Motion and immobility in a lyrical text (analysis of Chapter VI of Book Five of Ivan Bunin’s novel «The Life of Arsenyev»)

Chapter VI of Book Five of «The Life of Arsenyev» plays a special role in the novel: it is one of the novel’s climactic points. The text of Chapter VI brings together the opposing motifs of swiftness and slowness. The range of the swiftness and slowness motifs is rather broad, given that the chapter is relatively short. The same idea of the antinomial integration of motion and immobility is typical of both the chapter and the novel as a whole: both of them begin with a long descriptive introduction and a brief eventful denouement, where the descriptive part both delays the logic of events, adding to their retardation, and prepares the unexpected outcome. The novel’s timeline is pushed back by means of the retardation of plot and composition, allowing Bunin to design each text fragment as a complex temporal palimpsest. At the same time, the palimpsestic past is commingled with the future and the unreal due to the high dynamism of the text. This complex combination of motion and immobility results in a momentary concentration of a multitude of mental events, which adds a lyrical effect to the novel.

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