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This study forms part of a broader series of analyses examining the principles of dramaturgy and theatrical traditions that shape the interpretation of drama and the understanding of dramatic texts. It focuses on action, the most enduring element of the classical unities, and analyzes Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya–often described as being “without action” –through close reading and dramaturgical methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to explore how the metafictional awareness within each character shapes the overall interpretation of “A Story Without an End” (1886) by Anton Chekhov. From this perspective, this short story can be seen as Chekhov’s commentary on his own writing, revealing the path of evolution he would take in the years that followed. The analysis leads to the conclusion that “A Story Without an End” should be regarded as one of the key texts in the author’s creative breakthrough period, since after 1886 Chekhov’s works evolve towards greater artistic challenges and a style that goes far beyond the norms of humorous writing. Original title in Polish: Metafikcja w „Opowiadaniu bez końca” Antoniego Czechowa.

The widespread of cherry orchards in different regions of Russia and vaious locations (landowners’ estates, peasants’ plots, inns, cemeteries, Soviet-era dachas, etc.) was reflected in the works of fiction by Russian writers, as well as in their diary entries and epistolary heritage. The article considers the works of Alexei K. Tolstoy, Lev Mey, Anton Chekhov, Ivan Bunin, Boris Zaitsev, Sergey Esenin, Marina Tsvetaeva, and other authors who formed the symbolism of the cherry orchard. Since the cultivation of seedlings and adult trees with skillful but not very burdensome care was commercially effective, the cherry orchard symbolized prosperity and prosperity. The cherry harvest allowed the owners to show their hospitality: they treated their guests to various culinary products made of berries and liqueurs. Thanks to Chekhov, the cherry orchard became one of the symbols of the traditional Russian estate, and its death symbolized the destruction of the conservative world order. Cherry orchards testified to the domestication of the landscape.

Not only the general theme of madness, but also the features of the narrative allow us to compare the Garshin’s "A Red Flower" with "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" by Dostoevsky and "Ward No. 6" by Chekhov. It turns out that the storytelling process creates similar problems, the solution of which each writer provides in his own way: see personalisation, dual narrative and apparent objectivity. Motifs along with metaphorical constructions (f.e. dream, luminaries, illness) are also have common features. In Dostoevsky's story, the concept of the "fantastic" becomes a form of path to the personal narrative of the subject of the text, who analyzes the story, develops new linguistic and semantic means for the presentation of history, in which laughter-madness is becoming the generative principle. Consequently, both the parable character and the transformation of the short story into a short novel by Dostoevsky are realized, despite the fact that there is a first-person narrator. In "A Red Flower" there is also the mission of saving the world as a "crazy man", but the narrator in the third person and the narrative does not turn into a story-parable. The story seems to reproduce an anecdote about the adventures of the hero. At the same time, the uniqueness of Garshin's work lies in the way the world is renamed "illy", i. e. metaphorical language. In Chekhov's short novel, the metaphorical plan unfolds the comprehension of the hero, giving the corpus of "crazy narratives" a new touch thanks to completely non-random details – reminiscent of Garshin's. As a result of the analysis, it becomes clear that "Ward No. 6" implements the parable beginning, even if it does not unfold into a personal narrative similar to "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man".

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The contemporary brain disorders debate echoes a century-long conflict between two different approaches to mental suffering: one that relies on natural sciences and another drawing from the arts and humanities. We review contemporary neuroimaging studies and find that neither side has won. The study of mental differences needs both the sciences and the arts and humanities. To help develop an approach mindful of both, we turn to physician-writer Anton Chekhov's story "A Nervous Breakdown." We review the value of the arts and humanities as a coequal partner with natural sciences in the creation of a robust mental health humanities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Escape through Religion of the Chekhovian Characters In a study that involves the interpretation of such complex characters as those in the sphere of Russian writing, I inevitably reached issues like faith, soul, religion, suffering and aspirations. Considering that mysticism underlies the Russian soul, I tried to understand the human dimension of the characters from Chekhov’s plays, “Three sisters”, “Uncle Vanya”, “The Cherry Orchard” and ”The Seagull”. Thus, I analyzed the abyssal Slavic soul through the ideas of Russian mystical school and its representatives, Paul Evdokimov, and Nikolai Berdiaev, starting from the image of Christ in Russian thinking. For Chekhov, one must be faithful or go in search of faith, otherwise, his life will be deserted.

