Ivan Buninʼs prose works. An approach to the choice of copy texts for a critical edition

This article discusses the choice of copy texts to serve as the basis ofa critical edition of Ivan Bunin's prose works. The issue of choosing copy texts hasbeen most thoroughly dealt with in regard to Bunin's poetry, while the text criticismof his prose works is still at an early stage. The multiple stages Bunin's works wentthrough both before and after their publication require methods of presenting histexts to be elaborated which take into consideration both his own work on them andtheir impact on literary history and on contemporary readers and critics. The presentarticle embodies a first general approach to this subject and outlines a variety ofpossible solutions to the problems raised. Four groups of Bunin's prose works areexamined — those from his early, pre-revolutionary and émigré periods, and thosehe left unpublished — and an approach to choosing copy texts for each group isexplained. A suitable volume structure in a future critical edition of Bunin's worksis described. Problems posed by the correct dating of Bunin's stories are analyzed inrelation to their chronological position within a future critical edition and the choiceof copy texts for them. The basic principles underlying the choice of copy texts ofBunin's prose for a complete scholarly critical edition of his works are presented inconclusion. The article emphasizes that it is impossible to fulfill the last creative willof the author due to the incompleteness of his work with his legacy (selection of worksfor future editions, uncoordinated editing).