Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (1870-1953)
Notes for Bunin’s memoir on Chekhov. n.d.
Autograph manuscript, three fragmentary drafts for his book O Chehove (About Chekhov), n.p., n.d. [late 1940s/early1950s].

In Russian. In blue and red ink, three fragments, 136 x 193mm, 85 x 120mm and 75 x 205mm; tipped onto a leaf of paper, 300 x 205mm.

Notes for Bunin’s memoir on Chekhov: in the three notes, Bunin records first the typical facial features of the Chekhov family, then Chekhov's self-presentation, and finally his 'nobility'.

'Nikolai Chekhov – a total Mongol. / Chekhov's mother also quite Mongol-like in her face. / Anton Chekhov in the last two to three years of his life – an old, wrinkled Mongol'. 'I had never seen Chekhov in his robe'. 'Chekhov's nobility. His love – flower, animals, nobility of human deeds ...'.

Bunin worked on his memoir of his close friend and literary predecessor Anton Chekhov from the late 1940s until his death, although it remained unfinished, being completed by Bunin’s widow, Vera Muromtseva, and her assistant Leonid Zurov, for its publication in New York in 1955. In the introduction, Vera recalled the manner of its composition, reflected in these three scraps of paper: ‘In his last year on those sleepless nights – and he had lost almost all of his sleep – he spent his time scribbling things down on scraps of paper, sometimes even on cigarette boxes, remembering details of his conversations with Chekhov’.

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