The theme of fear in A. P. Chekhov’s works in the 1880s – early 1890s: typology of the author’s position

Fear as one of the key basic concepts of culture has repeatedly become the object of researches by Russian and foreign scientists. A.P. Chekhov, throughout his work, repeatedly addressed the problem of human fears. Let us also pay attention to the fact that in the works of A. P. Chekhov there are more than one work with the word “fear” in the title: these are the stories ‘A Thousand and One Passions, A Scary Night’ (1880), ‘A Terrible Night’ (1884), ‘Panic Fears’ (1886), and ‘Terror’ (1892). As we can see, the writer repeatedly came back to the problem of fear and how fear affects people throughout his whole life. In these stories, “fear” is the basis of the entire narrative, this feeling, starting with the title, is embodied at the compositional and metaphorical levels of the text. At the same time, other works were created during this period, in which the feeling of fear and danger is the basis of the entire narrative, for example, ‘On the High Road’ (1884), ‘Night in the Cemetery (Christmas Story)’ (1886). Finally, the story ‘Terror’ (1892) becomes the culmination of Chekhov’s fear of life. The aim is to identify and describe the typology of the author’s position in relation to the theme of fear in the work of A. P. Chekhov in the 1880s and early 1890s. The main material is Chekhov’s works of the early period of creativity in 1880–1887, dedicated to the theme of fear, as well as the story ‘Fear’ (1892) and the writer’s epistolary. The method of comparative analysis, systemic and narratological approaches to works of art and methodological scientific problems of positional style are used. A comparative analysis of Chekhov’s works ‘A Thousand and One Passions, A Scary Night’ (1880), ‘A Terrible Night’ (1884), ‘On the High Road’ (1884), ‘Night in the Cemetery (Christmas Story)’ (1886), ‘Panic Fears’ (1886), and ‘Terror’ (1892) made it possible to identify a common “resonant” space in the writer’s heritage, dedicated to the theme of fear, which allows us to raise the question of a single author’s position in relation to this topic in line with the scientific problems of Chekhov’s positional style. The early stories ‘A Thousand and One Passions, A Scary Night and ‘A Terrible Night’ are determined by a humorous approach to the “terrible”, but already in 1884, in the small-form drama ‘On the High Road’, fear receives a dramatic embodiment. Important in the development of the theme of fear in 1886 is on the one hand, in the story ‘Night in the Cemetery’ Chekhov returns to the humorous depiction of fear, on the other hand, in the story ‘Panic Fears’ this theme acquires existential meanings, which in the story of 1892 ‘Terror’ grow to the notion that existential fear in human life is total. The methodological approach in terms of Chekhov’s positional style made it possible to identify in his works of the 1880s and early 1890s the typology of the author’s position in relation to human fear. The works united by this problem have similar artistic features: this is the motif of the night, bad weather, internal focalization, due to the fact that the narration is organized in the first person. But in general, in these works, a typology of depicting a feeling of fear is revealed: the author’s position in relation to this topic is determined by humorous, dramatic and existential approaches.

A. P. Chekhov, fear, author’s position, focalization