Chekhov

The article examines the evolution of Chernyshevsky's ideas about the hero of Gogol's "Overcoat" (from the apologetics of the humanistic feeling to the "one who needs protection", to the denial of his right to sympathy, to the utterance of "unprofitable truth" about him) in order to show the relapse of such an interpretation of a small man in the domestic czech.

A viewpoint is presented that Chekhov’s comedy may be considered as a polyphonic (in the musicological understanding of the term) reunion of melodic voices of different characters with whom the voice (self-awareness, behavior, squeamish and sneering attitude to other people) of the young footman Yasha is conspicuously and ominously discordant.

The linkages between two levels of Chekhov’s and Andreyev’s plays – everyday life and existence – are considered in the article. Such aspects of main characters’ life as the existential tragedy of being, the state of alienation, loneliness, ambivalence, untrue existence, breakthrough to the beauty and divine grace are analyzed.

The article considers one of the ways of presenting the initial phase of character’s inner speech in A. P. Chekhov’s prose – stream of consciousness as a manifestation of his individual writing style.

In the article the image of the governess Sharlotta Ivanovna, a character from Vishneviy Sad (The Cherry Orchard), is analyzed. The motives of the play realized in the text are key to understanding the character. The story of creation and the stage fate of Sharlotta Ivanovna are also considered in the article.

The article regards image and notional parallels in the works by A. P. Chekhov and S. V. Rakhmaninov revealing similar features of the writer’s and composer’s artistic outlook as of those who reveal national identity of the Russian art.

The article focuses on Nabokov’s understanding Proust’s, Tolstoy’s and Chekhov’s metaphors as a way of passing from an objective to the subjective reality. The analogies with Nabokov’s perception of reality expressed in his art are drawn.