The image of king David in the artistic consciousness of I.A. Bunin

The article examines the work of I.A. Bunin in a wide historical, cultural and moral-philosophical context, reveals its religious-ontological and axiological constants that define the artistic picture of the writer's world, formed under the powerful influence of precedent texts of the oldest civilizations of the Middle East, among which the books of the Old Testament, recognized as sacred to Judaism, have the greatest mytho-suggestive valence. The problem of the spiritual influence of Holy Scripture on I.A. Bunin's worldview and life attitude, which has long been raised in literary studies, receives a new analytical perspective of reflection, associated with the identification of specific forms and ways of representation of the biblical material in the writer's multigenre works, in which modernity is perceived through the identification of ideological and semantic analogies and parallels with antiquity. The images of the Old Testament prophets and spiritual teachers of mankind invariably attracted the attention of I.A. Bunin throughout his life. In Bunin's works the figure of the biblical psalmist king David is especially significant. In the artistic consciousness of the writer, King David acts as a seeker of truth, making moral ascents and falls in the process of his spiritual search. Projecting the heroes of his works onto the figure of David (and vice versa), I.A. Bunin determines the moral and ethical potential of a modern person. Allusions and reminiscences related to the life and service of Tsar David to God and the world form the cultural and philosophical background of the work of I.A. Bunin, which becomes an integral part of the spiritual and intellectual space of Russian literature of the twentieth century, integrating into it the facts and artifacts of biblical history.