Известия Уральского федерального университета. Серия 2: Гуманитарные науки (Dec 2020)
Ivan Bunin’s Attraction: The Formation of a Creative Personality
Abstract
This article examines Ivan Bunin’s early work Attraction (1897), whose complete version was first published in 2019. The author demonstrates that the story features a number of attributes related to the portrayal of characters, plot organisation, chronotope, narration, and intertextuality, all of which help compare the young writer’s style with his later works, understand the patterns of his style’s evolution, and trace the genesis of Bunin’s original artistic philosophy and writing manner. The first chapter is a classical exposition and not only is it an example of well-learned lessons of Russian literature, but it also unveils the author’s creative search. It is characterised by compositional completeness, contains a prequel of the main story and a description of the main character, and sets the main plot lines. The first chapter is already indicative of the writer’s style / narrative strategy, which unites lyrical and epic aspects on the one hand and has features of a unique identity on the other. From there on, the writer builds his narrative based on the “manor text” of Russian literature, focuses his attention on the most important features of the text (such as the motif of silence), complementing them with new tonal and semantic shades, and an emphasised and even excessive substantivity of description. The characters’ psychological attributes are original too. Their system and order are akin to the traditional love triangle pattern complicated, however, by depicting the lead character surrounded by female characters, which, aside from the “manor text”, connects this story with Natalie. A wide variety of literary sources as well as the inaccuracy of citation show the future writer’s tendency to “rewriting” quotes, which was to become an important factor of conceptualisation of the author’s thought in Bunin’s creative work. The analysis of the story also shows that the aspiring writer felt free and organically fit the world of Russian literature.
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