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A Story by A. P. Chekhov “The Wolf”: Historical-medical and Archetypal Aspects
Views:422The plot of A. P. Chekhov's story "The Wolf" (in the first edition the story was called "Hydrophobia (A true story)") is associated with the frequent facts of wolves attacking people in the 1880s in the central part of the country (called an epidemic at the time).The time of writing the story between March and December 1886 is a year after the discovery of the rabies vaccine in the laboratory of Louis Pasteur and its successful testing in 1885; and in the year the story was created, the first Pasteur stations in Russia were opened. The paramount aspect of a plot of the work by A. P. Chekhov is connected with the field of psychology. Fear, which takes possession over the character, the landowner Nilov, is a psychological phenomenon in the medical sense and leads to an understanding of the fact why Chekhov needs an emphasis on the wolf in the title of the second edition of the story. The image of a wolf with its archetypal component plays a fundamental role in recreating a clinically accurate picture of fear. The real clash with a real wolf becomes a reflection of the fight with the "mental wolf," with its own fears. The writer is interested not so much in the existential side of the phenomenon of fear, as in the psychological one. And the image of a wolf with its archetypal component plays a fundamental role in recreating a clinically accurate picture of fear.
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Chekhov in New York: the Functions of Frame in Louis Malle's "Vanya on 42nd Street" (1994)
10 p.Views:193This paper focuses on Luis Malle’s creative adaptation of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya”. The frame location of "Vanya on 42nd street" is not only documentary evidence and a sign of admiration for the actors' ensemble, creating the spirit of live improvisation in the unfinished theatrical production by Andre Gregory. It is argued that the film is far from being another spectacular 're-citing' of Chekhov's ‘transcultural capital’. A set of framing elements foregrounds Chekhov's art in general and the way he represents Vanya’s stoic endurance in particular as resonating with the living experience of a person of any culture in whatever language (Russian, English, Bengali, theatrical, cinematic, etc.) holds general validity. Among leitmotifs which interconnect the frame and the drama performance within the film there are also those of kinship, unselfish friendship and true involvement in life as an ongoing rehearsal and improvisation on an inescapable life project that is never successful.
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Biblical parallels in Chekhov’s short story Murder
Views:46The paper explores biblical allusions in Anton Pavlovich Chekhov’s short story Murder. It aims not merely to identify certain biblical themes, but, through an analysis of Chekhov’s text and its biblical parallels, to attempt to provide a deeper understanding of the main character’s changing worldview (a question interpreted by researchers in different, often conflicting ways). The paper also points to motivic and semantic connections between the biblical text and the internal struggle of faith that affects Chekhov’s heroes. On one hand, two Old Testament stories from the Book of Genesis are examined: the fratricide of Abel by his brother Cain, and Jacob acquiring first-born status and the paternal blessing instead of his brother Esau, as well as Jacob’s struggle with the angel. On the other hand, certain sections of the New Testament Gospel according to Matthew are explored, as referenced in Murder, which point to two groups of ideas: the argument between Jesus and the Pharisees concerning proper religious practice and the true essence of faith, and Jesus’s allegory about the camel, as well as his words on murder, which both ratify and amend the Ten Commandments. Through the prism of these references, Yakov’s (and also Matvey’s) internal journeys are interpreted as a shift between the law of the Old Testament and the teachings of the New Testament.
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The Heritage of Tolstoy’s Artistic Detail in the Poetics of Chekhov (Defamiliarization and „Randomness”)
Views:176One type of the “random Chekhovian detail ”can be referred to as a special cognitive phenomenon arising during the perception of the background and foreground within the depicted perception of the hero. In this paper, I suggest that this technique works if we perceive Chekhov’s laconicity against the detailed descriptions of the inner world of Tolstoy’s characters in the process of their estrangement. In the first part using the example of “War and Peace” I examine the “random” details concerning various features of Tolstoy's defamiliarization and show their transformation in Chekhov’s poetics. The examples from Chekhov’s early short stories “Grisha” and “Polinka” demonstrate an intermediate level of this transformation. In the second part I turn to the story “The Lady with the Dog” and consider the transformation of Tolstoy's technique through parallels with the novels “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina”. The situation of Gurov and Tolstoy’s characters (Natasha, Prince Andrei, Levin) is similar with regard to the fact that they retain true love in their hearts and get into an everyday social situation, where they are exposed to the the automatism and lies of everyday life with special intensity.
