Mitya's Love
Encyclopedia
Mitya's Love is a short novel by a Nobel Prize-winning Russian
author Ivan Bunin written in 1924 and first published in books XXIII and XXIV of the Sovremennye Zapiski Paris
-based literary journal in 1925
. It's been included in (and gave the title to) a compilation of novelets and short stories published the same year in France.
in the summer of 1924. In the course of writing plot lines were changing drastically. The first version (marked as of June 3, 1924, by Vera Muromtseva) told the story of a 'moral fall' of a young man who's been degraded and compromised by a local village counterman. The theme of Mitya's love for Katya appeared later and soon became the major one. Some versions were full of details of country life, Alyonka's proposed marriage and Moscow's bohemian life Katya fell victim of. Most of these sub-plots were later omitted. Some of the sketches concerning the main character's relations with a village teacher Ganhka formed the plot of a short story called April (Апрель). Another spin-off was Rain (Дождь), a short story which was supposed to reveal in detail the chain of events that led to Petya's (such in this case was the hero's name) suicide. Bunin completed this story on June 7, 1924, then two days later returned to the main work and included the slightly altered version of Rain into it. In the final version of the novelet they form chapters XVIII and XIX. The last of the known versions' manuscript has been dated as September 14 (27), 1924.
In her letters (dated March 8 and September 16, 1959) Vera Muromtseva-Bunina told correspondent N.Smirnov that Mitya's prototype was partly Bunin's nephew Nikolai Pusheshnikov (who'd suffered a similar kind of unhappy love affair) partly (and more in terms of general appearance) the latter's brother Petya, a passionate hunter. "As for the title, that summer a boy named Mitya visited Grasse, rich land-owner's son, quiet, self-conscious and very young Russian aristocrat. Ivan Alekseevich instantly imagined how such a person could have been be tempted into something wrong by a village's starosta - for the simple motive of extorting a bottle of vodka off him, and that was how the novel started".
There were other autobiographical details in the book. The Shakhovskoye was, in fact, Kolontayevka, an estate next one to Bunin's. Galina Kuznetsova in her Grasse Diary wrote remembered: "In the neighbouring Kolontayevka estate, according to Bunin, there was this pine-tree alley which one particular summer was filled with some kind of special jasmine aromas... 'This alley I carried away with me to later put into Mitya's Love and - to such a sad and tragic effect!' I remember him saying."
At least once the novel has been changed without its author's consent. Lithuania
n poet Kostas Korsakas remembered Bunin in a conversation with him relating how an Italian
translation altered the finale into something more optimistic, so as "to let young boy instead of killing himself, drive his love home to a full realization". Bunin bitterly ridiculed this "lump of official optimism which had been added to his novel by a fascist regime's translator".
wrote: "I've read Mitya’s Love in French and got very excited. I am amazed by the way how subtly the depths of love are being examined and can but express my delight". The French poet and novelist Henri de Régnier
held Mitya's Love as equal to best examples of the classical Russian literature. "Bunin's fine book is the work of one of the Russian masters of an old novel - the kind that prospered in those times when Russia was the homeland of Tolstoy and Turgenev... Bunin, for all his peculiarities, belongs to this family of high quality masters", de Régnier wrote. German
poet Rainer Maria Rilke
sent a letter to Russkaya Mysl magazine in which he methodically analysed the main character's behaviour and motives. "The beloved Katya, this tender and impressionable Katya for the first time provides him with the outlook close to the unconsciously all-knowing outlook of a wild animal. Once he abandons the one he loves, he has to fill in these infinite immaterial reaches, this heavenly bliss which is quite spacial, - with a substance of the world he knows and loves. Once he loses Katya, he loses the world with her; left with nothing but a non-being, néant, courageously and logically chooses to die. One infinitesimal measure of curiosity (and I use this lowly concept consciously in this context) aimed at what might have followed this bout of desperation, could have saved him. Problem was, he put his whole world, known and visible, onto this tiny departing boat named 'Katya'... and on this boat the world sailed away from him".
There was, though, some criticism, coming mostly from Russians in Paris. Upon having read just part one of the book, Vladislav Khodasevich
sent a letter to Sovremennye Zapisky, arguing that "Bunin is all right when he doesn't fall for his best-loved recipe: 1% The Kreutzer Sonata
, 100% pure water." As Bunin scholar V. Lavrov pointed out, so carried away was the critic with his stream of irony that the fact that the whole totaled up to 101% somehow eluded his attention.
