“Aleksei Alekseichi” of Bunin’s short stories: integration elements of an unassembled cycle

The paper analyzes I. A. Bunin’s short story “Alexey Alekseich,” which is the central element of the unassembled cycle with a hero named Alexey Alekseevich. The cycle also includes short stories “The Archival File” and “Inscriptions.” A reconstruction of the writer’s strategy of composing the cycle expressed in Bunin’s metaposition towards literature as an aesthetic activity is carried out. Bunin actualizes the expressiveness of the authors’ proper noun (patronymic name) to hold a dialogue with his predecessors and intensify a debate with contemporaries in the literary field. On the one hand, in “Alexey Alekseich,” Bunin diminishes the role of a literary word in culture by parodying authoritative pretexts and polemics with them (L. N. Tolstoy). In this way, the writer invokes the specific theme of modernists - experimental attitude to the literary sign (Potekhin’s character). In addition, he introduces motifs of tomfoolery and oratorical behavior (with allusions to M. Gorky). On the other hand, comparing the different editions of “Alexey Alekseich” and its linkage with other two texts of the unassembled cycle shows that Bunin rehabilitates an artistic word and literary activity by applying onomatopoetic and narrative devices in the poetics of his short story. In this aspect, the role of the literary sign in culture is justified by its unique ability to confront death and oblivion. Thus, Bunin’s short story “Alexey Alekseich” reveals extensive use of the meaning-forming possibilities of the proper name.

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