“This lovely short story “Dushechka” (“The darling”)” (Chekhov's image in Gazdanov's novel “Nochnye dorogi” (“Night roads”) in the context of cryptopoetics)

The present study is devoted to several instances of Gaito Gazdanov’s cryptographic references to the texts of A. P. Chekhov. The focus of the study is the image of the Russian emigrant Fedorchenko, portrayed in Chekhov’s style. His literary prototype is the heroine of the short story “Dushechka” (“The Darling”). An appeal to Gazdanov’s publicistic speech “On Chekhov” allows to decipher the “Chekhovian” subtext of the image. The article also contains an analysis of the image of Suzanne who, being Fedorchenko’s heroine-double, is still portrayed by the author in a different vein. Tolstoy’s interpretation of the meaning of “Dushechka” (“The Darling”) made it possible to suspect a certain hidden “optimism” in the ending of the novel. The study takes into account the presence of other literary prototypes of the aforementioned heroes, and allusions to them disavow their correlation with the Chekhovian image and transpose them to a covert plane, the sphere of cryptopoetics.