Portrait code in Anton Chekhov’s short story “The lady with the dog”

Abstract

The article describes a special verbal-visual narrative, realized in Anton Chekhov’s short story “The Lady with the Dog”. In particular, the article focuses on the portrait code, which was first selected by the method of complete sampling and substantiated by the methods of contextual and phenomenological analysis. The visual allegory allows us to build up the integral semantic reality, described in the study with the help of the phenomenological concept of ekphrasis. Recognizing the text-forming role of the title, the author initially turns to a direct analysis of the position of the text absolute nature, revealing a method of prospection for the introduction of figurative discourse. The structure and semantics of the title of the story by Anton Chekhov obviously repeat the structure of the name of the secular female portrait, which is later realized in the dynamic system of the literary text. The article notes that the understanding of the art space as a communicative process allows us to consider the ekphratic units in “The Lady with the Dog” as coded messages or visual narratives that require a special algorithm and culture of interpretation. Particular attention is paid to the specific data of the figurative discourse, received and reconstructed in the prose statement; at the same time, the data of the proposed interpretation do not contradict the ideas existing in Chekhov studies about the usual forms of the psychological portrait in Russian realistic prose; the data of the two types of discourse are distinguished by the author.