More subtle but even less sympathetic was the reaction of Zinaida Gippius
who came up with a cycle of essays entitled "Of Love" intended to be published in the Sovremennye Zapisky magazine. Gippius compared Bunin's novel both to Goethes' The Sorrows of Young Werther
and French writer Charles Derennes's novel Gaby My Love. "Mitya as an intelligent being is all but non-existent. He's got hardly more consciousness than the spring-time nature, white cherry trees and breathing depths of Earth he's filled with", she wrote. Gippius found the Alyonka episode totally unbelievable and incompatible with Mitya's feelings for Katya. Bunin, on having read Gippius' essays, as editor Mark Vishnyak remembered, "has lost his temper and, in effect, vetoed their publication in Sovremennye Zapisky". Two of the Gippius’ articles were published in the Poslednye Novosty newspaper in 1925 as "Love and intelligence" (Любовь и мысль, June 18, #1579) and "Love and Beauty" (Любовь и красота, June 25, #1585, July 2, 1591).
Writer and historian Pyotr Bitzilli in his article "Notes on Tolstoy. Bunin and Tolstoy" (Sovremennye Zapisky, Paris, 1936, Vol. LX, 280-281.) compared Mitya's Love to Leo Tolstoy
's The Devil and commented on many similarities found. In a letter dated March 17, 1936, Bunin wrote: "Dear Pyotr Mikhailovich, it just so happened that I never read The Devil... And of those fragments in it that resemble description of Mitya and Alyonka's rendes-vous I've learned from you article. How these striking resemblances are to be explained? Very simple. We come from virtually the same place, and the village ways... in our respective estates were very similar. We both, apparently, borrowed some "classic" details related to this 'procurement' thing. For me this episode of Mitya dating Alyonka as procured by starosta, feels like still life, almost. For such was the story of one of my nephews' 'fall'. I partly borrowed his recount, which, incidentally, has had nothing whatsoever tragic about it".
Bitzilli, apparently was not convinced. In his April 5, 1936, letter, Bunin remarked that that some people's suggestion that Mitya's Love was closer to Turgenev
's prose was more realistic. As for Tolstoy's style of writing, there was "not a single note in it that would be in any way similar of familiar", he wrote. "Ethereal, light of touch, modernist and poetic", the book was as far removed from Tolstoy's prose as it could be, Bunin argued.
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
author Ivan Bunin written in 1924 and first published in books XXIII and XXIV of the Sovremennye Zapiski Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
-based literary journal in 1925
1925 in literature
The year 1925 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* April: F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway meet in the Dingo Bar on rue Delambre, in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, France shortly after the publication of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and shortly before...
. It's been included in (and gave the title to) a compilation of novelets and short stories published the same year in France.
Background
Ivan Bunin started working upon Mitya's Love in GrasseGrasse
-See also:*Route Napoléon*Ancient Diocese of Grasse*Communes of the Alpes-Maritimes department-External links:*...
in the summer of 1924. In the course of writing plot lines were changing drastically. The first version (marked as of June 3, 1924, by Vera Muromtseva) told the story of a 'moral fall' of a young man who's been degraded and compromised by a local village counterman. The theme of Mitya's love for Katya appeared later and soon became the major one. Some versions were full of details of country life, Alyonka's proposed marriage and Moscow's bohemian life Katya fell victim of. Most of these sub-plots were later omitted. Some of the sketches concerning the main character's relations with a village teacher Ganhka formed the plot of a short story called April (Апрель). Another spin-off was Rain (Дождь), a short story which was supposed to reveal in detail the chain of events that led to Petya's (such in this case was the hero's name) suicide. Bunin completed this story on June 7, 1924, then two days later returned to the main work and included the slightly altered version of Rain into it. In the final version of the novelet they form chapters XVIII and XIX. The last of the known versions' manuscript has been dated as September 14 (27), 1924.
In her letters (dated March 8 and September 16, 1959) Vera Muromtseva-Bunina told correspondent N.Smirnov that Mitya's prototype was partly Bunin's nephew Nikolai Pusheshnikov (who'd suffered a similar kind of unhappy love affair) partly (and more in terms of general appearance) the latter's brother Petya, a passionate hunter. "As for the title, that summer
There were other autobiographical details in the book. The Shakhovskoye was, in fact, Kolontayevka, an estate next one to Bunin's. Galina Kuznetsova in her Grasse Diary wrote remembered: "In the neighbouring Kolontayevka estate, according to Bunin, there was this pine-tree alley which one particular summer was filled with some kind of special jasmine aromas... 'This alley I carried away with me to later put into Mitya's Love and - to such a sad and tragic effect!' I remember him saying."
At least once the novel has been changed without its author's consent. Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
n poet Kostas Korsakas remembered Bunin in a conversation with him relating how an Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
translation altered the finale into something more optimistic, so as "to let young boy instead of killing himself, drive his love home to a full realization". Bunin bitterly ridiculed this "lump of official optimism which had been added to his novel by a fascist regime's translator".
