The University of Sheffield The Reality of Time, History and Life in the Prose of Ivan Bunin. Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Vera Dearman 1999 Abstract The thesis focuses on two major aspects. Firstly, it offers a discussion of the evolution of the notion of 'historicity' in the thought of various Russian thinkers and cultural historians with particular reference to the ideas of Berdiaev, Bakhtin and Likhachev. It also addresses the problem of the contribution made to the twentieth-century humanities by the 'Slavonic Renaissance' of the early part of the twentieth century. Secondly, the work examines various views on the issue of historical time and its perception and representation in artistic work, focusing primarily on the specificity of artistic time in the prose of Ivan Bunin. The discussion of this issue is based on four of Bunin's substantial works (The Shadow of the Bird, The Life of Arsen 'ev The Emancipation of Tolstoi and Dark Avenues), examining the problem of historical time from semantic and formal points of view. The analysis of the novel The Life ofArsen 'ev emerges as central to the whole discussion since it approaches the problem of the notion of 'path through life' and its significance both for an understanding of Bunin's work and in relation to the discursive practice of the 1920s and early 1930s in Russia. Moreover, for Bunin this category proves to be both a feature of artistic thinking and of generic significance, extending the boundaries of understanding and portrayal of historical time in its various aspects. Contents; Translation and Transliteration I Foreword I-IV Part One Chapter One The Idea of 'Historical Existence' in the Chronotope of Early 20th Century Russian Culture. 1-79 Part Two Chapter Two The Sacred Time of History: The Shadow ofthe Bird. 80-110 Chapter Three Genre and History in The Life ofArsen 'ev. 111-158 Chapter Four 'Without Beginning and End': The Idea of Extra-temporality in Chang's Dreams, God's Tree and The Emancipation ofTo/stoi. 159-197 Chapter Five 'A Return to Love': The First Day ofLent. 198-227 Conclusion 228-229 Bibliography I-XXIII I Translation and Transliteration Throughout the work all quotations are given in both the original language and in English. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated. Russian words are transliterated according to the Library of Congress system (without diacritics). FOREWORD As the twentieth century draws to a close we can assert with some confidence that in the history of the development of intellectual thought, our century will always be marked by its deep, at times 'obsessive', engagement with the study of time and space, and the interrelation and interaction between them, representing, above all, a detennined striving to exercise control over the way this issues develops. In other words, an attempt if not to solve the problem, then at least to draw certain conclusions and fonnulate some concepts from it. It is therefore no surprise that for the contemporary humanities, statements about the complexity and diversity of fonns of time and space and their importance for an interpretation of artistic work are accepted at face value. However, every time we move this issue from the realm of philosophy (where its study originally began and has been a priority for a long time) and place it within the sphere of poetics, we stumble across unexpected difficulties, one of which lies in the fact that here such notions as 'time', 'space', 'history', and such associated categories as 'historical time', 'historical method' and finally 'historicity', their meaning and content, are not fully and clearly defined. The present study, containing as it does five chapters, can be provisionally divided into two sections, one theoretical and the other practical. The function of the fonner is, by definition and purpose, to be theoretical and introductory at the same time. The latter seeks to establish and maintain an organic link between the two parts, dealing primarily with an analysis of the literary text. II The thematic core of the study focuses on two major aspects. On the one hand, it offers a close examination of various views on the issue of historical time and its perception and representation in artistic work. On the other hand, it approaches the question of the state of the Russian humanities at the tum of the century and during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Needless to say, in the history of Russian culture this epoch is noteworthy in many respects, marking a time of tremendous intellectual ferment and challenging questioning of conventional values which found their expression in a new, daring way of thinking and in a phenomenal diversity and prosperity of artistic and literary manifestations. But there will always be one distinctive feature that underlies all the work of Russian thought of this period. This peCUliarity can be describe as an aspiration to broaden one's awareness