Article

Name: France and the French in “Okayannye dni” by I. A. Bunin

Authors: D. D. Nikolaev

A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature RAS, Moscow, Russian Federation

In the section The Plot in the System of Cultural Universals: Bunin, East and West of the Russian Emigration

Abstract:

One of the main motives in “Odessa” part of I. A. Bunin’s “Okayannye dni” is connected with France. For the first time “Okayannye dni” was published in 1925 on the pages of Paris émigré newspaper “Vozrozhdenie”, and Bunin's text was addressed not only to Russian, but also to foreign audience, primarily French. The editorial circumstances of the first publication should be taken into account when explaining the significance of the “French” motives, but journalistic logic of 1925 follows the specific circumstances of life in Odessa and related author’s experience of 1919.

“The French” appear in the first fragment of the “Okayannye dni”, published in the first issue of “Renaissance” on June 3, 1925. In the newspaper publication the starting point is the decision of the French troops to leave Odessa. Bunin does not directly accuse France of abandoning the city and its inhabitants, but then constantly returns to the motive of unfulfilled hopes associated with the French. The French navy destroyer becomes a symbol of the hopes and their collapse.

Two other lines connecting Russia and France are also pointed in the first fragment of the “Okayannye dni”. Bunin writes about modern political events and about French history. Bunin constantly reminds the French of their historical responsibility for committing and canonizing their “great” revolution, thus setting an example of the Russian revolution. Among the semantic centers of the “Okayannye dni” in the newspaper publication are fragments about the leaders of the French revolution, in which Bunin refers to the book “Vielles maisons, vieux papiers” by G. Lenotre. References to Lenotr’s book help to avoid a negative assessment of the French revolution as a view of the Russian “from the outside”.

Significant changes in the text of the “Okayannye dni” in the book edition in Berlin in 1935 also relate to French motives. Their significance is reduced both by removing fragments and by the restoration of the natural chronological structure, in which the “Okayannye dni” now begin in Moscow on January 1, 1918, not by departure of the French troops from Odessa in 1919.

Keywords: Bunin, “Okayannye dni”, Russian Civil war, “Vozrozhdenie” (1925), diary, journalism, Russia and France, Russian revolution, The French revolution, Lenotre, Odessa, poetics, textology

Bibliography:

Bakuntsev A. V. I. A. Bunin na stranitsakh odesskoy pechati v gody Grazhdanskoy voyny. Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta. Seriya 10. Zhurnalistika, 2014, no. 5, р. 55–71. (in Russ.)

Bunin I. A. Sobranie sochineniy. Berlin, Petropolis, 1935, vol. 10: Okayannye dni, 255 p. (in Russ.)

Bunin I. A. Okayannye dni. Vospominaniya. Stat'i. Moscow, Sovetskiy pisatel’ Publ., 1990, 416 p. (in Russ.)

Lenotre G. Paris révolutionnaire. Vielles maisons, vieux papiers. Première serie. Deuxième edition. Paris, Libraire Académique Didier Perrin et C, Libraires-Éditeurs, 1904, 366 p.

Nikolaev D. D. Dnevnik kak publitsistika: Okayannye dni Ivana Bunina v parizh- skoy gazete “Vozrozhdenie” 1925 g. Avtobiografiya, 2019, no. 8, p. 117–148. (in Russ.)