This article presents the folklorist's view of the famous story by A.P. Chekhov “I want to Sleep” (1988), reveals his biographical and folklore-ethnographic contexts, shows his connection with the social institute of nanny girls and autobiographical memoirs about this experience. Special attention is paid to the deep connection of the story with the tradition of a lullaby, common motifs and images of the author's work and folklore songs are revealed, the so-called “mortal” lullabies – songs with a wish for the imminent death of the baby, the image of his funeral. If in the “mortal” lullabies death was replaced by sleep, then in the story “I want to sleep” the young nurse replaced the baby's sleep with his death, setting such an incredibly high price for the opportunity to sleep soundly. It is suggested that the “mortal” lullabies, having arisen as a magical act of deceiving death, were distributed, supported among hired nannies, responding to their soulful requests. On the other hand, it is concluded that the descriptions of funerals and commemorations are smoothly logically and poetically summed up by adult threats addressed to a child, including deadly ones. A modern parody version of the “scary” lullaby is presented. The analysis once again confirms the special, implicit folklorism as a property of the poetics of the writer's creativity. Chekhov's story is presented as an artistic imitation of an unsuccessful lullaby.

Unregulated intersections, according to E.A. Yablokov, are artistic rapprochement of writers not connected to each other biographically. At first glance, the oeuvres of Chekhov and Sholokhov form such an unregulated intersection. However, it is seemingly unregulated, seemingly uncrossed. The article highlights the commonality of writers, who belonged to one ethno-cultural space. The author indicates the consilience of functions of the image of steppe in Chekhov’s short-stories and Sholokhov’s epic novel The Silent Don (Tikhy Don), the similarities and differences when it comes to the writers focus on the Cossacks and related issues. Thus, the comparison of the writers may be both within their typological commonality and genetic succession.

Chekhov's drama “Three Sisters” is the richest of all Chekhov's plays in terms of sound design – despite a number of scientific works devoted to the sound score of the play, it still attracts the attention of researchers in this aspect. Today it seems relevant to consider the sounds, noises, musical fragments of the drama, recorded by the author in the remarks and text, constituting an integral part with the semantic field of the drama. This article shows that the sound concept of the play was carefully thought out by Chekhov in relation to the images he created and the events unfolding in the play – for each act and the play as a whole, and therefore the sound palette of the drama is its integral part and should be read by the directors as part of the author's intention. Examples of sound design of several significant performances in the history of the world theater of different years staged by K.S. Stanislavsky, Vl.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, A.V. supplementing the article, actualize attention to the sound palette of the play and expand the possibilities of interpreting the Chekhov’s play.

The present study proposes a reinterpretation of Chekhov's play from the perspective of the relationship the characters have with the night, with sleep, with dreams and nightmares. A very complex oneiric web is created by Chekhov by means of several factors: certain disturbances of temporality, slowness of the movement of the characters, boredom as a background state, drowsiness, insomnia, forgetfulness, identity disorders and so on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article is preoccupied by the problem of comparative analysis in the case of a writer as elusive as Chekhov, who does not formulate an open ideological message and generally withdraws his authorial voice. It raises the questions of what constitutes true kinship and similarity and highlights the vital importance of discerning above all the aesthetic aspect of the work, its poetics and artistic truth which take precedence over any structural or ideological considerations. To this end, various misconceptions and cases of false kinship are discussed, followed by examples of true continuity. In these examples, a close affinity is demonstrated through proximity of both ethics and aesthetics of the writers in question, and close textual comparisons are conducted. The next category discussed in the article addresses a paradox of simultaneously occurring rejection (or dislike) at one level, and real artistic closeness at another. We conclude by some general remarks on the nature of comparative analysis and offer another demonstration of stylistic proximity between two great writers, whose stylistics turns out to be so close that it is hard to tell them apart. We suggest that such parallels are not accidental, as form is inseparable from content, just as ethics is inseparable from aesthetics, and it is ultimately the artistic truth of the works under comparison that should always be kept strongly in focus.

