In the article, the poem “Mohammed and Safiya” is considered both in relation to other works by Bunin, and in the light of linguistic-historiosophical, anthropological and religious ideas of the time, which in various forms were reflected in the poem. The “contextual” approach makes it possible to actualize those potential subtextual meanings that come to life in the poem in the context of those spiritual and humanistic moods of the epoch that are associated with the desire for “renewal” of a person. Bunin substantiates the idea of the need for a “resurrection” of the worldview of the “first days” of Creation in a person, an “inner” return to the “original”, when a person lived in memory of his “Abrahamic” “birthright”. In the complex of “returning” awakening feelings that unite all mankind in spiritual kinship, Bunin saw the “meaning and purpose of history”, which should find their realization not in its frightening eschatology, but in its anthropological peak, in the space of Paradise, where it — the space of Paradise — is hierotopic, permeated with the gracious energy of the Creator's presence. And man is filled, like Mohammed, with a sense of “gentle” joy, an experience of “closeness, brotherhood and unity with all living on earth”.
For citation: Karpenko G.Yu., Mishra P. I.A. Bunin's Poem “Moham med and Safiya”: the anthropology of kinship (text and contexts of understanding), Ivanovo State University Bulletin, Series: Humanities, 2024, Special issue, pр. 16—24.