The Easter Short Story Genre as the Result of Spiritual and Moral Strivings of A. P. Chekhov (On the Night before Easter, Student, and Bishop)

Purpose. This paper aims to examine the short stories On the Night before Easter, Student and Bishop by A. P. Chekhov, which the author unites into an individual Easter story cycle based on their common spiritual and moral challenges and particular calendar time – the Easter. Results. The landscape in On the Night before Easter is in consonance with thoughts and inner world of the storyteller, novitiate Hieronimus and idling folk. By depicting nature, Chekhov manages to antithesize ‘spiritual’ and ‘fleshly’, ‘true’ and ‘borrowed’ knowledge. Easter motifs and attributes also contribute to this atmosphere. In this short story, Chekhov portrays the Church representatives as common people, which results in powerful emotional feedback from the readers. The main idea of the Easter short story Student – the issue of human memory, belief and time. At Easter the protagonist – Ivan Velikopolskii – has ‘resurrected’, feels a desire to live and enjoy his life. An accidental meeting with two women at the campfire on Great Friday allows him to acknowledge the importance of being involved in someone else’s suffering and uniting with people. In Bishop, one of Chekhov’s ‘top’ works, Easter motifs, attributes and landscape sketches help the writer to reveal the protagonist’s inner world and get through the author’s idea of the value of human life. This story finalizes many motifs and themes typical for Chekhov’s mature works. Conclusion. The works represented in this article are united by common themes, plots and Easter motifs and multiple psychological details embedded in the narration, which depict the inner world of characters. Landscape descriptions correlating with the characters’ spiritual state also play a significant role.