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• Female archetypes of Bunin’s images

  Ildikó Mária Rácz

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  15

  The system of ideas, Sophiology and philosophy of love of Vladimir Solovyov had a significant influence on the religious philosophy and formation of aesthetic views of the Russian Silver Age. Although the Nobel Prize-winning Russian writer in exile, Ivan Bunin, consciously distanced himself from the ideological and poetic tendencies of Russian Symbolism, the philosophical roots of Bunin’s prose after 1910 can be traced in Russian religious philosophy and Eastern religious teachings (Buddhism and Taoism). Bunin’s philosophy of love is also imbued with the dualistic vision that is fundamental to his philosophy of being, and the dichotomy of ‘heavenly’ and ‘earthly’ love is reflected in the ‘angelic’ and ‘demonic’ opposites of his female figures. Yet the former is the embodiment of the unattainable ideal of the Eternal Feminine, the latter, the Femme Fatale, the bearer of the earthly promise of carnal pleasures, of sexuality. The author’s female heroines also include the avatar of the Wise Woman (the embodiment of some ancient, archaic wisdom) or the Emanation of Isis (as the embodiment of cosmic energy, standing above the earthly laws of life and death). And like the symbols of yin and yang in Chinese philosophy, in the depths of each of Bunin’s female figures lurks something of its opposite.

• S. S. Bobrov’s Ode "The Kingdom of Universal Love": Erotogenesis and Phenomenology of Love (1785)

  Aleksey Petrov

  Svetlana Rudakova

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  162

  Among the genre concepts of Love formed in the poetry of the 18th century (erotic-political myth about the love of monarchs in an epithalamic ode; triumph of flesh and physiology in priapic ode; hedonism in anacreontic ode) a special place is occupied by the concept of historiosophical ode. In one of the works of this genre – «The Kingdom of Total Love» by S. S. Bobrov – an attempt was made to combine Eros and History. The ideas of Bobrov, a freemason poet, about the origin of Love go back to the myths of various genesis. Another idea was that Love brings light and harmony to non-living nature, and living nature is completely submitted to the Law of Love – the Law of the continuation of Life. In general, Love appears in Bobrov's historiosophical ode as a harmonizing cosmic force.

• Rácz, Ildikó Mária: A lét és a szerelem szentsége. Ivan Bunyin művészi világképe. L’Harmattan, Budapest 2020, 373 pp. ISBN 978-963-414-681-0

  Ágnes Dukkon

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  117

  This review presents a critical analysis of the monograph on Bunin by the Hungarian researcher Ildikó Mária Rácz. The author describes the main thematic blocs of the volume, for example, the influence of classic Russian literature on Bunin (Turgeniev, Tolstoi, Chekhov, and Tiutchev), the role of Eastern philosophy in the evolution of Bunin’s art, the connection between the modern psychological concepts (Freud, Jung) and the short stories as Mitya’s love or The grammar of love.