What are Bunin’s Dark Avenues [Tyomnye allei] about?

Abstract

The article deals with the topics and poetics of Bunin’s final book Dark Avenues [Tyomnye allei].The study is polemically charged: the author argues with a number of Bunin scholars who described the meanings and artistic uniqueness of the writer’s later works. Meskin believes that it was Bunin’s intention to narrow down the theme and the meaning of his best book. All that the author decided to refer to as love is merely part of a superficial plane of content of the stories; this plane would lack in aesthetic value were it not for another, inner, plane, which does not immediately catch the eye. Following in the polemical mode, the author is particularly keen to demonstrate how Bunin’s philosophy is manifested in the novellas, including his attitude towards life and death and his ambition to show a full range of relationships between a man and a woman, as well as his idea to write an elaborate answer to the question ‘What really is a woman?’ The author finds that Dark Avenues is not so much an encyclopaedia of love but of female characters: from attractive ‘predators’ to equally alluring ‘prey.’