Grief in Russian Émigrés’ Exilic Short Fiction: Bunin, Nabokov and Gazdanov

Abstract

This essay focuses on the short fiction of three Russian émigré writers—Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (1870-1953), Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) and Gaito Gazdanov (1903-1971)—with the purpose of tracing not only their lives, but also a psychological/inner experience of exile evident within their writing techniques as related to time and space. Bunin, an exponent of the older generation of the first wave of Russian émigré writers, expressed profound emotions of nostalgia in his exilic short fiction by employing the techniques of “double exposure” and “diachronic topography,” harkening back to pre-revolutionary landscapes. Nabokov, a representative of the younger generation of Russian first-wave émigré writers as well as an all-encompassing writer of the second wave of Russian emigration, underpinned by his obsession with his childhood memories of butterflies as symbols of love and beauty, intertwined cosmic synchronization with stories of a protagonist in exile. Gazdanov, another representative of the younger generation of Russian first-wave emigration, had his protagonists disengage from the horror of the past, yet replicated feelings of suffering within their inner world and contemporary circumstances. Though Nabokov and Gazdanov, as younger voices from the first generation of Russian emigration, delved into a new world of literature and absorbed more writing techniques from literary movements of contemporary Europe, they continued to explore themes of grief and suffering in exile, much like the older generation of Russian first-wave émigré writers did.