The dating of Ivan Bunin’s poems in the critical edition of his works

This article considers issues that arise when adapting the dating of Ivan Bunin’s poems established for the scholarly edition of his lyric poetry in the “Novaya Biblioteka poeta” series (2014) to the standards of the “Complete Collected Works”, which was initiated in the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of World Literature in 2017. The primary assumption made is that it is essential to adhere to a system of rules for dating the poems, which takes into consideration the individual features of Bunin’s work on his texts, and those principles are confirmed, which transfer directly from the scholarly apparatus of the edition of Bunin’s poetry into the “Complete Collected Works”, including a separate justification for the editorial status of the date below each text in the main section. There follows an indication of the directions to be taken for dating Bunin’s poems more precisely and fully in the complete edition of his creative works. This includes refining their chronology (drawing on the dates of the periodicals, in which Bunin’s poems were published, and on information from his correspondence), identifying precisely the tools (pencils, ink, pens) used to correct working copies of Bunin editions (as they changed over time, they make it possible to date his work on texts), correcting the dating of individual poems in the light of new information that appeared after the publication of the “Novaya Biblioteka poeta” edition. The way authorial and editorial dates are presented and formatted within the “Complete Collected Works” is then considered separately. The author's dates should be unified, the dates of poems written during foreign travels should be checked (Bunin could have used the Gregorian calendar), and the dates of poems written after the introduction of the new calendar style in Russia should be rechecked.