Early Travelogues of I. A. Bunin 1895–1902 as a Field of Narodnik (Peasant-Oriented) Literature and Symbolist Experiments

The article comprehensively examines the evolution of the travelogue genre in the early work of I. A. Bunin, analyzing the essays “Kazatskim khodom” (“Cossack Walk”, 1900) and “Na Dontse” (“On the Donets”, 1897), which are dominated by features of the Narodnik tradition and in which a lyrical “mood” of silence and existential melancholy emerges, blurring ideological discourse and anticipating the writer’s transition to a new poetics. The article examines the essays of 1901 “Tuman” (“Fog”), “Novaya doroga” (“The New Road”), “Na Zhenevskom ozere” / “Tishina” (“On Lake Geneva” / “Silence”), “Pereval” (“The Pass”), which feature a decisive shift toward symbolism: the space of travel transforms into a multidimensional symbolic landscape of metaphysical quests and reflections on the fate of Russia and human existence; key motifs acquire existential tension. Bunin’s early travelogues appear as a creative laboratory, where the Narodnik tradition synthesizes with individual quests and is then overcome in a symbolist vein, preparing the mature embodiment of the genre in the book “The Temple of the Sun” and defining the uniqueness of Bunin’s artistic method.