Toposes Steppe – City – Plant in A. P. Chekhov’s Prose Poetics of 1890s. The Functions

Abstract

Purpose. The subject of the article is the functional aspect of the major late A. P. Checkhov’s works topics. Steppe, city and plant / factory are polyfunctional space types and concepts.

Results. The steppe topos incorporated into Chekhov’s poetics and concepts in the 1880s, was developing in the 1890s in its existential meaning. The steppe topos in two short stories, At Home and The Petcheneg, represents a disastrous space. The main character of the first story, Vera Kardina, realizes her regress into wildness; the protagonist of the se cond story would never realize it. So, Vera’s decision is to be useful in her local social life; the Petcheneg, on contrary, is metaphorically dead.

The city topos is investigated in its major variant “the province”. The genius of the place is narrow-minded hypocrisy, total distrust and boredom. Misayl Poloznev, the personage of My Life, lives his own life in spite of the common way of living. Doctor Startsev, the protagonist of Ionych, could not overcome a city’s inertia of deindividualization.

The plant / factory topos marks a place of machinery, antagonistic to any human – proprietors and workers. In the novella A Woman’s Kingdom the plant’s master is unhappy and lonesome, in A Doctor’s Visit the factory symbolizes a devil. A young lady, the proprietor, is ready to leave the place and seek her own path.

Conclusion. Toposes the steppe, the city and the plant have a triple function. The first is a plot function (the action catalysator), the second is a conceptual (generation of negative senses), the third is architectonic (values structure).