The Crimean world of Ivan Shmelev in the reception of a chinese literary critic and translator

Annotation

A review of the monograph by the Chinese Slavist Xue Chen “The Crimean World in the ‘Sun of the Dead’ by I. S. Shmelev” (Moscow: MAKS Press, 2023. 192 p.). Shmelev’s work is analyzed in the context of the history of Russia in the 1920s, the biography of the writer, two trends in Russian literature of the 20th century, the metropolis and emigration. The main array of sources is the texts of Shmelev, Malyshkin, Babel, M. Bulgakov, Voloshin, Bunin, Tsvetaeva, Bal’mont, Klyuev, Yesenin and other contemporaries of the author of the “Sun of the Dead”. Parallels between the studied epic story, as well as the prose and journalism of the Norwegian, Chinese, Bashkir and Tatar authors of the 1920s lend originality to Xue Chen’s book and testify to her broad erudition. Scientifically productive is the development of the concept of the “Crimean text” by A. Lyusy in the process of a detailed analysis of the content (the subject, in particular, the theme of hunger, the existential problem of life and death, the circle of ideas, the characters’ characters) and form (images of nature, color painting, generic and genre specificity, symbolism) “Suns of the Dead”. Convincing is the observation of the genetic connection between the motives and images of Shmelev’s heroes with the Bible, mythology, and the works of a number of Russian writers. The identification of genetic and comparative typological similarities of Shmelev’s text with the works of foreign and Russian philosophers indicates that Xue Chen belongs to the scientific school of prof. N. M. Solntseva.

Keywords

Xue Chen, Chinese Slavic studies, I. S. Shmelev, Crimea, existence, Civil war, famine.

Literature

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