Title of the article:

MAN ON THE BORDER: POETICS OF CONTRAST IN “ABOVE THE CITY” AND “CHAPEL” BY I. A. BUNIN

Author(s):

Zoya S. Zakruzhnaya

Information about the author/authors

Zoya S. Zakruzhnaya — PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/000-0002-6798-1582
E-mail: z.zakruzhnaya@mail.ru

Section

Philological sciences

Year

2022

Volume

Vol. 64

Pages

pp. 162–170

Received

January 12, 2022

Approved after reviewing

February 15, 2022

Date of publication

June 28, 2022

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37816/2073-9567-2022-64-162-170

Index UDK

821.161.1.0

Index BBK

83.3(2Рос=Рус)53

Abstract

The paper is the first to come up with a comparative analysis of I. A. Bunin “Above the city” (1900) and “Chapel” (1944). The author aims to trace the creative and ideological evolution of I. A. Bunin. The grounds for comparison are the similarity of the key plot situations and likeness of the motive and figurative structures of the stories. The stories are based on the same key plot situation — a man on the border. At the same time, the motive structure of both stories is formed on the basis of the poetics of contrasts. The study reveals key antithetical motifs that create the “two worlds” of stories: children — adults; top — bottom; “here” — “there”; light — darkness; cold — warm; “past” — “present”; “living” — “dead”. The paper establishes that the contrast manifests itself in the key oppositions of the texts of both stories and realizes at all levels of the works (ideological and thematic, the level of the figurative system, the motive level) and turns out to be the most important property of Bunin's poetics, both “early” (pre-revolutionary) and “late” (emigrant) periods. At the same time, the comparative analysis shows that, despite the similarity and “evolutionary nature” of the motive and figurative structures of the stories, they have an opposite compositional orientation, so that the same plot situation receives a diametrically opposite resolution in the stories. It appears that I. A. Bunin goes through the “reverse” worldview evolution from the story “Above the city” (1900) to “The Chapel” (1944).

Keywords

I. A. Bunin, “Above the City”, “The Chapel”, poetics of contrast, motive, motive complex, creative evolution, ideological evolution.

References

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2 Bunin Iv. Nad gorodom [Over the City]. In: Bunin Iv. Nachal'naia liubov' [Initial Love]. Praga, Slavianskoe izdatel'stvo Publ., 1921, pp. 29–35. (In Russian)

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