Ladder locus in Chekhov’s work of 1890s–1900s: from the spiritual to the obscene

About the author:

Kristina S. Rasskazova, Junior Researcher, Center of Urban Studies, University of Tyumen, Tyumen, Russia; k.s.rasskazova@utmn.ru, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5240-6078

Abstract:

The research focuses on studying the structure of the ladder locus in Chekhov’s works of the 1890s–1900s, fixing non-classical shifts in the structure of the locus and assessing their amount. Using the historical and literary approach (M. M. Bakhtin, Yu. M. Lotman, and D. S. Likhachev), the author continues the study of the symbolic potential of Chekhov’s creativity, started by A. P. Chudakov, I. N. Sukhoi, and S. A. Komarov. In spatial terms, the article relies on M. O. Goryacheva and N. E. Razumova’s research. Using the continuous sampling method, 56 fragments from 1888 to 1903 were selected, 32 fragments were analyzed. The results show that when creating the author’s myth, Chekhov relies on the folklore, biblical context, imagery of Nietzsche, Merezhkovsky, Griboyedov, Gogol, and Dostoevsky; he creatively rethinks the material of the sources. Three individual author’s motives related to the ladder locus are identified: 1) the motive of the shameful and obscene, 2) falling down the stairs, and 3) the vertical gap. The analysis of the structure of the Chekhov ladder locus confirms the conclusions drawn earlier on the material of other spatial units: the topos of the garden, forest, manor, and the locus of the bench. The non-classical nature of spaces in the late creative period of the writer leads to the need to remove the attitude towards the realism of Chekhov’s texts and indicates the beginning of the modernization process in Russian literature in the last decade of the 19th c.

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