CONCERNING A THEME OF RUSSIAN POETRY AND PROSE
The article features the practice of parallel reading of two texts – the poetic dialogue that was
formed in the lyrics of Marina Tsvetaeva and Osip Mandelstam in 1916 and the novel Pure Monday
(1944), whose main action relates to 1913, by Ivan Bunin. In the work it is clearly stated that,
despite Bunin’s constantly emphasized rejection of Russian modernism, the novel can be regarded
as one of the artistic epilogue of the Silver age. Drawing readers’ attention on specific traits of the
mentality and the culture of last pre-revolution years as well as on the Moscow’s mode of life,
I. Bunin unconsciously recreates the plot that is similar to the one that was formed in Mandelstam’s
and Tsvetaeva’s dialogue. We paid particular attention exactly to the similarity of two
plots that contradicts the genre difference of texts. She, who considers Moscow Rus to be hers,
tries to get Him acquainted with this world (he was alienated from it before because of various
reasons). The investigation focuses on some details that correspond in the novel and the poetic
dialogue. For example, we analyze characters’ involvement in natural and religious calendar as
well as the connection between these references and the sense of boundary and coming historical
catastrophe. The topos of Moscow as «the strange city» appears to be significant; the city turns
out to be the center, whose place of trial is Kremlin cathedrals with «their Italian and Russian
soul». However, in spite of consistence of exact coincidences and the probability of the lyrical
dialogue’s influence on the prosaic text where correspondence of Tsvetaeva and V. Muromtseva-
Bunina could have been the mediator, we are convinced that we have the similarity of typological
character that can be explained by common initial realia. Thus, the novel Pure Monday on the one
hand and the lyrical dialogue of Mandelstam and Tsvetaeva on the other becomes the representatives
of the single «Moscow text about the Silver age of Russian culture». It should be noted that
those things that were conceptualized by Tsvetaeva as her personal experience were seen by Bunin
from the time perspective and interpreted as the historical experience of Russia.
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CONCERNING A THEME OF RUSSIAN POETRY AND PROSE // Сюжетология и сюжетография. 2017. № 1. Pp. 161–173.