UDC

82ʼ3

Authors

Nailya M. Abieva
Altai State Pedagogical University; ul. Molodezhnaya 55, Barnaul, 656031, Russian Federation;
e-mail: aceloti@yandex.ru

Abstract

Literary critics attach great importance to a character’s costume, which is part of the world of things in a work of fiction: in addition to describing the character, his/her appearance and costume perform certain other functions in the text. Anton Chekhov’s late prose, little studied in this aspect, provides extensive material for a mythopoetic research. This article shows how a costume and its “echoing” details set a leitmotif that exists in variations of meanings and ambiguous semantics. In Chekhov’s late works, costume details organize intertextual links. A costume, having appeared in one text, realizes its semantic potential in another text, while retaining the meaning assigned to it. This way, a black dress becomes a characterological and intertextual detail, pointing to the heroine’s exquisite taste. By embodying the symbolism of the black colour typical of Russian culture, this detail acquires a psychological meaning (“An Anonymous Story”, “A Lady-Hero”). This colour carries the subconsciously perceived signs of beauty and mystery at the same time (“The Steppe”), and, on the contrary, by emphasizing the ugliness of the heroines, highlights the spiritual drama (“Three Years”). In each case, a black dress brings forward the semantics of the sad existing in Russian culture. The act of knotting a tie – a traditional sign of family ties – is transformed and assigned a complicated meaning (“The Grasshopper”, “The Duel”). The semantics of the brown colour is found in the situations of physical and metaphysical death (“Three Years”, “The Grasshopper”). Diamonds, as a symbol of lost happiness (“An Anonymous Story”) or a symbol with inverted semantics, can be understood, on the one hand, as facets of the heroine’s perception by others and, on the other, as signs forming her psychological portrait (“Betrothed”).

Keywords

Anton Chekhov, Chekhov’s late prose, Chekhov’s poetics, costume semantics, character’s costume

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