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Abstract: The study analyzes of one of the most famous short stories by A. P. Chekhov. The key problem of the work – the problem of the ideal – did not pop up spontaneously in his mind. It was brought about by a number of factors, both biographical and literary in nature. The year the story was written, the writer’s elder brother, the artist Nikolai Chekhov, died of tuberculosis. By that time, the writer himself had already been suffering from the same disease for several years, which in many ways forced him to turn to the existential problems of life and death. Around the same time, a discussion arose in journalism about the content and forms of manifestation of the ideal of human life. One of the stimuli for it was the book by K. D. Kavelin, “The Tasks of Ethics”. As a working hypothesis, the article puts forward the idea that Chekhov was familiar with this book through a long review article published in the journal Severny Vestnik, with which the writer actively collaborated at the time. Therefore, the name of one of the “friends” of Nikolai Stepanovich, the main character of the story, appears not by chance, but quite naturally. Direct parallels are found between Kavelin’s philosophical work and the “notes of an old man”. With his story, Chekhov enters into a large literary and journalistic dialogue that was conducted by the leading Russian critics of the time. The name of N. I. Pirogov is associated with another side of the life of the main character and, indirectly, of the biographical author. Chekhov was undoubtedly familiar with the memoirs of the Russian surgeon and included an almost direct quote from them in his short story. In his notes, Pirogov writes about various aspects of his life, but ends them with the same appeal to the problem of the ideal and the meaning of human existence. N. A. Nekrasov, the third “friend” of the main character of “A Boring Story”, turns out to be related to him on the basis of creativity. Chekhov’s story is written in the first person, thereby revealing Nikolai Stepanovich, a professor and doctor, as a creatively active personality capable of producing highly artistic texts. The article concludes by providing an analysis of the intertextual ties of the story with Pushkin’s poem, as well as the definition of the genre specificity of the “life of a saint”.

About the author(s) :

Alexander V. Kubasov

Ural State Pedagogical University (Ekaterinburg, Russian Federation)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9074-1133

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 09.04.2026; date of publication: 30.06.2026

References:

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