girls too] flirt with my mom and it’s annoying. i do get a ton of cash, stuff, delicious food, vacations, a good insurance plan, car, a paid off house, etc. there’s always something to be grateful for.
+ my friends are always comparing themselves to me and jealous of what i have. if i give them a little, they are ungrateful. if i give them a lot, they are still ungrateful (they want MORE because according to them, they DESERVE what’s mine).
+ i don’t know why anyone would like a fat, stupid, broke, chink bitch? she’s a HOUSEWIFE for Christ sakes!
+ i like sharing, it makes me feel good inside. i’m grateful for what God has given me and i try my best to be a good steward of that. i know we are all interconnected. i do what i can, when i can, if i can. no pressure.
+ my parents gave a bunch of money to nonprofit organizations, i’m not sure what they did with the money. did it even go to the orphans and hungry kids?
+ my parents are Asian and they are racist.
+ my parents are Black and they are racist.
+ my parents are White and they are racist.
+ my parents are European and they are racist. Europeans were slaves to other Europeans, too.
+ my parents are Latino and they are racist.
+ my parents are Indian and they are racist.
+ my parents are African and they are racist.
+ my parents are Indian and are racist towards other Indians.
+ my parents are Chinese and they are racist towards other Asians. there is a hierarchy of Asians [Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Indonesian, Malaysian, Vietnamese, Filipino, Cambodian, etc.]
+ my dad won’t let me date a Japanese man, but he loves Japanese women. how is that fair? (your dad wants to secretly marry you, lock you in the basement, and never let you see the light of day).
+ i have this room and my Aunt is still jealous as fuck of me. My Uncle got her from the village of [fill in the blank]. She thinks i have it all. She calls me spoiled all the time. Gossips about me, which is annoying as fuck. Then expects us to take her out to eat and buy her shit. Which my parents will do, because they are people pleasers.
+ i’m emo, leave me the fuck alone. i hate all of you. i don’t even want to talk to you right now. the only reason why you’re here is because my parents are paying you to psychoanalyze me. (we’re all crazy and your parents need psychoanalysis too. it’s easier for them to blame a child. they rather throw their kids under a bus, than to grow up themselves and take responsibly for their own actions.) (i’m still glad you’re here, since your parents are forcing you to be here. let’s make the most of this time.)
+ my dad comes into my room at night and touches me inappropriately.
+ my mom comes into my room at night and touches me inappropriately.
+ my dad and mom come into my room at different times and touch me inappropriately.
+ my dad used to rape me and rate my performance. he logged it into a book. he also filmed me. later, we found out he raped my cousins too (girl and boy). is it wrong to be turned on by that? when my husband and i have sex, i think of my dad.
+ my mom filed for a divorce and then my dad lost his mind. my parents are both completely nuts. he’s worked his whole life as a doctor (he’s a good provider. but i don’t feel physically safe with him because he broke my trust, he’s a liar and a cheat). my mom is very important; she’s the leader of the mom’s group in our neighborhood, volunteers a lot at our school, and has the nicest outfits. we have a huge house and nice cars. they fight every day and are so loud. it can get violent.
+ when my dad has sex with my mom, he’s thinking about his student (daughter, little sister, and best friend).
+ when my mom has sex with her husband, she’s thinking about her Professor (i’m also a doctor) (they may or may not have had sex when she was 18 in Toronto (Older Caucasian Professor and European Caucasian Student), at Marymount University [Older Caucasian Sociology Professor], and at New York University [Older Caucasian Public Speaking Professor]) (she’s got daddy issues).
+ i’m scared of the dark, so i sleep with my dad. sometimes i feel his hard dick rub against my arm. he enjoys cuddling with me (i’m in 8th grade and yes, i still sleep with my dad).
+ my mom gets annoyed if i ask her where she got the candles from (she cares deeply for me) (my daughter is very ungrateful, angry, jealous, has a potty mouth, listens to bad music, and is a BIG FAT SLUT!).
+ my mom acts like a dude, she gets offended if i say that to her (she’s hypersensitive, with a touch of OCD.) (my mom won’t even let me say the word “freaking!” it resembles the word FUCKING! something she does not do with my dad).
+ there are women in other countries who don’t have access to clean water (they have to walk for miles to a well and then carry a bucket of water back to their village [while carrying a child]). my mom just threw a fit about the brand of water dad purchased. she doesn’t like Dasani, she wants FIJI!
+ my dad and mom are first cousins. we like to keep it in the family! that’s why my brother (he’s a dentist, graduated from NYUCD) and i don’t want to have children. we are Chinese and our partners are Caucasian.
+ my dad has a gambling problem, he gambled away thousands of dollars at the casino.
+ my mom has a gambling problem, she gambled away thousands of dollars at the casino.
+ hi, i’m a caucasian female and i’d like to say “please show some respect to your elders.”
+ our house is paid off and we have a couple of properties.
+ our house is paid off and we have a couple of properties. please don’t tell anyone, people out here only like you if they think you have shit. (funny thing about that is, whether you have money or not, people are still people and will be unhappy pieces of shit for all the days of their life.) (you told me to be vulnerable, is this vulnerable enough!)
+ we are renting this house. we may move into a smaller or even larger home, who knows?
+ we can’t afford this house, our family is so deep in debt but my mom doesn’t want to let go of a fantasy she has in her mind. she’s always comparing herself to others.
+ my mom thinks the louder she speaks, it will make a point and confirm her existence.
+ my mom speaks loudly and badly because her mom was quieter and never spoke up.
+ my mom doesn’t say much and is quieter, because every time she said anything, it was considered inappropriate or unnecessary.
+ my mom thinks taking a vow of silence (giving dad the silent treatment) will make a point and confirm her existence.
+ my mom has tiny breasts and i’ve always liked laying on her chest.
+ my mom has huge breasts and i’ve always liked laying on her chest.
+ my mom is gentle and kind. i’m into that kinda shit.
+ i’m not going to compliment my daughter or say anything positive to her because then she’ll get a big head. i rather her have low self esteem or none at all so she can live with mommy all the days of her life. she’s my kutta!
+ my parents have explosive fights. They throw lamps at eachother. My dad held a gun to my grandpa’s head (for simply existing) [INFP grandpa raised a daughter who will become “something” and pay all the families bills. he couldn’t make enough money to sustain the family. grandma likes things and wants to give money to her family members, to impress them.] [note: a word to the wise, make sure your finances are squared away before helping others. no matter how much you give to certain family members or friends, it will never be enough. they will always want more and demand it!]
+ my daughter is seeing a Physiologist right now (she’s very sick). Anyways, i want her to become a Lawyer and get married, and have babies for me. Then I will show her more respect, kindness, listen, be more attentive (talk less), genuinely care, take her feelings seriously, not scream so loudly, not pick at her flaws (do they really have to be seen as flaws?), not take myself so seriously, not be JEALOUS of my neighbor (friends and family), not gossip, and be more at peace. I will be the most important part of their lives! I will visit them all the time, call them every day, cook for them, bring them gifts, and pit the family against themselves. This will make me look like the heroine! Kim, you always look so sick and tired. We need help in the special needs department, maybe you can volunteer more (this will keep her out of trouble). i know you told me your mom is dentist (but she’s still stupid and i haven’t seen her around the house lately, it must mean she’s mad at you or you stole from her. i know you said your dad was air pilot but i don’t believe that, i bet he’s an employee at 7-11. my husband will look at you in disgust, he’s very important and busy. none of my kids want to talk to you. i know you said hi to my daughter and son, they just roll their eyes and run into the house (hoping you don’t exist), never mind you gave us a shit load of things and money.) (Brenda took a family picture for them y’all! INFP Brenda is now Sameera’s BEST FRIEND. Kim has been replaced that quickly.)
+ I’m a Veterinarian and a Mom! My husband is Caucasian and we have 4 kids. I know it all. I have two offices. I live in a BIG house in the middle of nowhere. My patient (who also looks like my cousin) (i told you i’m Vietnamese, not Korean. You look Korean, no you look Korean!) is acting very strange online (she’s posting www.desiringgod.org quotes). That’s freaking my biological family members out, I’m going to look at my patient like she’s bat shit crazy and doubt every word she says. I’m glad she pays all her bills in a timely manner. There are other careers out there, like Dentistry!
+ hi, I’m Dr. Maryann Kan FAGD MAGD, i too have 2 clinics. we don’t live in a large house, but we own a few properties. my husband is dead now (i didn’t really pay any attention to him while he was alive, VERY BUSY! GOTTA GO! ER’S! but now that’s he’s dead i’m at his grave site every weekend. my daughter is stupid, she never visits his grave. she doesn’t care about her dad or I.)
+ i think everyones doing the best they can. try not to compare yourself to others (even though your parents are). focus on what you can do. no matter how small that action may seem. making your bed and organizing your room is important. reducing the amount of clutter in your room is a helpful start. by clearing up your space, you can slowly start to clear the clutter in your mind. start with YOUR room first. don’t touch anyone else’s room, unless they have given you access.
+ hi!
+ my parents are super easy going, they laugh at everything. life is a complete joke to them.
+ oh look, the dooms day crew is here!
+ my parents are too serious. they are always stressed and angry.
+ my mom is skinny, she works out so much. her diet is incredibly healthy. she still doesn’t think she’s pretty. i think she’s beautiful. but i can’t convince her of that. i hope one day she realizes that YES, your physical appearance is important. but your spirit is just as important. (i bet you her mom said a bunch of shit to her as a kid. maybe her mom passed away when she was young or her mom was alive physically but dead spiritually. your mom did her best, she could only help you as much as she understood herself.)
+ my mom is skinny, she eats a balanced diet. she has a healthy love for herself. she enjoys her own company and doesn’t have very high expectations. she observes negative self talk. she accepts that it’s ok to sit with your sad, mad, frustrated, scared, horny feelings. you don’t need to judge these feelings, just allow them to be. sitting with your feelings is ok. it gives you time to heal. you will not continue with the same feeling all the time, humans go through ups, downs, and in between. the problem lies, when we don’t allow ourselves enough time to process our emotions. we start purchasing stuff left and right, watching porn, sleeping with random people, overeating, gossiping to feel better about ourselves, work ourselves silly, the next vacation will complete me, the next Yelp review will fulfill me, the next partner will be my heaven, etc.
+ my mom is fat, she never works out. her diet is horrible. she’s miserable. always sad, cries a lot. hypersensitive, i say one damn thing and she flips out. meanwhile, she talks so much shit and it’s ok for her to do so in her book because she’s the ADULT (if she’s feeding you, clothing you, and has put a roof over your head; i’d keep my mouth shut till you can do so on your own). she’s always wanting stuff from others. thinks those who have money should give her what’s theirs. doesn’t know how to organize her time wisely, she’s always late. the house is a mess. it’s disorganized and smells. she has no idea how to budget. as soon as she gets any money, she spends it and then some. the grass is greener on the other side and she wants what others have without thinking about how they got it. all she does is want want want, WITHOUT giving giving giving! she’s jealous and angry.
+ my mom doesn’t like it when i talk, she doesn’t like that i have a voice. (why don’t you be a good girl, sit at home, study, and BE QUIET!)
+ my mom says i don’t talk enough, she forces me to talk to everyone. ugh! (you should have MORE friends hunny)
+ my mom is good enough, but she doesn’t think so. she’s still trying to prove her existence at this very moment. (um, it’s called CREATIVE WRITING)
+ my mom doesn’t like to be questioned, she gets offended easily. (um, yes and no. you have the right to ask questions, it’s a free country. but also your questions are a bit offensive, off putting, and RUDE) (no wonder you don’t have any friends.)
+ my mom rather be alone and lonely, than lonely with someone. don’t you hate it when you’re at a party and there’s a ton of people around you, yet you still feel so alone. like nobody will ever fully understand you. (me too!)
+ my dad is angry. his dad never showed him how to express his emotions in a positive way. it’s ok to be angry, we all get angry. it’s an emotion, and all humans go through a list of different emotions (we are not robots). if someone hits (picks) on you, it’s normal to feel angry. if someone steals from you, it’s normal to feel angry. if someone betrays your trust, it’s normal to feel angry. if someone comes at you with anger, you can accept their feeling. you don’t have to change them, you do not control others. you do have control over yourself and may respond with kindness and gentleness. sometimes, that doesn’t work, in which you may have to respond anger with anger. you can also balance kindness, gentleness, and being stern at the same time. behind anger is sadness, hurt, and pain. when people do negative and hurtful things, it’s not so much you. they are battling themselves (battlefield of the mind).
+ my mom is moody. her feelings are all over the place. she has no idea how to manage her emotions and self soothe. she’s always waiting for someone else to “save her.” Super Man will come and save her day! i’m a kid, apparently it’s my job to make her happy and elevate her mood. (we are all responsible for our own happiness) (you cannot control anyone, it’s tough enough to control yourself).
+ my mom did everything she could to fight for her relationship with her husband. she tried being a good wife and mom. they dated for many years before they got married. once they were married and had 4 kids, my dad got bored. he wanted her to be the same person she was back in the day. his idea of helping the family was to bring a bunch of 25 year olds to the house and let them dictate orders to my mom. he also messed around with a bunch of females in our neighborhood, including our 4th house neighbor. he gave them gift cards, cash, “free” food, and gifts. when they demanded more, he listened and gave it to them. thinking more with his penis. did i mention he is proud and has a heightened sense of self?
+ my mom demands i take her out to eat. when i do, she later complains she’s gained too much weight from eating out. then demands i cook her a home cooked meal. in which then she complains again, that she got diarrhea from my cooking. (that’s a lawsuit waiting to happen).
+ my mom demands i take her out to eat, then says she’ll get the check the next time around. 6 meals later, i’ve been paying for it all. next time never came around.
+ my mom is lonely as fuck (daddy and mommy issues), she wants company. so she eats out with her friends for comfort and pays for their meals. even after spending time with her friends, she still feels lonely. the lunch turns into a therapy session. she feels completely, emotionally drained by the end of the meal. (so you gave your friends a free meal and free therapy?)
+ when my mom and dad have sex, she thinks about all the different guys that fucked her before she got married. that can’t be easy for my dad. he also knew she was a whore before they got married. they broke up 100 times, while dating. she encouraged him to leave her alone and to date other women. he continued pursuing the relationship anyways. they have a love and hate relationship. [It’s Year 2022, they are married and a bunch of thirsty bitches are showing up at our door. my dad decided to do everything they said. our switches, gift cards, cash, and toys went missing. he continued blaming mom for everything that was wrong in their relationship. saying things like “she has Alzheimer's and needs a brain scan.” claiming it’s his house and she should get the fuck out (you may want to check the records before assuming anything). Mom wanted to get The Ring Security System installed, but Dad was unhappy about that (YES, we have it in our budget to get The Ring Security System). There was a huge fight about that too].
+ hi, I'm Bronson Johnson (INTP & ENTP) and I'm Kim's first African American boyfriend. I may or may not have taken Kim away from INFP Phil (and INTP Yoshi). The last time I checked, Phil liked men and Kim's trying not to suck so much pussy anymore. She's bisexual. I think I can change her mind, we'll work on it. We never had a real relationship, it was all made up. 4 kids and a dog later, i'm going to cheat on her with any of the stupid thirsty bitches out there. (this is exactly why i don't have a joint account and hide my shit all over the place) Once a nigger, always a nigger. Once a chigger, always a chigger. It's CHINK, STUPID! I used to be GAY and like men, but Kim changed me. I was her project, now I like bisexuals.
+ hi, I’m Michael P. (ENTP) and I’m Polish Canadian. I’m one of Phil’s best friends and the three of us enjoy hanging out with one another. We like exploring Toronto, Canada together. Kim is not generous at all and really doesn’t care about anyone but herself. She is very mean. [side note: i never used Kim as much as Phil did. She keeps giving and he keeps taking. I know exactly how much to take before she will start to get bitter. This is one of the reasons why she has more respect for me. ESFJ Uncle Paul can confirm that [Police Officer and Real Estate Agent] [We interrupt Kim K.’s fantasy love story with her marrying a black man and having 4 beautiful children, cute dog!] While Phil is working at the Toronto Science Center, Kim and I spend time together. We enjoy eachothers company. She likes that i’m blond, blue eyed, tall, educated (i’m a student at The University of Toronto), down to earth (my family doesn’t have as much money as hers), i pretend to care, know how to make her smile (laugh), annoy her, i’m not clingy at all, she loves that I’m gay [i’m a LESBIAN!], i’m not that religious (i ask her questions outside the Catholic Church), and i have a very small penis (wait, i thought what i saw was a vagina). Your ISFJ Popo is so cute, is she still playing Mahjong with INFP Euoween Popo? does INFP Euoween Popo still asking for handouts continuously and send you on guilt trips? Don’t forget, she made you a dish of chicken cabbage [yup, and we gave her thousands of dollars for it]. Kim K. [grandma] and I have mind blowing sex. Wait, how can we be grandparents while still being teenagers? Later, I introduce her to a friend (he’s Faculty at The University of Toronto). She’ll probably meet me a whole bunch; for the rest of her life, again and again and again.
