Fatherlessness/Motherlessness

Abstract

The text attempts to conceptualize the four late plays of A. P. Chekhov – “The Seagull”, “Uncle Vanya”, “Three Sisters” and “The Cherry Orchard”, written between 1895 and 1904, as a cycle. The common places and problems in them are noted with the following regularity: once introduced, a given motif is not limited to the relevant drama in which it appears, but is reinterpreted until it exhausts its possibilities. In this sense, the article suggests the dramatical strategies of the mature Chekhov, betting on themes and characters with serious poetic potential, forming a recognizable, precisely Chekhovian macroplot. The semiotic center in it is fatherlessness, understood not so much as the absence of the father and, respectively, the disintegration of the patriarchal community, but also as destitution, uncertainty, pathlessness, lack of a stable perspective and the related fears for the upcoming – near or more distant – ruin. However, the missing father is not at all compensated by the presence of the mother – on the contrary, the primal matriarchy in which the Russian mythological mentality resides is also denied.