Siberian Federal University

Issue

Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences. 2011 4 (3)

Authors

Karlova, Olga A.

Contact information

Karlova, Olga A. : Siberian Federal University , 82 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041 Russia , e-mail:

Keywords

Russian literature; mentality; Russianness; reflection; sinaesthetics; intertextuality; realism; symbolism and modernism

Abstract

This article gives an overview of philosophic issues of national identity in the creative work of the famous Russian poet and writer Ivan Bunin, the investigation of the phenomenon of the «Russian soul constant» in the context of his works, the determination of the aspects of «Russianness» of the genre and style peculiarities of his prose and poetry, as well as Bunin's creative style in general. The reflection of nature accompanied by sounding silence is the most typical feature of Ivan Bunin's poetry. The human in Bunin's works is a vessel for the reflection of the nature, the organ of its thought and emotional experience. It is the world of nature the images of which occupy 74 % of all artistic descriptions by Bunin and for him it is the world of the highest harmony of the existence. Another typically Russian aspect of Ivan Bunin's work is his sinaesthetics. Bunin's texts, especially poetry, are first of all very picturesque. It may be said that it is the poetry of thousands of colours, but colours strictly selected and philosophically encoded. The picturesqueness of Bunin's poetry and prose does not have analogues in the Russian literature: at the average use of 70-90 colours formations for 10 thousand words in a text, Bunin uses 190 colours. At the same time the colourful luxury of Bunin's language according to Vladimir Nabokov is achieved, first of all, by its tone-painting, rhythm, laconism and the highest density of the verse. Letting the impressions through the prism of his concept, the master creates an integral image of heightened life, aims at painting its intensity of emotions, at reaching the superb degree of existence. The framework of the writer's philosophic thought is the entireness of existence. This framework includes all his poetry, plots, motifs, stories. Everything is connected with everything, everything is mutually penetrating, everything has its meaning only in respect to the whole. It is not only ancient logics of the mythocosmos typical for Russian philosophers and writers of various epochs, but also the courage of the thinker to operate with such notions as «eternity», «cosmos», «life» and «death». Love of a man and a woman obsessed with life and charmed with death, is eternal, tragic and mysterial in Bunin's work. His contemporaries used to note «repetitions» and imitation in Bunin's works. Yu. M. Lotman opened a new era in Bunin's studies by speaking about Bunin's modernist desire to «rewrite» the Russian literature in its art samples. Bunin is a realist only in artistic manner, although it is among the writers-realists of the 19th century, where he felt at ease. But his everyday life description is anti-natural, selective and symbolic. And in this anti-realist everyday life description Bunin was absolutely original. Another aspect of the «Russianness» artistic concept of Bunin is the memory. It becomes the crossroads of all the motifs of his work. Bunin himself expresses the essence of his work in words which at most cover the verges of life «heightened by art»: «We live by all that, by what we live, only to the extent at which we understand the price of that by what we live. Usually this price is very low: it rises only in the moments of excitement - excitement of happiness or unhappiness, vivid consciousness of the acquisition or loss, and in moments of poetic transfiguration of the past into memory». These and other existential, reason-for-being questions tired pragmatic Western thinkers and especially the European masters of arts of the 19th -20th centuries. For the natural-contemplating harmony of the Oriental civilizations such questions were too straightforward and «humanized». Answers to them the Russian culture gave. And these answers were secretly-mysterious, spiritual-pagan, light- sad, tragicmajeure. Perhaps these are the questions and the answers of the borderland of civilizations.

Pages

315-322

Paper at repository of SibFU

https://elib.sfu-kras.ru/handle/2311/2256

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).