The History of Publication of the Collection of Short Stories by I.A. Bunin “Dark Avenues”

Abstract

The article represents one of the first attempts of bringing together the available materials relating to the history of publication in emigration of “Dark avenues” by I.A. Bunin, having correlated them with the facts of history of publishing in Russian abroad. The method of the comparative historical analysis used in work helps to reconstruct in sufficient detail the history of publication of the short stories, which became the “business card” of emigrant creative works of I.A. Bunin. The first stories from the book “Dark Avenues” were published in periodicals of the Russian abroad in the late 1930-ies; after the beginning of World War II the New York “New magazine” started to publish new stories of the cycle. In the New York publishing house was published the first edition of “Dark avenues” in a form of collection; however the Parisian edition of 1946 is considered to be the “canonical” one: it is the latest version of the collection, published during the lifetime of Bunin. Proposed retrospective allows to see that the release history of “Dark avenues” has not ended with the death of Bunin, but still continues, already in the Russian literary space — the Russian philologists publish unpublished stories of the so-called “Circle of the ‘Dark avenues’ ”. Materials of this article can be used in preparation for publication of the academic collected works of the writer, requiring taking into consideration of all the existing editions of Bunin’s texts.