Many phenomena in language are expressed by phrases with the noun water because water, as a known element of the world, participates in the comprehension of the reality and the representation of abstract entities. This study presents a facet of the conceptual structure of the noun ‘water’ in its notion as an ‘element.’ A correlation with deep cognitive knowledge of a natural phenomenon is demonstrated and represented by the noun ‘water’, and symbolic values are ascribed to ‘water’ in I. Bunin’s prose in the context of metaphorical constructions with the word water and its substitutes. This study also highlights the notion that the conceptual framework of water knowledge, existing as the impression of archetypal representations and a mythological model of the world, becomes the basis for the formation of the symbolic meanings of the noun ‘water’ in language, as well as an existent form of abstract ideas (comprehended in I. Bunin’s prose by means of aquatic images) such as life and death, mythical chaos, combined dualities of the cradle and grave, and others. Moreover, the formation process of the symbolic values of the noun ‘water’ (Chaos, Life and Death, Eternity, Path, Memory, Prima Materia, Life-giving Bosom, etc.), which appear in the writer’s texts as meaningful fragments of lexeme semantics, are determined by deep structures of knowledge as presented in the system of language itself. The deep-semantic roles, or more precisely: semantic actants, whose position can be taken by the noun ‘water’ and its analogues in the structure of the sentence, act as a form of deep (pre-lingual) knowledge representation, associated with the natural phenomenon nomination. Thus, it is stated that semantic roles of AGENT, SOURCE, INSTRUMENT, etc., determine the symbolic meanings that have found their objectivity in the noun ‘water’ in the prose of I. Bunin. Formalization of the deep (prelingual) knowledge of water phenomenon, which is hidden in the linguistic form and determines the semantics of the noun ‘water’, allows us reconstructing the very process of generating symbolic water values in the writings of I. Bunin, revealed on the basis of the distribution of this lexeme.