Фольклорная символика рассказа И. Бунина «Ворон»

Abstract

The article is devoted to a poetical analysis of Ivan Bunin’s short story “The Raven” (1944), which is a part of the cycle of short stories about love “Dark Alleys”. The research is undertaken in order to comprehend the role of folklore in the formation of the poetic world of Bunin’s love story, to identify the emotional and aesthetic perspectives of the images, motifs, and the central conflict of the short story, which is contextually conditioned and mediated by folklore symbols. The research is novel in that it is the first to analyze in detail the short story “The Raven”, its character system (images of the father, the son, the daughter, Elena Nikolaevna) and to identify the most important folklore components of the central conflict of the story (a love conflict). As a result, it is shown that the active involvement of folklore symbols (the folklorized concept “The Raven”, a color palette of folklore), which were close and understandable to the Parisian community of Russian emigrants, allowed Bunin (who adhered to national traditions, including folklore ones) to bring additional poetic intentions into the text of the shott story, imbued with imagery familiar from childhood and bright fairy-tale emotionality, to bring the perception of the text created in exile closer to the nostalgic memory of the abandoned homeland of Russia.