A collection of ivan bunin “selected poems” (1929): the author's concept and artistic originality

Abstract

The article presents a structural-compositional, stylistic and semantic analysis of the final author's collection of poems by I. A. Bunin “Selected poems&8j1;, published in 1929 (Paris). The article briefly touches upon the critical reception of the collection and its place in the literary life of the Russian Diaspora. The pivoting themes (Russia, God, life, death, memory, culture, history, creativity, time, etc.), motifs and images (earth and sky, sea, stars, deer, empty house, etc.), characteristic of this book are investigated. Opening and closing works of the collection are analyzed. The ways in which the author’s point of view informs the book are also considered: we consider his departure from subjectivism and confessionalism and insistence on creation of objective, omniscient “I”. On the basis of the number of characteristic poetic features (metric, lexical similarity, citation and allusion) the article argues that the poetry of E.A. Baratynsky and, in particular, his collection of “Twilight”, impacted the structure, composition, and style of the “Selected poems” by Bunin. Hence, Bunin’s collection is not just a selection of disparate poems, but a complex artistic whole, which grew out of intra- and intertextual links between poetic pieces. The resulting text has its internal plot, its own agenda and closure, which might be considered as a poetic analogue of Bunin's collection of short stories “Dark Alleys”. The purpose of the new book was Bunin's desire to express his mature philosophical and aesthetic views on the world and art, and through a comprehensive inquiry into modern and olden ways of human life to give answers to eternal ontological questions, setting them into poetic form.