+ hi, i'm Philip Liang (INFP) (Pakistani Chinese Canadian) and am Gavin Yeh's (Pakistani Chinese Canadian) Best Friend. Now that Gavin was stupid enough to break Kim's heart, I will take it from here. I know i'm not as good looking but can sweet talk her, make her feel sorry for me, and write poetic love letters to woo her. don't ask me for any money, my family is broke. i can tutor you in Math online. i will send you handmade pop up cards and sketch beautiful artwork as gifts. i may even send you a rock that reminds me of you. you'll then come to Toronto (empty handed, Kim never gave me a thing) where we will have our first kiss under a tree in front of Stephanie Yen's (INFP) Apartments. it was very sloppy and wet, we'll have to practice some more. i'll suck the shit out of your pussy, while also finger fucking you. could you wash your mouth and dick a bit better, it kinda smells. i think you need better soap and body wash. we'll have a long distance relationship for an unknown period of time. my dad (Robert P. Kan) and i are sharing a hotel room in Toronto, Canada. he’s attending a funeral and once he’s back we’ll be going to a wedding together (my INTJ Chinese Canadian cousin Betty is marrying an INTP Jewish man). phil and i have lunch while my dad is out, then we head to the hotel. we figured we could have sex before my dad came back to the hotel. in the middle of our sex session, my dad started opening the door (he forgot something). we were not freaking out at all. good thing i had all the locks bolted, which bought us some time and he quickly put on his clothes. he pretended he was taking a nap, because it was so hot outside. i was still naked (put a towel around me) and acted like i was about to take a shower. my dad was pissed and screamed at the both of us. he could only give us a short lecture (he had to run back to the funeral), but told us to stay at the hotel so he could finish scolding us. good thing, Phil looks like an innocent, kind, gentle, smart guy who would never have sex till marriage. we'll call eachother while I'm in New York and you in Australia. Even when you are dating your ISFJ Taiwanese girlfriend with a thin waistline (who mostly wants your nonexistent money, you're still a Dental Student) you'll ask me to marry you again and again. You tell me that you will break up with your girlfriend right now; we could get engaged and continue right where we left off. you like that i never ask you for anything and any money you do have goes straight to your dental school student loans. i'll visit you in Australia, where you'll fuck the shit out of me. our relationship was so traumatic and toxic, you now like men. i'm so glad you came out of the closet! Gay Lives Matter!
+ hi, I'm Gavin Yeh (ENFP) and could you show me a titty or something on the camera. baby, i want my name tatted on your ass. it doesn't have to be large font, it can be in small font. more cushion for the pushin'. i love rap music and playing basketball. let's have sex in the bathroom stall. i have to break up with you because i found an ISFJ Filipino Canadian chick with a thin waistline (in reality, he's always horny and i live in The States. new pussy is always better than old pussy!) My Mom, Rita Yeh [INFJ] is still wondering if we can get married because your family has money, you're a nice girl, and already part of the family. Gavin is Keenan Kan's (INFJ) first cousin. Kimberly Kan is also Keenan's first cousin, but Gavin and Kim are not cousins. Frankly, I'm tired of listening to Gavin talk about how much he loves your vagina. Kim, for the 800th time, you are not that fat and he loves your ass. [note: proceed with great caution. you will be replaced.]
+ hi, i’m Kalia Sokos and i’m a STEP MOM! When i was a student at Bishop Ireton High School, I sucked 2 Latino men’s dicks at the back of Richard Byrd Library in Springfield, VA. Now I’m married to an older man with kids and i’m rich! look at how important i am. I was super cool at BI, smoked, did horribly in school, was a cheerleader [ESFP], dated an African American basketball player [ESTP], and was a server at Milano's Family Restaurant in Springfield, VA (Kim is a horrible tipper. Um, we gave you $2,000 worth of free Dental Care). I’m Greek, blonde (she dyes her hair), light skinned, and have pretty eyes (nice eyelashes). We’re seconds away from making a porno. I’m a beautiful fucking person you dip shits. Did you guys make your beds yet? Your Dad needs to buy me more shit or else! (ESTP Mr. Sokos & ESFP Mrs. Sokos) (INFJ Harry Sokos & Maxie The Yorkie [aka Kim K.] [ran over by The Olson’s van because they let Maxie run freely around Julian Street without a leash or any supervision.) (it’s very loud at The Sokos’s house, dad is always yelling at mom, and mom yells back crying hysterically at kids and around Julian street. they burned down their kitchen because Mrs. Sokos was juggling too much at one time.) (The Kan’s have Mercedes [S500 and C320], so now we need to also get Mercedes and Jaguars. Dr. Kan can you please give us good deals on dental work and by good deals, i mean free.)
+ INTP Laura Olson [Irish American], ISFJ Kate Olson [Irish American], INFJ Sarah Olson [Irish American] [not born yet], INFJ Harry Sokos [Greek American] [Tree House Dad], Kim K. [Tree House Mom], and ESFP Kalia Sokos will just be playing house outside on the tree in front of The Kan's House in Springfield, VA (which has now been taken down). What is up with ISFJ Cathy Peed? She's 1/2 Caucasian and 1/2 Filipino. Why does she keep stealing everyones shit and then lying about it? It's gotta be a disorder or something. Hey everyone, feel bad that her mom died. Kim's just mad because we all saw INFJ Jason Scheel from Bishop Ireton High School enter The Kan's house from the backdoor. Her parents were out on vacation and they told us to watch over her and the home. He was trying to run inside quickly, but Kim didn't know we saw him. I think he was at her house to study the bible. They must have been planning on starting an online bible website.
+ WHAT!? [African American Woman at Chantilly, VA Dollar Tree] (she’s not rude at all. she’s very respectful, kind, gentle, generous, beautiful, has a lovely spirit, hard working, never gossips, doesn’t think you owe her anything, loves to share, volunteers, doesn’t ask for handouts, loves to cook, never asks you for a thing, doesn’t stare at your husbands dick, isn’t thirsty, very educated, eloquent, funny, has a great sense of humor, not sarcastic, black lives don’t matter!, nuck if you buck is not her favorite song, encouraging, optimistic, believes you are enough, loves children, doesn’t compare herself to anyone else, and believes the world is big enough for all of us to win at something).
+ hi, i’m Uncle Mark (INTP) (Pakistani Chinese American) and a Dentist. I was rude and mean to Kimberly Kan at a dinner party in Toronto, Canada [ESFJ Aunty Florence’s House]. I made fun of her for not knowing what the capital of Virginia was (it’s MIAMI right!). I spoil my daughter and son rotten and still make fun of Kim for being spoiled (she’s an only child) (#onlychildrenarepoepletoo). She was a kid. (i have no idea why this uncle is so mean and is making fun of me. i’m already overweight and the kids at St. Bernadette’s Elementary make fun of me [Isabel is a bully. i do like mixing ketchup and mayo together.] INTP Uncle Glenn is hotter! (INTJ MD Aunty's Husband) [my INTP Filipino American crush Albert Nomarosa makes fun of my weight too. He’s always been more attracted to Maggie Dressel and her blonde hair, blue-ish eyes, and thin waistline.]. Now my Uncle’s here making fun of the fact that i’m STUPID too.) (it’s ok, i look different now at Bishop Ireton High School and Albert N. and I meet again at ENTP Maggie Dressel’s House Party. Where you will gyrate on my ass in the dark to loud music. Yes, your dick is hard and you’re touching me all over the place with my clothes on. I see something over there, i gotta go. INFP Liz (Caucasian American) (Maggie’s Best Friend) will take it from here! I’m at AP Biology in Bishop Ireton High School, and now you’re an INTP Japanese American teenager. You’re going to fuck the shit out of my pussy at your Dad’s townhouse [your mom abandoned the family, your sisters in College, and your INFJ Dad is at work]. Aunty Jane (INTJ) is very important, knows it all, and won’t give her husband any pussy. Uncle Mark (INTP) is sexually frustrated and is not allowed to say a damn thing to Aunty Jane without her putting him down immediately. She’s the man of the house, which is why i need space from her. Thanks Kim for telling everyone my business. I later met an INTP Indian American man at a club in Miami, in which he gyrated all over my ass too. I don’t mind (www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbUBMklQSVU&list=RDSbUBMklQSV...). Then another INTP Haitian American man (looks more Ethiopian) at NYUCD. I don’t find him attractive at all, we never had sex, he’s stupid, has a small penis, never pissed on me, and is NOT a Dentist. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDq3fNew1rU&list=RDtDq3fNew1r...
+ my name is Crystal (INFJ), and i hate that my mom is a psychiatrist. yes, i’m married to an INTP Jewish Man. he’s quiet and keeps to himself. all my mom fucking does is psychoanalyze my dad, brother, i, and the rest of our immediate family all day! she thinks she’s god’s gift to man because she has fancy degrees behind her name. she is well known in the Psychology department (as Uncle Peter [INFP] has repeatedly told you). i still sleep walk! she’s not as proud of you as you think, more jealous and has a need for popularity. are we going to get lunch or what? yea yea yea, we’re SPOILED! and obviously my Dad wants my pussy. It’s softer, gentler, more real, understanding, more submissive, and follow directions well. i told you i was a daddy’s girl.
+ my name is Dr. Jane Kou (INTJ) (Pakistani Chinese American) and I’m a Psychiatrist. I’m Kim K.’s Aunt. My husband, Mark and I are separated. He’s an INTP Dentist. Dr. Maryann Kan DDS FAGD MAGD (INTJ) and her husband Robert P. Kan (ESFJ) need couples therapy. I mentioned this while visiting The Kan Family in Virginia, and Maryann threw a fit. She kicked me out of the house. Robert drove me to the airport. Kim is a very nice girl, she’s always been a good daughter and does listen to her parents. Kim has SOCIAL ANXIETY! (it’s a free country, i can say that can’t i?) (when did you start liking black men? i would have picked the white guy.)
+ funded by Dr. Maryann Kan DDS FAGD MAGD (and Dr. Jordan Bernt Peterson, Clinical Psychologist) [ENTP Caucasian Male & INTJ Pakistani Chinese American Female]
+ i farted! (i can smell it from here)
Volunteer Gilbert Cortez,right, and Jenna Curcio, intern for U.S. Adaptive Recreation Center help skier Andy Bates down the hill at Bear Mountain, Friday, Jan. 2, 2009. .Volunteers and staff of the not-for-profit U.S. Adaptive Recreation Center at the Big Bear Mt. Resorts help physically and mentally challenged people learn to enjoy the snow at Bear Mountain, Friday, Jan. 2, 2009. Eric Reed/photographer
March 14, 2021. Boston, MA.
A group of 5th graders rallied, (physically distanced and masked) in front of the Massachusetts State House to draw attention to the ongoing eviction crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Organizers stated that despite a patchwork of emergency eviction prevention efforts at the state and federal levels, judges have okayed 1,500 evictions in Massachusetts since Gov. Baker ended the state-wide eviction moratorium. Additionally over 10,000 new and pending eviction cases have progressed since the moratorium was allowed to expire, putting tens of thousands of people at risk of homelessness during a pandemic.
Exacerbating the eviction crisis is the looming expiration date of the federal eviction moratorium, enacted through the CDC, which is scheduled to end on the 31st of this month.
5th graders involved in Boston Workers Circle and supporters from City Life/Vida Urbana spoke out to stop non-emergency evictions in the pandemic (including pandemic debt-related evictions, no-fault evictions, and evictions due to a landlord's refusal to accept rent relief).
Using street theater, signs, and speeches, they called on the Massachusetts legislature to immediately enact the COVID-19 Housing Equity Bill, HD. 3030 / SD. 1802, which was recently crafted by the Homes For All Massachusetts coalition. Homes For All Massachusetts is a coalition of grassroots housing justice groups across the state, led by residents on the frontlines of the eviction crisis.
© 2021 Marilyn Humphries
Interstate 26 (I-26) is a nominally east–west (but physically more northwest–southeast diagonal) main route of the Interstate Highway System in the Southeastern United States. I-26 runs from the junction of U.S. Route 11W (US 11W) and US 23 in Kingsport, Tennessee, generally southeastward to US 17 in Charleston, South Carolina.[2] The portion from Mars Hill, North Carolina, east (compass south) to I-240 in Asheville, North Carolina, has signs indicating FUTURE I-26 because the highway does not yet meet all of the Interstate Highway standards. A short realignment as an improvement in the freeway was also planned in Asheville, but has been postponed indefinitely due to North Carolina's budget shortfalls.[3] Northwards from Kingsport, US 23 continues to Portsmouth, Ohio, as Corridor B of the Appalachian Development Highway System, and beyond to Columbus, Ohio, as Corridor C. In conjunction with the Columbus–Toledo, Ohio, corridor formed by I-75, US 23, and State Route 15, I-26 forms part of a mostly high-speed four-or-more-lane highway from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Coast at Charleston, South Carolina. There are no official plans for extensions north of Kingsport, Tennessee.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_26
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...
Hong Kong Sports Association for the Physically Disabled 50th Anniversary Roving Exhibition_Citywalk2
Sometimes life has a way of putting some seemingly insurmountable physical challenges in your path, especially if you are in a wheelchair. I like to think of myself as a problem solver, able to sometimes “outsmart” the problem by thinking outside of the box. A time when I had to use...
netmaddy.com/gadgets-for-physically-disabled-persons/ netmaddy.com
Go to Page with image in the Internet Archive
Title: Culpeper's English physician; and complete herbal : to which are now first added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult properties, physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind : to which are annexed, rules for compounding medicine according to the true system of nature, forming a complete family dispensatory, and natural system of physic, beautified and enriched with engravings of upwards of four hundred and fifty different plants and a set of anatomical figures, illustrated with notes and observations, critical and explanatory
Creator: Culpeper, Nicholas, 1616-1654
Creator: Sibly, E. (Ebenezer), 1751-1800
Creator: Lofft, Elizabeth Susan, Provenance
Creator: Phillips, Edward England, Provenance
Creator: University of Bristol. Library
Publisher: London : Printed for the author, and sold at the British Directory-Office, Ave-Maria-Lane; and by Champante and Whitrow, Jewry-Street, Aldgate
Sponsor: Jisc and Wellcome Library
Contributor: University of Bristol
Date: 1794
Language: eng
Description: With a frontispiece and 29 numbered plates
Forms v. 1 of a 2 v. set: the herbal and the medical part
The set is published in 42 numbered parts of which v. 1 includes nos. 1-25 and v. 2 nos. 26-42
Dedication dated: In the year of Masonry 5798
ESTC
This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library
University of Bristol Library
With this are bound the second part of another edition, and the editor's A key to physic. The volume is bound according to the "Directions to the binder" (on p. 256, at the end of the second part): pt. 1, Appendix (usually forming pt. of Key to physic), pt. 2 and Key to physic
If you have questions concerning reproductions, please contact the Contributing Library.
Note: The colors, contrast and appearance of these illustrations are unlikely to be true to life. They are derived from scanned images that have been enhanced for machine interpretation and have been altered from their originals.
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Humans Are Physically
Waymo, Uber and others are testing self-driving car technology in various regions. Not everyone is happy about it and some are taking matters into their own hands.
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One last glimpse of my pelican friend, whom I tried to rescue from the tangled fishing line. He was, what do pilots call it? Physically unqualified to fly. A more fortunate pelican can be seen silhouetted in the negative space between pier pilings. Dsc05535.Jpg
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin was the first Russian writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933. 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 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 Tolstoy and Chekhov.
Biography
Early life
Ivan Bunin was born on his parental estate in Voronezh province, the third and youngest son of Aleksey Nikolayevich Bunin (1827–1906) and Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Bunina (née Chubarova, 1835–1910). He had two younger sisters: Masha (Maria Bunina-Laskarzhevskaya, 1873–1930) and Nadya (that latter died very young) and two elder brothers, Yuly and Yevgeny. Having come from a long line of rural gentry, Bunin was especially proud that poets Anna Bunina (1774–1829) and Vasily Zhukovsky (1783–1852) were among his ancestors. He wrote in his 1952 autobiography:
I come from an old and noble house that has given Russia a good many illustrious persons in politics as well as in the arts, among whom two poets of the early nineteenth century stand out in particular: Anna Búnina and Vasíly Zhukovsky, one of the great names in Russian literature, the son of Athanase Bunin and the Turk Salma.
"The Bunins are direct ancestors of Simeon Bunkovsky, a nobleman who came from Poland to the court of the Great Prince Vasily Vasilyevich," he wrote in 1915, quoting the Russian gentry's Armorial Book. Chubarovs, according to Bunin, "knew very little about themselves except that their ancestors were landowners in Kostromskaya, Moskovskaya, Orlovskya and Tambovskaya Guberniyas". "As for me, from early childhood I was such a libertine as to be totally indifferent both to my own 'high blood' and to the loss of whatever might have been connected to it," he added.
Ivan Bunin's early childhood, spent in Butyrky Khutor and later in Ozerky (of Yelets county, Lipetskaya Oblast), was a happy one: the boy was surrounded by intelligent and loving people. Father Alexei Nikolayevich was described by Bunin as a very strong man, both physically and mentally, quick-tempered and addicted to gambling, impulsive and generous, eloquent in a theatrical fashion and totally illogical. "Before the Crimean War he'd never even known the taste of wine, on return he became a heavy drinker, although never a typical alcoholic," he wrote. His mother Lyudmila Alexandrovna's character was much more subtle and tender: this Bunin attributed to the fact that "her father spent years in Warsaw where he acquired certain European tastes which made him quite different from fellow local land-owners." It was Lyudmila Alexandrovna who introduced her son to the world of Russian folklore. Elder brothers Yuly and Yevgeny showed great interest in mathematics and painting respectively, his mother said later, yet, in their mother's words, "Vanya has been different from the moment of birth... none of the others had a soul like his."
Young Bunin's susceptibility and keenness to the nuances of nature were extraordinary. "The quality of my vision was such that I've seen all seven of the stars of Pleiades, heard a marmot's whistle a verst away, and could get drunk from the smells of landysh or an old book," he remembered later. Bunin's experiences of rural life had a profound impact on his writing. "There, amidst the deep silence of vast fields, among cornfields – or, in winter, huge snowdrifts which were stepping up to our very doorsteps – I spent my childhood which was full of melancholic poetry," Bunin later wrote of his Ozerky days.
Ivan Bunin's first home tutor was an ex-student named Romashkov, whom he later described as a "positively bizarre character," a wanderer full of fascinating stories, "always thought-provoking even if not altogether comprehensible." Later it was university-educated Yuly Bunin (deported home for being a Narodnik activist) who taught his younger brother psychology, philosophy and the social sciences as part of his private, domestic education. It was Yuly who encouraged Ivan to read the Russian classics and to write himself. Until 1920 Yuly (who once described Ivan as "undeveloped yet gifted and capable of original independent thought") was the latter's closest friend and mentor. "I had a passion for painting, which, I think, shows in my writings. I wrote both poetry and prose fairly early and my works were also published from an early date," wrote Bunin in his short autobiography.
