Description
Book SynopsisThis book sprang from three handwritten lines by Ivan Bunin, Russia's first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Found inside a first edition of
Mitya's Love, they led to the discovery of one of the largest corpora of letters written to Ivan and Vera Bunin by two people whose lives and legacy had been, until now, forgotten. These letters are now in the Russian Archive in Leeds (RAL), and are published here for the first time. The book also focuses on memory and history in its purest form, as narrated by witnesses who lived through the most tragic century in Russian history. Their stories involve Grand Dukes, Russian literary and political giants, as well as one of the architects of the Gulag, and show how these lives intertwined. It also sheds new light on the life and works of Chekhov, Gorky, A. Tolstoy, and Bunin.
Trade Review“This is not an ordinary study of literary history. It starts as Tsareva-Brauner’s personal journey—beginning with her chance discovery of an autograph of writer Ivan Bunin on the inside cover of a book—and develops into a family history of Nikolai and Natalia Kulman, close friends and financial supporters of the Bunin family in Russia and France… This is a book for readers who already know and admire Bunin’s work. However, it is also a book for those interested in following the twists and turns of intellectual history as it unfolds... Highly recommended.”
–A. J. DeBlasio, Dickinson College, CHOICE
“By translating the letters of the Kulmans to the Bunins, the author of Autographs Don’t Burn: Letters to Bunins sheds light on the unknown life of Russian émigré intellectuals and their close friends who had to flee the country during the establishment of the Soviet Union and provides information on what these intellectuals went through during a very turbulent time in Russian history, as well as their life experiences and activities to preserve their culture and language in a foreign country.”
—Ayse Dietrich, International Journal of Russian Studies
Table of Contents
- Archives and Libraries
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: The People behind the Autograph
- Nikolai Karlovich Kulman
- Natalia Ivanovna Bokii-Likhareva-Kulman
- Nikolai and Natalia Kulman: Their Story
- Gleb Bokii—The Case of Myth Creation
- Chapter 2: The Exodus
- Chapter 3: Note on Translation of Letters
- Chapter 4: Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)
- Chapter 5: Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Vera Bunina (1928–1938)
- Chapter 6: Letters of Natalia Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1944–1952)
- Bibliography
