Parallels of the Sharp Ironic Style of O. I. Senkovsky’s Prose in A. P. Chekhov’s Work

Abstract

The present article is a search for thematic and stylistic interrelations between A. P. Chekhov's story ‘What is most often found in novels, novellas, etc.?’ and O. I. Senkovsky's story ‘Autumn Boredom’, published almost half a century earlier. Senkovsky, ironising over the tendencies fashionable in the first third of the 19th century in social life and literature influencing it, in a sufficiently developed form elevates them to an absolute and thus openly condemns them. A. P. Chekhov, in a much more concise form, essentially only listing what to him appear to be the recurrent strains of literary works of the last third of the 19th century, achieves the same satirical and ironising tone of the work itself. The stories, which differ sharply from each other in style, however, point to a large extent to the same phenomena, which do not seem to have disappeared, but still have their place in Chekhov's contemporary literature. Both works share the writers' common ground in their view of the unproductive strains of contemporary literature and are an interesting testimony to the ironic-critical beginning of their talent.