Copyright of Motif Academy Journal of Folklore is the property of Motif Yayincilik and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The author presents a highly personal case for considering Andrey Platonov as the third person of a 'holy trinity' of writers from early twentieth-century Russia. Where Chekhov foresaw huge social upheaval (but died before seeing it) and Gorky staged the beginnings of insurrection, Platonov explores the fallout of the Revolution. The malign impact of Gorky's doctrine of Socialist Realism on Platonov's life and work is tracked. The challenges of adapting Platonov's fiction to the stage are examined, and a case study offered of the new play Bliss, based on 'The River Potudan', which premiered in Platonov's hometown of Voronezh, in June 2019. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is preoccupied by the problem of comparative analysis in the case of a writer as elusive as Chekhov, who does not formulate an open ideological message and generally withdraws his authorial voice. It raises the questions of what constitutes true kinship and similarity and highlights the vital importance of discerning above all the aesthetic aspect of the work, its poetics and artistic truth which take precedence over any structural or ideological considerations. To this end, various misconceptions and cases of false kinship are discussed, followed by examples of true continuity. In these examples, a close affinity is demonstrated through proximity of both ethics and aesthetics of the writers in question, and close textual comparisons are conducted. The next category discussed in the article addresses a paradox of simultaneously occurring rejection (or dislike) at one level, and real artistic closeness at another. We conclude by some general remarks on the nature of comparative analysis and offer another demonstration of stylistic proximity between two great writers, whose stylistics turns out to be so close that it is hard to tell them apart. We suggest that such parallels are not accidental, as form is inseparable from content, just as ethics is inseparable from aesthetics, and it is ultimately the artistic truth of the works under comparison that should always be kept strongly in focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The text attempts to conceptualize the four late plays of A. P. Chekhov – “The Seagull”, “Uncle Vanya”, “Three Sisters” and “The Cherry Orchard”, written between 1895 and 1904, as a cycle. The common places and problems in them are noted with the following regularity: once introduced, a given motif is not limited to the relevant drama in which it appears, but is reinterpreted until it exhausts its possibilities. In this sense, the article suggests the dramatical strategies of the mature Chekhov, betting on themes and characters with serious poetic potential, forming a recognizable, precisely Chekhovian macroplot. The semiotic center in it is fatherlessness, understood not so much as the absence of the father and, respectively, the disintegration of the patriarchal community, but also as destitution, uncertainty, pathlessness, lack of a stable perspective and the related fears for the upcoming – near or more distant – ruin. However, the missing father is not at all compensated by the presence of the mother – on the contrary, the primal matriarchy in which the Russian mythological mentality resides is also denied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dramatic rewritings--adaptations, updates, additions and hybridizations of genres--have the role of dynamizing the literary substrate and framework, often configuring a bridge between history events or episodes through which a society passes across eras. Matei Vișniec deconstructs and recomposes Shakespearean or Chekhovian characters, reworks the material of classical authors' plays in a new form on a seemingly improvised frame, contextualising both hypotext and hypertext. Through these returns, a constant dialogue with memory is operated, with the revitalization and remembrance of important moments in the becoming of a culture, a theatre or an artist. Textual improvisations also show themselves as a way of productive reception. Our analysis1 will focus on texts that go through the process of rewriting the classics of universal literature, from The Chekhov Machinery, to Richard III Will Not Take Place or Scenes from the Life of Meyerhold and Why Hecuba--these are plays that revisit texts and characters, melting them into the mould of the present with tragi-comic, grotesque, derisory accents. In a perspective beyond spatial and temporal landmarks, the playwright creates a palimpsest from fragments about humanity across eras, about the great errors West to East of Europe, and themes that cross literary, theatrical and creative borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From ancient times until the nineteenth century, loyalty, trust, understanding, forbearance, and empathy were only some of the merits one expected to find as the foundation of true friendship in Western culture. For instance, Aristotle insists that friendship must be "reciprocal" and "must involve a wish for the good of the loved one as an end in itself". Any friendship based on personal gains, whether tangible or not, would have been dismissed as false friendship. The transition from the relatively simple life of Aristotle's time and the following centuries to the complex modern age has produced a dramatic change in the Western culture, a change that evidently encompassed the concept of friendship. Whereas the Industrial Revolution initiated a gradual change, shifting the world's economy from an agricultural to an industrial one, the transition from friendships of 'excellence' to friendships of 'utility' and 'pleasure' was rather more accelerated, in the sense that what was viewed as superficial relationships became, over a short period of time, dominant in modern Western culture and recognized as manifestations of friendship. This study explores this cultural change as depicted in two modern dramas-- The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov and A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the Russian socialists, “America” was the promised land — a kind of metaphor of absolute freedom, making possible full self-realization of every person. In Dostoevsky's The Demons, Russian socialists Shatov and Kirillov find their way to America, subsequently break with the ideas of socialism, but nevertheless perish — either as a result of his past (Shatov), or his atheism (Kirillov). It is not without reason that even for Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment America also means the futility of the exodus for a Russian person who is not free from shame and conscience, and Svidrigailov's expression “to go to America” even turned out to be an allegory of suicide. This symbolism is to a certain extent preserved in Russian literature after Dostoevsky. The article demonstrates this by examples of Chekhov's play The Seagull and Gazdanov's story “Black Swans”. Although plots and images of the Crime and Punishment, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov differ, the similar artistic dialectics is observed in Dostoevsky's last novel, which, according to some researchers, allegedly ends with Dmitry Karamazov's flight to America. Unlike Herzen and Chernyshevsky, “America” in Dostoevsky's works appears not so much as a metaphor of freedom, but rather as an allegory of suicide.

