Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin
Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin was a notable Russian writer born in 1870 in czarist Russia, specifically in the village of Navrochat, Penza province. He faced the challenges of early loss, as his father died when he was just a year old, leading his family to relocate to a home for widows in Moscow. Kuprin pursued a military career, graduating as a second lieutenant and serving in the Ukraine, but his discontent with military life prompted him to transition into writing. Influenced by prominent writers like Maxim Gorky and Anton Chekhov, he began publishing his works in the late 19th century, gaining recognition for his short stories and novels that often explored social issues and the plight of minorities.
Kuprin's most acclaimed work is "The Duel" (1905), which delves into army life and personal struggles. Throughout his career, he produced a variety of literary pieces, including short stories, novels, and travelogues, with themes reflecting his diverse experiences. After experiencing the upheavals of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, he emigrated to Paris in 1920 but eventually returned to Russia in 1937, where he passed away in 1938. His writing is celebrated for its clarity and emotional depth, remaining influential even as literary trends shifted.
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Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin
Author
- Born: August 26, 1870
- Birthplace: Narovchat, Penza, Russia
- Died: October 25, 1938
- Place of death: Leningrad, Soviet Union (now St. Petersburg, Russia)
Biography
Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin was a popular middle-class writer at the beginning of the twentieth century. He was born in czarist Russia in 1870, in the village of Navrochat, Penza province. His father, Ivan Ivanovich Kuprin, was a minor government official; his mother, Liubov’ Alekseevna Kuprina, was descended from an upper-class Tatar family. His father died when Kuprin was only a year old, and the family moved to a home for widows in Moscow in 1874, where he attended a school for orphaned gentlemen’s children. In 1881, he entered military cadet school and in 1888, Alexander Military Academy.
Graduating as a second lieutenant in 1890, he was posted to the Ukraine, remaining there for four years, and then left the army, of which he was highly critical. He traveled throughout the Ukraine, performing a number of odd jobs. During this time he met the famous Russian writers Maxim Gorky and Anton Chekhov, both of whom encouraged him to write. He settled in St. Petersburg in 1901 and landed a job at the journal Mir bozhii. In 1902, he married Maria Karlovna Davydova, the daughter of the journal’s editor. Gorky invited Kuprin to join a group of neorealistic writers, Sreda, and to write for his alamanac, Znanie. At the outbreak of World War I, Kuprin was briefly recalled to active service, then returned to writing and journalism. He was ambivalent about the Bolshevik Revolution, deciding to immigrate to Paris in 1920, along with many other Russian writers. He felt his exile keenly and, with deteriorating health, finally returned to Russia in 1937. He died of cancer in 1938.
Kuprin began writing while he was in the military, beginning in 1889 with a short story about a jilted actress. While he was in the Ukraine a number of his short stories were published in Kiev newspapers, including the story that first won him notice, “Doznanie” (1894), about the military. His first novel, Molokh, appeared in 1896, and concerned the plight of workers in the newly industrializing Ukraine. The best years of his writing career were in the first decade of the twentieth century, when a steady stream of high quality short stories emerged, many of them about the treatment of minorities, especially Jews and Tatars, the result of his varied experiences of a decade earlier.
His most significant work is his novel Poedinok (1905; The Duel, 1916), which he worked on for ten years before its publication. It deals with army life, values, and attitudes; at one level it is Kuprin’s own duel with the army. The book was an immediate success, coming on the heels of Russian military defeats by the Japanese. In addition to writing short stories, he also produced a travelogue on the Cote d’Azur, France, and a memoir of Chekhov. His other novels include Yama (1909-1915; Yama: The Pit, 1931), a three-part novel about prostitution, and the semi-autobiographical Iunkera (1933), also in three volumes. His most anthologized works probably are the short stories “Granatovyi braslet (1911; “The Bracelet of Garnets,” 1917), and “Reka zhizni” (1906), and the prose poemSulamif (1908). His work has been widely translated and several of his stories have been adapted as motion pictures. Till the end, his best prose was praised for sparseness and purity of style, even when his brand of realism was no longer in vogue.