I. Bunin’s early prose woman portrayal: romanticism traditions

The article reviews the main peculiarities of static and dynamic women portrayal in early Bunin’s prose, stressing the strong influence of the romantic portrayal. This influence can be seen when the writer’s early prose is compared to the heroines of Russian romantic long story (A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinskiy, V. F. Odoevskiy). For example, paleness, thinness and adjacent contrasting details in the descriptions of Bunin’s heroines are some features of the romantic portrayal. Here the author uses some innovative devices: impression portrayal, the parallelism of appearance portrayal and the environment. The analysis of the characters’ gestures helps us to imagine «the spatial shape» of Bunin’s heroines, and to understand the psychology of women’s characters. Bunin’s portrayal borrows sharp movements and «gesture-action», which reveals the condition of the character by externally insignificant movement, from the gesture portrayal of the romantic heroine. The gesture-portrayal of Bunin’s heroines is strengthened by the significance of their facial expressions and «intonation gestures», in comparison to the romantic gesture portrayal. Also, tears and passionate gestures, which are not accepted in the realm of the realistic method, are gone from Bunin’s women portrayal.