The library as an element of the “estate culture”in the works of Russian writersof the second half of the XIXth — beginning of the XXth centuries:I.S. Turgenev, I.A. Goncharov, I.A. Bunin

Abstract

Descriptions of an estate library in the writings of the XIXth century Russian authors, performing a narrative and characterological function in the representation of the characters, at the same time acquires symbolic meaning as the personification of cultural ancestral and national memory. The subject of analysis in this article are I. Turgenev’s (“Faust”), I. Goncharov’s (“The Precipice”) and I. Bunin’s writings (“Antonovka Apples”, “The Grammar of Love”). In Turgenev’s story “Faust”, a Goethe’s tragedy, book from the protagonist’s library when being read together by the characters, wakes their feelings and helps them to realize themselves, though leads them eventually to the dramatic final. In Goncharov’s novel “The Precipice” Boris Raisky’s library and the characters’ attitude to it is one of the characters’ axiological characteristics and also an occasion for them to discuss the role of memory preserved in the tradition of world literature, the actuality of meanings that it comprises. In Bunin’s works (“Antonovka Apples”, “The Grammar of Love”) a library as well as an estate itself becomes an expression of nostalgia for the culture that is going to the past.