Young Bunin's susceptibility and keenness to the nuances of nature were extraordinary. "The quality of my vision was such that I've seen all seven of the stars of Pleiades, heard a marmot's whistle a verst away, and could get drunk from the smells of landysh or an old book," he remembered later. Bunin's experiences of rural life had a profound impact on his writing. "There, amidst the deep silence of vast fields, among cornfields – or, in winter, huge snowdrifts which were stepping up to our very doorsteps – I spent my childhood which was full of melancholic poetry," Bunin later wrote of his Ozerky days.