Information about the author:
Maxim S. Shavlinsky
Maxim S. Shavlinsky, bibliographer of the 1st category, Central City Public Library named after V.V. Mayakovsky, Fontanka River Embankment, 46, 191025 Saint Petersburg, Russia; graduate student, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5156-8999
E-mail:
Acknowledgements:
The research was carried out at the A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences with the financial support of the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 22-18-00347 “Ivan Bunin’s Early Work: Poetry, Prose, Criticism, Journalism, Translations (1883–1902)”).
Abstract:
The article makes a textual comparison of all 7 publications of the story “Late at Night”. The main idea is to show on what basis Bunin makes the edits. Almost immediately after the publication of the story in the symbolist almanac “Northern Flowers” (1901), Bunin received a letter from V.S. Miroliubov, where the latter criticized the writer for unnecessary biographical details in the story, indicating his marital problems with Anna Tsakni. Although Bunin denied all biographical coincidences in his response letter, in the next publication of the story he removed almost all the coincidences and moved the scene from St. Petersburg to Paris. The change in locus greatly affected both the poetics of the text and the perception: critics and researchers later repeatedly read “Paris” as a meaning-forming detail of the text. In the following publications in the 1910s, the already mature writer finally got rid of the last biographical allusions, reworked and shortened the text, getting rid of various cliches pointing to the poetics of symbolism and romanticism.