This article provides a historical perspective on the famous Chekhovian story that has been previously viewed only as a story of love with the main focus on characters’ psychology. The new approach refers to a historical climate in Russian in the end of 19 century when religion lost its primary value. The conflict between the main characters is interpreted as a conflict between religious and secular mentality. Chekhov talks about a tendency of changing values in society, when the natural man’s mentality dominates the sacramental sphere, declares its morality false, ridiculous and even harmful. Gurov cannot understand Anna Sergeevna’s repentance, because he gravitates towards the progressive pole. The institution of marriage is not sacred for him, and, like for many of his contemporaries, a church wedding ceremony is no more than just a beautiful ritual. Just as another Chekhovian character, Voinitsky, Gurov doesn’t consider cheating on a spouse a great sin. He is a man of modern tendencies. For him, God is an abstract, mythical, speculative, philosophical concept not applicable to his own life that he lives in accordance with the tendencies of a secular society. Critics often associate the image of the dog with Anna Sergeevna, but in reality it is connected rather to Gurov. First of all, the sex of the dog is male, not female (Spitz is a male). Also, in the story, the dog loves his owner, Anna Sergeevna, but he could never understand the reason for her sadness. In the same way, Gurov, though being in love with Anna Sergeevna, would never understand fully what makes her so upset.

For a long time Hungarian literature has been influenced by Russian literature. A.P. Chekhov’s works have been drawing a specific interest among Hungarian readers. In this regard, the question about genetic and typological ties between Russian and Hungarian literature arises. The issue in the article is considered on the example of the short story “Ferko” by the Hungarian writer, ethnographer and folklorist Istvan Temerken and the “steppe” works of A.P. Chekhov. For many Hungarian writers Chekhov’s literary works became a model which they relied on during the search of new art forms. I. Temerken grew up in a steppe region of Hungary and the “steppe” theme was especially close to him. The story “Ferko” is written in Chekhov’s manner. The place of the action is the steppe, the main character is a boy, as if separated from everyone who is next to him, the image of the road and a number of other elements of the art world of the short story allow you to notice strong similarities in the story “Ferko” and “steppe” works of Chekhov (especially in the story “Steppe”). However, Temerken could not read “Steppe” translated into Hungarian, since the story was translated after the writer’s death. It means that apart from a direct orientation to the Chekhov’s style and poetics, there should be something in the field of typological rapprochement of cultures, which explains this similarity. A.N. Veselovsky called this phenomenon “counter courses”. And modern researchers explain then as archetypes or cultural universals common to all cultures. In the works of Temerken and Chekhov such are the images of a child, steppe, sun, etc.

This text attempts to trace a hidden archetype in nineteenth-century Russian literature and how it works in Dostoevsky. As much as there is a lot of space in the metaliterature of the Russian troika, understood as a horses driving and its symbolic metamorphosis of a bird-trio in Gogol, the emphasis here is on the topic, which I can call the “other Russian troika (trio)”. It is about the presence of an almost sacred three-dimensional character, who at one point is attacked and overturned against his presumption of holiness by a fourth demonological hero and a serious battle for his re-sacralization is imminent. Set by the three Baroque witches in Shakespeare's “Macbeth”, led by Hekate, this model was first tested in nineteenth-century Russian literature by Pushkin in “A Tale of Tsar Saltan”, and then in two stages, feminized and masculinized, developed by Dostoevsky in “The Idiot” and “The Karamazov Brothers”, respectively, and finally finds its triumphant ending in Chekhov's “Three Sisters”, whose character system parodies that of “The Idiot”. Why is Dostoevsky such an important link in the listed paradigm? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comparative analysis of the relationship between the narrator and the main character in the structure of flash fiction by A.P. Chekhov and J. Joyce. The authors conclude that there are typological similarities in the relationship between the narrator and the main character in the flash fiction of A.P. Chekhov and J. Joyce. This was influenced by the global trend in literature at the turn of the 20th century, according to which the role of the author as an omniscient and omnipresent demiurge of the fictional world started to wane. The paper puts forward that the unique entwinement of the narrator's and the main character's voices in A.P. Chekhov's and J. Joyce's short stories is the main structural-constructive factor of the free indirect speech and contributes to revealing the subtle creative substance of the works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The metaphor «depth of the garden» introduced in the stage direction of the first act of «Uncle Vanya» is analyzed. It is proved that both entities of the genitive metaphor have a metaphoric meaning. The metaphoric meaning of the lexeme ‘garden’ is connected with units of legal semantics. The lexeme ‘depth’ is connected with water metaphors in the text. ‘The depth of the garden’ points to the degree of Serebryakov’s doomness in his search for God’s mercy, which is depicted through water images. The analysis of the metaphor with its complex relations, including phonetic ones, demonstrates Chekhov’s poetic style, that gives the word specific weight and lends the language a leading role in depicting the world. A fragment of the world – Serebryakov’s walk in the garden – looks like predestination of professor’s fate, made up of his missteps.

