Crime Without Punishment: Ivan Bunin’s "Loopy Ears"

Despite their often disparate recollections of Ivan Bunin, émigré writers, critics, and memoirists agree that he was vociferously opposed to the fiction of Fedor Dostoevski, especially his major novels. They recall repeatedly that Bunin looked upon Dostoevskii as a “loathsome writer” and that he indicted Crime and Punishment, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov for what he believed to be their strained atmosphere, brittle construction, unwieldy style, and, most importantly, their monotonous characters, especially conscience-stricken criminals and suffering heroines. The émigré literati further contend that Bunin found particularly abhorrent the Christian mysticism of Dostoevskii’s world view. In Bunin’s opinion, they report, the ontological flights and falls of Raskol'nikov and Alesha Karamazov were but a lame excuse to “have Christ shoved into vulgar novels.” Valentin Kataev recalls that Bunin raged apropos of Raskol'nikov: “Dostoevskii sticks your nose into impossible and inconceivable abominations, into spiritual filth—From here has come everything that has happened to Russia: Decadence, Modernism, Revolution, young people who are infected to the marrow of their bones with Dostoevshchina—[ who are] without direction in their lives, confused, physically and spiritually crippled by war, not knowing what to do with their strengths and talents, at times, their exceptional, even colossal talents.” Significantly, Bunin’s dislike of Dostoevskii continued until his death. A. Bakhrakh reports that on November 7, 1953, the last day of Bunin’s life, the writer promised that “should I live and God give me strength, I will try again to remove Dostoevskii from his pedestal.”