By the end of the 1870s, the Bunins, plagued by the gambling habits of the head of the family, had lost most of their wealth. In 1881 Ivan was sent to a public school in Yelets, but never completed the course: he was expelled in March 1886 for failing to return to the school after the Christmas holidays due to the family's financial difficulties.
Literary career
In May 1887 Bunin published his first poem "Village Paupers" (Деревенские нищие) in the Saint Petersburg literary magazine Rodina (Motherland). In 1891 his first short story "Country Sketch (Деревенский эскиз) appeared in the Nikolay Mikhaylovsky-edited journal Russkoye Bogatstvo. In Spring 1889, Bunin followed his brother to Kharkiv, where he became a government clerk, then an assistant editor of a local paper, librarian, and court statistician. In January 1889 he moved to Oryol to work on the local Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper, first as an editorial assistant and later as de facto editor; this enabled him to publish his short stories, poems and reviews in the paper's literary section. There he met Varvara Pashchenko and fell passionately in love with her. In August 1892 the couple moved to Poltava and settled in the home of Yuly Bunin. The latter helped his younger brother to find a job in the local zemstvo administration.
Ivan Bunin's debut book of poetry Poems. 1887–1891 was published in 1891 in Oryol. Some of his articles, essays and short stories, published earlier in local papers, began to feature in the Saint Petersburg periodicals.
Bunin spent the first half of 1894 travelling all over Ukraine. "Those were the times when I fell in love with Malorossiya (Little Russia), its villages and steppes, was eagerly meeting its people and listening to Ukrainian songs, this country's very soul," he later wrote.
In 1895 Bunin visited the Russian capital for the first time. There he was to meet the Narodniks Nikolay Mikhaylovsky and Sergey Krivenko, Anton Chekhov (with whom he began a correspondence and became close friends), Alexander Ertel, and the poets Konstantin Balmont and Valery Bryusov.
1899 saw the beginning of Bunin's friendship with Maxim Gorky, to whom he dedicated his Falling Leaves (1901) collection of poetry and whom he later visited at Capri. Bunin became involved with Gorky's Znanie (Knowledge) group. Another influence and inspiration was Leo Tolstoy whom he met in Moscow in January 1894. Admittedly infatuated with the latter's prose, Bunin tried desperately to follow the great man's lifestyle too, visiting sectarian settlements and doing a lot of hard work. He was even sentenced to three months in prison for illegally distributing Tolstoyan literature in the autumn of 1894, but avoided jail due to a general amnesty proclaimed on the occasion of the succession to the throne of Nicholas II. Tellingly, it was Tolstoy himself who discouraged Bunin from slipping into what he called "total peasantification." Several years later, while still admiring Tolstoy's prose, Bunin changed his views regarding his philosophy which he now saw as utopian.
In 1895–1896 Bunin divided his time between Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In 1897 his first short story collection To the Edge of the World and Other Stories came out, followed a year later by In the Open Air (Под открытым небом, 1898), his second book of verse. In June 1898 Bunin moved to Odessa. Here he became close to the Southern Russia Painters Comradeship, became friends with Yevgeny Bukovetski and Pyotr Nilus. In the winter of 1899–1900 he began attending the Sreda (Wednesday) literary group in Moscow, striking up a friendship with the Nikolay Teleshov, among others. Here the young writer made himself a reputation as an uncompromising advocate of the realistic traditions of classic Russian literature. "Bunin made everybody uncomfortable. Having got this severe and sharp eye for real art, feeling acutely the power of a word, he was full of hatred towards every kind of artistic excess. In times when (quoting Andrey Bely) "throwing pineapples to the sky" was the order of the day, Bunin's very presence made words stick in people's throats," Boris Zaitsev later remembered. He met Anton Chekov in 1896, and a strong friendship ensued.
1900–1909
The collections Poems and Stories (1900) and Flowers of the Field (1901) were followed by Falling Leaves (Листопад, 1901), Bunin's third book of poetry (including a large poem of the same title first published in the October 1900 issue of Zhizn (Life) magazine). It was welcomed by both critics and colleagues, among them Alexander Ertel, Alexander Blok and Aleksandr Kuprin, who praised its "rare subtlety." Even though the book testifies to his association with the Symbolists, primarily Valery Bryusov, at the time many saw it as an antidote to the pretentiousness of 'decadent' poetry which was then popular in Russia. Falling Leaves was "definitely Pushkin-like", full of "inner poise, sophistication, clarity and wholesomeness," according to critic Korney Chukovsky. Soon after the book's release, Gorky called Bunin (in a letter to Valery Bryusov) "the first poet of our times." It was for Falling Leaves (along with the translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, 1898) that Bunin was awarded his first Pushkin Prize. Bunin justified a pause of two years in the early 1900s by the need for "inner growth" and spiritual change.
At the turn of the century Bunin made a major switch from poetry to prose which started to change both in form and texture, becoming richer in lexicon, more compact and perfectly poised. Citing Gustave Flaubert, whose work he admired, as an influence, Bunin was "demonstrating that prose could be driven by poetic rhythms, but still remain prose." According to the writer's nephew Pusheshnikov, Bunin once told him: "Apparently I was born a versemaker... like Turgenev, who was a versemaker, first and foremost. Finding the true rhythm of the story was for him the main thing – everything else was supplementary. And for me the crucial thing is to find the proper rhythm. Once it's there, everything else comes in spontaneously, and I know when the story is done."
In 1900 the novella Antonov Apples (Антоновские яблоки) was published; later it was included in textbooks and is regarded as Bunin's first real masterpiece, but it was criticised at the time as too nostalgic and elitist, allegedly idealising "the Russian nobleman's past." Other acclaimed novellas of this period, On the Farm, The News from Home, and To the Edge of the World (На край света), showing a penchant for extreme precision of language, delicate description of nature and detailed psychological analysis, made him a popular and well-respected young author.
In 1902 Znanie started publishing the Complete Bunin series; five volumes appeared by the year 1909. Three books, Poems (1903), Poems (1903–1906) and Poems of 1907 (the latter published by Znanie in 1908), formed the basis of a special (non-numbered) volume of the Complete series which in 1910 was published in Saint Petersburg as Volume VI. Poems and Stories (1907–1909) by the Obschestvennaya Polza (Public Benefit) publishing house. Bunin's works featured regularly in Znanie's literary compilations; beginning with Book I, where "Black Earth" appeared along with several poems, all in all he contributed to 16 books of the series.
In the early 1900s Bunin travelled extensively. He was a close friend of Chekhov and his family and continued visiting them regularly until 1904. The October social turmoil of 1905 found Bunin in Yalta, Crimea, from where he moved back to Odessa. Scenes of "class struggle" there did not impress the writer, for he saw them as little more than the Russian common people's craving for anarchy and destruction.
In November 1906 Bunin's passionate affair with Vera Muromtseva began. The girl's family was unimpressed with Bunin's position as a writer, but the couple defied social convention, moving in together and in April 1907 leaving Russia for an extended tour through Egypt and Palestine. The Bird's Shadow (Тень птицы) (1907–1911) collection (published as a separate book in 1931 in Paris) came as a result of this voyage. These travelling sketches were to change the critics' assessment of Bunin's work. Before them Bunin was mostly regarded as (using his own words) "a melancholy lyricist, singing hymns to noblemen's estates and idylls of the past." In the late 1900s critics started to pay more notice to the colourfulness and dynamics of his poetry and prose. "In terms of artistic precision he has no equal among Russian poets," Vestnik Evropy wrote at the time. Bunin attributed much importance to his travels, counting himself among that special "type of people who tend to feel strongest for alien times and cultures rather than those of their own" and admitting to being drawn to "all the necropolises of the world." Besides, foreign voyages had, admittedly, an eye-opening effect on the writer, helping him to see Russian reality more objectively. In the early 1910s Bunin produced several famous novellas which came as a direct result of this change in perspective.
In October 1909 Bunin received his second Pushkin Prize for Poems 1903–1906 and translations of (Lord Byron's Cain, and parts of Longfellow's The Golden Legend). He was elected a member of the Russian Academy the same year. In Bunin, The Academy crowns "not a daring innovator, not an adventurous searcher but arguably the last gifted pupil of talented teachers who's kept and preserved... all the most beautiful testaments of their school," wrote critic Aleksander Izmailov, formulating the conventional view of the time. It was much later that Bunin was proclaimed one of the most innovative Russian writers of the century.
1910–1920
In 1910 Bunin published The Village (Деревня), a bleak portrayal of Russian country life, which he depicted as full of stupidity, brutality, and violence. This book caused controversy and made him famous. Its harsh realism (with "characters having sunk so far below the average level of intelligence as to be scarcely human") prompted Maxim Gorky to call Bunin "the best Russian writer of the day."
"I've left behind my "narodnicism" which didn't last very long, my Tolstoyism too and now I'm closer to the social democrats, but I still stay away from political parties," Bunin wrote in the early 1910s. He said he realised now that the working class had become a force powerful enough to "overcome the whole of Western Europe," but warned against the possible negative effect of the Russian workers' lack of organisation, the one thing that made them different from their Western counterparts. He criticised the Russian intelligentsia for being ignorant of the common people's life, and spoke of a tragic schism between "the cultured people and the uncultured masses."
In December 1910 Bunin and Muromtseva made another journey to the Middle East, then visited Ceylon; this four-month trip inspired such stories as "Brothers" (Братья) and "The Tsar of Tsars City" (Город царя царей). On his return to Odessa in April 1911, Bunin wrote "Waters Aplenty" (Воды многие), a travel diary, much lauded after its publication in 1926. In 1912 the novel Dry Valley (Суходол) came out, his second major piece of semi-autobiographical fiction, concerning the dire state of the Russian rural community. Again it left the literary critics divided: social democrats praised its stark honesty, many others were appalled with the author's negativism.
Bunin and Muromtseva spent three winters (1912–1914) with Gorky on the island of Capri, where they met with Fyodor Shalyapin and Leonid Andreev, among others. In Russia the couple divided their time mainly between Moscow and a Bunin family estate at Glotovo village nearby Oryol; it was there that they spent the first couple years of World War I. Dogged by anxieties concerning Russia's future, Bunin was still working hard. In the winter of 1914–1915 he finished a new volume of prose and verse entitled The Chalice of Life (Чаша жизни), published in early 1915 to wide acclaim (including high praise from the French poet Rene Ghil). The same year saw the publication of The Gentleman from San Francisco (Господин из Сан-Франциско), arguably the best-known of Bunin's short stories, which was translated into English by D. H. Lawrence. Bunin was a productive translator himself. After Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha (1898), he did translations of Byron, Tennyson, Musset and François Coppée.
During the war years, Bunin completed the preparation of a six-volume edition of his Collected Works, which was published by Adolph Marks in 1915. Throughout this time Bunin kept aloof from contemporary literary debates. "I did not belong to any literary school; I was neither a decadent, nor a symbolist nor a romantic, nor a naturalist. Of literary circles I frequented only a few," he commented later. By the spring of 1916, overcome by pessimism, Bunin all but stopped writing, complaining to his nephew, N.A. Pusheshnikov, of how insignificant he felt as a writer and how depressed he was for being unable to do more than be horrified at the millions of deaths being caused by the War.
In May 1917 the Bunins moved to Glotovo and stayed there until autumn. In October the couple returned to Moscow to stay with Vera's parents. Life in the city was dangerous (residents had to guard their own homes, maintaining nightly vigils) but Bunin still visited publishers and took part in the meetings of the Sreda and The Art circles. While dismissive of Ivan Goremykin (the 1914–1916 Russian Government Premier), he criticised opposition figures like Pavel Milyukov as "false defenders of the Russian people". In April 1917 he severed all ties with the pro-revolutionary Gorky, causing a rift which would never be healed. On 21 May 1918, Bunin and Muromtseva obtained the official permission to leave Moscow for Kiev, then continued their journey through to Odessa. By 1919 Bunin was working for the Volunteer Army as the editor of the cultural section of the anti-Bolshevik newspaper Iuzhnoe Slovo. On 26 January 1920, the couple boarded the last French ship in Odessa and soon were in Constantinople.
Emigration
Bunin and Muromtseva arrived in Paris, from then on dividing their time between apartments at 1, rue Jacques Offenbach in the 16th arrondissement of Paris and rented villas in or near Grasse in the Alpes Maritimes. Much as he hated Bolshevism, Bunin never endorsed the idea of foreign intervention in Russia. "It's for a common Russian countryman to sort out his problems for himself, not for foreign masters to come and maintain their new order in our home. I'd rather die in exile than return home with the help of Poland or England. As my father taught me: 'Love your own tub even if it's broken up'", he once said, allegedly, to Merezhkovsky who still cherished hopes for Pilsudsky's military success against the Bolshevik regime.
Slowly and painfully, overcoming physical and mental stress, Bunin returned to his usual mode of writing. Scream, his first book published in France, was compiled of short stories written in 1911–1912, years he referred to as the happiest of his life.
In France Bunin published many of his pre-revolutionary works and collections of original novellas, regularly contributing to the Russian emigre press. According to Vera Muromtseva, her husband often complained of his inability to get used to life in the new world. He said he belonged to "the old world, that of Goncharov and Tolstoy, of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, where his muse had been lost, never to be found again." Yet his new prose was marked with obvious artistic progress: Mitya's Love (Митина любовь, 1924), Sunstroke (Солнечный удаp, 1925), Cornet Yelagin's Case (Дело коpнета Елагина, 1925) and especially The Life of Arseniev (Жизнь Аpсеньева, written in 1927–1929, published in 1930–1933) were praised by critics as bringing Russian literature to new heights. Konstantin Paustovsky called The Life of Arseniev an apex of the whole of Russian prose and "one of the most striking phenomena in the world of literature."
In 1924, he published the "Manifesto of the Russian Emigration", in which he i.a. declared:
There was Russia, inhabited by a mighty family, which had been created by the blessed work of countless generations. ... What was then done to them? They paid for the deposal of the ruler with the destruction of literally the whole home and with unheard of fratricide. ... A bastard, a moral idiot from the birth, Lenin presented to the World at the height of his activities something monstrous, staggering, he discorded the largest country of the Earth and killed millions of people, and in the broad day-light it is being disputed: was he a benefactor of the mankind or not?
In 1925–1926 Cursed Days (Окаянные дни), Bunin's diary of the years 1918–1920 started to appear in the Paris-based Vozrozhdenye newspaper (its final version was published by Petropolis in 1936). According to Bunin scholar Thomas Gaiton Marullo, Cursed Days, one of the very few anti-Bolshevik diaries to be preserved from the time of the Russian Revolution and civil war, linked "Russian anti-utopian writing of the nineteenth century to its counterpart in the twentieth" and, "in its painful exposing of political and social utopias... heralded the anti-utopian writing of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Bunin and Zamyatin had correctly understood that the Soviet experiment was destined to self destruct," Marullo wrote.
In the 1920s and 1930s Bunin was regarded as the moral and artistic spokesman for a generation of expatriates who awaited the collapse of Bolshevism, a revered senior figure among living Russian writers, true to the tradition of Tolstoy and Chekhov. He became the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, which was awarded to him in 1933 "for following through and developing with chastity and artfulness the traditions of Russian classic prose." Per Halstroem, in his celebratory speech, noted the laureate's poetic gift. Bunin for his part praised the Swedish Academy for honouring a writer in exile. In his speech, addressing the Academy, he said:
Overwhelmed by the congratulations and telegrams that began to flood me, I thought in the solitude and silence of night about the profound meaning in the choice of the Swedish Academy. For the first time since the founding of the Nobel Prize you have awarded it to an exile. Who am I in truth? An exile enjoying the hospitality of France, to whom I likewise owe an eternal debt of gratitude. But, gentlemen of the Academy, let me say that irrespective of my person and my work your choice in itself is a gesture of great beauty. It is necessary that there should be centers of absolute independence in the world. No doubt, all differences of opinion, of philosophical and religious creeds, are represented around this table. But we are united by one truth, the freedom of thought and conscience; to this freedom we owe civilization. For us writers, especially, freedom is a dogma and an axiom. Your choice, gentlemen of the Academy, has proved once more that in Sweden the love of liberty is truly a national cult.
In France, Bunin found himself, for the first time, at the center of public attention. On 10 November 1933, the Paris newspapers came out with huge headlines: "Bunin — the Nobel Prize laureate" giving the whole of the Russian community in France cause for celebration. "You see, up until then we, émigrés, felt like we were at the bottom there. Then all of a sudden our writer received an internationally acclaimed prize! And not for some political scribblings, but for real prose! After having been asked to write a first page column for the Paris Revival newspaper, I stepped out in the middle of the night onto the Place d'Italie and toured the local bistros on my way home, drinking in each and every one of them to the health of Ivan Bunin!" fellow Russian writer Boris Zaitsev wrote. Back in the USSR the reaction was negative: Bunin's triumph was explained there as "an imperialist intrigue."
Dealing with the Prize, Bunin donated 100,000 francs to a literary charity fund, but the process of money distribution caused controversy among his fellow Russian émigré writers. It was during this time that Bunin's relationship deteriorated with Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky (a fellow Nobel Prize nominee who once suggested that they divide the Prize between the two, should one of them get it, and had been refused). Although reluctant to become involved in politics, Bunin was now feted as both a writer and the embodiment of non-Bolshevik Russian values and traditions. His travels throughout Europe featured prominently on the front pages of the Russian emigre press for the remainder of the decade.
In 1933 he allowed calligrapher Guido Colucci to create a unique manuscript of "Un crime", a French translation of one of his novellas, illustrated with three original gouaches by Nicolas Poliakoff.
