Человек на границе: поэтика контраста в рассказах И. А. Бунина «Над городом» и «Часовня»

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).