REMINISCENCES, QUOTATIONS AND MOTIFS OF THE PSALTER IN THE WORKS OF I. A. BUNIN

The article examines the reminiscences, quotations and motifs borrowed from the Book of Psalms by I. A. Bunin in his poetry and prose. Discovering such reminiscences and quotations helps to clarify some debatable issues of the writer's personal position and outlook. The Book of Psalms acts as a major text of precedence in Bunin's works. Some of his poems are poetic variations of psalms (The Psalter, 1916; To Russia, 1922). Day and night as dominant images of Bunin's poetry are viewed as constants of being due to their creation by God. Night as an especially important and most frequent image in the whole heritage of I. A. Bunin becomes for him the time of self-knowledge and discovery of God, which is quite consistent with the poetic world of the Psalmist. In Bunin's prose, reading from the Book of Psalms often appears after a character dies. Death is thus viewed as a solemn and majestic event, and eternity becomes the main motif of such stories as The Pine Trees (1901), The Exodus (1918), Transfiguration (1923). It is from the psalmodic tradition that the title of one of Bunin's most conceptually important stories comes ? Many waters (1911?1926). In this story, the author views the eternal through the lens of revolutionary perturbations in the 1917 Russia. The whole host of symbols associated in the Book of Psalms with 'many waters' finds a new life in Bunin's story. The author shows facing God as a profoundly Christian feeling. His protagonist feels not only fear, but primarily “the love and joy of being”. Cosmiological, historical and providential 'plots' and images borrowed from the psalms prove that the Orthodox tradition was very important for Bunin's creative consciousness.