In 1934–1936, The Complete Bunin in 11 volumes was published in Berlin by Petropolis. Bunin cited this edition as the most credible one and warned his future publishers against using any other versions of his work rather than those featured in the Petropolis collection. 1936 was marred by an incident in Lindau on the Swiss-German border when Bunin, having completed his European voyage, was stopped and unceremoniously searched. The writer (who caught cold and fell ill after the night spent under arrest) responded by writing a letter to the Paris-based Latest News newspaper. The incident caused disbelief and outrage in France. In 1937 Bunin finished his book The Liberation of Tolstoy (Освобождение Толстого), held in the highest regard by Leo Tolstoy scholars.
In 1938 Bunin began working on what would later become a celebrated cycle of nostalgic stories with a strong erotic undercurrent and a Proustian ring. The first eleven stories of it came out as Dark Avenues (or Dark Alleys, Тёмные аллеи) in New York (1943); the cycle appeared in a full version in 1946 in France. These stories assumed a more abstract and metaphysical tone which has been identified with his need to find refuge from the "nightmarish reality" of Nazi occupation. Bunin's prose became more introspective, which was attributed to "the fact that a Russian is surrounded by enormous, broad and lasting things: the steppes, the sky. In the West everything is cramped and enclosed, and this automatically produces a turning towards the self, inwards."
The war years
As World War II broke out, Bunin's friends in New York, anxious to help the Nobel Prize laureate get out of France, issued officially-endorsed invitations for him to travel to the US, and in 1941 they received their Nansen passports enabling them to make the trip. But the couple chose to remain in Grasse. They spent the war years at Villa Jeanette, high in the mountains. Two young writers became long-term residents in the Bunin household at the time: Leonid Zurov (1902–1971), who had arrived on a visit from Latvia at Bunin's invitation earlier, in late 1929, and remained with them for the rest of their lives, and Nikolai Roshchin (1896–1956), who returned to the Soviet Union after the war.
Members of this small commune (occasionally joined by Galina Kuznetsova and Margarita Stepun) were bent on survival: they grew vegetables and greens, helping one another out at a time when, according to Zurov, "Grasse's population had eaten all of their cats and dogs". A journalist who visited the Villa in 1942 described Bunin as a "skinny and emaciated man, looking like an ancient patrician". For Bunin, though, this isolation was a blessing and he refused to re-locate to Paris where conditions might have been better. "It takes 30 minutes of climbing to reach our villa, but there's not another view in the whole world like the one that's facing us," he wrote. "Freezing cold, though, is damning and making it impossible for me to write," he complained in one of his letters. Vera Muromtseva-Bunina remembered: "There were five or six of us... and we were all writing continuously. This was the only way for us to bear the unbearable, to overcome hunger, cold and fear."
Ivan Bunin was a staunch anti-Nazi, referring to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini as "rabid monkeys". He risked his life, sheltering fugitives (including Jews such as the pianist A. Liebermann and his wife) in his house in Grasse after Vichy was occupied by the Germans. According to Zurov, Bunin invited some of the Soviet war prisoners ("straight from Gatchina", who worked in occupied Grasse) to his home in the mountains, when the heavily guarded German forces' headquarters were only 300 metres (980 ft) away from his home.
The atmosphere in the neighbourhood, though, was not that deadly, judging by the Bunin's diary entry for 1 August 1944: "Nearby there were two guards, there were also one German, and one Russian prisoner, Kolesnikov, a student. The three of us talked a bit. Saying our farewells, a German guard shook my hand firmly".
Under the occupation Bunin never ceased writing but, according to Zurov, "published not a single word. He was receiving offers to contribute to newspapers in unoccupied Switzerland, but declined them. Somebody visited him once, a guest who proved to be an agent, and proposed some literary work, but again Ivan Alekseyevich refused." On 24 September 1944, Bunin wrote to Nikolai Roshchin: "Thank God, the Germans fled Grasse without a fight, on August 23. In the early morning of the 24th the Americans came. What was going on in the town, and in our souls, that's beyond description." "For all this hunger, I'm glad we spent the War years in the South, sharing the life and difficulties of the people, I'm glad that we've managed even to help some", Vera Muromtseva-Bunina later wrote.
Last years
In May 1945 the Bunins returned to 1, rue Jacques Offenbach in Paris. Aside from several spells at the Russian House (a clinic in Juan-les-Pins) where he was convalescing, Bunin stayed in the French capital for the rest of his life.[3] On 15 June, Russkye Novosty newspaper published its correspondent's account of his meeting with an elderly writer who looked "as sprightly and lively as if he had never had to come through those five years of voluntary exile." According to Bunin's friend N. Roshchin, "the liberation of France was a cause of great celebration and exultation for Bunin".
Once, in the audience at a Soviet Russian Theatre show in Paris, Bunin found himself sitting next to a young Red Army colonel. As the latter rose and bowed, saying: "Do I have the honour of sitting next to Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin?" the writer sprang to his feet: "I have the even higher honour of sitting next to an officer of the great Red Army!" he passionately retorted. On 19 June 1945, Bunin held a literary show in Paris where he read some of the Dark Avenue stories. In the autumn of 1945, on the wave of the great patriotic boom, Bunin's 75th birthday was widely celebrated in the Parisian Russian community. Bunin started to communicate closely with the Soviet connoisseurs, journalist Yuri Zhukov and literary agent Boris Mikhailov, the latter receiving from the writer several new stories for proposed publishing in the USSR. Rumours started circulating that the Soviet version of The Complete Bunin was already in the works.
In the late 1940s Bunin, having become interested in the new Soviet literature, in particular the works of Aleksandr Tvardovsky and Konstantin Paustovsky, entertained plans of returning to the Soviet Union, as Aleksandr Kuprin had done in the 1930s. In 1946, speaking to his Communist counterparts in Paris, Bunin praised the Supreme Soviet's decision to return Soviet citizenship to Russian exiles in France, still stopping short of saying "yes" to the continuous urging from the Soviet side for him to return. "It is hard for an old man to go back to places where he's pranced goat-like in better times. Friends and relatives are all buried... That for me would be a graveyard trip," he reportedly said to Zhukov, promising though, to "think more of it." Financial difficulties and the French reading public's relative indifference to the publication of Dark Avenues figured high among his motives. "Would you mind asking the Union of Writers to send me at least some of the money for books that've been published and re-issued in Moscow in the 1920s and 1930s? I am weak, I am short of breath, I need to go to the South but am too skinny to even dream of it," Bunin wrote to Nikolay Teleshov in a 19 November 1946, letter.
Negotiations for the writer's return came to an end after the publication of his Memoirs (Воспоминания, 1950), full of scathing criticism of Soviet cultural life. Apparently aware of his own negativism, Bunin wrote: "I was born too late. If I had been born earlier, my literary memoirs would have been different. I wouldn't have been a witness to 1905, the First World War, then 1917 and what followed: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler... How can I not be jealous of our forefather Noah. He lived through only one flood in his lifetime". Reportedly, the infamous Zhdanov decree was one of the reasons for Bunin's change of mind. On 15 September 1947, Bunin wrote to Mark Aldanov: "I have a letter here from Teleshov, written on 7 September; 'what a pity (he writes) that you've missed all of this: how your book was set up, how everybody was waiting for you here, in the place where you could have been... rich, feasted, and held in such high honour!' Having read this I spent an hour hair-tearing. Then I suddenly became calm. It just came to me all of a sudden all those other things Zhdanov and Fadeev might have given me instead of feasts, riches and laurels..."
After 1948, his health deteriorating, Bunin concentrated upon writing memoirs and a book on Anton Chekhov. He was aided by his wife, who, along with Zurov, completed the work after Bunin's death and saw to its publication in New York in 1955. In English translation it was entitled About Chekhov: The Unfinished Symphony. Bunin also revised a number of stories for publication in new collections, spent considerable time looking through his papers and annotated his collected works for a definitive edition. In 1951 Bunin was elected the first ever hononary International PEN member, representing the community of writers in exile. According to A. J. Heywood, one major event of Bunin's last years was his quarrel in 1948 with Maria Tsetlina and Boris Zaitsev, following the decision by the Union of Russian Writers and Journalists in France to expel holders of Soviet passports from its membership. Bunin responded by resigning from the Union. The writer's last years were marred by bitterness, disillusionment and ill-health; he was suffering from asthma, bronchitis and chronic pneumonia.
On 2 May 1953, Bunin left in his diary a note that proved to be his last one. "Still, this is so dumbfoundingly extraordinary. In a very short while there will be no more of me – and of all the things worldly, of all the affairs and destinies, from then on I will be unaware! And what I'm left to do here is dumbly try to consciously impose upon myself fear and amazement," he wrote.
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin died in a Paris attic flat in the early hours of 8 November 1953. Heart failure, cardiac asthma and pulmonary sclerosis were cited as the causes of death. A lavish burial service took place at the Russian Church on Rue Daru. All the major newspapers, both Russian and French, published large obituaries. For quite a while the coffin was held in a vault. On 30 January 1954, Bunin was buried in the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery.
In the 1950s, Bunin became the first of the Russian writers in exile to be published officially in the USSR. In 1965, The Complete Bunin came out in Moscow in nine volumes. Some of his more controversial books, notably Cursed Days, remained banned in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s.
Legacy
Ivan Bunin made history as the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. The immediate basis for the award was the autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev, but Bunin's legacy is much wider in scope. He is regarded as a master of the short story, described by scholar Oleg Mikhaylov as an "archaist innovator" who, while remaining true to the literary tradition of the 19th century, made huge leaps in terms of artistic expression and purity of style. "[Bunin's] style heralds an historical precedent... technical precision as an instrument of bringing out beauty is sharpened to the extreme. There's hardly another poet who on dozens of pages would fail to produce a single epithet, analogy or metaphor... the ability to perform such a simplification of poetic language without doing any harm to it is the sign of a true artist. When it comes to artistic precision Bunin has no rivals among Russian poets," wrote Vestnik Evropy.
Bunin's early stories were of uneven quality. They were united in their "earthiness", lack of plot and signs of a curious longing for "life's farthest horizons"; young Bunin started his career by trying to approach the ancient dilemmas of the human being, and his first characters were typically old men. His early prose works had one common leitmotif: that of nature's beauty and wisdom bitterly contrasting with humanity's ugly shallowness. As he progressed, Bunin started to receive encouraging reviews: Anton Chekhov warmly greeted his first stories, even if he found too much "density" in them. But it was Gorky who gave Bunin's prose its highest praise. Till the end of his life Gorky (long after the relationship between former friends had soured) rated Bunin among Russian literature's greatest writers and recommended his prose for younger generations of writers as an example of true and unwithering classicism.
As a poet, Bunin started out as a follower of Ivan Nikitin and Aleksey Koltsov, then gravitated towards the Yakov Polonsky and Afanasy Fet school, the latter's impressionism becoming a marked influence. The theme of Bunin's early works seemed to be the demise of the traditional Russian nobleman of the past – something which as an artist he simultaneously gravitated toward and felt averted from. In the 1900s this gave way to a more introspective, philosophical style, akin to Fyodor Tyutchev and his "poetic cosmology". All the while Bunin remained hostile to modernism (and the darker side of it, "decadence"); Mikhaylov saw him as the torch-bearer of Aleksander Pushkin's tradition of "praising the naked simplicity's charms."
The symbolist's flights of imagination and grotesque passions foreign to him, Bunin made nature his field of artistic research and here carved his art to perfection. "Few people are capable of loving nature as Bunin does. And it's this love that makes his scope wide, his vision deep, his colour and aural impressions so rich," wrote Aleksander Blok, a poet from a literary camp Bunin treated as hostile. It was for his books of poetry (the most notable of which is Falling Leaves, 1901) and his poetic translations that Bunin became a three time Pushkin Prize laureate. His verse was praised by Aleksander Kuprin while Blok regarded Bunin as among the first in the hierarchy of Russian poets. One great admirer of Bunin's verse was Vladimir Nabokov, who (even if making scornful remarks about Bunin's prose) compared him to Blok. Some see Bunin as a direct follower of Gogol, who was the first in Russian literature to discover the art of fusing poetry and prose together.
The wholesomeness of Bunin's character allowed him to avoid crises to become virtually the only author of the first decades of the 20th century to develop gradually and logically. "Bunin is the only one who remains true to himself", Gorky wrote in a letter to Chirikov in 1907. Yet, an outsider to all the contemporary trends and literary movements, Bunin was never truly famous in Russia. Becoming an Academician in 1909 alienated him even more from the critics, the majority of whom saw the Academy's decision to expel Gorky several years earlier as a disgrace. The closest Bunin came to fame was in 1911–1912 when The Village and Dry Valley came out. The former, according to the author, "sketched with sharp cruelty the most striking lines of the Russian soul, its light and dark sides, and its often tragic foundations"; it caused passionate, and occasionally very hostile reactions. "Nobody has ever drawn the [Russian] village in such a deep historical context before," Maxim Gorky wrote. After this uncompromising book it became impossible to continue to paint the Russian peasantry life in the idealised, narodnik-style way, Bunin single-handedly closed this long chapter in Russian literature. He maintained the truly classic traditions of realism in Russian literature at the very time when they were in the gravest danger, under attack by modernists and decadents. Yet he was far from "traditional" in many ways, introducing to Russian literature a completely new set of characters and a quite novel, laconic way of saying things. Dry Valley was regarded as another huge step forward for Bunin. While The Village dealt metaphorically with Russia as a whole in a historical context, here, according to the author, the "Russian soul [was brought into the focus] in the attempt to highlight the Slavic psyche's most prominent features." "It's one of the greatest books of Russian horror, and there's an element of liturgy in it... Like a young priest with his faith destroyed, Bunin buried the whole of his class," wrote Gorky.
Bunin's travel sketches were lauded as innovative, notably Bird's Shadow (1907–1911). "He's enchanted with the East, with the 'light-bearing' lands he now describes in such beautiful fashion... For [depicting] the East, both Biblical and modern, Bunin chooses the appropriate style, solemn and incandescent, full of imagery, bathing in waves of sultry sunlight and adorned with arabesques and precious stones, so that, when he tells of these grey-haired ancient times, disappearing in the distant haze of religion and myth, the impression he achieves is that of watching a great chariot of human history moving before our eyes," wrote Yuri Aykhenvald. Critics noted Bunin's uncanny knack of immersing himself into alien cultures, both old and new, best demonstrated in his Eastern cycle of short stories as well as his superb translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha (1898).
Bunin was greatly interested in international myths and folklore, as well as the Russian folkloric tradition. But, (according to Georgy Adamovich) "he was absolutely intolerant towards those of his colleagues who employed stylizations, the "style Russe" manufacturers. His cruel – and rightly so – review of Sergey Gorodetsky's poetry was one example. Even Blok's Kulikovo Field (for me, an outstanding piece) irritated him as too lavishly adorned... "That's Vasnetsov," he commented, meaning 'masquerade and opera'. But he treated things that he felt were not masqueradery differently. Of the Slovo o Polku Igoreve... he said something to the effect that all the poets of the whole world lumped together couldn't have created such wonder, in fact something close to Pushkin's words. Yet translations of the legend... outraged him, particularly that of Balmont. He despised Shmelyov for his pseudo-Russian pretenses, though admitting his literary gift. Bunin had an extraordinarily sharp ear for falseness: he instantly recognized this jarring note and was infuriated. That was why he loved Tolstoy so much. Once, I remember, he spoke of Tolstoy as the one 'who's never said a single word that would be an exaggeration'."
Bunin has often been spoken of as a "cold" writer. Some of his conceptual poems of the 1910s refuted this stereotype, tackling philosophical issues like the mission of an artist ("Insensory", 1916) where he showed fiery passion. According to Oleg Mikhaylov, "Bunin wanted to maintain distance between himself and his reader, being frightened by any closeness... But his pride never excluded passions, just served as a panzer — it was like a flaming torch in an icy shell." On a more personal level, Vera Muromtseva confirmed: "Sure, he wanted to come across as [cold and aloof] and he succeeded by being a first-class actor... people who didn't know him well enough couldn't begin to imagine what depths of soft tenderness his soul was capable of reaching," she wrote in her memoirs.
The best of Bunin's prose ("The Gentleman from San Francisco", "Loopy Ears" and notably, "Brothers", based on Ceylon's religious myth) had a strong philosophical streak to it. In terms of ethics Bunin was under the strong influence of Socrates (as related by Xenophon and Plato), he argued that it was the Greek classic who first expounded many things that were later found in Hindu and Jewish sacred books. Bunin was particularly impressed with Socrates's ideas on the intrinsic value of human individuality, it being a "kind of focus for higher forces" (quoted from Bunin's short story "Back to Rome"). As a purveyor of Socratic ideals, Bunin followed Leo Tolstoy; the latter's observation about beauty being "the crown of virtue" was Bunin's idea too. Critics found deep philosophical motives, and deep undercurrents in Mitya's Love and The Life of Arseniev, two pieces in which "Bunin came closest to a deep metaphysical understanding of the human being's tragic essence." Konstantin Paustovsky called The Life of Arseniev "one of the most outstanding phenomena of world literature."
In his view on Russia and its history Bunin for a while had much in common with A. K. Tolstoy (of whom he spoke with great respect); both tended to idealise the pre-Tatar Rus. Years later he greatly modified his view of Russian history, forming a more negative outlook. "There are two streaks in our people: one dominated by Rus, another by Chudh and Merya. Both have in them a frightening instability, sway... As Russian people say of themselves: we are like wood — both club and icon may come of it, depending on who is working on this wood," Bunin wrote years later.
