V. Zhukovskys aesthetics and biography codes in I. Bunin's story Nataly

The article examines I.A. Bunins perception of V.A. Zhukovskys ballad creativity and life scenarioand their motif representations in the story Nataly. Zhukovskys aesthetics and biographycodes, which are very important for comprehending the whole cycle Dark Alleys, definethe architectonics of Nataly. The ballad Svetlana becomes the pretext of the story causing themotif symmetry of its compositional frame (the first and the seventh parts - the introduction and thefinale). In the first and the last chapters of Nataly we see the reflections of Zhukovskys work, wherethe writer successively reconstructs the ballad situation of waiting for a fiance, his late arrival, divinationon probable marriage and midnight supper. At first sight, the motif background of everydayevents become ballad horrors outlined in the first chapter and realized in the last one - prediction oflove till death and portent of death. The intentional ballad features disappear in the last chapter, thetone becomes drier, the details are more common (for example, the lamp replaces the candle), but thesuccessive reproduction of the details of the first chapter prepares the reader for the only possible and,at first sight, unpredictable finale of Nataly. Not only the first and the last chapter, but also the systemof personages of the story is also created by reflection principle. Bunin makes Vitaliy and AlekseyMeshcherskiy an antithesis of the live and the dead; they appear as doubles from the plot of Svetlana- the ghostly fiance and the heroines promised. Bunins Nataly inherits the traits of V.Zhukovskys, A. Pushkins and L. Tolstoys favourite heroines who convey the writers view of thebest qualities of woman's national character.The narrative ballad structure is transformed in Bunins typical manner: the hero-narrator changesthe ballad narrator. Further, addressing this stable motif system of Russian culture Bunin introducesthe regular Christmas-blizzard chronotope into the narration, which had already functioned in theworks of his great predecessors. Besides, this Bunins story contains the key topics of Zhukovskys lifescenario: illegitimate status in Bunin's family and ф dramatic love to a relative - Masha Protasova. Insuch inter-level constructive repetition the cycle-forming principle of Dark Alleys manifests itself.Besides this manifestation there is a clear plot aspect of the method: motif borrowings from Zhukovskyurge to specify the origin of the tradition that Bunin associated himself with. In Bunins opinion,among the main representatives of the domestic classical authors (Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Tolstoy), theauthor of Svetlana was, as it seems, the very artist not to provoke a wish to rewrite him by hisdescendant known for his passionate polemic temperament.

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