Ambivalently Modern, Ambiguously Traditional: Ivan Bunin and the Courtroom Narrative

The paper offers a reading of Ivan Bunin's “The Case of Cornet Elagin” to argue that this underappreciated story affords insight into one of the central issues debated by Bunin scholars: the writer's place within realist and modernist practice. “Elagin” dramatizes Bunin's ambivalent relationship with both and reveals how his embrace of modernist aesthetics is qualified by his distaste for modernist ethics, especially for the culture of decadence. To trace how this dynamic of engagement and critique plays itself out in “Elagin,” the paper explores the story's formal conception, its relationship with previously overlooked documentary sources, and its place within the tradition of courtroom narrative.