In emigration Bunin continued his experiments with extremely concise, ultra-ionized prose, taking Chekhov and Tolstoy's ideas on expressive economy to the last extreme. The result of this was God's Tree, a collection of stories so short, some of them were half a page long. Professor Pyotr Bitsilly thought God's Tree to be "the most perfect of Bunin's works and the most exemplary. Nowhere else can such eloquent laconism can be found, such definitive and exquisite writing, such freedom of expression and really magnificent demonstration of [mind] over matter. No other book of his has in it such a wealth of material for understanding of Bunin's basic method – a method in which, in fact, there was nothing but basics. This simple but precious quality – honesty bordering on hatred of any pretense – is what makes Bunin so closely related to... Pushkin, Tolstoy and Chekhov," Bitsilli wrote.
Influential, even if controversial, was his Cursed Days 1918–1920 diary, of which scholar Thomas Gaiton Marullo wrote:
The work is important for several reasons. Cursed Days is one of the very few anti-Bolshevik diaries to be preserved from the time of the Russian Revolution and civil war. It recreates events with graphic and gripping immediacy. Unlike the works of early Soviets and emigres and their self-censoring backdrop of memory, myth, and political expediency, Bunin's truth reads almost like an aberration. Cursed Days also links Russian anti-utopian writing of the nineteenth century to its counterpart in the twentieth. Reminiscent of the fiction of Dostoevsky, it features an 'underground man' who does not wish to be an 'organ stop' or to affirm 'crystal palaces'. Bunin's diary foreshadowed such 'libelous' memoirs as Yevgenia Ginzburg's Journey into the Whirlwind (1967) and Within the Whirlwind, and Nadezhda Mandelstam's Hope Against Hope (1970) and Hope Abandoned (1974), the accounts of two courageous women caught up in the Stalinist terror of the 1930s. Cursed Days also preceded the "rebellious" anti-Soviet tradition that began with Evgeny Zamyatin and Yury Olesha, moved on to Mikhail Bulgakov, and reached a climax with Boris Pasternak and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One can argue that, in its painful exposing of political and social utopias, Cursed Days heralded the anti-utopian writing of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Bunin and Zamyatin had correctly understood that the Soviet experiment was destined to self destruct."
Despite his works being virtually banned in the Soviet Union up until the mid-1950s, Bunin exerted a strong influence over several generations of Soviet writers. Among those who owed a lot to Bunin, critics mentioned Mikhail Sholokhov, Konstantin Fedin, Konstantin Paustovsky, Ivan Sokolov-Mikitov, and later Yuri Kazakov, Vasily Belov and Viktor Likhonosov.
Ivan Bunin's books have been translated into many languages, and the world's leading writers praised his gift. Romain Rolland called Bunin an "artistic genius"; he was spoken and written of in much the same vein by writers like Henri de Régnier, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jerome K. Jerome, and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. In 1950, on the eve of his 80th birthday, François Mauriac expressed in a letter his delight and admiration, but also his deep sympathy to Bunin's personal qualities and the dignified way he'd got through all the tremendous difficulties life had thrown at him. In a letter published by Figaro, André Gide greeted Bunin "on behalf of all France", calling him "the great artist" and adding: "I don't know of any other writer... who's so to the point in expressing human feelings, simple and yet always so fresh and new". European critics often compared Bunin to both Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, crediting him with having renovated the Russian realist tradition both in essence and in form.
On 22 October 2020 Google celebrated his 150th birthday with a Google Doodle.
Private life
Bunin's first love was Varvara Pashchenko, his classmate in Yelets [not plausible as Ivan was at a male gymnasium and Varvara at an all female gymnasium], daughter of a doctor and an actress, whom he fell for in 1889 and then went on to work with in Oryol in 1892. Their relationship was difficult in many ways: the girl's father detested the union because of Bunin's impecunious circumstances, Varvara herself was not sure if she wanted to marry and Bunin too was uncertain whether marriage was really appropriate for him. The couple moved to Poltava and settled in Yuly Bunin's home, but by 1892 their relations deteriorated, Pashchenko complaining in a letter to Yuly Bunin that serious quarrels were frequent, and begging for assistance in bringing their union to an end. The affair eventually ended in 1894 with her marrying actor and writer A. N. Bibikov, Ivan Bunin's close friend. Bunin felt betrayed, and for a time his family feared the possibility of him committing suicide. According to some sources it was Varvara Pashchenko who many years later would appear under the name of Lika in The Life of Arseniev (chapter V of the book, entitled Lika, was also published as a short story). Scholar Tatyana Alexandrova, though, questioned this identification (suggesting Mirra Lokhvitskaya might have been the major prototype), while Vera Muromtseva thought of Lika as a 'collective' character aggregating the writer's reminiscences of several women he knew in his youth.
In the summer of 1898 while staying with writer A. M. Fedorov, Bunin became acquainted with N. P. Tsakni, a Greek social-democrat activist, the publisher and editor of the Odessa newspaper Yuzhnoe Obozrenie (Southern Review). Invited to contribute to the paper, Bunin became virtually a daily visitor to the Tsakni family dacha and fell in love with the latter's 18-year-old daughter, Anna (1879–1963). On 23 September 1898, the two married, but by 1899 signs of alienation between them were obvious. At the time of their acrimonious separation in March 1900 Anna was pregnant. She gave birth to a son, Nikolai, in Odessa on 30 August of the same year. The boy, of whom his father saw very little, died on 16 January 1905, from a combination of scarlet fever, measles and heart complications.
Ivan Bunin's second wife was Vera Muromtseva (1881–1961), niece of the high-ranking politician Sergey Muromtsev. The two had initially been introduced to each other by writer Ekaterina Lopatina some years earlier, but it was their encounter at the house of the writer Boris Zaitsev in November 1906 which led to an intense relationship which resulted in the couple becoming inseparable until Bunin's death. Bunin and Muromtseva married officially only in 1922, after he managed at last to divorce Tsakni legally. Decades later Vera Muromtseva-Bunina became famous in her own right with her book Life of Bunin.
In 1927, while in Grasse, Bunin fell for the Russian poet Galina Kuznetsova, on vacation there with her husband. The latter, outraged by the well-publicized affair, stormed off, while Bunin not only managed to somehow convince Vera Muromtseva that his love for Galina was purely platonic, but also invite the latter to stay in the house as a secretary and 'a family member'. The situation was complicated by the fact that Leonid Zurov, who stayed with the Bunins as a guest for many years, was secretly in love with Vera (of which her husband was aware); this made it more of a "love quadrilateral" than a mere triangle. Bunin and Kuznetsova's affair ended dramatically in 1942 when the latter, now deeply in love with another frequent guest, opera singer Margo Stepun, sister of Fyodor Stepun, left Bunin, who felt disgraced and insulted. The writer's tempestuous private life in emigration became the subject of the internationally acclaimed Russian movie, His Wife's Diary (or The Diary of His Wife) (2000). which caused controversy and was described by some as masterful and thought-provoking, but by others as vulgar, inaccurate and in bad taste. Vera Muromtseva-Bunina later accepted both Kuznetsova and Margarita Stepun as friends: "nashi" ("ours"), as she called them, lived with the Bunins for long periods during the Second World War. According to A.J. Heywood of Leeds University, in Germany and then New York, after the war, Kuznetsova and Stepun negotiated with publishers on Bunin's behalf and maintained a regular correspondence with Ivan and Vera up until their respective deaths.
Bibliography
Novel
The Life of Arseniev (Жизнь Арсеньева, 1927–1933, 1939)
Short novels
The Village (Деревня, 1910)
Dry Valley (Суходол, 1912)
Mitya's Love (Митина любовь, 1924)
Short story collections
To the Edge of the World and Other Stories (На край света и другие рассказы, 1897)
Antonovka Apples (Антоновские яблоки, 1900)
Flowers of the Field (Цветы полевые, 1901)
Bird's Shadow (Тень птицы, 1907–1911; Paris, 1931)
Ioann the Mourner (Иоанн Рыдалец, 1913)
Chalice of Life (Чаша жизни, Petersburg, 1915; Paris, 1922)
The Gentleman from San Francisco (Господин из Сан-Франциско, 1916)
Chang's Dreams (Сны Чанга, 1916, 1918)
Temple of the Sun (Храм Солнца, 1917)
Primal Love (Начальная любовь, Prague, 1921)
Scream (Крик, Paris, 1921)
Rose of Jerico (Роза Иерихона, Berlin, 1924)
Mitya's Love (Митина любовь, Paris, 1924; New York, 1953)
Sunstroke (Солнечный удар, Paris, 1927)
Sacred Tree (Божье древо, Paris, 1931)
Dark Avenues (Тёмные аллеи, New York, 1943; Paris, 1946)
Judea in Spring (Весной в Иудее, New York, 1953)
Loopy Ears and Other Stories (Петлистые уши и другие рассказы, 1954, New York, posthumous)
Poetry
Poems (1887–1891) (1891, originally as a literary supplement to Orlovsky vestnik newspaper)
Under the Open Skies (Под открытым небом, 1898)
Falling Leaves (Листопад, Moscow, 1901)
Poems (1903) (Стихотворения, 1903)
Poems (1903–1906) (Стихотворения, 1906)
Poems of 1907 (Saint Petersburg, 1908)
Selected Poems (Paris, 1929)
Translations
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The Song of Hiawatha (1898)
Memoirs and diaries
Waters Aplenty (Воды многие, 1910, 1926)
Cursed Days (Окаянные дни, 1925–1926)[66]
Memoirs. Under the hammer and sickle. (Воспоминания. Под серпом и молотом. 1950)
Duncan, physically spent after completing a strenuous set of exercises as part of "The Chin-up Program". Duncan works full-time as a fireman but trained as a gymnast from an early age. He uses the gym as a space for strength and conditioning a well as to develop his acrobatic and hand balancing skills.
75% of the world are physically unable to digest dairy products. 95% of vegans are unable to draw well.
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin was the first Russian writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933. 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 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 Tolstoy and Chekhov.
Biography
Early life
Ivan Bunin was born on his parental estate in Voronezh province, the third and youngest son of Aleksey Nikolayevich Bunin (1827–1906) and Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Bunina (née Chubarova, 1835–1910). He had two younger sisters: Masha (Maria Bunina-Laskarzhevskaya, 1873–1930) and Nadya (that latter died very young) and two elder brothers, Yuly and Yevgeny. Having come from a long line of rural gentry, Bunin was especially proud that poets Anna Bunina (1774–1829) and Vasily Zhukovsky (1783–1852) were among his ancestors. He wrote in his 1952 autobiography:
I come from an old and noble house that has given Russia a good many illustrious persons in politics as well as in the arts, among whom two poets of the early nineteenth century stand out in particular: Anna Búnina and Vasíly Zhukovsky, one of the great names in Russian literature, the son of Athanase Bunin and the Turk Salma.
"The Bunins are direct ancestors of Simeon Bunkovsky, a nobleman who came from Poland to the court of the Great Prince Vasily Vasilyevich," he wrote in 1915, quoting the Russian gentry's Armorial Book. Chubarovs, according to Bunin, "knew very little about themselves except that their ancestors were landowners in Kostromskaya, Moskovskaya, Orlovskya and Tambovskaya Guberniyas". "As for me, from early childhood I was such a libertine as to be totally indifferent both to my own 'high blood' and to the loss of whatever might have been connected to it," he added.
Ivan Bunin's early childhood, spent in Butyrky Khutor and later in Ozerky (of Yelets county, Lipetskaya Oblast), was a happy one: the boy was surrounded by intelligent and loving people. Father Alexei Nikolayevich was described by Bunin as a very strong man, both physically and mentally, quick-tempered and addicted to gambling, impulsive and generous, eloquent in a theatrical fashion and totally illogical. "Before the Crimean War he'd never even known the taste of wine, on return he became a heavy drinker, although never a typical alcoholic," he wrote. His mother Lyudmila Alexandrovna's character was much more subtle and tender: this Bunin attributed to the fact that "her father spent years in Warsaw where he acquired certain European tastes which made him quite different from fellow local land-owners." It was Lyudmila Alexandrovna who introduced her son to the world of Russian folklore. Elder brothers Yuly and Yevgeny showed great interest in mathematics and painting respectively, his mother said later, yet, in their mother's words, "Vanya has been different from the moment of birth... none of the others had a soul like his."
Young Bunin's susceptibility and keenness to the nuances of nature were extraordinary. "The quality of my vision was such that I've seen all seven of the stars of Pleiades, heard a marmot's whistle a verst away, and could get drunk from the smells of landysh or an old book," he remembered later. Bunin's experiences of rural life had a profound impact on his writing. "There, amidst the deep silence of vast fields, among cornfields – or, in winter, huge snowdrifts which were stepping up to our very doorsteps – I spent my childhood which was full of melancholic poetry," Bunin later wrote of his Ozerky days.
Ivan Bunin's first home tutor was an ex-student named Romashkov, whom he later described as a "positively bizarre character," a wanderer full of fascinating stories, "always thought-provoking even if not altogether comprehensible." Later it was university-educated Yuly Bunin (deported home for being a Narodnik activist) who taught his younger brother psychology, philosophy and the social sciences as part of his private, domestic education. It was Yuly who encouraged Ivan to read the Russian classics and to write himself. Until 1920 Yuly (who once described Ivan as "undeveloped yet gifted and capable of original independent thought") was the latter's closest friend and mentor. "I had a passion for painting, which, I think, shows in my writings. I wrote both poetry and prose fairly early and my works were also published from an early date," wrote Bunin in his short autobiography.
By the end of the 1870s, the Bunins, plagued by the gambling habits of the head of the family, had lost most of their wealth. In 1881 Ivan was sent to a public school in Yelets, but never completed the course: he was expelled in March 1886 for failing to return to the school after the Christmas holidays due to the family's financial difficulties.
Literary career
In May 1887 Bunin published his first poem "Village Paupers" (Деревенские нищие) in the Saint Petersburg literary magazine Rodina (Motherland). In 1891 his first short story "Country Sketch (Деревенский эскиз) appeared in the Nikolay Mikhaylovsky-edited journal Russkoye Bogatstvo. In Spring 1889, Bunin followed his brother to Kharkiv, where he became a government clerk, then an assistant editor of a local paper, librarian, and court statistician. In January 1889 he moved to Oryol to work on the local Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper, first as an editorial assistant and later as de facto editor; this enabled him to publish his short stories, poems and reviews in the paper's literary section. There he met Varvara Pashchenko and fell passionately in love with her. In August 1892 the couple moved to Poltava and settled in the home of Yuly Bunin. The latter helped his younger brother to find a job in the local zemstvo administration.
Ivan Bunin's debut book of poetry Poems. 1887–1891 was published in 1891 in Oryol. Some of his articles, essays and short stories, published earlier in local papers, began to feature in the Saint Petersburg periodicals.
Bunin spent the first half of 1894 travelling all over Ukraine. "Those were the times when I fell in love with Malorossiya (Little Russia), its villages and steppes, was eagerly meeting its people and listening to Ukrainian songs, this country's very soul," he later wrote.
In 1895 Bunin visited the Russian capital for the first time. There he was to meet the Narodniks Nikolay Mikhaylovsky and Sergey Krivenko, Anton Chekhov (with whom he began a correspondence and became close friends), Alexander Ertel, and the poets Konstantin Balmont and Valery Bryusov.
1899 saw the beginning of Bunin's friendship with Maxim Gorky, to whom he dedicated his Falling Leaves (1901) collection of poetry and whom he later visited at Capri. Bunin became involved with Gorky's Znanie (Knowledge) group. Another influence and inspiration was Leo Tolstoy whom he met in Moscow in January 1894. Admittedly infatuated with the latter's prose, Bunin tried desperately to follow the great man's lifestyle too, visiting sectarian settlements and doing a lot of hard work. He was even sentenced to three months in prison for illegally distributing Tolstoyan literature in the autumn of 1894, but avoided jail due to a general amnesty proclaimed on the occasion of the succession to the throne of Nicholas II. Tellingly, it was Tolstoy himself who discouraged Bunin from slipping into what he called "total peasantification." Several years later, while still admiring Tolstoy's prose, Bunin changed his views regarding his philosophy which he now saw as utopian.
In 1895–1896 Bunin divided his time between Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In 1897 his first short story collection To the Edge of the World and Other Stories came out, followed a year later by In the Open Air (Под открытым небом, 1898), his second book of verse. In June 1898 Bunin moved to Odessa. Here he became close to the Southern Russia Painters Comradeship, became friends with Yevgeny Bukovetski and Pyotr Nilus. In the winter of 1899–1900 he began attending the Sreda (Wednesday) literary group in Moscow, striking up a friendship with the Nikolay Teleshov, among others. Here the young writer made himself a reputation as an uncompromising advocate of the realistic traditions of classic Russian literature. "Bunin made everybody uncomfortable. Having got this severe and sharp eye for real art, feeling acutely the power of a word, he was full of hatred towards every kind of artistic excess. In times when (quoting Andrey Bely) "throwing pineapples to the sky" was the order of the day, Bunin's very presence made words stick in people's throats," Boris Zaitsev later remembered. He met Anton Chekov in 1896, and a strong friendship ensued.
1900–1909
The collections Poems and Stories (1900) and Flowers of the Field (1901) were followed by Falling Leaves (Листопад, 1901), Bunin's third book of poetry (including a large poem of the same title first published in the October 1900 issue of Zhizn (Life) magazine). It was welcomed by both critics and colleagues, among them Alexander Ertel, Alexander Blok and Aleksandr Kuprin, who praised its "rare subtlety." Even though the book testifies to his association with the Symbolists, primarily Valery Bryusov, at the time many saw it as an antidote to the pretentiousness of 'decadent' poetry which was then popular in Russia. Falling Leaves was "definitely Pushkin-like", full of "inner poise, sophistication, clarity and wholesomeness," according to critic Korney Chukovsky. Soon after the book's release, Gorky called Bunin (in a letter to Valery Bryusov) "the first poet of our times." It was for Falling Leaves (along with the translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, 1898) that Bunin was awarded his first Pushkin Prize. Bunin justified a pause of two years in the early 1900s by the need for "inner growth" and spiritual change.