Thus far perhaps the most acclaimed Irish practitioner of the short story, Frank O’Connor, attributes a lasting influence to Russian author Anton Chekhov when he considers the direction that the modern Irish short story was to take in the twentieth century. In The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story (1963), O’Connor emphasized two particular themes in Chekhov’s short fiction that influenced his own stories: on the one hand, a preoccupation with loneliness; on the other, a belief that venial sin, or the adoption of a false personality, was “far more destructive” than mortal sin itself. In other writings, he expressed an interest in narrative technique and structure as he found them in Chekhov’s stories. The article explores O’Connor’s “Uprooted” from his collection Crab Apple Jelly (1944), a story about displaced intellectuals. My reading illustrates how the Irish writer was not only adopting Chekhov’s themes but was also experimenting with Chekhov’s character types and narrative techniques, particularly as found in the Russian author’s story “The Lady with the Dog.” At the same time, O’Connor developed a distinctly individual technique of his own within the Irish realist/naturalist short story tradition, making a lasting impact on the art of the modern Irish short story. Unlike his displaced Irish characters in “Uprooted,” he prefers to remain faithful to this tradition.

This text deals with Chekhov’s questioning of the conventions of the stage observed as a box and his insistence on Nature as an important element of the dramatic space. Through the example of five of Chekhov’s great plays it shows the developmental journey of his plays, bearing in mind the place that Nature occupies in them. This journey could be treated as a path from the principle of representation based on the cube to the alternative principle based on the on the sphere, as suggested by Étienne Souriau. In this argument we can find reasons to proclaim Chekhov our contemporary.

Beyond their psychological realism and questionable symbolism, some of A. P. Chekhov’s plays also manifest a self-referential and metadramatic/ metadramaturgical component of implicit theatrical po(i)etics. This is an aspect rather ignored by Chekhov’s critics and linked to the crisis which, according to Peter Szondi, occurs in European drama around 1880. Matéi Visniec draws attention to it and exploits it in his own creation, in plays such as “La machine Tchékhov” [The Chekhov Machine], “Nina ou De la fragilité des mouettes empaillées” [Nina or About the Fragility of Stuffed Seagulls], in close connection with the postmodern preference for intertextual and self-referential writing.

It is considered the paradigm of teleological models, attempts to answer the eternal question about the meaning and purpose of existence in Chekhov’s. It is introduces the concepts of «anchor model» (justification of life by simplifying it by forcing the introduction of meaning), «model vector» (general aspiration towards meaningful life) and «field man» (according to Chekhov’s ideology, a true sage walking between the poles «there is a sense» and «there is no sense»).

The feeling of «shame» of Chekhov’s characters does not always coincide with the one which author means. Characters in Chekhov’s stories have different reasons for the feeling. They also experience it with different intensity levels. Lexis for the concept of «shame» is rarely verbalized in the text, this emotional state is conveyed by external evidence, behaviour, perception of an environment. Besides, the author distinguishes shame from awkwardness and a state of confusion, that is why lexis which denotes the concept of «shame» is not a synonymic one, as it is always broadly interpreted. In a number of Chekhov’s characters painful feeling of shame awakes conscience, leads to the insight and broader views on a situation and himself. In Chekhov’s stories, as in ones of his classic forerunners, only a person gifted with a moral feeling can experience shame. However, before Chekhov’s works the concept of shame was not such a characteristic feature, but in his stories presence of this feeling as well as its absence is of a great importance for the character. In Chekhov’s stories the concept of «shame» correlates not with the idea of «recovery of a lost person», original sin, or idea of one’s duty, but with the idea of right or wrong overviews, feelings and acts of a character and a society.

