Estate Topos in Ivan Bunin’s Prose

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the manor topos and the image of the estate in the prose by Ivan A. Bunin. The relevance of the study lies in the fact that the concept of “estate topos” is not sufficiently developed in the Chinese humanities. The article considers only a few works by Chinese researchers. The works of Russian scholars are more focused on Bunin’s poetry. Based on the theory of the estate topos, the article shows that еhe image of the estate in the writer’s prose becomes the most important. In the study of the dynamics of this image, three stages of its formation and functioning are distinguished. Between 1890 and 1900 the image develops, the locus of the garden is clearly indicated (the story “Tan’ka”). The period of 1900–1919 is characterized by deepening of interpretation. From the poeticization of estate life in “Antonovka Apples” the author proceeds to deep reflections on the reasons for the extinction of noble nests in “Sukhodol”. In the period of 1920–1940 the image of the estate is built in organic correlation with the theme of the house, the lost home, the lost native nest. This period is represented by the story “Mitya’s Love”, the novel “The Life of Arseniev”, the collection of stories “Dark Alleys’. The novel “The Life of Arseniev” is a kind of culmination in the disclosure of the estate theme in Bunin’s prose. The image of the estate in the novel is associated with the nature of the hero’s memories, it changes along with the change of his emotional experiences in different periods of life from childhood to adolescence, and then to youth. In the 1920s and 1940s, the content and tonality of the estate topos were significantly corrected. The estate is interpreted as an absolute value, imprinted by memory and preserved thanks to memory in the space of culture. The image of the estate in Bunin’s work acquires semantic volume and bright originality, associated, among other things, with the historiosophical and spiritual understanding of this phenomenon in Russian culture.