Между Каменкой и Грассом (Бунин и Гоголь)

Abstract

The problem “Bunin and Gogol” is considered in two aspects — diachronic and synchronic. The first one implies the study of the dynamics of the appreciation of Gogol’s creative art by young Bunin (which is reflected in memories of the main character-narrator in “The Life of Arsenyev”) and by Bunin in his later years of the emigration period. This is the progression from ecstatic acceptance to repulsion, from feeling of intimacy to the comprehension of difference. In the synchronic aspect Bunin’s attitude to early Gogol appears in the context of Bunin’s “ukrainophilia”, his interest in Ukraine, its history and culture. From this point of view in comparative aspect (without application to axiological criterion) features and peculiar properties of the two classics of Russian literature — both personal and literary ones — are analyzed. Dissimilarity of the creative principles, poetics, styles of Bunin and Gogol is evaluated as the sign of transition from one historic-literary epoch to another and transcultural line between the classic and the emerging modernism, to which Gogol was the predecessor.