of, in essence, a single problem, namely, man's existence in history, broadly speaking, in culture. In conjunction with this it was important for me here to raise afresh the issue of the meaning and content of such notions as 'historicity' and 'the historical' and to demonstrate their significance both for an understanding of the discursive practice of the 1920s and early 1930s in Russia and in relation to an analysis of the artistic work. A significant part of the thesis is concerned with the study of Ivan Bunin's fiction. The focus on Bunin is stimulated not only by my personal interest in his work, but, more importantly, by a wish to examine the specificity of artistic time in Bunin's work, to reveal all the complexity of its understanding and the profound context of its perception and representation. The discussion of this issue is based on four of Bunin's substantial works (each of which is closely examined in a separate chapter): the collection of III travel notes The Shadow ofthe Bird; the novel The Life ofArsen 'ev (in English translation The Well of Days); the monographic essay The Emancipation of Tolstoi; and the collection of short stories Dark Avenues. The choice of these particular works is conditioned first and foremost by the fact that, representing different phases in the development of Bun in's creative thinking, they allow us to trace most vividly the dialectics of Bunin's 'sense of time', that is, the fonnation and evolution of the concept of historicity as such. Furthennore, the generic diversity of the selected works (travel notes, novel, essay, and short stories) offers an opportunity to consider the problem of historical time from a semantic as well as fonnal point of view. From this perspective it thus becomes possible to broaden the spectrum of study of Bunin's fiction in general, shifting the endless and seemingly unresolvable debate about Bunin's position on the Realism - Modernism scale to a discussion of the true place of his artistic world in Russian literature of the turn of the century and onwards. Such an approach, moreover, enables me to trace the polemics on the nature of time and its perception and representation in Bunin's work, arguing against the view, widely held in contemporary scholarship (in the works of such scholars as Afanas'ev, Kucherovskii, Connolly, Woodward and Mikhailov), that Bunin was a thoroughly' ahistorical' artist. In my work I greatly benefited from the material held in the Bakhtin Centre (University of Sheffield) to which I was attached as a PhD student. I have found the Russian State (fonnerly Lenin) Library to be an invaluable source of secondary bibliographical material and the Russian Archive at Leeds IV University to contain much important information on Bunin's life and work such as diaries, periodicals, magazines, literary journals and Bunin's correspondence with writers and critics. lowe a debt to my supervisor Professor David Shepherd for his considerate guidance, indefatigable help and encouragement. I should like to thank Professor William Leatherbarrow for reading and commenting on two chapters of the present work. Thanks are also due to Professor Robert Russell for his constant willingness to offer assistance with my research. Finally, I am grateful to Thomas Dearman for his patience, and linguistic and moral support through each stage of the writing of this work. Part One CHAPTER ONE The Idea of 'Historical Existence' in the Chronotope of Early 20th Century Russian Culture. Ho 6IalTHC. Ha Mol B3rm1Jl. - 61alTHC HCTOPH'ICCICOC. '1emOBCIC He noceneHeu lCaICol-HHISYJl. reorpacllH'IeclCol TO'lICH. rOJlIal H CTOnCTHJI. BOT 'ITO cnY.HT CMY MCCTHOCT.IO. CTpaHol. npocTpaHcTBoM. OH 06HTaTcn. BpeMeHH. [ •.• J '-IenoBcIC­ JlelcTBYlOlllee nHUO. OH repol nOCTaHOBJCH. JCoTOpaJi Ha31alBaeTCJI " HCTOPHJI" HnH " HCTOpH'lecJCoe CYlIlccTBoBaHHc " • BOPHC fiaCTcpHaJC. lZTO Taroe veROler? 1. Why the 'Slavonic Renaissance'? The question of what took place in Russian culture at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century and how this should be defined has interested the contemporary humanities for some time. The idea . that for Russian philosophy, literature and art the tum of the century and first quarter of the twentieth century was both chronologically and qualitatively a new epoch representing a peculiar cultural-historical phenomenon, remains widely accepted. The sources of this approach can be found in the theoretical works of thinkers and writers of that time. Nevertheless the significance of the experience gained by the Russian humanities of the tum of the century and first quarter of this century turns out to be hotly debated, constantly 'troubling' contemporary minds. Moreover, there are reasons, perhaps decisive ones, for touching upon certain difficulties which arise when answering this question. The first reason is one of material, for the existing theoretical and critical literature devoted to this subject is quite considerable.