Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (1870-1953)

An early letter to his great friend Roshchin. 1928
Autograph letter signed (‘Iv. Bunin’) to Nikolay Roshchin, Villa Jeanette, Grasse, 13 January 1928.

In Russian, three pages, 270 x 210mm .

Asking Roshchin to arrange hotel rooms for him, his wife and his lover in Paris. Bunin opens with the cheery greeting 'Happy New Year! Happy new lover!', and goes on with the rather startling request ('Don't think for a moment that I am joking') that Roshchin arrange three rooms for him, for Vera Bunina and for his lover Galina Kuznetsova at Roshchin's hotel in Paris, which has caught his attention as it sounds so cheap: the rooms are to be 'as high as possible (if the lift is safe and serviceable), and as quiet and as bright as possible. Myself and Vera [Bunina] will need rooms next to each other ... I would like to be in the corner, at the end of the corridor, a dead end ... "Poetry" [his nickname for Galina] has, as you know, humble tastes, and it would be very nice if she had a bright and dry-ish room'. Bunin goes on to ask for full details about the hotel, including a plan of the area, and instructs Roshchin not to let anyone know when he will be arriving.

Nikolay Yakovlevich Roshchin (1896-1956: his original last name was Fedorov) had seen military service in the First World War and the Civil War, being promoted to captain in the anti-Bolshevik armies (whence Bunin’s affectionate nickname for him, ‘capitan’. He was evacuated to Yugoslavia after being wounded, and from 1924 moved to Paris, where he became a close friend of the Bunins, spending several months each year with them in Grasse. Roshchin became a writer himself, under Bunin’s guidance, and published short stories and a single novel, with war (especially the Civil War) and emigration constant themes. During the Second World War he was active in the French Resistance, and took part in the Liberation of Paris. Having failed twice in requests to return to Russia during the early 1930s, in 1946 he was one of the first group of emigrants to return to the Soviet Union.

This lot is offered without reserve.
Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.