This article deals with the study of the phenomenon of laughter, which is an important component and feature of the character of deacon Pobedov in Chekhov’s novel «The Duel». The deacon’s laughter, as a reaction to the words and actions of other characters, implements in dialogues when Pobedov acts as an observer of the act of communication. In this context, laughter should be considered as an assessment of a communicative event. The study shows that the deacon, being in the space of nature, loses laughter as a positive reaction. In this space, the deacon, on the one hand, in the internal dialogue acts as a dreaming and reflecting person, and, on the other hand, a person experiencing feelings of fear, despair, and excitement.

Short stories «Trouble» and «Nervous Breakdown» have social and psychological issues. However, as it often happens in A.P. Chekhov’s works, it is realized with the involvement of a folk culture language with which it creates the basis for its national identity. A folklore image of a mermaid and concepts related to it have an important role in these realistic short stories. The image, being constructive in both cases, appears in different forms and performs different functions. In the first case, the mermaid creates an associated field of indifference, devastation. In the second – temptation, fall, seduction.

The 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 80s of the XIX century in the central part of the country (it is not by chance that this period of tragic cases of contact with wild animals was called an epidemic).The time of writing the story from March to December 1886 is not accidental, since the discovery of the rabies vaccine in the laboratory of Louis Pasteur and its successful testing occurred about a year before the writing of "Hydrophobia (A true story)" 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 as 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the construction of the mother figure in Chekhov's dramaturgy. In his four major plays the playwright creates diverse mother characters that reflect psychological tendencies and socioeconomic factors. These characters are central in the family dynamics of the plays and influence the actions and emotions of the other characters. Themes of love, success, loss and memory prevail in the interpersonal discourse. In The Seagull Arkadina is a dominant mother in an antagonistic relationship with her son. The Russian literary type of the "superfluous man" inspires the creation of Treplev in a play where the Oedipus Complex becomes an illuminating lens. In Uncle Vanya, Vanya is an emasculated son who renegades (temporarily) to claim (unsuccessfully) his masculinity. His mother admires her son-in-law, not her son. In Three Sisters, Natasha is a possessive mother that usurps a house for herself and her children. Her pragmatism supersedes the dreamy illusions of the three sisters. In The Cherry Orchard, Ranevskaya functions as a frivolous mother governed by her fluid emotions. She leaves her daughters behind in favor of a lover, burdened by the loss of her son. Chekhov creates complex mother portraits that spark the dramatic tension of his plays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Brian Friel acquired the appellation 'Ireland's Chekhov' or the 'Irish Chekhov' during the 1970s when critics began to comment on similarities in their respective dramaturgies. Here Friel's 'affinities' with Chekhov are outlined through his several observations on the playwright; a brief examination of three of his own plays with Chekhovian echoes and resonances; the consideration of his 'translations' of major plays described as "after Chekhov"; and an introductory appraisal of an original piece where Friel invents a fictional 'afterlife' meeting for two of Chekhov's characters from different plays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teffi's theatrical work has not been investigated to any great extent. As Teffi was dubbed the 'female Chekhov', I aim to explore similarities with Chekhov's dramatic work by comparing two of her early miniatures with two Chekhov vaudevilles in order to find out how he may have influenced her and where instead she seeks her own way. A more general analysis of an early full-length Teffi drama coupled with a comparison of that work with the features of Chekhov's major dramas are offered as a conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In our research, we saw that Andreyev's assumptions were fulfilled - the film perfected the technique of depicting the action and the scene. The truth theater has replaced the incomprehensible naturalist theater with the new viewer. Enchanted theater is what makes everyone involved in a play - the writer, the stage, the theater and the audience. New Age viewers have to play offstage. In order for viewers to participate in a play, it must be responsive to new challenges - a more developed intellect, which gives the theater a representation of "intellectual experiences", or as Andreyev puts it: "the time of the drama of the Word has come. The body is surrendered to the film, and the soul and thought to the theater. (…) there is the subtlest crack of survival, almost like a dream of the soul, projection into the fourth dimension…" In further research into this topic it would be interesting to examine the extent to which today's participants in the drama of the Moscow Art Theater (the Hudozhestveny Theater) follow Andreyev's conception, as well as to look at the pro et contra views of contemporary playwrights on the theater of panpsychism.