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“Hungarian Subject Matter” in Chekhov (The Short Story The Unnecessary Victory)
Views:186The paper considers “The unnecessary victory” as one of the notable works of the earliest stage of Chekhov’s creativity. The Hungarian theme of the story, inspired by the novels of Mór Jókai translated into Russian, and its plot, related to the traditions of the European career novel, address a wide audience. The young writer plays along with this reader with exotic narrative elements and delineates the difference between serious and marginal literature. This hoax, together with other skits of those years, reveals the young writer’s view of literary pursuits as an exciting game in which the main expectation is to be truthful and graceful. The same goals, according to Chekhov, characterize literature in general, regardless of the field of its competence and of the readership coverage.
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The relationship between Excellent People by Chekhov and the ideological position and artistic attitude in the late short stories of Leo Tolstoy
Views:90In Chekhov and His Prose (first published in 1965), the author, Thomas G. Winner contends that the subject matters of a few of Chekhov’s short stories written in the 1880s (such as «Хорошие люди» [Excellent People]) were created in the spirit of Leo Tolstoy, yet the one called «Несчастье» [Misfortune], written also in 1886, already marked the beginning of a series of texts that can be interpreted directly as “a light parody” of Anna Karenina (1873–1877) as well. The basic question posed here concerns whether there is really a significant difference that can be observed between the above two works and whether they reveal this sharp difference in the reception of Tolstoyan ideas that Winner's monograph suggests. The paper seeks to answer this query on the basis of the interpretation of Excellent People and the textual representation of the issue of goodness. In this analysis, particular attention is given to the way in which Tolstoy's ideas are represented and to the author's poetic choices that bring the text close to Tolstoy's late short stories.
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The Linguistic Means of Representation of the Category of Generality in the Text of A.P Chekhov’s Three Years
Views:141The multi-level means of representation of the category of generality inherent in the language as a whole are reflected in the story of A. P. Chekhov "Three Years" in all their diversity. The characters of the work reflect on generally significant topics in the context of their own lives, thatimplementthe category of generality in the work. When language units function in the text of the story, their particular-specific and generalizing meanings interact, which causes a two-dimensional semantic perception both within a single utterance and the text as a whole. The use of the means of generalizing in the speech of the characters is pragmatically driven and is determined by the purpose of the speaker to depersonalize the statement or to influence the interlocutor, giving personal reflections a universal meaning.
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Historia Morbi of the Hero of A.P. Chekhov's Short Story The Black Monk: Textual and Intertextual Forms of its Presentation
Views:81The ambiguity of the presentation of the illness of the protagonist of Chekhov’s short story The Black Monk and the author's attitude to it is discussed in this paper. The essential role of irony in the story is noted, due to the historical and literary context and the intertext that arises on its basis. The ironic modality is induced, on the one hand, due to the connection of the story with the early work of the writer, and on the other hand, with the works of other authors. The role of Griboyedov's comedy Woe from Wit as a catalyst for irony is also discussed. The ironic modality does not exclude the formulation of a serious problem of the inauthentic existence of humans but gives it an ambivalent character. The interweaving of the conditional beginning and the unconditional in the depiction of the hero and his illness allows Chekhov to pose the ontological problem of the inadequacy of the self-esteem of the individual.
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Figures of the Young Actress in the Dramatic Art of A.N. Ostrovsky and A.P. Chekhov
Views:152The present study focuses on the turning point in drama history between the artistic concept of A.N. Ostrovsky, the founder of modern Russian theater, and that of A.P. Chekhov, who transformed the former approach in the matter of just a few decades. I propose that an analysis of Ostrovsky’s Talents and Admirers (1881) and Chekhov’s The Seagull (1896) can reveal the borderline that divides the dramatic formations belonging to these two separate periods. The analysis concentrates on the transformation of a specific motive, the portrayal and the dramatization of the chances of destiny available for the figure of the young actress. I presume that the dramaturgical features surfacing through the exploration of this portrayal will outline the differences in the approach and in the poetic means used by the outstanding representatives of these successive periods in drama history. Thus, I am not seeking intertextual instances in the narrow sense of the term. Rather, I am after a thematic and motive-based congeniality and its saturation with a new meaning, coming from the functional shift that establishes a connection between the texts of the pieces by Chekhov and Ostrovsky. This approach to intertextuality in the broader sense of the term, which is not primarily present in references at the textual level but is rather based on, for example, thematic congruity, can play an important part also in the assessment concerning functional history, in exploring reception-related peculiarities and, consequently, in the validation of the historical aspect.
