From Manuscript to Print: The Evolution of Bakunts’s Style in the Artistic Refinement of the Story “Alpine Violet”

Abstract

This article presents, for the first time, a comparative examination of the autograph (13 pages) of A. Bakunts's short story "Alpine Violet" and its final, substantially revised version published in the 1933 collection The Sower of Black Fields. The study isolates and analyzes the linguistic and stylistic modifications that gradually reveal the evolution of the author's literary style. An investigation of Bakunts's creative workshop demonstrates that he elevated the traditions of Tumanyan and Terian to a new level of artistic development. The author's poetic language draws nourishment from the national forms of Armenian, yet through his painterly and creative reworking, these forms acquire greater colorfulness, lyricism, and freshness of tone and atmosphere. The master of language simplifies modes of expression while simultaneously intensifying and deepening the underlying thought. At times he imparts universal overtones to the narrative, achieving broad artistic generalizations. In the final version, the writer condenses the semantic richness of the story, deepens the psychological analysis of the characters' movement toward silence, and further reveals their spiritual traits. It is most readily demonstrated at the lexical level: in depicting nature, the human being, and the surrounding world, Bakunts frequently personifies silence and expands its semantic field by employing a wide range of synonyms in both literal and figurative senses.