In this third and concluding volume of his acclaimed portrait of Ivan Bunin, Thomas Gaiton Marullo relates the struggle of the writer and of the émigré Russian artistic community in Europe to keep alive the memory of “patriarchal” Russia against a backdrop of personal suffering, poverty, war, and longing for the homeland. As in his first two volumes, Mr. Marullo displays a keen eye for the telling quotation and a remarkable talent for putting together a moving story from highly disparate sources.
From the Other Shore, 1920-1933: A Portrait of the Nobel Prize-Winning Writer and of Russians in Exile, Drawn from Letters, Diaries, and Fiction
347 pages
13 hours of reading
In this second volume of his major work on Bunin, the neglected master of Russian letters, Thomas Marullo recreates his life in exile, chiefly in Paris, after escaping from his newly bolshevized country in 1920. Drawing from Bunin's correspondence, his diaries, and his stories, and translating most of these materials into English for the first time, Mr. Marullo gives us a vivid picture of a man suddenly and agonizingly without a country. Bunin's life and art, which depended so heavily on traditional Russian values, seemed to be overthrown in a moment, and the writer found himself marooned amidst Western culture, clinging to his old ideals. Through his writings we are also provided a window on the lively but despairing and often fractious community of Russian emigrés in Paris in the twenties, which included Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff Chafiapin, Prokofiev, Chagall, Kandinsky, Pavlova, Diaghilev, and Zamyatin. The volume ends in 1933, when Bunin became the first Russian to receive the Nobel Prize in literature. Mr. Marullo's first volume, Ivan Russian Requiem , was widely acclaimed. Gary Saul Morson of Northwestern "It engages the reader from the first page ...Marullo has an eye for the perfect quotation." Ruth Rischin, in the Russian Review , described the book as "elegantly crafted... a serious achievement."