The article focuses on social and economic connotations of Chekhov’s The Proposal placing them against the context of the post-reform 19th century Russia. It examines the aspects of social and economic life of peasants who after the 1861 Emancipation Manifesto, were forced to become wage workers, and later urban proletariat because the landowners had maintained their land property. However, aristocracy, too, had to adapt to the new social and economic conditions; the main class of the Russian society was undergoing existential crisis. The article discusses how contractual relations among gentry, owners of small or medium-size estates, effected their living conditions and became fateful for the slowly fading class. Landowners’ struggle for survival in harsh social conditions is the key to the understanding of the conflict in Checkov’s play, polysemantic nature of the “proposal,” and lyrical humor of the “social comedy”. The essay argues that the conflict described in the play stems from a verbal agreement on the land ownership between the characters’ ancestors. The play is farcical because the dispute over the land has no rational or documentary grounds but bears on the idea of appropriation.

In the process of professional theater formation in Iraq the choice of translated plays for the stage was of a great importance. A.P.Chekhov became one of the most favorite Russian playwrights in the Arab countries. During the previous century practically all Chekhov’s plays were staged by Iraqi theatre parties. Salakh Alkasab, the creator of Iraqi experimental “theatre of visual perception”, also staged his plays. This type of theatre in general is based not upon dialogues, but upon spectacular and peculiar performances, distribution of author’s and director’s ideas between artificially created characters. Here the thing, which is called Chekhov’s “underlying theme” by Russian scientists, is bared and put on the stage. It resulted in a great difference between Chekhov’s text and the text of the performance. The director put away characters, substitutes cues for actions. In the play “The seagull” S.Alkhasab concentrated on the love-line Treplev – Nina and on the confrontation between Treplevinnovator and his mother. In the play “Uncle Vanya” characters are placed not in the space of the manor, but in the ward. In “Three sisters” artistic space has become dominating category in the play. The director uses symbolic language, for instance, he puts Destiny on the stage. At the heart of performance there is tendency to show Chekhov’s innovations. Iraqi critics have ambiguous thoughts about S.Alkhasab’s performances.

Chekhov’s stories about children should not be considered as childish. In these stories questions and problems which are typical of Chekhov’s works are raised. And these problems turn out to be even tragic because they concern the most unprotected people – children. Chekhov does not connect humane feeling which distinguishes children’s image with idealization and tender emotion, their images are not entered in stereotype “infant”. Childhood is described from different sides in Chekhov’s stories: it is child’s world itself with its happiness and misfortunes, it is also child’s world which contacts with the world of adults, adult world and children’s perception of adults, interrelations between children and parents marked by A.P. Chekhov with communicative failure which takes place because of adults. Opposition of something natural, clear to something burdened with prejudice, “rules” and stereotyped views on the world shows falsity and “abnormality of the norm” of world order, its unhappiness. It is “hard to be child” in such kind of the world. Chekhov does not affirm its total conformity to reality. Child’s perception is narrowed and superficial, but contact with it evidently shows distortion primary and elementary norms of human contacts and behavior. In a number of stories, starting with the earliest ones, A.P. Chekhov used the method of deprivation in which elements of Chekhov’s peculiar way of narration “in manner and tone of the hero” are obvious.

