Эквиваленты в рассказах о женщинах Чехова и Костолани
Equivalents in stories about women of Chekhov and Kosztolányi

Summary/Abstract: We often come across thematic and formal equivalences in small narrative works of Chekhov and Kosztolányi on women’s fate. Connecting situations and actions especially characterizes these works, as well as the presentation of equivalent episodes on the basis of a similar pattern of selection. The first part of the thesis mentions novellas by Chekhov and Kosztolányi in which examples of the fore-mentioned method of editing are present and where the starting and ending points of the work emphasize this practice. A similar way of thinking can be found in the background of those novellas of Chekhov and Kosztolányi, in which equivalence appears not as an analogy, but as an opposition. The second part of the thesis discusses two novellas, one by Chekhov, the other by Kosztolányi, of remarkable content and poetic similarity. Chekhov’s Душечка (1899) and Kosztolányi’s Erzsébet (1929) are both stories that can be modelled as lines of equivalency based on the same paradigm: the wholeness of the heroine, the unity of her individuality can only be realized through another person and the efforts made towards that goal are almost comical, yet their presentation is not altogether ironic in any of the cases—the author’s perspective moves rather towards understanding and immersing. Both Chekhov and Kosztolányi set a seemingly unambiguous human deficiency to be multi-dimensional through the situational similarity and contrast in the equivalent episodes.

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