The death of А. Chekhov as the finale of an era: Between journalism, literature and philosophy (based on the material published in the “Novoye Vremya” newspaper)

The purpose of the article is to analyze publications in “Novoye Vremya” devoted to the death of A. Chekhov. During the viewing of the newspaper for 1904–1905 it was possible to find more than 50 relevant materials of different genres. These are, in particular, notes on the writer's last days; the meeting of the coffin in St. Petersburg at the Nikolaevsky railway station; the arrangement of the grave at the cemetery of the Novodevichy Monastery; memorial meetings and lectures. The most interesting are the obituaries and memoirs of the leading journalists of “Novoye Vremya”. N. Engelhardt, V. Rozanov and V. Burenin, recognizing Chekhov’s outstanding talent, nevertheless assess him as a minor author and refuse to put him on a par with the great novelists — Goncharov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy. M. Menshikov and A. Suvorin, in turn, talk about the end of the “golden age” of Russian literature. At the origins of this era stood Pushkin, who overcame romanticism and turned to the poetry of reality, and its finale is associated with the death of Chekhov, who always remained within the framework of the realistic tradition, but mastered techniques that were soon adopted by modernists — new romantics. In a sense, Chekhov mirrored Pushkin’s creative path.