Starting from the word "luck", the article shows the multiple meanings of the term and tries to find possible answers to the Question: what exactly does "being lucky" mean" The analysis proposes ideas and answers on how the actor could influence his own luck and shows how bad luck can be changed into good luck. The article proposes a science-based reconsideration of the idea of luck. The fact that intuition exists has been scientifically proven, and the article proposes the idea that the actor might have an advantage in influencing his luck because he has at his disposal a tool trained for years in working for the stage: his own intuition. The research uses references from philosophy, psychology, films, TV series, examples of Hollywood actors considered lucky, and analysis of Chekhovian lines on luck. In conclusion, the research leads to the idea that the actor's actions to generate his own luck could be based on the actor's courage to listen to his intuition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mike Bartlett's Albion (2017) is a highly sophisticated and illuminating instance of the diversity and complexity of adaptation. Although declaring no explicit relationship to informing source texts, amongst myriad intertextual allusions Albion manifests an engagement with Chekhov's drama that abundantly affords adaptation's pleasures. As well as deploying the principal hallmarks and strategies of Chekhovian dramaturgy, Bartlett reconfigures in Brexit Britain scenarios, characters and relationships from The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard. Moreover, demonstrating the thoroughness with which the English have appropriated and naturalized Chekhov, Bartlett implicitly challenges cardinal assumptions of that domestic tradition, through his nuanced subversion of both the 'country-house' and 'state-of-the-nation' play. Consequently, he reveals adaptation as a richly dialogic process, in which source and adapted texts shed light on each other. The politics of dramatic form(s) and of cultural adaptation and appropriation, to which Bartlett's revision of a preeminent part of English dramatic heritage points, deftly parallel, and function as an analogue for, the conservative heritage enterprise that Albion portrays. Highlighting the longstanding association of the countryside and landscape with English cultural identity, the protagonist's project of restoring an historic country garden to its former grandeur is laden with especial significance at this contemporary moment of national crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussion concerning the proposed and planned erection of a monument to A.I. Solzhenitsyn unfolded in Rostov-on-Don in 2017-2018. Sculptor D. Lyndin, a prominent artist known in the Don Region, created a design and a model of the monument. The city authorities proposed several sites for the monument: not far from the Southern Federal University – former Rostov State University at which Solzhenitsyn was a student, or in a new residential area with one of the streets being named after the writer. However, the process of monument’s erection was paused and postponed due to the discussion, which took place in the city. Adversaries and opponents of the monument accused the writer of the blackening the history of the country and of glorifying the collaborationism. Adherents and supporters appealed to the youth years of Solzhenitsyn in Rostov-on-Don, to the fact that the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to him, to his oeuvre and creative writing activities. The image of steppe in the novel «One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich» is, obviously, of South Russian origin; the image at the same time is within the literature and literary tradition, which has given/added a sustainable artistic filling to this spatial image, from the folklore to Gogol and Chekhov, and from them – to Sholokhov and Solzhenitsyn. Steppe is one of the most ancient symbols, which has also reflected the national notions of the world and human destiny and fate. This spatial image is treated as a cultural periphery, a boundary between «one’s own or ours» and «stranger’s or alien» worlds, the wild field. This is a space of transition, ordeals, and formation of a hero/protagonist. Steppe in Solzhenitsyn’s novel is not simply an action place, rather a meta-image, which acquires the existence character, organises the entire structure of literary text, and contributes to the depiction of the national character.

This article is devoted to a well-known doctor and writer A.P. Chekhov. It shows the influence of his doctor's activity on the creative literary process and concept of humanism in his literary works.

Gorky started his literary career as a playwright at the Moscow Art Theatre. He wrote his first plays for its troupe in competition with Chekhov whose plays were performed there during the same period. Thus, two Moscow Art Theatre directors, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko dealts with two authors whom they valued but whose approaches differed. My paper that forms part of a study concerning Gorky’s collaboration with the Moscow Art Theatre, focuses on the way in which Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko revised and embellished the history of their relationship with Gorky in their autobiographies both written in the Soviet period, My Life in Art (1926) and My Life in the Russian theatre (1936) respectively. In real fact, the relationship was problematic due to Gorky’s political opinions and the difficulties that the actors encountered playing his characters. Since the middle of the 1920s, Gorky became a defender of the Moscow Art Theatre and consequently, the two directors put their political and aesthetic contradictions aside and sought to reconcile themselves with Gorky who contributed to make the Art Moscow Theatre a model Soviet theatre. Besides, the writer supported Stanislavsky in founding an opera-dramatic studio in 1935 and writing and publishing “The Stanislavsky System.”

Purpose of research. The aim of the research was to check which threads of Anton Chekhov's three dramas (The Bear, The Announcement, and Jubilee) were omitted or changed by the Polish director, and what effect this had on the first post-1989 Krakow [or Cracow] theatrical adaptation of these works as a whole. Methodology. The subject of the research was Tadeusz Pawlowicz's script staged at the Bagatela theatre in Krakow on 8 April, 1989. The research analysed the Polish script used in adapting three works: The Bear, The Announcement and Jubilee. The translation of a literary work into a stage work are examined by distinguishing the characters omitted from the theatrical script as well as the themes of Anton Chekhov's works. In this way we can answer the question of which episodes of the works were omitted and which were added in the translation. Results. The analysis showed that Tadeusz Pawłowicz, by transferring a literary work from one form to another (literary - theatre) and from one culture to another (Russian - Polish), made marginal deletions, thus remaining faithful to the text of Chekhovian works and did not add his own original parts to the text. Moreover, the director, while making 33 collapses copied the idea of combining three of Chekhov's vaudeville pieces into one production, Vsevoloda Meyerhold from 1935. Conclusions. The study took into account the aspects of translating a literary work into a stage work. The study of the modification of the content of the original text and the translation is not intended to examine the insights of the Polish viewer. The results obtained merely show the possibility of decoding and understanding the most important themes in the works that the director gives the viewer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]