Dreams (iwan bunin)

Ivan Bunin in 1901 in a photo of Maxim Dmitriev

Dreams ( Russian Сны , Sny ) is a short story by the Russian Nobel Prize laureate for literature Ivan Bunin , which was written towards the end of 1903 and in 1904 in Gorki's first Snanije anthology in Saint Petersburg together with Goldener Boden ( Russian Золотое дно , Solotoje dno ) under the common title Black earth ( Russian Чернозём , Chernosjom ) appeared.

overview

First the action takes place in the station waiting room and then in a 3rd class carriage of a passenger train on the journey into the city.

Out of the dialogue-heavy text, two remarkable episodes, presented in an everyday naturalistic manner, stand out.

First, a petty bourgeois wife lies dying at home during her delivery. The petty bourgeois - on the way to town - wants to get a doctor.

Second, in the 3rd grade, a certain “narrator” and a couple of farmers traveling with them interpret their eponymous dreams.

Many contemporary Russian writers saw in the text Bunin's turn to criticize social conditions - here the Russian peasant class. In the letter accompanying the manuscript of the story sent to Gorky of December 11, 1903, Bunin, who feared being deleted by the censors, admitted: Realism - yes, but no social criticism. Because the text is only a sketch (probably inspired by the Snanije publishing concept).
1904, Alexander Amfiteatrov certifies the author a masterful laconic style. And if a text passage appears as a social comment, it is not meant as such, but that impression is created simply by Bunin's disarming realism. Korolenko criticizes the short story in Russkoje Bogatstvo : Bunin probably did not listen to what the farmers were saying in the train compartment. Bunin's answer has come down to us. After that, Korolenko did not understand the narrative.
In 1953, shortly before his death, Bunin admitted that fifty years ago, at the end of 1903, he hastily sent the story to Petersburg.

Dreams. German by Larissa Robiné pp. 219–226 in: Iwan Bunin: Antonäpfel. Stories 1892–1911. Editing and epilogue: Karlheinz Kasper . 536 pages. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1982