The letters between the Bunins and the Zaytsevs. 1930-s

The second article, prepared on the basis of the full text of the correspondence of I. A. Bunin and B. K. Zaytsev, as well as their wives V. N. Bunina and V A. Zaytseva, is dedicated to the letters of the 1930s. During this period, the life of the Russian emigration used to change: in the first half of the decade, the Bunins and the Zaytsevs lived extremely poorly (poverty is a constant subject of reflection in the letters); after Bunin’s receiving the Nobel Prize (the very moment of notification, the triumph of Russian Paris, the trip to Stockholm are covered in detail in the letters “in both directions”), the financial situation improved for both families (Bunin made a generous gift to the Zaytsevs). The deaths of loved ones in Russia (the fathers of V. N. Bunina and V. A. Zaytseva died in Moscow at almost the same time, in the spring of 1933) and in emigration (M. S. Bruyant, nee Muromtseva, cousin of V. N. Bunina and a good friend of V. A. Zaytseva, died in 1930), the colleagues in poetry (the death and funeral of V. F. Khodasevich are especially detailed), bring the two families together in grief; joyful events (the marriage of N. B. Zaytseva or the Nobel celebrations) unite them in joy. An important plot of the correspondence is the journey of the Zaytsev couple to Finland (to the Karelian Isthmus, close to the Soviet border, and to Valaam): the newly acquired sense of the Motherland and spiritual cleansing in an Orthodox monastery on their native land became an important milestone in their life and work. The reader’s reviews of the two writers and their wives about the current Russian literature are very interesting (Vladimir Sirin, V. V Nabokov, as well as M. I. Tsvetaeva and L. N. Andreev, who died earlier, are discussed in the correspondence). The mutual evaluations of the new works by Bunin and Zaytsev, published in this decade, are also important.