If You See the Buddha: Studies in the Fiction of Ivan Bunin

Angebote / Angebote:

In this study Thomas Gaiton Marullo seeks to break the deadlock that has impeded criticism on Bunin for almost a century: first, by establishing him as a "modern" writer whose images were thoroughly rooted in the twentieth century, and second, by positing Bunin's abiding interest in Buddhism as a major influence on his writing.Specifically, Marullo analyzes the Buddhistic underpinnings of six works by Bunin (including the masterful Life of Arseniev) that have long been regarded as classics in Russian literature and as the basis for Bunin's being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1933 -- the first Russian writer ever to receive this honor. Yet these works have continued to defy in-depth analysis and classification. By demonstrating how the key Buddhistic concepts of "self", "craving", "enlightenment", "regression", and "rebirth" figure prominently in these works, Marullo shows how these ideas merged with Bunin's personal amalgam of fragmented and dislocated modernistic images to enable him to make sense of his world, to fashion an ars poetica that tempered his philosophical and aesthetic restiveness, and to inject a sense of timelessness into his writings.