Information about the author:
Elena A. Takho-Godi
Elena A. Takho-Godi, DSc in Philology, Leading Research Fellow, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia; Professor, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Leninskie gory 1, 119991 Moscow, Russia; Head of the Department, Library-Museum “House of A.F. Losev,” Arbat 33, 119002 г. Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6907-8656
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Abstract:
The article focuses on the early stage of the reception of Anton Chekhov’s works written in 1904–1906 by the renowned literary critic of the first quarter of the 20th century, Yuli Aikhenval’d (1872–1928). It is shown that the critic’s perspective was influenced by various factors: personal, albeit fleeting, meetings, a special attitude towards Chekhov at the editorial office of the journal “Russkaya Mysl”, where Aikhenval’d acted in these years primarily as a theater critic, productions of Chekhov’s plays at the Moscow Art Theater, especially the premiere of “The Cherry Orchard”, which he responded to with a review, Aikhenval’d’s aesthetic focus on “natural symbolism” in contrast to “cerebral”, theoretical Symbolism, as well as the formation of methods of psychological criticism that worked well on the texts of Chekhov’s works. In exile, the feeling of “kinship” with Chekhov’s work is no longer connected with the writer’s heroes’ striving for an ideal world, as Yuli Aikhenval’d envisioned it in 1904, but with the idea of Chekhov’s Russia, lost forever by the “exiles from this white paradise” in the fire of historical catastrophe.
Keywords: Yuli Aikhenval’d, Anton Chekhov, psychological criticism, literary silhouette, aesthetic attitude, literature of emigration.
