About the author
Galina I. Romanova (Moscow, Russia), DSc in Philology, Professor of the Department of Russian literature, Moscow city pedagogical
University.
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-6173-2411.
E-mail:
Abstract
On the basis of thematic proximity and similarity of a number of formal features (chronotope of the noble nest; the image of the negative aspects of the es- tate life; the weakening of cause-and-effect relations between the events; the system of characters, tied by relation, but separated spiritually; the specificity of organization of speech) genre transformations in the last novel of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin “Old Years in Poshe khonye” (1889) and in the short stories cycle of I.A. Bunin “Black Earth” (1903) have compared. The theme of returning to their homeland also brings them closer together — a mental appeal to the past, that is, in Poshekhon’s childhood by Saltykov-Shchedrin, the road to the family estate — by Bunin. In both works embodied a persistent conflict that does not find a final solution. The sharp denial of the present state of reality, characteristic of satire, presupposes the existence of an ideal, which in the works by Saltykov-Shchedrin and appears as an idyllic picture of the world. In relation to it, the image of estate life in both “Old Years in Poshekhonye” and “Black Earth” is anti-idyllic: here everything is the opposite and contradicts the idyllic notions of peaceful life in harmony with nature. In Bunin’s story, this feature is shown in the appeal to the genre of “poem of desolation”.