The evolution of Čexov’s attitude to the reception of Nietzsche: ‘The Grasshopper’ – ‘The Black Monk’ – ‘Three Sisters’”

Abstract

The article is dedicated to a relevant issue – A. Chekhov’s attitude to F. Nietzsche with regards to “the lost generation” problem. Based on the material of the short story “The Grasshopper”, the story “The Black Monk” and the play “Three Sisters play, the attitude of the writer to the theory of Nietzsche’s “super-human” is  analyzed. At that, the subject of research refers to the direct as well as indirect polemics of Chekhov with  Nietzsche. The relevance of the results is determined by the framework of the study of Nietzscheism in Russian literature from the viewpoint of the manifestation of national identity, the specificness of Russian existentialism.

Chekhov’s innovativeness is based on the opposition to Nietzsche’s “super-human” of an “average” hero. Also,  the  stages  of  Chekhov’s  attitude  to  Nietzsche  are  clarified: the  replacement  of  “ordinary”  by “extraordinary”, “own” by “someone else’s» (“The Grasshopper”), the disaster of utmost individualism which led to madness and death without penitence (“The Black Monk”) and the destruction of illusions (“Three Sisters”).

The  approach  used  by  the  authors  creates  the  possibility  of  reviewing  the  established  idea  on  the connection of “the lost generation” with the creative work of A. Kuprin and shift the borders of the issue to Chekhov’s poetics.