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Angelika Molnár: Reception and Analysis of the Text. Selected works. Moscow, Azbukovnik, 2023, 447 pp. ISBN 978-5-91172-236-4
Views:76The review examines a new book by Hungarian researcher Angelika Molnár on classical Russian literature of the 19th century. Molnár's book analyses the works of Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Chekhov in the context of the overlaps with the literature of the 21st century (Ulitskaya, Akunin, etc.). The main emphasis is placed on describing the principles of textual formation through the prism of discursive poetics. The history of Hungarian reinterpretation of Russian classics is widely represented in the book. The interpretations of the works reveal unusual correlations between the works and show the specificity of the writers' poetics in a new way.
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The Motive of Passage as a Cultural Universal In I.S. Shmelev’s Novel “The Story of a Love”: Semantic and Functional Aspect
Views:184The article considers the motive of passage from the point of view of its role in the plot inI.S. Shmelev’s novel and from the point of view of mythopoetic meanings. It has been established that in the work “The Story of a Love” the symbolism of the passage motive is associated not only with the situation of the transition, but also with the Fall, which is interpreted by the writer as a stage of the movement towards insight. The passage motive organizes two spaces of storytelling: real and mental. Real space is divided into a space of purity and sin, the transition from one spatial locus to another also signifies the transition taking place in the soul of the protagonist from purity to sin and vice versa. The motives of the passage and temporary death are combined with the Christian motive of the transformation, allowing I.S. Shmelev to show the spiritual toss of the main character more clearly – as a transfer from life to death and its subsequent revival, as well as to assert the main motivein his work – the merger of the “mundane” and the “heavenly”, the world of objects, the material world and the “invisible" world of divine light.
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Rácz, Ildikó Mária: A lét és a szerelem szentsége. Ivan Bunyin művészi világképe. L’Harmattan, Budapest 2020, 373 pp. ISBN 978-963-414-681-0
Views:152This review presents a critical analysis of the monograph on Bunin by the Hungarian researcher Ildikó Mária Rácz. The author describes the main thematic blocs of the volume, for example, the influence of classic Russian literature on Bunin (Turgeniev, Tolstoi, Chekhov, and Tiutchev), the role of Eastern philosophy in the evolution of Bunin’s art, the connection between the modern psychological concepts (Freud, Jung) and the short stories as Mitya’s love or The grammar of love.
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Object – Body – Flashback in “The Seagull” by Michael Mayer
6 p.Views:189The article features the transformation mechanisms of Chekhov’s play “The Seagull” in its film adaptation of 2018 by Michael Mayer. The director’s concept activates the opposition “memory – forgetfulness” and this is based on composition-visual reminiscences, i.e. flashbacks. The world of objects and the body discourse in the film complies with that specific film story of nostalgia in which the past is not simply going back to the things the characters were through, but also as a new reading of Chekhov’s intertextuality in the context of Anglo-Saxon cinema culture as well as a stylized memory of the Russian classic writer and his times.
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«Chekhov’s Stage Set»: «The Cherry Orchard» in the Russian Poetry of the 20th – Early 21st Century
8 p.Views:232Chekhov’s text is one of the most significant constituents of the Russian poetry of the 20th – early 21st centuries. The one most frequently alluded to is the play by Chekhov – «The Cherry Orchard». The play written at the break of historical epochs turns out to be in tunes with the times of another turning-point. This fact conditions the allusion to the Chekhov’s text in a poem «The Young Poetry» by V. Kornilov. The main feature of the crucial time period in the poem is the category of freedom, unexpectedly granted during the historical turn and change. The key theme, which determines the historiosophical sense of the text, is a quotation from «The Cherry Orchard», a dialogue between Gaev and Fiers. I. Kabysh perceives the Chekhov’s play both mythopoetically and symbolically in such poems as «How Niveous-White Everything Is in Russia Today! » and «The Snow Started to Fall Without Delays». She introduces a different time into the text, models the reality after the events described in «The Cherry Orchard» and interpreted by the author of the poem in the lower clef (as in «crumbled estate»). The loss of the Garden, its disintegration, the loss of entity, is a gradual, step by step, process – into dachas, then into dust; that is the way the motif of vanishing space and culture appears.