V. Zhukovskys aesthetics and biography codes in I. Bunin's story Nataly
The article examines I.A. Bunins perception of V.A. Zhukovskys ballad creativity and life scenario and their motif representations in the story Nataly. Zhukovskys aesthetics and biography codes, which are very important for comprehending the whole cycle Dark Alleys, define the architectonics of Nataly. The ballad Svetlana becomes the pretext of the story causing the motif symmetry of its compositional frame (the first and the seventh parts - the introduction and the finale). In the first and the last chapters of Nataly we see the reflections of Zhukovskys work, where the writer successively reconstructs the ballad situation of waiting for a fiance, his late arrival, divination on probable marriage and midnight supper. At first sight, the motif background of everyday events become ballad horrors outlined in the first chapter and realized in the last one - prediction of love till death and portent of death. The intentional ballad features disappear in the last chapter, the tone becomes drier, the details are more common (for example, the lamp replaces the candle), but the successive reproduction of the details of the first chapter prepares the reader for the only possible and, at first sight, unpredictable finale of Nataly. Not only the first and the last chapter, but also the system of personages of the story is also created by reflection principle. Bunin makes Vitaliy and Aleksey Meshcherskiy an antithesis of the live and the dead; they appear as doubles from the plot of Svetlana - the ghostly fiance and the heroines promised. Bunins Nataly inherits the traits of V. Zhukovskys, A. Pushkins and L. Tolstoys favourite heroines who convey the writers view of the best qualities of woman's national character. The narrative ballad structure is transformed in Bunins typical manner: the hero-narrator changes the ballad narrator. Further, addressing this stable motif system of Russian culture Bunin introduces the regular Christmas-blizzard chronotope into the narration, which had already functioned in the works of his great predecessors. Besides, this Bunins story contains the key topics of Zhukovskys life scenario: illegitimate status in Bunin's family and ф dramatic love to a relative - Masha Protasova. In such inter-level constructive repetition the cycle-forming principle of Dark Alleys manifests itself. Besides this manifestation there is a clear plot aspect of the method: motif borrowings from Zhukovsky urge to specify the origin of the tradition that Bunin associated himself with. In Bunins opinion, among the main representatives of the domestic classical authors (Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Tolstoy), the author of Svetlana was, as it seems, the very artist not to provoke a wish to rewrite him by his descendant known for his passionate polemic temperament.