Зоопоэтика И.С. Шмелёва: образы животных в малой прозе писателя
Zoopoetics of Ivan Shmelev: Images of Animals in the Short Prose

Summary/Abstract: Features of Shmelev’s zoopoetics are described in the article on the basis of the early stories, such as "My Mares", "Light Page", and "Mary", in which images of animals are analysed in the context of Russian literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries ("Strider" by Lev Tolstoy, "Kashtanka" by Anton Chekhov, "The White Poodle" and "Emerald" by Alexander Kuprin, and "Dreams of Chang" by Ivan Bunin). Shmelev’s zoopoetics is based on the philosophy of life and death, freedom and captivity, and the connection between the natural world and the world of childhood, and is actualized in anthropomorphic images of animals manifested in the texts of the writer in many ways (psychologism, spirituality, and the use of the concepts of “soul”, “destiny”, “love” “morality” and “compassion”). Animals in the stories appear as a certain indicator, because the correlation with them and the attitude to them reveal the other characters – both adults and children.

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