Wilson Center Experts
Mary Petrusewicz
Research Grant
Kennan Institute
Expertise:
Russia and Eurasia
; Russia
Affiliation:
PhD Candidate, University of Wisconsin
Wilson Center Project(s):
Into the Heart of Darkness: Ivan Bunin and the Modernist Poetics of Personal Memory
Term:
Sep 01, 1996
May 01, 1997
Project Summary
Places Ivan Bunin in the cultural matrix of the Europe to which he emigrated, demonstrating the influence of turn-of-the-century European thought on Bunins fiction. Analyzes Bunins growing use of evocative, symbolic imagry as a method of revealing the modernist hidden realm of mental life. Examines the nature of Bunins nostalgia and formulates a theory of mnemonic writing for his work after emigration. Defines the qualities of his exile, and the longing to return in memory to an ahistoricval realm.