Time and eternity in Ivan Shmelev's “Spruce branches”: axiological perspective

The article focuses upon peculiarities of the chronotopical structure of Ivan Shmelev’s short story “Spruce Branches” (1947). It is argued that the distinctive feature of the architectonics of this literary marsterpiece is a complex interaction of time and eternity. The story is organized around three dominant spatio-temporal motifs or chronotopes that bind discrete scenes into a coherent whole. In the chronotope of memory, which lies at the very core of human life, the disparate temporal planes of the past and the present are unified. The chronotope of miracle, which unfolds on the borderline of the temporal and the timeless, allows eternity to ingress into everyday earthly existence as “an active force that has a profound transforming effect on man and the world as a whole” (A. Osipov). A miracle, having occurred once, does not disappear irrevocably into the past, but continues to sanctify the totality of existence in both its present and its future. It becomes a “value-event” centre (M.M.Bakhtin) of an individual, personal chronotope of a hero and a locus of their temporal experience. In the chronotope of encounter the finite closedness of earthly reality is overcome and time merges with the boundless space of “all-embracing and eternal life” (S. Frank). We demonstrate that the abovementioned chronotopic values are realized within a shared “vertical” context that is formed by direct or hidden allusions to the precedent texts of the New Testament. While referring to the absolute value, they enhance the narrative with meaningful insights which enable it to reach the profoundness of archetypal generalization. We reach a conclusion that in today’s world of “narrowing cultural spheres and confusion of public consciousness” (V. Tyupa), the timeless values that find their masterful literary rendering in Ivan Shmelev’s short story can serve as a definitive guidepost on the way to prevent the imminent threat of devaluation of Russian culture.