In the late 1880s, Anton Chekhov wrote a novel. It is known that at least three chapters of it were written, and that it was presented to Chekhov as a system of short stories united by the fates of characters sympathetic to the author; hence the title already formed in the course of the work.:
"Stories from the lives of my friends". However, among both lifetime and posthumous publications, neither the novel nor any surviving parts of it could be found. Hence its various characteristics in Czech studies: "incomplete", "failed", "extinguished"," unwritten "and even"mythical". Numerous conjectures and conjectures have been made about the fate of the mysterious novel for decades. At one time, I expressed the opinion (Russian literature. 1965. N 2. pp. 172-179), that the surviving chapters are three stories that, for a number of reasons, were published at different times and under different circumstances. These stories (listed in the order in which they should have followed in the novel): "At the Zelenins' "(published posthumously - the magazine "Russian Thought". 1905. Kn. G), " After the Theater "( published by Chekhov in the "Petersburg newspaper" on April 7, 1892), " Letter "(the magazine "Labor Way". 1907. N 7). Moreover, the previous dating of the stories ("At the Zelenins '" and "Letter", before the titles of which in the manuscript there were numbers, respectively, "I" and "III", attributed to 1903, then to 1898, and then to the year of publication).
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the story "After the Theater" was dated at the time of publication and was not connected with the other two in any way) was replaced by a new one-1887-1889, which was confirmed when comparing autographs (handwriting, paper).
This solution of the problem was supported-often, however, not without reservations - by a number of Czech scholars and was reflected in the last academic 30-volume Collection of works and letters of A. P. Chekhov (see p.:
Soch. Vol. 7. Moscow, 1977. pp. 510-517; p. 718-commentary; Vol. 8. Moscow, 1977. pp. 32-34; p. 437-commentary). However, a number of studies, including recent ones, treat the three stories as belonging to a novel idea as a hypothesis, although the most convincing of all existing ones, but still causing some doubts and therefore requiring additional justification. Apparently, the arguments put forward earlier need to be clarified and developed. And it is appropriate to do this right now-and not so much on the occasion of the approaching 140th anniversary of the writer, but in connection with the preparation of a fundamental academic publication - the Chekhov Encyclopedia, in which the problem of the "mysterious" novel will undoubtedly not be ignored.
We will give additional arguments that may cause controversy , and as a result, we hope, a final solution will be found to the question that has been worrying researchers of Chekhov's work for almost a century.
So, are these three stories really preserved parts of a single novel? Having briefly outlined the history of the issue, we will then present new arguments in favor of this point of view.
Chekhov's statements about the problems, individual situations and characters of the conceived novel are well known. In order to confirm that the stories are closely related to each other and that they partly embody the novel's intent, we pointed out a number of circumstances. So, the plot of each of the stories is presented in the form of a letter that a particular character has just received or is about to send. In all three stories, the Zelenin family is represented; among the characters mentioned in Chekhov's letters and conversations are the "student who will die", the father who has a "convict son", the children of a "widow-general's wife", and a young man who " seeks God (...) and finds only one abyss." The search for young heroes echoes what Chekhov reported about the problems of the conceived novel: "This novel is based on the lives of good people, their faces, deeds, words, thoughts and hopes; my goal is to kill two birds with one stone: to draw life truthfully and by the way show how much this life deviates from the norm" (letter to A. N. Pleshcheyev, April 9, 1889).
To make the three stories belong to a single novel concept more clearly, we will consider an aspect that has not been touched upon before-time and space in the stories, that is, their chronotope.
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The chronotope of each of the stories is twofold: on the one hand - the place and time depicted by the author-narrator, on the other-those mentioned in the letters of the characters.
Let's start with the location. In all three stories, the characters appear in their usual home environment, and this is clearly essential for the structure of the narrative. Nadya Zelenina writes a letter in her room-this is how the story begins: "Nadya Zelenina, after returning with her mother from the theater where "Eugene Onegin" was performed, and coming to her room, quickly threw off her dress, loosened her braid, and in only a skirt and a white blouse quickly sat down at the table to write this a letter like Tatiana's." Ignatiy Bashtanov also writes a letter while in his room: he is a cripple and does not leave the house at all. "At this time, Fr. Alexey came into his room with a tray with a glass of tea on it. Ignasha was confused and put the letter under his pillow, "- this is how the story "The Letter" ends. It would seem that the situation is different in the story "At the Zelenins'": there Natalia Zelenina, finding herself with her sick son Vasya in Yalta, writes a letter to her daughter Masha. However, even here the place of direct representation is not the Crimea, but a room in the house where the family permanently lives (which is emphasized by the title itself: "At the Zelenins'"). For this purpose, unlike the other two stories, it is depicted not writing, but reading a letter received by Masha from her mother from the Crimea. Chekhov presents his characters to the reader in their ordinary, everyday surroundings.
