Philosophical and aesthetic significance of biblical allusions in the poetics of A. P. Chekhov’s novella “Three years”

The article comprehends the functions of biblical quotations in A. P. Chekhov’s novella “Three Years” (1895). The purpose of the analysis is to identify the philosophical and aesthetic significance of biblical allusions in the artistic unity of the novella “Three Years”. The research is based on a systematic approach that allows combining a holistic (immanent) analysis of a work of art with intertextual connections, biblical and non-biblical contexts. The article analyzes in detail direct quotations from the Bible, their role in the plot-compositional unity of A. P. Chekhov’s story “Three Years”, reveals the interaction of biblical allusions with other contexts, including the everyday and moral tradition characteristic of epic forms, various storylines, a system of leitmotivs and symbols (time-space, symbolism of number and name, symbolism of luminaries: moon, sun, etc.). The compositional correspondence of the story to the sonata form is traced, which makes it possible to identify the change of key themes (love and faith), the variability and unpredictability of human feelings. The author builds a parabolic connection between biblical history and contemporary life to clarify the universal laws of being. The complex organization of the plot of the story, the parallelism of life situations and biblical history, the parabolic connection built by the author between the depicted present and the biblical parable time allow us to see how the philosophical and aesthetic principle of the author’s thought brings the private life of the heroes of the story into the universal unity of spiritual searches, doubts, illusions, confides ideas, feelings, events taking place, allowing us to correlate high moral principle and profanity, reinforcing the image of the dual nature of man, the need for a constant choice between compassion and indifference, faith and despondency, remembrance and oblivion.