Old Russia

THE WELL OF DAYS--Ivan Bunin-- Knopf ($2.50). Three months ago few U. S. readers had ever heard of Ivan Alexeyevich Bunin. Now, by grace of his recently-won Nobel Prize (TIME, Nov. 20), the U. S. public is aware of his name if not of his books. To take advantage of his sudden fame, Publisher Knopf rushed two Bunin reprints (The Gentleman from San Francisco, The Village) through the press, last fortnight brought out his latest (translated) novel, The Well of Days. Readers of this grave, sensitive but unmodern autobiographical novel may now see what Author Bunin is about, will agree that the Nobel Prize Committee could have made many a worse choice. An unreconstructed rebel against the Soviets, Author Bunin left Russia some 16 years ago, lives an exile's life at Grasse, France. The Well of Days tells the story of his quiet youth in the country he loves and thinks he will never see again. As in Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, the names of people and places are changed, but the thin disguise is not intended to deceive. A nonpolitical novelist, Bunin is out of step with his countrymen but beats no rival drum. Quietly certain that Russia is on the down grade, he says: "I know for sure that I grew up in the epoch of the greatest Russian might, and of the full consciousness of it." Born the third son of impoverished country gentry, "Alexey Alexandrovich Arseniev" grew up in central Russia in an atmosphere of shabby nobility and melancholy decay. His father was an attractive spendthrift who lived on memories of the Crimean War, magniloquent hopes for the future, present delusions of his own practical sense. Alexey had the upbringing and the schooling of a reduced gentleman, but there was no career in store for any of the Arseniev sons. Nicholas married and settled down on a farm; George turned Socialist, was arrested and spent a year in jail; Alexey left school and decided to become a writer. Meantime their father, with the best will in the world, was running through what was left of his estate. Alexey's reminiscent story ends with the beginning of his first serious love affair. As epilog he tells of the funeral in exile of one of Russia's Grand Dukes. Of the interval that cost him his country and irrevocably removed his youth, he says nothing. Author Bunin, like all good Russian authors, writes with a reverent simplicity which only a natural dignity can carry off, and in which simple truths occasionally seem startling. He writes of illness as "in reality an unconsummated death, a crazy journey into certain realms of beyond, that never leaves us unscathed." Of doubt: "Perhaps everything was really nonsense, but that nonsense was my life. . . ."

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