The same principle applies to the time plan of the story. What is directly depicted is not the time of what happened, but the moment when the hero understands what happened, when he reports it in a letter or learns about it from a letter. And since the characters seem to correspond regularly, first of all, they inform about the events of a few days, more often-one day. At the same time, secondly, in letters we are talking about people who are well known to both the addressee and the addressee, even if nothing significant happens to them - they just met or visited each other: "Yesterday I was so carried away by the book that I wasn't even happy about the arrival of Travnikov, whom I love", " Yesterday my father tripped on the street and fell (...) Thank God, everything went well"; "Yesterday your mother was at the Zelenins 'and stopped by to see us" ("Letter"). - "Yesterday he (student Gruzdev) visited us and stayed until two o'clock" ("After the theater"). - "Yesterday Vasya and I arrived in Yalta..."; "Today we invited the doctor"; "This morning in the corridor I met Nadenka Pol, the daughter of Colonel Pol, who was a battery commander in your father's brigade" ("At the Zelenins'").
Before us, as if only the usual course of life:".. everything said that the evening had already begun, that it would be a long, quiet one, a little dull, a little sad, and that it would be neither better nor worse than yesterday; it would be outlived, and tomorrow it would be forgotten, and in the memory of people it would be forgotten.
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it will mix with other evenings, like smoke with smoke... " ("At the Zelenins'").
As a result, life is presented as if involuntarily, without selection, in its daily course, episodes are mentioned as if by chance, they are reported only because it happened or was remembered yesterday or today. Having informed Maria Sergeyevna in a letter that her mother had visited them yesterday, Ignatiy Bashtanov, as if commenting on the conversation that had taken place the day before, writes: "I cannot help seeing your beautiful, gentle, beaming face and hearing your voice at least once a month; I cannot help seeing your generous mother and all your cheerful, merciful, God-blessed family, which is as close to my soul as my brothers and father. I need each one .to see my old father, the sufferer, by my side every day, and to hear him awake every night, thinking aloud of my brother the convict. I need my crazy brother monk to come to us from the monastery once every two or three months, only to curse civilization in my presence with flashing eyes and go back."
It turns out that the siblings chose the opposite paths in life for Chekhov. When Ignatius sends the book, which is not named in any way, along with the letter, he tells about the dispute that he had with Travnikov in connection with this book - namely, such disputes were then being waged in society around the "Kreutzer Sonata". The country with its culture (Tchaikovsky's opera, Tolstoy's novella), its monasteries and penal servitude, and the most acute conflicts of the era are revealed behind the cozy, habitable home space and monotonously flowing time, as if by chance. This is common to all three stories, but in all three stories it is refracted through a special and unified prism for these texts. This common feature is exactly what Chekhov intended to portray in his novel.
The spatial framework of the novel, as it appeared to Chekhov, practically coincides with the place of action of all these stories. In his letters, Chekhov pointed out that his characters were residents of one district: "This novel captures the whole district (noble and zemsky), the domestic life of several families" (letter to D. V. Grigorovich of January 12, 1888; approximately the same in a letter to Grigorovich of October 9 of the same year). This is what we find in the narrative: "Your mother visited the Zelenins' yesterday and came to see us." "Stopped by" means they don't live nearby, but if on the same day - "yesterday" - they managed to visit both neighbors and have conversations with them, then the Volchaninov, Zelenin and Bashtanov families live in the same neighborhood, apparently - in the same county.
We do not find direct indications of the time of the novel's action in Chekhov's statements (however, in his works he does not directly connect the course of action with any specific historical events at all
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events or dates), but everything that happens with him, as a rule, is correlated with the cycle of nature, the pictures of which are diverse and multifunctional for the writer. The three stories included in the novel are set in early spring. In the first story - "At the Zelenins'", it is noted that "there was ice in the yard and cereals were falling from the sky", then a letter is given in which Natalia Zelenina reports that she and her son Vasya arrived in Yalta "yesterday", and then: "They say that here in March the weather is always like this..." In the phrase crossed out in the manuscript, a reminder of the upcoming birthday of the late father of the young heroine of General Zelenin-March 22. And at the end of the email: "Don't forget to send 200 rubles to Moscow on March 20." It is clear that the time of action is the first half of March.
In the second story - "After the Theater" - Nadia Zelenina writes:: Finally, in the story "The Letter" Ignatius Bashtanov explains: his father, a priest, fell yesterday because of fatigue: "Holy Week, he serves almost all day"; and at the end of Ignatius's letter - the phrase: "Cherry blossoms? It's too early, though." Apparently, this is the beginning of April: in 1889 (the estimated time of creation of the story Holy Week fell on April 3-8, according to the old style (Cross calendar for 1889, Moscow, 1889. p. 3). In all three stories - a single movement of time, and these are not just references to a certain time of the year, but also to a certain time of the year). waiting for spring and related changes.
Thus, fitting in with the general features of Chekhov's poetics, as it developed by the end of the 1880s, the chronotope of the three stories shows that we are looking at works that make up something whole and fully correspond to what we know about the novel, as it seemed to Chekhov during his work on "Stories from the Life of my friends". friends" (1887-1889). The fact that the stories belong to the novel concept is once again confirmed.
Volgograd
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