The Еaster Аrchetype in the Story of Ivan Bunin “Lyrnik Rodion”

The article analyzes the story of I. A. Bunin “Lyrnik Rodion” in the context of the Christian spiritual tradition. The musical creations of folk performers reflected in the “Lyrnik Rodion” evokes from oblivion the native folk culture of Malorussia (Little Russia), gradually fading into the shadows against the background of the intensive development of a spiritually decaying civilization. The performance of folk songs brings back to memory the old days when the Zaporozhian Sich was a stronghold of the Christian faith. The song chronotope expands the metaphysical space of Little Russia to the Danube and the Carpathian Mountains, as places of origin and unity of the Eastern Slavs on an Orthodox basis. Turning to the origins of Slavs and Orthodoxy, fixed mentally, rather than geographically in ethical everyday and song culture, the author inscribes Little Russia into a series of sacred toposes, expanding the vertical of time from the past to the present, and the horizontal of space from the Dnieper to the sacred Danube. The image of the main character-a blind man (an invariant of the fool), edification and The “soul-saving” of the spiritual verse, the Easter time, during which the action in the “Lyrnic Rodion” takes place, aligns this work with Easter stories and allows us to consider the artistic image of Little Russia through the prism of the Easter archetype. The inner transformation of the lyricist and his listeners under the influence of folk music, especially the song lyrics of the Christian spiritual tradition, brings to the fore Orthodox axiology in the coordinate system of which the story’s author sees the national character and ethnic culture of Little Russia.