Urban news story and literary plot: through the “Juzhnyj kraj” newspaper

Abstract

Using forgotten news publications, the paper restores the source of the plot of A. S. Suvorin’s comedy “Tatyana Repina”, preserved in literary history mostly thanks to the continuation A. Chekhov wrote for it. This source was presumably an urban news story in the “Juzhnyj kraj” newspaper — Russia’s largest pre-revolutionary provincial paper, published in Kharkov for almost forty years. The newspaper contributed to the reputation of E. Kadmina, a notable opera and drama actress, by printing reviews of her performances and also highlighted her personal tragedy and painful death. Part of this effort belonged to the young critic Yu. Govorukha-Otrok, whose theatrical reviews analyzed the drama troupe’s performances. A. Suvorin’s addressing to the event covered in the paper and its conversion into a literary plot is seen as important evidence of the interaction between literature and periodicals, which requires description and study. In A. Suvorin’s play, the arrangement of the plot evolved from an urban news story accounted for the mass reader’s demands, their interests and expectations. The study considers A. Chekhov’s and A. Suvorin’s argument about “Tatyana Repina”, clarifying the issue of the genre of Chekhov’s play. The writers’ debate over the ways of developing a provincial plot is treated as a notable sign of the development of language and its expressive devices. These were determined not so much by readers’ and viewers’ expectations as by specific laws of dramatic conventionality.