Article

Name: Train Travel as the Basis of the Plot in Bunin’s Works Part one: East and West

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:

Train travel is one of the most frequently used motives in I. A. Bunins’ works. In the center of the plot of the “Zapisnaya knizhka” (“Notebook”) (“Novaya Russkaya Zhizn” (Gelsingfors), 1921, April 2), subsequently reworked into the story “Tretiy klass” (“Third Class”) is the voyage on the train on Ceylon. Train ride in France becomes the basis of the plot of the story “Notre-dame de la garde”, published in the newspaper “Vozrozhdenie” (“Renaissance”) (Paris) on October 17, 1925. These works are united not only by the same fiction method (we see another country and its inhabitants through the eyes of a Russian passenger on the train), but also by direct textual parallels in newspaper publications. In both cases, the train becomes a ‘mirror’ of the country: the first is the train of the East and the second is the train of the West.

The contrast between East and West is most clearly pointed in the “Zapisnaya knizhka”, where it is associated with the ideological struggle of 1921. In the newspaper Bunin wrote about the West no less than about the East. The main characters of his work were the British. But in the story “Tretiy klass”, published in 1926 in “Illyustrirovannaya Rossiya” (“Illustrated Russia”), the actual publicistic pathos becomes unnecessary. A similar tendency towards a decrease in the concrete historical publicistic pathos we can find in the history of the text of the story “Notre-dame de la garde”. Here, the changes are also associated with the reduction of the universal-social that played an important role in the newspaper and its replacement with the simply universal.

The plot allows Bunin to show France from different sides, as well as declare his attitude towards the country. The system of oppositions in the newspaper version of the story “Notre-dame de la garde” is more complicated than in the one in the collected works – later Bunin renounces the class characteristic. The poster-ideal West turns out to be a deception, but the destruction of external, advertising harmony does not mean the absence of beauty and internal harmony. The types created by Bunin in the story have both a national and universal character.

Keywords: Bunin, Russian emigration, “Zapisnaya knizhka” (“Notebook”), “Tretiy klass” (“Third Class”), poetics, history of the text, “Notre-dame de la garde”, plot

Bibliography:

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