At the turn of the century Bunin made a major switch from poetry to prose which started to change both in form and texture, becoming richer in lexicon, more compact and perfectly poised. Citing Gustave Flaubert, whose work he admired, as an influence, Bunin was "demonstrating that prose could be driven by poetic rhythms, but still remain prose." According to the writer's nephew Pusheshnikov, Bunin once told him: "Apparently I was born a versemaker... like Turgenev, who was a versemaker, first and foremost. Finding the true rhythm of the story was for him the main thing – everything else was supplementary. And for me the crucial thing is to find the proper rhythm. Once it's there, everything else comes in spontaneously, and I know when the story is done."
In 1900 the novella Antonov Apples (Антоновские яблоки) was published; later it was included in textbooks and is regarded as Bunin's first real masterpiece, but it was criticised at the time as too nostalgic and elitist, allegedly idealising "the Russian nobleman's past." Other acclaimed novellas of this period, On the Farm, The News from Home, and To the Edge of the World (На край света), showing a penchant for extreme precision of language, delicate description of nature and detailed psychological analysis, made him a popular and well-respected young author.
In 1902 Znanie started publishing the Complete Bunin series; five volumes appeared by the year 1909. Three books, Poems (1903), Poems (1903–1906) and Poems of 1907 (the latter published by Znanie in 1908), formed the basis of a special (non-numbered) volume of the Complete series which in 1910 was published in Saint Petersburg as Volume VI. Poems and Stories (1907–1909) by the Obschestvennaya Polza (Public Benefit) publishing house. Bunin's works featured regularly in Znanie's literary compilations; beginning with Book I, where "Black Earth" appeared along with several poems, all in all he contributed to 16 books of the series.
In the early 1900s Bunin travelled extensively. He was a close friend of Chekhov and his family and continued visiting them regularly until 1904. The October social turmoil of 1905 found Bunin in Yalta, Crimea, from where he moved back to Odessa. Scenes of "class struggle" there did not impress the writer, for he saw them as little more than the Russian common people's craving for anarchy and destruction.
In November 1906 Bunin's passionate affair with Vera Muromtseva began. The girl's family was unimpressed with Bunin's position as a writer, but the couple defied social convention, moving in together and in April 1907 leaving Russia for an extended tour through Egypt and Palestine. The Bird's Shadow (Тень птицы) (1907–1911) collection (published as a separate book in 1931 in Paris) came as a result of this voyage. These travelling sketches were to change the critics' assessment of Bunin's work. Before them Bunin was mostly regarded as (using his own words) "a melancholy lyricist, singing hymns to noblemen's estates and idylls of the past." In the late 1900s critics started to pay more notice to the colourfulness and dynamics of his poetry and prose. "In terms of artistic precision he has no equal among Russian poets," Vestnik Evropy wrote at the time. Bunin attributed much importance to his travels, counting himself among that special "type of people who tend to feel strongest for alien times and cultures rather than those of their own" and admitting to being drawn to "all the necropolises of the world." Besides, foreign voyages had, admittedly, an eye-opening effect on the writer, helping him to see Russian reality more objectively. In the early 1910s Bunin produced several famous novellas which came as a direct result of this change in perspective.
In October 1909 Bunin received his second Pushkin Prize for Poems 1903–1906 and translations of (Lord Byron's Cain, and parts of Longfellow's The Golden Legend). He was elected a member of the Russian Academy the same year. In Bunin, The Academy crowns "not a daring innovator, not an adventurous searcher but arguably the last gifted pupil of talented teachers who's kept and preserved... all the most beautiful testaments of their school," wrote critic Aleksander Izmailov, formulating the conventional view of the time. It was much later that Bunin was proclaimed one of the most innovative Russian writers of the century.
1910–1920
In 1910 Bunin published The Village (Деревня), a bleak portrayal of Russian country life, which he depicted as full of stupidity, brutality, and violence. This book caused controversy and made him famous. Its harsh realism (with "characters having sunk so far below the average level of intelligence as to be scarcely human") prompted Maxim Gorky to call Bunin "the best Russian writer of the day."
"I've left behind my "narodnicism" which didn't last very long, my Tolstoyism too and now I'm closer to the social democrats, but I still stay away from political parties," Bunin wrote in the early 1910s. He said he realised now that the working class had become a force powerful enough to "overcome the whole of Western Europe," but warned against the possible negative effect of the Russian workers' lack of organisation, the one thing that made them different from their Western counterparts. He criticised the Russian intelligentsia for being ignorant of the common people's life, and spoke of a tragic schism between "the cultured people and the uncultured masses."
In December 1910 Bunin and Muromtseva made another journey to the Middle East, then visited Ceylon; this four-month trip inspired such stories as "Brothers" (Братья) and "The Tsar of Tsars City" (Город царя царей). On his return to Odessa in April 1911, Bunin wrote "Waters Aplenty" (Воды многие), a travel diary, much lauded after its publication in 1926. In 1912 the novel Dry Valley (Суходол) came out, his second major piece of semi-autobiographical fiction, concerning the dire state of the Russian rural community. Again it left the literary critics divided: social democrats praised its stark honesty, many others were appalled with the author's negativism.
Bunin and Muromtseva spent three winters (1912–1914) with Gorky on the island of Capri, where they met with Fyodor Shalyapin and Leonid Andreev, among others. In Russia the couple divided their time mainly between Moscow and a Bunin family estate at Glotovo village nearby Oryol; it was there that they spent the first couple years of World War I. Dogged by anxieties concerning Russia's future, Bunin was still working hard. In the winter of 1914–1915 he finished a new volume of prose and verse entitled The Chalice of Life (Чаша жизни), published in early 1915 to wide acclaim (including high praise from the French poet Rene Ghil). The same year saw the publication of The Gentleman from San Francisco (Господин из Сан-Франциско), arguably the best-known of Bunin's short stories, which was translated into English by D. H. Lawrence. Bunin was a productive translator himself. After Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha (1898), he did translations of Byron, Tennyson, Musset and François Coppée.
During the war years, Bunin completed the preparation of a six-volume edition of his Collected Works, which was published by Adolph Marks in 1915. Throughout this time Bunin kept aloof from contemporary literary debates. "I did not belong to any literary school; I was neither a decadent, nor a symbolist nor a romantic, nor a naturalist. Of literary circles I frequented only a few," he commented later. By the spring of 1916, overcome by pessimism, Bunin all but stopped writing, complaining to his nephew, N.A. Pusheshnikov, of how insignificant he felt as a writer and how depressed he was for being unable to do more than be horrified at the millions of deaths being caused by the War.
In May 1917 the Bunins moved to Glotovo and stayed there until autumn. In October the couple returned to Moscow to stay with Vera's parents. Life in the city was dangerous (residents had to guard their own homes, maintaining nightly vigils) but Bunin still visited publishers and took part in the meetings of the Sreda and The Art circles. While dismissive of Ivan Goremykin (the 1914–1916 Russian Government Premier), he criticised opposition figures like Pavel Milyukov as "false defenders of the Russian people". In April 1917 he severed all ties with the pro-revolutionary Gorky, causing a rift which would never be healed. On 21 May 1918, Bunin and Muromtseva obtained the official permission to leave Moscow for Kiev, then continued their journey through to Odessa. By 1919 Bunin was working for the Volunteer Army as the editor of the cultural section of the anti-Bolshevik newspaper Iuzhnoe Slovo. On 26 January 1920, the couple boarded the last French ship in Odessa and soon were in Constantinople.
Emigration
Bunin and Muromtseva arrived in Paris, from then on dividing their time between apartments at 1, rue Jacques Offenbach in the 16th arrondissement of Paris and rented villas in or near Grasse in the Alpes Maritimes. Much as he hated Bolshevism, Bunin never endorsed the idea of foreign intervention in Russia. "It's for a common Russian countryman to sort out his problems for himself, not for foreign masters to come and maintain their new order in our home. I'd rather die in exile than return home with the help of Poland or England. As my father taught me: 'Love your own tub even if it's broken up'", he once said, allegedly, to Merezhkovsky who still cherished hopes for Pilsudsky's military success against the Bolshevik regime.
Slowly and painfully, overcoming physical and mental stress, Bunin returned to his usual mode of writing. Scream, his first book published in France, was compiled of short stories written in 1911–1912, years he referred to as the happiest of his life.
In France Bunin published many of his pre-revolutionary works and collections of original novellas, regularly contributing to the Russian emigre press. According to Vera Muromtseva, her husband often complained of his inability to get used to life in the new world. He said he belonged to "the old world, that of Goncharov and Tolstoy, of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, where his muse had been lost, never to be found again." Yet his new prose was marked with obvious artistic progress: Mitya's Love (Митина любовь, 1924), Sunstroke (Солнечный удаp, 1925), Cornet Yelagin's Case (Дело коpнета Елагина, 1925) and especially The Life of Arseniev (Жизнь Аpсеньева, written in 1927–1929, published in 1930–1933) were praised by critics as bringing Russian literature to new heights. Konstantin Paustovsky called The Life of Arseniev an apex of the whole of Russian prose and "one of the most striking phenomena in the world of literature."
In 1924, he published the "Manifesto of the Russian Emigration", in which he i.a. declared:
There was Russia, inhabited by a mighty family, which had been created by the blessed work of countless generations. ... What was then done to them? They paid for the deposal of the ruler with the destruction of literally the whole home and with unheard of fratricide. ... A bastard, a moral idiot from the birth, Lenin presented to the World at the height of his activities something monstrous, staggering, he discorded the largest country of the Earth and killed millions of people, and in the broad day-light it is being disputed: was he a benefactor of the mankind or not?
In 1925–1926 Cursed Days (Окаянные дни), Bunin's diary of the years 1918–1920 started to appear in the Paris-based Vozrozhdenye newspaper (its final version was published by Petropolis in 1936). According to Bunin scholar Thomas Gaiton Marullo, Cursed Days, one of the very few anti-Bolshevik diaries to be preserved from the time of the Russian Revolution and civil war, linked "Russian anti-utopian writing of the nineteenth century to its counterpart in the twentieth" and, "in its painful exposing of political and social utopias... heralded the anti-utopian writing of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Bunin and Zamyatin had correctly understood that the Soviet experiment was destined to self destruct," Marullo wrote.
In the 1920s and 1930s Bunin was regarded as the moral and artistic spokesman for a generation of expatriates who awaited the collapse of Bolshevism, a revered senior figure among living Russian writers, true to the tradition of Tolstoy and Chekhov. He became the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, which was awarded to him in 1933 "for following through and developing with chastity and artfulness the traditions of Russian classic prose." Per Halstroem, in his celebratory speech, noted the laureate's poetic gift. Bunin for his part praised the Swedish Academy for honouring a writer in exile. In his speech, addressing the Academy, he said:
Overwhelmed by the congratulations and telegrams that began to flood me, I thought in the solitude and silence of night about the profound meaning in the choice of the Swedish Academy. For the first time since the founding of the Nobel Prize you have awarded it to an exile. Who am I in truth? An exile enjoying the hospitality of France, to whom I likewise owe an eternal debt of gratitude. But, gentlemen of the Academy, let me say that irrespective of my person and my work your choice in itself is a gesture of great beauty. It is necessary that there should be centers of absolute independence in the world. No doubt, all differences of opinion, of philosophical and religious creeds, are represented around this table. But we are united by one truth, the freedom of thought and conscience; to this freedom we owe civilization. For us writers, especially, freedom is a dogma and an axiom. Your choice, gentlemen of the Academy, has proved once more that in Sweden the love of liberty is truly a national cult.
In France, Bunin found himself, for the first time, at the center of public attention. On 10 November 1933, the Paris newspapers came out with huge headlines: "Bunin — the Nobel Prize laureate" giving the whole of the Russian community in France cause for celebration. "You see, up until then we, émigrés, felt like we were at the bottom there. Then all of a sudden our writer received an internationally acclaimed prize! And not for some political scribblings, but for real prose! After having been asked to write a first page column for the Paris Revival newspaper, I stepped out in the middle of the night onto the Place d'Italie and toured the local bistros on my way home, drinking in each and every one of them to the health of Ivan Bunin!" fellow Russian writer Boris Zaitsev wrote. Back in the USSR the reaction was negative: Bunin's triumph was explained there as "an imperialist intrigue."
Dealing with the Prize, Bunin donated 100,000 francs to a literary charity fund, but the process of money distribution caused controversy among his fellow Russian émigré writers. It was during this time that Bunin's relationship deteriorated with Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky (a fellow Nobel Prize nominee who once suggested that they divide the Prize between the two, should one of them get it, and had been refused). Although reluctant to become involved in politics, Bunin was now feted as both a writer and the embodiment of non-Bolshevik Russian values and traditions. His travels throughout Europe featured prominently on the front pages of the Russian emigre press for the remainder of the decade.
In 1933 he allowed calligrapher Guido Colucci to create a unique manuscript of "Un crime", a French translation of one of his novellas, illustrated with three original gouaches by Nicolas Poliakoff.
In 1934–1936, The Complete Bunin in 11 volumes was published in Berlin by Petropolis. Bunin cited this edition as the most credible one and warned his future publishers against using any other versions of his work rather than those featured in the Petropolis collection. 1936 was marred by an incident in Lindau on the Swiss-German border when Bunin, having completed his European voyage, was stopped and unceremoniously searched. The writer (who caught cold and fell ill after the night spent under arrest) responded by writing a letter to the Paris-based Latest News newspaper. The incident caused disbelief and outrage in France. In 1937 Bunin finished his book The Liberation of Tolstoy (Освобождение Толстого), held in the highest regard by Leo Tolstoy scholars.
In 1938 Bunin began working on what would later become a celebrated cycle of nostalgic stories with a strong erotic undercurrent and a Proustian ring. The first eleven stories of it came out as Dark Avenues (or Dark Alleys, Тёмные аллеи) in New York (1943); the cycle appeared in a full version in 1946 in France. These stories assumed a more abstract and metaphysical tone which has been identified with his need to find refuge from the "nightmarish reality" of Nazi occupation. Bunin's prose became more introspective, which was attributed to "the fact that a Russian is surrounded by enormous, broad and lasting things: the steppes, the sky. In the West everything is cramped and enclosed, and this automatically produces a turning towards the self, inwards."
The war years
As World War II broke out, Bunin's friends in New York, anxious to help the Nobel Prize laureate get out of France, issued officially-endorsed invitations for him to travel to the US, and in 1941 they received their Nansen passports enabling them to make the trip. But the couple chose to remain in Grasse. They spent the war years at Villa Jeanette, high in the mountains. Two young writers became long-term residents in the Bunin household at the time: Leonid Zurov (1902–1971), who had arrived on a visit from Latvia at Bunin's invitation earlier, in late 1929, and remained with them for the rest of their lives, and Nikolai Roshchin (1896–1956), who returned to the Soviet Union after the war.
Members of this small commune (occasionally joined by Galina Kuznetsova and Margarita Stepun) were bent on survival: they grew vegetables and greens, helping one another out at a time when, according to Zurov, "Grasse's population had eaten all of their cats and dogs". A journalist who visited the Villa in 1942 described Bunin as a "skinny and emaciated man, looking like an ancient patrician". For Bunin, though, this isolation was a blessing and he refused to re-locate to Paris where conditions might have been better. "It takes 30 minutes of climbing to reach our villa, but there's not another view in the whole world like the one that's facing us," he wrote. "Freezing cold, though, is damning and making it impossible for me to write," he complained in one of his letters. Vera Muromtseva-Bunina remembered: "There were five or six of us... and we were all writing continuously. This was the only way for us to bear the unbearable, to overcome hunger, cold and fear."
Ivan Bunin was a staunch anti-Nazi, referring to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini as "rabid monkeys". He risked his life, sheltering fugitives (including Jews such as the pianist A. Liebermann and his wife) in his house in Grasse after Vichy was occupied by the Germans. According to Zurov, Bunin invited some of the Soviet war prisoners ("straight from Gatchina", who worked in occupied Grasse) to his home in the mountains, when the heavily guarded German forces' headquarters were only 300 metres (980 ft) away from his home.
The atmosphere in the neighbourhood, though, was not that deadly, judging by the Bunin's diary entry for 1 August 1944: "Nearby there were two guards, there were also one German, and one Russian prisoner, Kolesnikov, a student. The three of us talked a bit. Saying our farewells, a German guard shook my hand firmly".
Under the occupation Bunin never ceased writing but, according to Zurov, "published not a single word. He was receiving offers to contribute to newspapers in unoccupied Switzerland, but declined them. Somebody visited him once, a guest who proved to be an agent, and proposed some literary work, but again Ivan Alekseyevich refused." On 24 September 1944, Bunin wrote to Nikolai Roshchin: "Thank God, the Germans fled Grasse without a fight, on August 23. In the early morning of the 24th the Americans came. What was going on in the town, and in our souls, that's beyond description." "For all this hunger, I'm glad we spent the War years in the South, sharing the life and difficulties of the people, I'm glad that we've managed even to help some", Vera Muromtseva-Bunina later wrote.
Last years
In May 1945 the Bunins returned to 1, rue Jacques Offenbach in Paris. Aside from several spells at the Russian House (a clinic in Juan-les-Pins) where he was convalescing, Bunin stayed in the French capital for the rest of his life.[3] On 15 June, Russkye Novosty newspaper published its correspondent's account of his meeting with an elderly writer who looked "as sprightly and lively as if he had never had to come through those five years of voluntary exile." According to Bunin's friend N. Roshchin, "the liberation of France was a cause of great celebration and exultation for Bunin".
