«…О деревне и мужиках, о смерти и жизни…»: Вс. Иванов и И. Бунин в контексте литературных дискуссий 1920-х гг.

Abstract

In this article is for the first time presented the comparison of the creativity of Vs. Ivanov and I.A. Bunin in a broad historical and literary context of evaluating Bunin’s works of different years by critics of Soviet Russia, as well as understanding his influence on the formation of village prose of young Soviet writers. The author of this article introduces a wide range of literary-critical articles of the 1920s into scientific use where Bunin’s creativity is examined from both class and aesthetic positions. The question of the influence of Bunin’s works about the peasantry on the prose of the younger generation of writers during the 1920s was solved by critics in different ways — from recognizing the regularity of the influence of the older generation of writers on young prose writers to denying the possibility of a “bourgeois artist” to give a truthful description of village and, consequently, asserting the unacceptability of the Bunin tradition for Soviet literature. The article contains a parallel between the stories of Vs. Ivanov’s “The Life of Smokotinin” and I. Bunin’s “I Still Keep Silent” is considered from the point of view of the subject matter and philosophical problems of the works.