Critical reception
Upon its release the book was generally praised by the European critics and writers. Danish writer and historian of literature Georg BrandesGeorg Brandes
Georg Morris Cohen Brandes was a Danish critic and scholar who had great influence on Scandinavian and European literature from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century. He is seen as the theorist behind the "Modern Breakthrough" of Scandinavian culture...
wrote: "I've read Mitya’s Love in French and got very excited. I am amazed by the way how subtly the depths of love are being examined and can but express my delight". The French poet and novelist Henri de Régnier
Henri de Régnier
Henri François Joseph de Régnier was a French symbolist poet, considered one of the most important of France during the early 20th century....
held Mitya's Love as equal to best examples of the classical Russian literature. "Bunin's fine book is the work of one of the Russian masters of an old novel - the kind that prospered in those times when Russia was the homeland of Tolstoy and Turgenev... Bunin, for all his peculiarities, belongs to this family of high quality masters", de Régnier wrote. German
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
poet Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...
sent a letter to Russkaya Mysl magazine in which he methodically analysed the main character's behaviour and motives. "The beloved Katya, this tender and impressionable Katya for the first time provides him with the outlook close to the unconsciously all-knowing outlook of a wild animal. Once he abandons the one he loves, he has to fill in these infinite immaterial reaches, this heavenly bliss which is quite spacial, - with a substance of the world he knows and loves. Once he loses Katya, he loses the world with her; left with nothing but a non-being, néant, courageously and logically chooses to die. One infinitesimal measure of curiosity (and I use this lowly concept consciously in this context) aimed at what might have followed this bout of desperation, could have saved him. Problem was, he put his whole world, known and visible, onto this tiny departing boat named 'Katya'... and on this boat the world sailed away from him".
There was, though, some criticism, coming mostly from Russians in Paris. Upon having read just part one of the book, Vladislav Khodasevich
Vladislav Khodasevich
Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich was an influential Russian poet and literary critic who presided over the Berlin circle of Russian emigre litterateurs....
sent a letter to Sovremennye Zapisky, arguing that "Bunin is all right when he doesn't fall for his best-loved recipe: 1% The Kreutzer Sonata
The Kreutzer Sonata
The Kreutzer Sonata is a novella by Leo Tolstoy, published in 1889 and promptly censored by the Russian authorities. The work is an argument for the ideal of sexual abstinence and an in-depth first-person description of jealous rage...
, 100% pure water." As Bunin scholar V. Lavrov pointed out, so carried away was the critic with his stream of irony that the fact that the whole totaled up to 101% somehow eluded his attention.
More subtle but even less sympathetic was the reaction of Zinaida Gippius
Zinaida Gippius
Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius, was a Russian poet, playwright, editor, short story writer and religious thinker, regarded as a co-founder of Russian symbolism and seen as "one of the most enigmatic and intelligent women of her time in Russia"....
who came up with a cycle of essays entitled "Of Love" intended to be published in the Sovremennye Zapisky magazine. Gippius compared Bunin's novel both to Goethes' The Sorrows of Young Werther
The Sorrows of Young Werther
The Sorrows of Young Werther is an epistolary and loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774; a revised edition of the novel was published in 1787...
and French writer Charles Derennes's novel Gaby My Love. "Mitya as an intelligent being is all but non-existent. He's got hardly more consciousness than the spring-time nature, white cherry trees and breathing depths of Earth he's filled with", she wrote. Gippius found the Alyonka episode totally unbelievable and incompatible with Mitya's feelings for Katya. Bunin, on having read Gippius' essays, as editor Mark Vishnyak remembered, "has lost his temper and, in effect, vetoed their publication in Sovremennye Zapisky". Two of the Gippius’ articles were published in the Poslednye Novosty newspaper in 1925 as "Love and intelligence" (Любовь и мысль, June 18, #1579) and "Love and Beauty" (Любовь и красота, June 25, #1585, July 2, 1591).
Writer and historian Pyotr Bitzilli in his article "Notes on Tolstoy. Bunin and Tolstoy" (Sovremennye Zapisky, Paris, 1936, Vol. LX, 280-281.) compared Mitya's Love to Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
's The Devil and commented on many similarities found. In a letter dated March 17, 1936, Bunin wrote: "Dear Pyotr Mikhailovich, it just so happened that I never read The Devil... And of those fragments in it that resemble
Bitzilli, apparently was not convinced. In his April 5, 1936, letter, Bunin remarked that that some people's suggestion that Mitya's Love was closer to Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...
's prose was more realistic. As for Tolstoy's style of writing, there was "not a single note in it that would be in any way similar of familiar", he wrote. "Ethereal, light of touch, modernist and poetic", the book was as far removed from Tolstoy's prose as it could be, Bunin argued.