“Ionych” by A.P. Chekhov and “Ionych” by F.D. Nefyodov: About one of the pretexts of the Chekhov’s story

The article reveals the pretext of A.P. Chekhov’s story “Ionych. The article reveals the pretext of A.P. Chekhov’s story “Ionych”. The essay of the same name by F.D. Nefyodov was published in the “Severny Vestnik” magazine in the same year as the stories “Lights” and “Steppe”, which could have caused Chekhov’s attention to the work of the populist writer. Chekhov collaborated with the magazine and closely followed the materials published in it. He did not recognize Nefyodov as a major writer, however, he obviously remembered his ethnographic essay dedicated to the Russian Old Believers. Ten years later, Chekhov turns to someone else’s work and uses it as one of the important pretexts for his story “Ionych”. The stories of the same name by two authors are interconnected by elements of a certain similarity. Chekhov uses part of someone else’s material to realize his task — to reveal the evolution of the protagonist. Intertextual echoes of Chekhov’s story with Nefyodov’s essay help to create, as it were, a backstory for Dr. Startsev. In addition to Nefyodov’s essay, the intertext in Chekhov’s story is given by references to the works of other authors. Autointertext plays an important role in the story. Chekhov’s reliance on various pretexts is due to the stylistic nature of his work. Chekhov’s rethinking of the material of his predecessors in “Ionych” is due to the renewal of the solution to the problem of personality, which was relevant for the 90s of the 19th century.