The paper investigates the song lyrics of I. Bunin in the context of evolutionary changes that happened to the genre of songs in Russian poetry of the late XIX - early XX centuries. One of the constitutional processes of thinking through genre in the work of I. Bunin is the synthesis of the lyric song and cleric song. The author of the paper emphasizes the role of the folk tradition and stylization in genre formation, the ratio of folk poetry and literary imagery in the song structure.
