Dostoevsky and Chekhov: Aspects of Architectonics and Poetics

The semantic axis “Dostoevsky - Chekhov” in culture is devoid of the stable certainty of a binary opposition, since it shows a rich spectrum of meanings. The perception and artistic development of the Dostoevsky phenomenon by Chekhov is a truly unlimited theme, demanding clarification of a number of key aesthetic “parameters,” which are determined in turn by the ratio of the epistemological attitudes of the writers, the principles of creative writing that they adopt, which form the problem of genre evolution (from the dominant genre of Dostoevsky’s “big novel” to the objective “antinovelism” of Chekhov’s genre system), and many others. The articles of this collection analyze the assimilation by Chekhov of the artistic “impulses” received from Dostoevsky, the origins and direction of artistic and philosophical evolution “toward Dostoevsky.”