Duel (story)

The first mention of the idea, very reminiscent of the plot of "Duel", is still in Chekhov's 1888 letter. A few months after a trip across the Caucasus, in November 1888, Chekhov wrote A.S. Suvorin : “Oh, what a story I started! <...> I am writing on the topic of love. The form chosen feuilleton-fictional. A decent man took his wife away from a decent man and wrote his opinion about it; living with her - opinion; diverges - again an opinion. I have a glimpse of the theater, the prejudice of the “dissimilarity of beliefs”, the Georgian Military Road, family life, the inability of the modern intellectual to this life, Pechorin, Onegin, and Kazbek. ” Work on the story began in late 1890, immediately after Chekhov returned from Sakhalin to Moscow ^[1] . Belgian writer D. Gilles in the biography of “Chekhov, or a disillusioned viewer,” noted about this story that in the last months of 1891 “a faint hint of hope slipped in Chekhov's skepticism: he, of course, did not join any doctrine, but now he it seemed that scientific discoveries, especially medical ones, could alleviate the human fate ... He did not nevertheless become a scientist , because for him, besides science, there were other values: beauty, culture, elegance of thought ” ^[2] .

The story of A.P. Chekhov was first published in 1891 in the newspaper Novoye Vremya , in numbers no. 5621, 5622, 5624, 5628, 5629, 5635, 5642, 5643, 5649, 5656, 5657 from 22, 23, 25 , October 29, 30, November 5, 12, 13, 19, 26, 27 with the signature of Anton Chekhov. In 1892, it was printed in a separate edition, included in the collected works of A.P. Chekhov, published by A.F. Marx. During the life of the writer in the years 1892-1899, was published nine times as a separate edition ^[3] .

• Main characters:
  • Ivan Andreevich Laevsky is a young man of twenty-eight, who is characterized by an unconscious lie ^[4] . As A.M. Skabichevsky writes , he is “a morally dissolved and sensual sloth and womanizer, ... a sad legacy of serfdom” ^[5] . At the end of the story, a metamorphosis occurs with him, and he becomes an “exemplary citizen."
  • Nadezhda Fedorovna - Laevsky's mistress. In the opinion of Volynsky A.L., she is “a sinner of a lower level,” depicted “subtly, intelligently and skillfully” ^[6] .
  • Von Koren is a young zoologist. Nature is firm, but with ideals somewhat despotic ^[4] . Positivist, translating the views of G. Spencer about the omnipotence of natural selection ^[7] , more precisely, reducing them to the call to destroy "geeks".

• The secondary characters of "Duel" did not stop the special attention of critics. Although some noted that the author “masterfully,” “lively,” “beautifully” portrayed the minor characters of the story with their “clear, simple spiritual life” ^[1] .

• • Samoylenko - military doctor, the owner of the cafe.
  • Deacon Victory - just a young man who graduated from the seminary.
  • Kirilin - police officer, Nadezhda Fyodorovna's lover.

The famous Chekhov's zoil, Skabichevsky, wrote: “The power of Chekhov’s artistic talent is in the workshop describing the characters, but the thoughts he holds in his last works amaze with their misery. From the end, the novelte breathes falsehood and vulgarity ” ^[5] . Literary critic Derman A. B. argues that the work “feels the absence of the author’s inner conviction in the force of the dogma with which he forcibly subdued the actions of his characters, and hence the lifelessness, schematics and crumpled up of the final” ^[8] . Among the failures of Chekhov ranked "Duel" and D. Mirsky ^[9] :

The lack of individuality of the characters is especially noticeable when Chekhov makes them talk on abstract topics for a long time. Chekhov did not “feel the ideas,” and his heroes — when given a word — speak in a colorless and boring newspaper language. Especially such rhetoric corrupted "Duel".

G. Berdnikov notes the departure of Chekhov from "Tolstoyan moralism", and the manifestation of psychological analysis, "going back to Tolstoy's" dialectic of the soul "." As the inner world of Laevsky and Nadezhda Fyodorovna is revealed, “an ever more acute conflict of everyone with his conscience” is revealed, and this conflict, according to the literary critic, prepares and substantiates the spiritual cleansing crisis that they experience on the night before the duel ^[10] .

• Duel (USSR, 1961), directors Tatna Berezantseva , Lev Rudnik
• Duel (Great Britain, 1963), director Charles Jarrott (TV series “Festival”)
• Duel (TV) (Germany), director
• Bad good man (USSR, 1973), director Iosif Kheifits , filming in Evpatoria , and Gagra
• Duel (2010, director Dover Koshashvili , filming in Croatia)
• Horses carry me ... (1996, director Vladimir Motyl, based on - the action has been moved to modern times)

• Creativity A. P. Chekhov in the panorama of opinions / Duel (rus.) . Russian State Library . The date of circulation is June 15, 2012. Archived September 25, 2012.