Published 2020-12-23
Keywords
- motive, the paradox of adultery, moral and ethical choice, existential attitude
Abstract
The article substantiates the relevance of isolating adultery as one of the independent, powerful phenomena of the artistic world of I. Bunin. It is proved that adultery in the Bunin world is inappropriate to interpret as trivial adultery, considered in an unambiguous ethical coordinate system. The main approaches and directions of research into the poetics of adultery are determined: historicaltypological, comparative, method of motive's analysis.
The main purposes of the article are: to trace the main variants and variations of adultery, to understand how and in what main directions its development took place in the Bunin world; to clarify the moral, aesthetic and existential foundations of adultery as something that binds together such contradictory and necessary for comprehending the mystery of authenticity (F. Stepun), personality and truthfulness of feelings, as liberty and duty, love and responsibility, loyalty and betrayal, devotion, decency and possibility of change for self, choice and chance.
Results. The fact of adultery in I. Bunin in no way implies immorality, depravity of a person, even in those cases when it is unambiguous from the traditional point of view. This is typical both for works focused on the poetics of realism and for stories for which the discoveries of existentialism are significant. The banality, predictability of the situation and types of heroes of adultery, inevitable when describing betrayal, are the equivalent of the Kantian situation of moral and ethical choice in I. Bunin. Aesthetic perception and the experience of betrayal are one of the opportunities for the heroes to know who they are.
Conclusions. I. Bunin's deliberate attention to the everyday life of adultery, but also his non-admission in the practice of life, is the hero's choice of their usual everyday life as a choice of themselves, an almost Heidegger's opportunity to be oneself, and not a representative of the vulgarity of everyday situations. Adultery is a space of inner freedom and honesty of the self, existential infinity and unlimited possibilities of immersion and self-awareness, as well as his rights, duties (not)choosing oneself.