Existential Motives in the 1880-1884 Chekhov’s Short Stories

DOI 10.18522/1995-0640-2024-1-12-23 Еxistential issues first appeared in the A.P. Chekhov's short stories of 1880-1884. There are a number of short stories of this period, in which abandonment and alienation are manifested as characteristic features of the world. The main characters of these stories find themselves in a being-for-another situation or in a borderline situation. Alienation ignores rebellion of main characters, so fall becomes an unavoidable part of their existence in stories 'St. Peter's Day' (1881), 'June twenty-ninth' (1882), 'Swedish Match' (1884), 'Perpetuum mobile' (1884) e.t.c. In some cases, such heroes are capable of introspection and consciousness of existential horror, but often characters of these stories cannot realize the existential significance of events. The existential content of the world is often addressed to the reader and is beyond the characters. The description of the world in such kinds of stories is associated with the introduction of a metonymic symbol that allows to point to the existential level of being without resorting to attempts to describe it directly. In the short story 'Lady-hero' metonymy and metaphor work within the same deployed image, performing different functions. In the following years, the role of the existential component in the writer's stories will only increase dramatically, but the indication of existential problems is revealed in all its sharpness and versatility in the first years of A.P. Chekhov's work. Key words: existential philosophy, Chekhov's early short stories, abandonment, alienation, being-for-another, metonymic symbol