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Abstract: The second part of the article investigates the period after Bunin’s Nobel Prize for literature in 1933, remarkable for a peak of critical attention to the author. 44 reviews were published at this stage – they demonstrate the widening of the interest in Bunin and confirm his significance for the Bulgarian cultural memory. All critical texts (1903–1943) presented in the article introduce previously unknown source material into scholarly circulation, and its growing volume and versatility reveal Bunin’s reception as a multifaceted process. As a result, the Nobel laureate – a “little-known minor author” – turned into a writer, who was widely read and interpreted in Bulgaria. All reviews, reports and scholarly papers can be arranged in a single, but not homogeneous plot, consisting of several parallel lines, behind which one can see different trends. The approaches indicated as aesthetic (dealing with literary studies), Slavophile and sociological correspond to the theoretical “aspects” in the reception of the “other”, proposed by Tzvetan Todorov: “to love”, “to identify with” and “to explore”. Aesthetic criticism tries to keep on exploring, Slavophiles love and are identified positively, while sociological criticism does not accept Bunin’s values and gives him a negative evaluation. The articles written by literary critics in emigration, published in translation into Bulgarian, are examined separately. This criticism of translations contributes to the development of Bulgarian Bunin studies and to assimilation of a missing metalanguage, i.e. it affirms the dominance of the aesthetic tendency. The reception of Russian emigrant’s literary criticism in Bulgaria is also not homogeneous and includes a memoir, historiosophical and literary layer. It is the aesthetic prism that unites reception in the Bulgarian and Russian languages and motivates literary scholars to include Bunin in the list of „normative” (J. Assman) literary authorities. The chief contribution of the critical reception of Bunin presented in this article lies in the creation and stabilization of the national tradition in studying and teaching the Russian writer in Bulgaria.

About the author(s) :

Galina Petkova

Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” (Sofia, Bulgaria)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1002-5183

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 31.08.2023; date of publication: 31.10.2023

References:

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