Once, in the audience at a Soviet Russian Theatre show in Paris, Bunin found himself sitting next to a young Red Army colonel. As the latter rose and bowed, saying: "Do I have the honour of sitting next to Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin?" the writer sprang to his feet: "I have the even higher honour of sitting next to an officer of the great Red Army!" he passionately retorted. On 19 June 1945, Bunin held a literary show in Paris where he read some of the Dark Avenue stories. In the autumn of 1945, on the wave of the great patriotic boom, Bunin's 75th birthday was widely celebrated in the Parisian Russian community. Bunin started to communicate closely with the Soviet connoisseurs, journalist Yuri Zhukov and literary agent Boris Mikhailov, the latter receiving from the writer several new stories for proposed publishing in the USSR. Rumours started circulating that the Soviet version of The Complete Bunin was already in the works.
In the late 1940s Bunin, having become interested in the new Soviet literature, in particular the works of Aleksandr Tvardovsky and Konstantin Paustovsky, entertained plans of returning to the Soviet Union, as Aleksandr Kuprin had done in the 1930s. In 1946, speaking to his Communist counterparts in Paris, Bunin praised the Supreme Soviet's decision to return Soviet citizenship to Russian exiles in France, still stopping short of saying "yes" to the continuous urging from the Soviet side for him to return. "It is hard for an old man to go back to places where he's pranced goat-like in better times. Friends and relatives are all buried... That for me would be a graveyard trip," he reportedly said to Zhukov, promising though, to "think more of it." Financial difficulties and the French reading public's relative indifference to the publication of Dark Avenues figured high among his motives. "Would you mind asking the Union of Writers to send me at least some of the money for books that've been published and re-issued in Moscow in the 1920s and 1930s? I am weak, I am short of breath, I need to go to the South but am too skinny to even dream of it," Bunin wrote to Nikolay Teleshov in a 19 November 1946, letter.
Negotiations for the writer's return came to an end after the publication of his Memoirs (Воспоминания, 1950), full of scathing criticism of Soviet cultural life. Apparently aware of his own negativism, Bunin wrote: "I was born too late. If I had been born earlier, my literary memoirs would have been different. I wouldn't have been a witness to 1905, the First World War, then 1917 and what followed: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler... How can I not be jealous of our forefather Noah. He lived through only one flood in his lifetime". Reportedly, the infamous Zhdanov decree was one of the reasons for Bunin's change of mind. On 15 September 1947, Bunin wrote to Mark Aldanov: "I have a letter here from Teleshov, written on 7 September; 'what a pity (he writes) that you've missed all of this: how your book was set up, how everybody was waiting for you here, in the place where you could have been... rich, feasted, and held in such high honour!' Having read this I spent an hour hair-tearing. Then I suddenly became calm. It just came to me all of a sudden all those other things Zhdanov and Fadeev might have given me instead of feasts, riches and laurels..."
After 1948, his health deteriorating, Bunin concentrated upon writing memoirs and a book on Anton Chekhov. He was aided by his wife, who, along with Zurov, completed the work after Bunin's death and saw to its publication in New York in 1955. In English translation it was entitled About Chekhov: The Unfinished Symphony. Bunin also revised a number of stories for publication in new collections, spent considerable time looking through his papers and annotated his collected works for a definitive edition. In 1951 Bunin was elected the first ever hononary International PEN member, representing the community of writers in exile. According to A. J. Heywood, one major event of Bunin's last years was his quarrel in 1948 with Maria Tsetlina and Boris Zaitsev, following the decision by the Union of Russian Writers and Journalists in France to expel holders of Soviet passports from its membership. Bunin responded by resigning from the Union. The writer's last years were marred by bitterness, disillusionment and ill-health; he was suffering from asthma, bronchitis and chronic pneumonia.
On 2 May 1953, Bunin left in his diary a note that proved to be his last one. "Still, this is so dumbfoundingly extraordinary. In a very short while there will be no more of me – and of all the things worldly, of all the affairs and destinies, from then on I will be unaware! And what I'm left to do here is dumbly try to consciously impose upon myself fear and amazement," he wrote.
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin died in a Paris attic flat in the early hours of 8 November 1953. Heart failure, cardiac asthma and pulmonary sclerosis were cited as the causes of death. A lavish burial service took place at the Russian Church on Rue Daru. All the major newspapers, both Russian and French, published large obituaries. For quite a while the coffin was held in a vault. On 30 January 1954, Bunin was buried in the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery.
In the 1950s, Bunin became the first of the Russian writers in exile to be published officially in the USSR. In 1965, The Complete Bunin came out in Moscow in nine volumes. Some of his more controversial books, notably Cursed Days, remained banned in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s.
Legacy
Ivan Bunin made history as the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. The immediate basis for the award was the autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev, but Bunin's legacy is much wider in scope. He is regarded as a master of the short story, described by scholar Oleg Mikhaylov as an "archaist innovator" who, while remaining true to the literary tradition of the 19th century, made huge leaps in terms of artistic expression and purity of style. "[Bunin's] style heralds an historical precedent... technical precision as an instrument of bringing out beauty is sharpened to the extreme. There's hardly another poet who on dozens of pages would fail to produce a single epithet, analogy or metaphor... the ability to perform such a simplification of poetic language without doing any harm to it is the sign of a true artist. When it comes to artistic precision Bunin has no rivals among Russian poets," wrote Vestnik Evropy.
Bunin's early stories were of uneven quality. They were united in their "earthiness", lack of plot and signs of a curious longing for "life's farthest horizons"; young Bunin started his career by trying to approach the ancient dilemmas of the human being, and his first characters were typically old men. His early prose works had one common leitmotif: that of nature's beauty and wisdom bitterly contrasting with humanity's ugly shallowness. As he progressed, Bunin started to receive encouraging reviews: Anton Chekhov warmly greeted his first stories, even if he found too much "density" in them. But it was Gorky who gave Bunin's prose its highest praise. Till the end of his life Gorky (long after the relationship between former friends had soured) rated Bunin among Russian literature's greatest writers and recommended his prose for younger generations of writers as an example of true and unwithering classicism.
As a poet, Bunin started out as a follower of Ivan Nikitin and Aleksey Koltsov, then gravitated towards the Yakov Polonsky and Afanasy Fet school, the latter's impressionism becoming a marked influence. The theme of Bunin's early works seemed to be the demise of the traditional Russian nobleman of the past – something which as an artist he simultaneously gravitated toward and felt averted from. In the 1900s this gave way to a more introspective, philosophical style, akin to Fyodor Tyutchev and his "poetic cosmology". All the while Bunin remained hostile to modernism (and the darker side of it, "decadence"); Mikhaylov saw him as the torch-bearer of Aleksander Pushkin's tradition of "praising the naked simplicity's charms."
The symbolist's flights of imagination and grotesque passions foreign to him, Bunin made nature his field of artistic research and here carved his art to perfection. "Few people are capable of loving nature as Bunin does. And it's this love that makes his scope wide, his vision deep, his colour and aural impressions so rich," wrote Aleksander Blok, a poet from a literary camp Bunin treated as hostile. It was for his books of poetry (the most notable of which is Falling Leaves, 1901) and his poetic translations that Bunin became a three time Pushkin Prize laureate. His verse was praised by Aleksander Kuprin while Blok regarded Bunin as among the first in the hierarchy of Russian poets. One great admirer of Bunin's verse was Vladimir Nabokov, who (even if making scornful remarks about Bunin's prose) compared him to Blok. Some see Bunin as a direct follower of Gogol, who was the first in Russian literature to discover the art of fusing poetry and prose together.
The wholesomeness of Bunin's character allowed him to avoid crises to become virtually the only author of the first decades of the 20th century to develop gradually and logically. "Bunin is the only one who remains true to himself", Gorky wrote in a letter to Chirikov in 1907. Yet, an outsider to all the contemporary trends and literary movements, Bunin was never truly famous in Russia. Becoming an Academician in 1909 alienated him even more from the critics, the majority of whom saw the Academy's decision to expel Gorky several years earlier as a disgrace. The closest Bunin came to fame was in 1911–1912 when The Village and Dry Valley came out. The former, according to the author, "sketched with sharp cruelty the most striking lines of the Russian soul, its light and dark sides, and its often tragic foundations"; it caused passionate, and occasionally very hostile reactions. "Nobody has ever drawn the [Russian] village in such a deep historical context before," Maxim Gorky wrote. After this uncompromising book it became impossible to continue to paint the Russian peasantry life in the idealised, narodnik-style way, Bunin single-handedly closed this long chapter in Russian literature. He maintained the truly classic traditions of realism in Russian literature at the very time when they were in the gravest danger, under attack by modernists and decadents. Yet he was far from "traditional" in many ways, introducing to Russian literature a completely new set of characters and a quite novel, laconic way of saying things. Dry Valley was regarded as another huge step forward for Bunin. While The Village dealt metaphorically with Russia as a whole in a historical context, here, according to the author, the "Russian soul [was brought into the focus] in the attempt to highlight the Slavic psyche's most prominent features." "It's one of the greatest books of Russian horror, and there's an element of liturgy in it... Like a young priest with his faith destroyed, Bunin buried the whole of his class," wrote Gorky.
Bunin's travel sketches were lauded as innovative, notably Bird's Shadow (1907–1911). "He's enchanted with the East, with the 'light-bearing' lands he now describes in such beautiful fashion... For [depicting] the East, both Biblical and modern, Bunin chooses the appropriate style, solemn and incandescent, full of imagery, bathing in waves of sultry sunlight and adorned with arabesques and precious stones, so that, when he tells of these grey-haired ancient times, disappearing in the distant haze of religion and myth, the impression he achieves is that of watching a great chariot of human history moving before our eyes," wrote Yuri Aykhenvald. Critics noted Bunin's uncanny knack of immersing himself into alien cultures, both old and new, best demonstrated in his Eastern cycle of short stories as well as his superb translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha (1898).
Bunin was greatly interested in international myths and folklore, as well as the Russian folkloric tradition. But, (according to Georgy Adamovich) "he was absolutely intolerant towards those of his colleagues who employed stylizations, the "style Russe" manufacturers. His cruel – and rightly so – review of Sergey Gorodetsky's poetry was one example. Even Blok's Kulikovo Field (for me, an outstanding piece) irritated him as too lavishly adorned... "That's Vasnetsov," he commented, meaning 'masquerade and opera'. But he treated things that he felt were not masqueradery differently. Of the Slovo o Polku Igoreve... he said something to the effect that all the poets of the whole world lumped together couldn't have created such wonder, in fact something close to Pushkin's words. Yet translations of the legend... outraged him, particularly that of Balmont. He despised Shmelyov for his pseudo-Russian pretenses, though admitting his literary gift. Bunin had an extraordinarily sharp ear for falseness: he instantly recognized this jarring note and was infuriated. That was why he loved Tolstoy so much. Once, I remember, he spoke of Tolstoy as the one 'who's never said a single word that would be an exaggeration'."
Bunin has often been spoken of as a "cold" writer. Some of his conceptual poems of the 1910s refuted this stereotype, tackling philosophical issues like the mission of an artist ("Insensory", 1916) where he showed fiery passion. According to Oleg Mikhaylov, "Bunin wanted to maintain distance between himself and his reader, being frightened by any closeness... But his pride never excluded passions, just served as a panzer — it was like a flaming torch in an icy shell." On a more personal level, Vera Muromtseva confirmed: "Sure, he wanted to come across as [cold and aloof] and he succeeded by being a first-class actor... people who didn't know him well enough couldn't begin to imagine what depths of soft tenderness his soul was capable of reaching," she wrote in her memoirs.
The best of Bunin's prose ("The Gentleman from San Francisco", "Loopy Ears" and notably, "Brothers", based on Ceylon's religious myth) had a strong philosophical streak to it. In terms of ethics Bunin was under the strong influence of Socrates (as related by Xenophon and Plato), he argued that it was the Greek classic who first expounded many things that were later found in Hindu and Jewish sacred books. Bunin was particularly impressed with Socrates's ideas on the intrinsic value of human individuality, it being a "kind of focus for higher forces" (quoted from Bunin's short story "Back to Rome"). As a purveyor of Socratic ideals, Bunin followed Leo Tolstoy; the latter's observation about beauty being "the crown of virtue" was Bunin's idea too. Critics found deep philosophical motives, and deep undercurrents in Mitya's Love and The Life of Arseniev, two pieces in which "Bunin came closest to a deep metaphysical understanding of the human being's tragic essence." Konstantin Paustovsky called The Life of Arseniev "one of the most outstanding phenomena of world literature."
In his view on Russia and its history Bunin for a while had much in common with A. K. Tolstoy (of whom he spoke with great respect); both tended to idealise the pre-Tatar Rus. Years later he greatly modified his view of Russian history, forming a more negative outlook. "There are two streaks in our people: one dominated by Rus, another by Chudh and Merya. Both have in them a frightening instability, sway... As Russian people say of themselves: we are like wood — both club and icon may come of it, depending on who is working on this wood," Bunin wrote years later.
In emigration Bunin continued his experiments with extremely concise, ultra-ionized prose, taking Chekhov and Tolstoy's ideas on expressive economy to the last extreme. The result of this was God's Tree, a collection of stories so short, some of them were half a page long. Professor Pyotr Bitsilly thought God's Tree to be "the most perfect of Bunin's works and the most exemplary. Nowhere else can such eloquent laconism can be found, such definitive and exquisite writing, such freedom of expression and really magnificent demonstration of [mind] over matter. No other book of his has in it such a wealth of material for understanding of Bunin's basic method – a method in which, in fact, there was nothing but basics. This simple but precious quality – honesty bordering on hatred of any pretense – is what makes Bunin so closely related to... Pushkin, Tolstoy and Chekhov," Bitsilli wrote.
Influential, even if controversial, was his Cursed Days 1918–1920 diary, of which scholar Thomas Gaiton Marullo wrote:
The work is important for several reasons. Cursed Days is one of the very few anti-Bolshevik diaries to be preserved from the time of the Russian Revolution and civil war. It recreates events with graphic and gripping immediacy. Unlike the works of early Soviets and emigres and their self-censoring backdrop of memory, myth, and political expediency, Bunin's truth reads almost like an aberration. Cursed Days also links Russian anti-utopian writing of the nineteenth century to its counterpart in the twentieth. Reminiscent of the fiction of Dostoevsky, it features an 'underground man' who does not wish to be an 'organ stop' or to affirm 'crystal palaces'. Bunin's diary foreshadowed such 'libelous' memoirs as Yevgenia Ginzburg's Journey into the Whirlwind (1967) and Within the Whirlwind, and Nadezhda Mandelstam's Hope Against Hope (1970) and Hope Abandoned (1974), the accounts of two courageous women caught up in the Stalinist terror of the 1930s. Cursed Days also preceded the "rebellious" anti-Soviet tradition that began with Evgeny Zamyatin and Yury Olesha, moved on to Mikhail Bulgakov, and reached a climax with Boris Pasternak and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One can argue that, in its painful exposing of political and social utopias, Cursed Days heralded the anti-utopian writing of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Bunin and Zamyatin had correctly understood that the Soviet experiment was destined to self destruct."
Despite his works being virtually banned in the Soviet Union up until the mid-1950s, Bunin exerted a strong influence over several generations of Soviet writers. Among those who owed a lot to Bunin, critics mentioned Mikhail Sholokhov, Konstantin Fedin, Konstantin Paustovsky, Ivan Sokolov-Mikitov, and later Yuri Kazakov, Vasily Belov and Viktor Likhonosov.
Ivan Bunin's books have been translated into many languages, and the world's leading writers praised his gift. Romain Rolland called Bunin an "artistic genius"; he was spoken and written of in much the same vein by writers like Henri de Régnier, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jerome K. Jerome, and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. In 1950, on the eve of his 80th birthday, François Mauriac expressed in a letter his delight and admiration, but also his deep sympathy to Bunin's personal qualities and the dignified way he'd got through all the tremendous difficulties life had thrown at him. In a letter published by Figaro, André Gide greeted Bunin "on behalf of all France", calling him "the great artist" and adding: "I don't know of any other writer... who's so to the point in expressing human feelings, simple and yet always so fresh and new". European critics often compared Bunin to both Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, crediting him with having renovated the Russian realist tradition both in essence and in form.
On 22 October 2020 Google celebrated his 150th birthday with a Google Doodle.
Private life
Bunin's first love was Varvara Pashchenko, his classmate in Yelets [not plausible as Ivan was at a male gymnasium and Varvara at an all female gymnasium], daughter of a doctor and an actress, whom he fell for in 1889 and then went on to work with in Oryol in 1892. Their relationship was difficult in many ways: the girl's father detested the union because of Bunin's impecunious circumstances, Varvara herself was not sure if she wanted to marry and Bunin too was uncertain whether marriage was really appropriate for him. The couple moved to Poltava and settled in Yuly Bunin's home, but by 1892 their relations deteriorated, Pashchenko complaining in a letter to Yuly Bunin that serious quarrels were frequent, and begging for assistance in bringing their union to an end. The affair eventually ended in 1894 with her marrying actor and writer A. N. Bibikov, Ivan Bunin's close friend. Bunin felt betrayed, and for a time his family feared the possibility of him committing suicide. According to some sources it was Varvara Pashchenko who many years later would appear under the name of Lika in The Life of Arseniev (chapter V of the book, entitled Lika, was also published as a short story). Scholar Tatyana Alexandrova, though, questioned this identification (suggesting Mirra Lokhvitskaya might have been the major prototype), while Vera Muromtseva thought of Lika as a 'collective' character aggregating the writer's reminiscences of several women he knew in his youth.
In the summer of 1898 while staying with writer A. M. Fedorov, Bunin became acquainted with N. P. Tsakni, a Greek social-democrat activist, the publisher and editor of the Odessa newspaper Yuzhnoe Obozrenie (Southern Review). Invited to contribute to the paper, Bunin became virtually a daily visitor to the Tsakni family dacha and fell in love with the latter's 18-year-old daughter, Anna (1879–1963). On 23 September 1898, the two married, but by 1899 signs of alienation between them were obvious. At the time of their acrimonious separation in March 1900 Anna was pregnant. She gave birth to a son, Nikolai, in Odessa on 30 August of the same year. The boy, of whom his father saw very little, died on 16 January 1905, from a combination of scarlet fever, measles and heart complications.
