Ivan Bunin’s prose works. An approach to the choice of copy texts for a critical edition

Abstract

This article discusses the choice of copy texts to serve as the basis of a critical edition of Ivan Bunin's prose works. The issue of choosing copy texts has been most thoroughly dealt with in regard to Bunin's poetry, while the text criticism of his prose works is still at an early stage. The multiple stages Bunin's works went through both before and after their publication require methods of presenting his texts to be elaborated which take into consideration both his own work on them and their impact on literary history and on contemporary readers and critics. The present article embodies a first general approach to this subject and outlines a variety of possible solutions to the problems raised. Four groups of Bunin's prose works are examined — those from his early, pre-revolutionary and émigré periods, and those he left unpublished — and an approach to choosing copy texts for each group is explained. A suitable volume structure in a future critical edition of Bunin's works is described. Problems posed by the correct dating of Bunin's stories are analyzed in relation to their chronological position within a future critical edition and the choice of copy texts for them. The basic principles underlying the choice of copy texts of Bunin's prose for a complete scholarly critical edition of his works are presented in conclusion. The article emphasizes that it is impossible to fulfill the last creative will of the author due to the incompleteness of his work with his legacy (selection of works for future editions, uncoordinated editing).

Keywords

• ivan bunin
• archive material
• text criticism
• choice of copy text
• collected works