Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (1870-1953)
An epic depiction of the difficulties of the Bunin household. 1943
Autograph letter signed (‘Iv. Bun.’) to Nikolay Roshchin, Grasse, 15 December 1943.

In Russian. Six pages, 273 x 214mm and (f.3) 227 x 216mm, some underlining in red and blue pencil. Envelope.

'What a fabulous bastard, what a monster has been sitting on my neck and on Vera's for 14 years': on the unbearable difficulties in the wartime Bunin household caused by the behaviour of Leonid Zurov. Bunin writes in despair at the difficulties of his wartime household in Grasse, due to the unbearable behaviour of Leonid Zurov. The letter begins with the rhetorical question 'are my sins really so great that I have been suffering this punishment for 14 years!', and Bunin goes on to transcribe verbatim a shouting-match between himself and Zurov prompted by a trivial incident involving a mislaid pair of pliers, then describing a second confrontation between Zurov and Vera Bunina ('You have always been a pig!'), which Vera nevertheless meets with compassion ('So it is clear, Lenya, that you do not love me'), and a further confrontation prompted by Bunin's having replaced one of the blackout curtains ('Who dared to change the curtain for me?'). Bunin alludes to the romantic nature of the relationship between Vera Bunina and Zurov: 'But what, what can I do?! Break his head with something, so that V[era] N[ikolaevna] would die of a broken heart? And somehow last summer we were returning to diner from Nice, we sat down for dinner ... he is in the garden, but after five minutes he flies in ... looking at me with furious eyes ... and yells into the dining room "Anyone who goes to my garden and stamps and picks my peas, I will beat like a dog!" ... I jump up and grab the bottle, he grabs a chair and waves it over my head ... This, captain, is how I live ... Let at least someone in Paris and in the world in general know what my life is like and what a fabulous bastard, what a monster has been sitting on my neck and on Vera's for 14 years ... I am writing to you, of course, in secret from Vera N ...'.

Published in O.N. Mikhailov Zhizn΄ Bunina: Lish΄ slovu zhizn΄ dana… (Moscow, 2001), 422-424. Leonid Zurov (1902-1971) had moved from Riga to France in November 1929 at Bunin’s invitation in order to become his secretary; he also helped the Bunins in the garden but his deteriorating mental health made cohabitation difficult, as recounted here. Zurov was ultimately the heir to Bunin’s archive; he died in 1967 in a mental hospital.

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