Ivan Bunin's second wife was Vera Muromtseva (1881–1961), niece of the high-ranking politician Sergey Muromtsev. The two had initially been introduced to each other by writer Ekaterina Lopatina some years earlier, but it was their encounter at the house of the writer Boris Zaitsev in November 1906 which led to an intense relationship which resulted in the couple becoming inseparable until Bunin's death. Bunin and Muromtseva married officially only in 1922, after he managed at last to divorce Tsakni legally. Decades later Vera Muromtseva-Bunina became famous in her own right with her book Life of Bunin.
In 1927, while in Grasse, Bunin fell for the Russian poet Galina Kuznetsova, on vacation there with her husband. The latter, outraged by the well-publicized affair, stormed off, while Bunin not only managed to somehow convince Vera Muromtseva that his love for Galina was purely platonic, but also invite the latter to stay in the house as a secretary and 'a family member'. The situation was complicated by the fact that Leonid Zurov, who stayed with the Bunins as a guest for many years, was secretly in love with Vera (of which her husband was aware); this made it more of a "love quadrilateral" than a mere triangle. Bunin and Kuznetsova's affair ended dramatically in 1942 when the latter, now deeply in love with another frequent guest, opera singer Margo Stepun, sister of Fyodor Stepun, left Bunin, who felt disgraced and insulted. The writer's tempestuous private life in emigration became the subject of the internationally acclaimed Russian movie, His Wife's Diary (or The Diary of His Wife) (2000). which caused controversy and was described by some as masterful and thought-provoking, but by others as vulgar, inaccurate and in bad taste. Vera Muromtseva-Bunina later accepted both Kuznetsova and Margarita Stepun as friends: "nashi" ("ours"), as she called them, lived with the Bunins for long periods during the Second World War. According to A.J. Heywood of Leeds University, in Germany and then New York, after the war, Kuznetsova and Stepun negotiated with publishers on Bunin's behalf and maintained a regular correspondence with Ivan and Vera up until their respective deaths.
Bibliography
Novel
The Life of Arseniev (Жизнь Арсеньева, 1927–1933, 1939)
Short novels
The Village (Деревня, 1910)
Dry Valley (Суходол, 1912)
Mitya's Love (Митина любовь, 1924)
Short story collections
To the Edge of the World and Other Stories (На край света и другие рассказы, 1897)
Antonovka Apples (Антоновские яблоки, 1900)
Flowers of the Field (Цветы полевые, 1901)
Bird's Shadow (Тень птицы, 1907–1911; Paris, 1931)
Ioann the Mourner (Иоанн Рыдалец, 1913)
Chalice of Life (Чаша жизни, Petersburg, 1915; Paris, 1922)
The Gentleman from San Francisco (Господин из Сан-Франциско, 1916)
Chang's Dreams (Сны Чанга, 1916, 1918)
Temple of the Sun (Храм Солнца, 1917)
Primal Love (Начальная любовь, Prague, 1921)
Scream (Крик, Paris, 1921)
Rose of Jerico (Роза Иерихона, Berlin, 1924)
Mitya's Love (Митина любовь, Paris, 1924; New York, 1953)
Sunstroke (Солнечный удар, Paris, 1927)
Sacred Tree (Божье древо, Paris, 1931)
Dark Avenues (Тёмные аллеи, New York, 1943; Paris, 1946)
Judea in Spring (Весной в Иудее, New York, 1953)
Loopy Ears and Other Stories (Петлистые уши и другие рассказы, 1954, New York, posthumous)
Poetry
Poems (1887–1891) (1891, originally as a literary supplement to Orlovsky vestnik newspaper)
Under the Open Skies (Под открытым небом, 1898)
Falling Leaves (Листопад, Moscow, 1901)
Poems (1903) (Стихотворения, 1903)
Poems (1903–1906) (Стихотворения, 1906)
Poems of 1907 (Saint Petersburg, 1908)
Selected Poems (Paris, 1929)
Translations
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The Song of Hiawatha (1898)
Memoirs and diaries
Waters Aplenty (Воды многие, 1910, 1926)
Cursed Days (Окаянные дни, 1925–1926)[66]
Memoirs. Under the hammer and sickle. (Воспоминания. Под серпом и молотом. 1950)
Physically he was the connoisseur's connoisseur. He was a giant panda, Santa Claus and the Jolly Green Giant rolled into one. On him, a lean and slender physique would have looked like very bad casting.”
Submitted by: Rajesh Pandey
Country: India
Organisation: Self Employed
Category: Professional
Caption: A physically handicapped man waits for his turn to get his eye checked
Photo uploaded from the #VisionFirst! Photo Competition (photocomp.iapb.org) held for World Sight Day 2019
Hong Kong Sports Association for the Physically Disabled 50th Anniversary Roving Exhibition_Citywalk2
At Auschwitz, people turned into forms physically, emotionally and mentally unrecognizable. The will to live was strong, but also bestial - whether Nazi or Jew or prisoner, people did things to one another they could never fathom possible outside of the camp. But the human spirit also triumphed - Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish priest who volunteered to take the place of another prisoner randomly selected for punishment and crying for his family. Kolbe died 11 days later, and the prisoner whose life he had saved reunited with his family after the war and lived to age 95.
Emotionally and physically exhausted, Wayne Glover, a retired Air Force chief master sergeant, and his wife, IIah, a secretary at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., rest with their dogs, Bailey and Izzie, on what's left of their front porch March 5, 2008, after spending hours sifting through the rubble of what had been their dream home in Prattville, Ala. A tornado ripped through the town Feb. 17, 2008, damaging some 900 homes and businesses, injuring 50 people and leaving a trail of destruction that left many homeless.
Interstate 26 (I-26) is a nominally east–west (but physically more northwest–southeast diagonal) main route of the Interstate Highway System in the Southeastern United States. I-26 runs from the junction of U.S. Route 11W (US 11W) and US 23 in Kingsport, Tennessee, generally southeastward to US 17 in Charleston, South Carolina.[2] The portion from Mars Hill, North Carolina, east (compass south) to I-240 in Asheville, North Carolina, has signs indicating FUTURE I-26 because the highway does not yet meet all of the Interstate Highway standards. A short realignment as an improvement in the freeway was also planned in Asheville, but has been postponed indefinitely due to North Carolina's budget shortfalls.[3] Northwards from Kingsport, US 23 continues to Portsmouth, Ohio, as Corridor B of the Appalachian Development Highway System, and beyond to Columbus, Ohio, as Corridor C. In conjunction with the Columbus–Toledo, Ohio, corridor formed by I-75, US 23, and State Route 15, I-26 forms part of a mostly high-speed four-or-more-lane highway from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Coast at Charleston, South Carolina. There are no official plans for extensions north of Kingsport, Tennessee.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_26
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...
This is a cliff with some desert varnish.
Desert varnish forms only on physically stable rock surfaces that are no longer subject to frequent precipitation, fracturing or wind abrasion. The varnish is primarily composed of particles of clay along with iron and manganese oxides. There is also a host of trace elements and almost always some organic matter. The color of the varnish varies from shades of brown to black.
Originally scientists thought that the varnish was made from substances drawn out of the rocks it coats. Microscopic and microchemical observations, however, show that a major part of varnish is clay (which could only arrive by wind). Clay, then, acts as a substrate to catch additional substances that chemically react together when the rock reaches high temperatures in the desert sun. Wetting by dew is also important in the process.[citation needed]
Another important characteristic of desert varnish is that it has an unusually high concentration of manganese. Manganese is relatively rare in the earth's crust, making up only 0.12% of its weight. In desert varnish, however, manganese is 50 to 60 times more abundant. This significant enrichment is thought to be caused by biochemical processes (many species of bacteria use manganese).
March 14, 2021. Boston, MA.
A group of 5th graders rallied, (physically distanced and masked) in front of the Massachusetts State House to draw attention to the ongoing eviction crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Organizers stated that despite a patchwork of emergency eviction prevention efforts at the state and federal levels, judges have okayed 1,500 evictions in Massachusetts since Gov. Baker ended the state-wide eviction moratorium. Additionally over 10,000 new and pending eviction cases have progressed since the moratorium was allowed to expire, putting tens of thousands of people at risk of homelessness during a pandemic.
Exacerbating the eviction crisis is the looming expiration date of the federal eviction moratorium, enacted through the CDC, which is scheduled to end on the 31st of this month.
5th graders involved in Boston Workers Circle and supporters from City Life/Vida Urbana spoke out to stop non-emergency evictions in the pandemic (including pandemic debt-related evictions, no-fault evictions, and evictions due to a landlord's refusal to accept rent relief).
Using street theater, signs, and speeches, they called on the Massachusetts legislature to immediately enact the COVID-19 Housing Equity Bill, HD. 3030 / SD. 1802, which was recently crafted by the Homes For All Massachusetts coalition. Homes For All Massachusetts is a coalition of grassroots housing justice groups across the state, led by residents on the frontlines of the eviction crisis.
© 2021 Marilyn Humphries
A distant watchtower deep down in the valley with the Great Wall stretching to infinity on either side of it. You have to be really physically fit to get all the way down there, and I was surprised at the number of people who have managed to venture all the way there. The watchtowers were built to accommodate soldiers, send messages, observe the enemy, and store supplies. These watchtowers also had shooting and observing holes. (The Great Wall of China, Badaling, near Beijing (Peking), China, May 2017)
Hong Kong Sports Association for the Physically Disabled 50th Anniversary Roving Exhibition_Citywalk2
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Title: Culpeper's complete herbal : with nearly four hundred medicines, made from English herbs, physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to man; with rules for compuounding them: also, directions for making syrups, ointments, &c
Creator: Culpeper, Nicholas, 1616-1654
Publisher: Halifax : Milner and Sowerby
Sponsor: Emory University, Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library
Contributor: Emory University, Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library
Date: 1852
Language: eng
Description: Includes index
Electronic reproduction
Bound in publisher's burgandy cloth with blind-stamped boards, spine stamped in gilt and blind, and cream colored endpapers
HEALTH: Added as part of 2008 Rare Book Project
digitized
The online edition of this book in the public domain, i.e., not protected by copyright, has been produced by the Emory University Digital Library Publications Program
If you have questions concerning reproductions, please contact the Contributing Library.
Note: The colors, contrast and appearance of these illustrations are unlikely to be true to life. They are derived from scanned images that have been enhanced for machine interpretation and have been altered from their originals.
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Title: Culpeper's English physician and complete herbal. To which are now first added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult properties, physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind : to which are annexed, rules for compounding medicine according to the true system of nature forming a complete family dispensatory and natural system of physic ...
Creator: Culpeper, Nicholas, 1616-1654. n 83007664
Creator: Sibly, E. (Ebenezer), 1751-1800. n 86817613
Publisher: London : Printed for J. Adlard ... for the proprietor and sold at the Encyclopædia Office ... and by Champante and Whitrow
Sponsor: Wellcome Library
Contributor: Wellcome Library
Date: 1810
Language: eng
Partial contents: v. 2. Containing the medical part
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Note: The colors, contrast and appearance of these illustrations are unlikely to be true to life. They are derived from scanned images that have been enhanced for machine interpretation and have been altered from their originals.
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Title: Culpeper's English physician; and complete herbal : to which are now first added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult properties, physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind : to which are annexed, rules for compounding medicine according to the true system of nature, forming a complete family dispensatory, and natural system of physic, beautified and enriched with engravings of upwards of four hundred and fifty different plants and a set of anatomical figures, illustrated with notes and observations, critical and explanatory
Creator: Culpeper, Nicholas, 1616-1654
Creator: Sibly, E. (Ebenezer), 1751-1800
Creator: Lofft, Elizabeth Susan, Provenance
Creator: Phillips, Edward England, Provenance
Creator: University of Bristol. Library
Publisher: London : Printed for the author, and sold at the British Directory-Office, Ave-Maria-Lane; and by Champante and Whitrow, Jewry-Street, Aldgate
Sponsor: Jisc and Wellcome Library
Contributor: University of Bristol
Date: 1794
Language: eng
Description: With a frontispiece and 29 numbered plates
Forms v. 1 of a 2 v. set: the herbal and the medical part
The set is published in 42 numbered parts of which v. 1 includes nos. 1-25 and v. 2 nos. 26-42
Dedication dated: In the year of Masonry 5798
ESTC
This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library
University of Bristol Library
With this are bound the second part of another edition, and the editor's A key to physic. The volume is bound according to the "Directions to the binder" (on p. 256, at the end of the second part): pt. 1, Appendix (usually forming pt. of Key to physic), pt. 2 and Key to physic
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The gelada baboon can also be physically distinguished by the bright patch of skin on its chest. This patch is hourglass-shaped. On males it is bright red and surrounded by white hair; on females it is far less pronounced. However, when in estrus, the female's patch will brighten in color. This is thought to be analogous to the swollen buttocks common to most baboons experiencing estrus. Females also have knobs of skin around their patches.
Look at that physique! And this is after being laid off due to White Line Disease.
Tell me, does this guy look in his 20s to you? He shocks me too.
Keep active physically and mentally
Exercise regularly
Practice yoga and meditation for 20 minutes
Engage in social activities
Avoid excessive thinking
Get proper sleep
Use fiber rich foods, fruits, fresh vegetables, and Amla(Indian gooseberry) and eat your meals at the same time each day.
For more information, visit our website.
Clone Troopers, physically identical soldiers bred solely for battle, redefine the future of galactic warfare. The Clone Trooper Captains represent a specialized breed, born in the hatcheries of Kamino, designed to serve as battlefield officers and special mission operatives. Armed with DC-15A blaster rifles and trained in both squad and company level tactics they were assigned to lead companies of Clone Trooper soldiers.
During the First Battle of Geonosis, these officers took a company lead position at Forward Command Centers and destroyed Confederacy OG-9 homing spider droids by skillfully utilizing the speed and maneuverability of their Speederbikes.
Throughout the course of the long and bloody conflict that followed, the efficiency of the Clone Trooper Infantry and their Captains would be proven time and again on many scattered worlds.
Mirror
The mirror represents bot metaphorically and physically, a milestone in mankind’s history: an almost magical surface through which we develop the knowledge of the world and ourselves.
Through the mirror, actually, man has gotten to know himself and, thanks to advancements in technology, then learnt more about the cosmos, light, their own inwardness. Without mirrors, we would know nothing about heavenly bodies, and very little about our inner and outer nature.
At the “Festival della Scienza” (Science Festival) edition 2006 (26 Oct. - 7 Nov. Genoa, Italy) the exhibition “Mirrors” aims therefore at exploring the dynamics of perception of oneself and of others through reflected image.
Physically stunning mare by Bon Point (GB) out of Joy's Appeal, by Valid Appeal. Sweet temper and good manners. Has been ridden through training level dressage, but is very spooky and professional-level only. Open, cycling, ready to breed.
1st dam Joy's Appeal, dam of Goodlookindude (Halo's Image) winner of $29K
2nd dam Joy to Raise, dam of MAYAKOVSKY At 2: 2ND Hopeful Stakes (G1); At 3: WON Gotham Stakes (G2) Set NTR at Saratoga, 5.5F in 1:03.32
-and Capotes Joy 40 starts 8-7-6 $ 102,807
Cribber. Special consideration if she goes with ONTHERIGHTWICKET.
More information at www.equinenow.com/horse-ad-270230.
Hong Kong Sports Association for the Physically Disabled 50th Anniversary Roving Exhibition_Citywalk2
It was amazing at the number of physically challenged people who showed up to march. Some were in wheel chairs, Hovearounds, on crutches, walking with canes and on artificial legs. A big salute to those who didn't let anything hold them down.
Here I present my take on the Gunderson (or Greenbrier) Maxi iv’s. This is the first MOC of mine that I’ve physically built. Whilst I found this a rewarding experience, it inevitably threw up a few issues. I was very conservative with the spacing between units to try and accommodate R40 track, however I’ve found I really don’t like the spacing and have since redesigned the middle bogies to bring the cars 2 studs closer together. This has also lead to my first experience with ball bearings, which has turned out to be a frustrating experience. As a result, I’m awaiting delivery of some new axels that better fit the bearings. The reference images used for the design were from Kato N scale models. Whilst I think I’ve replicated that design well, I feel the model is lacking a bit of overall detail which I’ll look to add at a later date - I just need to find some better reference material first. That being said, I’m not too happy with the stairs design either, and will look for alternatives. The model itself is big! Predominantly 8 wide but peaking at 9.8 wide with the stairs, and coming in at 180 studs long. Surprisingly it cost around £130 to build which I thought was good - most likely due to the number of elements I could get from the local PAB wall. I went to order parts for the containers (not my design) last night, but that proved cost prohibitive, so I’m just finalising a design of my own which should be cheaper, despite having a few more details (but not sticker friendly).
In the later images I’ve copied the design and modified the well length to serve as a basis for Maxi I cars, but yet to address further elements to represent that design. I also decided to mess around with colour options to try and represent Maersk cars. The lightest colour (1/3) I feel is the closest match, but lacking numerous elements for a sleek design. 2/3 is the one I favour most, whilst I think it’s further from true Maersk colour, when I look at it in isolation it’s the one that’s ’most Maersk’ to me. The darkest (3/3) has the best part pallet in the colour, but I think it’s a shade too far. Originally I’d planned to build a 5 car rake as per the real thing, but at a provisional 244 studs long I might just settle for a 3 car rake.
The cars accommodate containers to the BMR intermodal standard.
Thoughts/feedback welcome.
Harvard is physically moving 2 historic buildings a couple of blocks up Mass Ave this weekend. As a result, 5 blocks of it will be closed over the weekend forcing all kinds of interesting detours and parking restrictions. I found this distressingly cool map of what kind of chaos will ensue, including the exact locations of various signs.