The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-11-10
Literature Award
Goes to B J an
Anti-Soviet Writer
Nobel Prize Winner Is
Novelist of Second
Rank
BY JOSEPH FREEMAN

Dispatches from Stockholm, Swe-
den, reported yesterday that the 1888
Nobel Prize for literature has been
awarded to Ivan Bunin, white guard
Russian author.
The award of the Nobel Prize to
a poet and novelist of the second
rank who since 1917 has bitterly at
tackled the Soviet Union Is a glar~
ing example of the class basis Of lit
erature.
Bunin is known here chiefly
as the author of short story called
1.-THE Gentleman of San Francisco"
In Russia he is known as the trans
lator of Longfel1ow's "Hiawatha, and
Byron's Cain and Manfred"
He is best known as one of the lit
erary spokesman of the small, land
owning nobility, which was already
falling to pieces when the October
Revolution swept 1t out Of history.
This years Nobel Prize winner was
born in Vorone5h in 1870. He came
from an old noble family Of minor
Importance and although he called
himself a free spirit" his works &C
tually reflected the feeble and hope
less spirit of the petty nobility.
Indeed, Bunin may be said to be
the last poet OF the Russian nobility.
His early works, delicate pastels in
verse and prose colored by affec-
tiorate and detailed descriptions of
the Russian landscape, described the
"noblemen's nest" dying. The poet
mourned the passing Of beauty that
was no more-tfe beauty OF those
days when the Russian landowning
nobility was a vital force. His poems
and novels flutter with old-fasllioned
sentiments for Little Mother Rus
sia.'
The Beauty of Autumn
The Gentleman from Voronezh
loved the decadent beauty Of autumn,
which somehow sy1nbolized the dy-
ing culture of the Russian nobility.
From the futility and despair of the
landowning class lying on its his
toric deathhed, Bunin sought escape
in pililosoptic thoughts, as vague as
they were vast. Because the idle
landowners, the Qblomovs, living on
peasant labor, lolied about their I'M
cultivated estates in decrepit utility,
Bunjn concluded thet everything
mundane was futile. Earthly life, he
said, did not count in the face Of
the endless infinity Of time.
But there came day when the
ethereal runner of the Russian skies
plunged passionateIy Into the affairs
Of this vulgar earth. The october
Revolution reused in him all the
hatred and fury of the noble against
the toiling masses.
In the early days of the Revolution,
he edited white guard chauvinist
sheet in the Ukraine. Later he
Joined the white emigres in Paris,
where for the past fifteen years he
has hurled impotent insults against
the workers and peasants OF his
homeland building a Socialist So
ciety.
Dynamite, Oil and Poetry
In addition to his work as cosIn~
ter revolutionary journalist, BuniIi
has continued to write verse and
prose tales. The broad nature Of
Soviet literary life may be judged by
the fact that some Of his tales, not
Of a political nature, which he has
written in emigration, have been re-
published in the Soviet Union. Els
Loves of Mityin'' was issued in Len
ingrad in 1924 and 1926, and his COL
lection Of tales "Chang's Dreams was
issued in 1927 by the State Publish
ing House in Moscow.
The Swedish Academy has honored
this white guard writer with a prize
founded by Alfred Nobel, who was not
only the inventor of dynamite, but
the owner of oil fields in Baku now
owned and operated by the workers
and peasants state.
No wonder, then, that the Swedish
Academy, in deciding upon Russian
author for the prize has chosen 3
bitter foe of the Soviet regime. Even
among white guard writers, Bunin
is not considered as of the first rank.
Both Kuprin and Merezhkovsky are
his superior in talent, imagination
and energy.
But all Of these pale into irsignifi-
caace-considered from a. purely
literary viewpoint beside the gigantic
figure Of Maxim Gorky, who even be-
fore the October Revolution lowered
as one of the titans of Russian and
world literature.
Two Camps.
To have ignored Cork and have
awarded the Nobel prize to a. second
E2te white guard is only one example
OF the growing politicalization Of liter
airy life. Tt is no longer a question
as TO whether writer's should have
political views. That question is dead
and cannot be revived by the cheap
antics Of Communist critics who
psychologicsllv ara still rooted in the
Greenwich Village Of the wa days.
The question now is what politics
a writer should have. Evsrv day 1t
becomes clearer that tie literary
world. Ike the world at large, is d.
viding sharply into two camps, and
that writer who does not wish to land 4,
into the camp of the white guards "
and the fascists must join the camp NJ
OF the Communists n.~ M