The Village by Ivan Bunin

First published:Derevnya, 1910 (English translation, 1923)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Social criticism

Time of plot: Early twentieth century

Locale: Russia

Principal characters

• Tikhon Ilitch Krasoff, a self-made landowner
• Kuzma Ilitch Krasoff, his imaginative brother
• The Bride, a peasant woman employed by Tikhon
• Rodka, a peasant and the husband of the Bride

The Story:

The ancestors of Tikhon and Kuzma Ilitch Krasoff are nothing to be proud of: Their great-grandfather had been hunted from Durnovka with wolfhounds, their grandfather had distinguished himself by becoming a thief, and their father, a petty huckster, had died early in life as a result of his drinking. The sons, after serving for a time as clerks in town stores, take to the road as itinerant peddlers. After they travel together for many years, their partnership is mutually dissolved during an argument over the division of profits. The two part very bitterly.

After the partnership is broken, Tikhon takes over a posting station a few miles from Durnovka, the little village where his family has lived for many generations. Along with the station, he operates a liquor dispensary and general mercantile establishment. Determined to become a man of some consequence, he begins to build up his fortune although he is already in his forties. He decides to follow the tax collectors and buy land at forced sales, and he pays the lowest possible prices for what he purchases.

Tikhon’s private life is anything but rich. He lives with his cook, a mute woman, who becomes the mother of his child. The child, however, is accidentally smothered, and soon afterward Tikhon sends the woman away and marries a noblewoman, by whom he tries to have children. His efforts, however, are fruitless, for the children are always born premature and dead. As if to make up, temporarily at least, for his wife’s failure to present him with children, fate gives Tikhon the opportunity of finishing off, economically speaking, the last member of the family that had held his own ancestors in serfdom through the previous centuries.

Life is not easy for Tikhon. A government order closes all the dramshops, including his, and makes liquor a state monopoly. Tikhon also continues to be disturbed by the fact that he has no children, as he believes this indicates his failure in life.

The summer following the government order closing his liquor business proves to be a bad one. There is no rain and it is very hot, so the grain harvest on his lands is only a fraction of what it should have been. During the fall, Tikhon goes to a fair to do some horse-trading, and while he is there he becomes disgusted with himself and with life in general, which suddenly seems pointless to him. He begins drinking heavily, downing immense quantities of vodka, although not enough to interfere with the conduct of his business.

Tikhon’s life is little affected by the war with Japan that breaks out soon afterward; he is more affected by persistent rumors of an attempt at a socialist revolution in the Russian legislative body. When he learns that the great landowners—those who own more than a thousand acres—are likely to have their estates taken from them for redistribution, he even begins to agitate a little for the new laws. Soon, however, he changes his mind when he discovers that the peasants on his own land are plotting against him. One Sunday, he hears that they are meeting at Durnovka to rise in rebellion against him. He immediately goes to the village, but the peasants refuse to listen to him and drive him away with force. The uprising is short-lived, and within a few days the peasants are back to deal with him again, but Tikhon no longer trusts them—he thinks of them as little better than treacherous animals.

One of the workers on Tikhon’s land is a young peasant named Rodka, who is married to a young girl of some beauty who is always called the Bride. The girl is a source of annoyance to Tikhon because she arouses him sexually. On several occasions she resists his unwelcome attentions, but finally he has his way with her. The Bride does not complain; she simply endures, much as she endures the terrible beatings that her husband administers to her with a whip. The beatings make Tikhon afraid of Rodka, and so he plots to do away with the peasant. Such scheming, however, proves unnecessary, for the Bride herself poisons her husband. Tikhon, at least, is sure that she has poisoned her husband, although no one else thinks so.

Chance brings to Tikhon’s attention a volume of poems written by his brother, Kuzma. Stirred by the knowledge that his brother is still alive and also an author, Tikhon writes him a letter, telling him that it is high time they buried their past differences and became friends again. Kuzma comes to Durnovka, and the two brothers become, at least on the surface, friendly. Tikhon offers his brother the overseership of the estate at Durnovka, and Kuzma accepts because he has no other prospects for earning a living.

Kuzma Krasoff has done nothing with his life. Following the dissolution of his partnership with Tikhon years before, he worked here and there, as a drover, a teamster, a general worker. Then he fell in love with a woman at Voronezh and lived with her for ten years, until she died. In that decade, he busied himself by trading in grain and horses and by writing occasionally for the local newspaper. All of his life he has wanted to become a writer. He received no education, except for short periods of instruction at the hands of an unemployed shoemaker and from books he borrowed occasionally. He considers his life a complete waste, for he has never been able to settle down to writing seriously.

In his maturity Kuzma blames all of his troubles, and the troubles of Russians in general, on a lack of education. He believes that education is the answer to every problem confronting him and his country, and he asserts that the Russians, whom he regards as little better than barbarians with a wide streak of hatred in their makeup, would be better folk if they were educated.

Kuzma’s life as overseer on his brother’s estate is not a happy one. He feels that the position is a last resort, and he dislikes the people with whom he has to deal, including Tikhon. He is also perturbed by the Bride, whom Tikhon has sent to cook and keep house for him. She does not arouse him as she had aroused Tikhon, but Kuzma is bothered by her presence, and he feels extremely sorry for her because, a few years before, a group of men had raped her. That incident, Kuzma feels, lingers like a cloud over her existence. When at last he speaks to Tikhon about the matter, Tikhon, supposing that Kuzma has been sampling the same favors that he himself had enjoyed in the past, laughs at his brother’s scruples. Nevertheless, he does arrange to marry off the woman, and the Bride becomes the wife of a peasant on the estate. On the wedding day, only Kuzma realizes that the prospect of a husband brings no joy to the Bride and that she, like himself, will never really be happy.

Bibliography

Connolly, Julian. Ivan Bunin. Boston: Twayne, 1982. Presents an analytical survey of Bunin’s major works, with a special emphasis on the evolution of Bunin’s views on human existence. Examines the treatment of Russian society in The Village against the background of Bunin’s perceptions of the inevitable decline and fall of major cultures and civilizations.

Kryzytski, Serge. The Works of Ivan Bunin. The Hague, the Netherlands: Mouton, 1971. The first monograph on Bunin published in English contains a detailed description of Bunin’s work and its critical reception. Compares Bunin’s treatment of Russian peasant life in The Village to that found in the works of his contemporaries.

Marullo, Thomas Gaiton. If You See the Buddha: Studies in the Fiction of Ivan Bunin. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1998. Examines the influence of Buddhism on Bunin’s writing, focusing on six of his works; chapter 2 is devoted to a discussion of The Village. Points out how these works express Buddhist concepts of self, craving, enlightenment, regression, and rebirth, and how these ideas helped Bunin make sense of his world.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. Ivan Bunin: Russian Requiem, 1885-1920—A Portrait from Letters, Diaries, and Fiction. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1993.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Ivan Bunin: From the Other Shore, 1920-1933—A Portrait from Letters, Diaries, and Fiction. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1995.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Ivan Bunin: The Twilight of Emigré Russia, 1934-1953—A Portrait from Letters, Diaries, and Memoirs. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002. Three-volume compilation of letters, diary and memoir excerpts, and stories—along with comments from Bunin’s family, friends, and others who knew him—chronicles the author’s life. Marullo’s introduction and commentary in each volume place the compiled materials within the context of Bunin’s life and times.

Woodward, James B. Ivan Bunin: A Study of His Fiction. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980. Stimulating discussion of Bunin’s work analyzes the role that nature plays in his fiction. Also focuses on the way that human attitudes toward nature shape the experiences of Bunin’s characters.