Information about the author:
Anton V. Bakuntsev
Anton V. Bakuntsev, PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 а, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
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 research is devoted to the literary-critical article by Ivan Bunin “E.A. Baratynsky: On the Occasion of the Centenary of His Birth”, written with a didactic purpose and published in 1900 in the Moscow journal “Vestnik Vospitania”. The present paper considers Bunin’s article from the historical-biographical, literary and textual points of view. The author of the research notes the similarity of the article about E.A. Baratynsky with the youthful literary-critical texts of Bunin and at the same time its difference from the later Bunin’s articles devoted to the life and works of N.V. Uspensky, T.G. Shevchenko, I.S. Nikitin, Ya.P. Polonsky, A.M. Zhemchuzhnikov, and also reveals its lexical, stylistic, compositional, factual shortcomings. Based on the textual analysis of the printed text and the autograph of the Bunin’s article, the author of the research concludes that there are three variants of it: initial, middle and final. The first two variants are recorded in the autograph, which is an incomplete draft manuscript with three layers of author’s edits, the third variant is presented in the form of a journal publication. The latter, due to its completeness, ac- cording to the author of the research, should be chosen as the main text of the article under consideration for its inclusion in the future Ivan Bunin’s Complete Works and Letters.
