The Mermaid World of “Rusya” (Fairy-Tale and Mythological Motifs and Images of I. Bunin’s Short Story)
Bogdanova Olga Vladimirovna, Liu Minjie
A. I. Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University
Far Eastern Federal University
Submitted: 07.10.2022
Abstract. The paper is devoted to analysing the figurative and motivic series of Ivan Bunin’s short story “Rusya” (1940), which was included in the cycle of short stories about love “Dark Alleys”. The research aims to comprehend the role of Russian folklore in the formation of the poetic world of Bunin’s text. The authors of the paper identify the main dominants of the literary world of Bunin’s short story, differentiate the existential spaces of the acting characters, trace the trends in the embodiment of the poetic space of a female character based on Russian folklore and ancient Slavic mythology. In particular, the authors consider the character system of the short story and evaluate the axiological coordinates of the main characters through it. The research is novel in that it is the first to focus on two endings of Bunin’s short story, which have not previously attracted the attention of critics, to represent in detail the folkloristic components of the image of the main female character. It is the first time that the researchers do not associate Rusya’s image with Russia, but correlate her “swamp” world with the mentifact of a mermaid. As a result, it has been proved that the nature of the unusual female character and the poetic world of Bunin’s short story as a whole is largely connected not with the Russian origin of the female character, but with her “mermaid” (and partly Eastern) origin.
Key words and phrases: И. Бунин, рассказ «Руся», цикл «Темные аллеи», система героев, фольклор, русалочий мир, I. Bunin, short story “Rusya”, cycle “Dark Alleys”, character system, folklore, mermaid world
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