The article presents a fundamentally new interpretation of Ivan Bunin's last work of fiction, the book Dark Avenues. The author examines the book in dynamic terms, arguing that the genre-based form of the novella changes significantly from part one to part three and nearly dissolves in the finale (the short story 'The Chapel'). The most important reason for the structural changes was a powerful and varied intertext that reinterprets virtually the entire Russian classical tradition, including Bunin's earlier works (even The Life of Arsen'ev). The specific nature of this intertext, which has not been described before, makes clear that Dark Avenues was the beginning of a shift by Bunin from modernism to postmodernism.