I. A. Bunin and V.N. Muromtseva. 1906. Moscow. Photograph from the archive of I.A. Bunin.
For a joint photo portrait, Ivan Bunin and Vera Muromtseva posed soon after meeting each other. Their first meeting took place on November 4, 1906 at a literary evening in the house of writer Boris Zaitsev, where, according to the owner’s recollections, the 36-year-old Bunin was reading poems so wonderfully that attracted Vera Nikolaevna, who was only 25 years old.
After that Bunin and Muromtseva began to see each other often: they went for a walk, had lunch together and visited exhibitions. Some literary scholars suggest that it was the beginning of the romantic relationship with Vera Nikolaevna that the classic wrote the poem about “We were walking beside each other, but…” in 1917.
We were walking beside each other, but
You did not dare to look at me anymore,
And in the wind of the March day
Our empty speech was lost.
The clouds were whitening
Through the garden, where droplets were falling,
Your cheek was pale,
And like the flowers, the eyes became blue.
I avoided gazing at your
Already half-open lips,
But it was still blissfully empty
That wonderful world where we walked beside each other.
For several months, lovers did not publicise their relationship. Muromtseva studied chemistry at the Higher Women’s Courses of Professor Guerrier, and her loved ones were against her distraction from preparing for exams and working on her thesis. However, Vera Nikolaevna chose Bunin over a career as a research scientist, and in spring of 1907 the couple went on a journey through the countries of ancient civilizations to the ‘homeland of Jesus Christ’ and visited Egypt, Syria and Palestine.
For a joint photo portrait, Ivan Bunin and Vera Muromtseva posed soon after meeting each other. Their first meeting took place on November 4, 1906 at a literary evening in the house of writer Boris Zaitsev, where, according to the owner’s recollections, the 36-year-old Bunin was reading poems so wonderfully that attracted Vera Nikolaevna, who was only 25 years old.
After that Bunin and Muromtseva began to see each other often: they went for a walk, had lunch together and visited exhibitions. Some literary scholars suggest that it was the beginning of the romantic relationship with Vera Nikolaevna that the classic wrote the poem about “We were walking beside each other, but…” in 1917.
We were walking beside each other, but
You did not dare to look at me anymore,
And in the wind of the March day
Our empty speech was lost.
The clouds were whitening
Through the garden, where droplets were falling,
Your cheek was pale,
And like the flowers, the eyes became blue.
I avoided gazing at your
Already half-open lips,
But it was still blissfully empty
That wonderful world where we walked beside each other.
For several months, lovers did not publicise their relationship. Muromtseva studied chemistry at the Higher Women’s Courses of Professor Guerrier, and her loved ones were against her distraction from preparing for exams and working on her thesis. However, Vera Nikolaevna chose Bunin over a career as a research scientist, and in spring of 1907 the couple went on a journey through the countries of ancient civilizations to the ‘homeland of Jesus Christ’ and visited Egypt, Syria and Palestine.
The Bunins were married only in 1922: the writer had long been denied a divorce by his first wife, Anna Tsakni. Vera Nikolaevna and Ivan Alekseevich lived for 47 years together, until the writer died in 1953.
Andrei Sedykh, Bunin’s literary secretary, wrote about the relationship in the Bunins family:
