Issues

The paper is based on archival materials. Nadezhda Teffi, who wrote a complimentary review of Azerbaijani author Banine’s autobiographical French language novel “Caucasian Days” in 1946, introduced her to Ivan Bunin, the Nobel Prize laureate in literature. The Russian writer fell in love with an attractive novelist and tried to become her mentor, to persuade her to become a Russian writer, rather than a French one. At the same time, Soviet writer Konstantin Simonov, who arrived in Paris with his wife, movie star Valentina Serova, tried to persuade Bunin to get a Soviet passport, as many emigrants did, and to return to his homeland. Banine, who wanted to visit her native land, invited Bunin to go with her to the USSR for a few months. Nothing came of this venture. As for Bunin, this love affair made him suffer. Banine later described the story of their relationship in an unpublished novel, “Methuselah and the Viper.” She wrote two versions of her memoirs in French as well, a short one and a full one. Both, containing Bunin’s letters to her, were translated into Russian. This article introduces her letters to Bunin into scholarly circulation for the first time. These letters allow us to understand the background of all the events better, as well as literary and life strategies of the Russian writer and of the Azerbaijani author, who remained a French-language writer.