Sins of Love

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (1870–1953) is one of the greatest masters of the short story in Russian literature and an outstanding poet. In 1933, he became the first Russian Nobel Prize laureate in Literature—for his “truthful artistic talent with which he recreated in prose the typical Russian character,” but already in exile. On this disc is an audio performance based on Ivan Bunin’s stories “Sins of Love.” At the center of each of them is a Woman. Here is Nadezhda, who gave the best moments to the one who read to her: “Around the crimson hawthorn bloomed, dark lindens’ alleys stood…” Here is the cruel-hearted Beauty… Here is Kuma, who in her modest white dress was wonderfully beautiful… Masha, who ran a hat-making workshop in Paris… And the one for whom the steamboat “Saratov” took a former officer—now a prisoner—away to Vladivostok. But dearest of all to the author is Tanya. “Ah, that peasant scent of her head, her breathing, the apple-coolness of her cheeks!” She was so afraid at first that the old maid would find out about her sin! And she didn’t know that February of the seventeenth year was coming...

“Probably, each of us has some especially precious love memory—or some especially heavy love sin…” Ivan Bunin