THE BIBLICAL CHRONOTOPE IN THE “TRAVEL POEMS” BY IVAN A. BUNIN “THE BIRD’S SHADOW”

Ivan Bunin created his “Travel Poems” ? “The Bird’s Shadow” ? based on the impressions of his wanderings, between 1903 and 1909, across the Middle East countries including Turkey, Judaea, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Greece. Modern researchers present the East of Bunin’s “Travel Poems” as a certain generalized image of a “culturological aspect” which comprises the historical and cultures features of different countries of the Levant. Meanwhile, Bunin emphasized that he took his journeys to Judaea and Palestine as a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, not as mere leisure travels. The importance of the Bible East in the “Travel Poems” is also determined by the fact that the largest part of his routes and most of his essays (7 essays of 11) are related to the Holy Land. This article examines the artistic space-time of the Palestinian Essays by Bunin and reveals and characterizes the biblical chronotope and the role of the key topos of the Old Testament and the New Testament. However, the author emphasizes a special meaning of some biblical topos. These are the places associated with the key biblical events and with intentionality of author’s consciousness, which generate a broad range of the keynotes of the cycle of stories: the Valley of Josaphat as the place of the upcoming Last Judgement; the Dead Sea as the symbol of visitation of God for the people’s sins; the Judean Desert where Jesus was tempted by devil; Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Gennisaret as the cities of ancient Palestine related to the events of the Terrestrial Life of Jesus Christ. The hero’s perception of the holy places, domination of the biblical space-time in the “Travel Poems” devoted to the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, aspiration for being projected to the biblical times, unity of the hero’s chronotope with the biblical chronotope ? all this indicates the extreme importance of the biblical events for the author and for the storyteller. The research of the artistic space-time continuum in the “Travel Poems” by Bunin ? “The Bird’s Shadow” ? helps to determine the biblical chronotope as the main space-time structure of the Palestinian Essays and of the whole cycle of stories.