Spatial and temporal organization of the story of I.A. Bunin “Cold Autumn”

Abstract

This article is an analysis of the chronotope in I.A. Bunins story Cold Autumn. From the point of view of the spatio-temporal organization, this text is built quite unusually: it is clearly divided into three parts, each of which has its own characteristic. Time in the story is presented non-linearly, it flows at different speeds - the description of one evening of characters is as detailed as possible and takes two-thirds of the story, and the rest of the heroines life is only one-third. In general, the story is built retrospectively and is focused on the memories of the heroine, therefore, many dates are given indirectly. The space in the story is based on the contrast between a detailed description of the estate and the locus of the house and an abstract enumeration of the heroines multiple movements abroad. This detailed description of the events taking place in Russia and the abstraction of space and time abroad may be related to the authors personal experience: Cold Autumn which was created in exile bears the imprint of Bunins longing and nostalgia for the lost Homeland. In this study, the spatio-temporal organization of the story Cold Autumn is fitted into the context of I.A. Bunins works and is also compared with the concept of the chronotope presented by B. Pasternak in the novel Doctor Zhivago.

Keywords

• “cold autumn”
• space and time
• i. bunin
• b. pasternak
• “doctor zhivago”