About the nature of the Chekhov's parody ("Novel with contrabass")

The article deals with the problem of genre and style originality of the story by A.P. Chekhov’s «Novel with a contrabass» (1886) as a vivid example of Chekhov’s parody. In the intertextual layer of the work, parallels, quotations and reminiscences from the works of Pushkin and Zhukovsky are revealed, and their artistic functions are determined. The conclusion is made about the role of the genre tradition of the ballad in the work of Chekhov. The essence of Chekhov’s aesthetic searches is revealed: the writer’s artistic anthropology is based on the fact that for Chekhov’s heroes of both the early and late periods of creativity, there really is «otherness, the spiritual hypostasis of being». Chekhov depicts this other being in different ways at different stages of creativity, but Chekhovian studies cannot ignore this phenomenon. A holistic examination of Chekhov’s legacy using the methodology of «spiritual realism» is necessary.