Treating dead words (Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Sorokin)

The article deals with V.Sorokin's screen script Moscow and a fragment of the novel Goluboe salo (Blue lard), which can be called "clones" of Chekhov's texts. Regarding Sorokin's oeuvre as a victory of deconstruction, the author is trying to reveal resemblances and differences of the two writers' positions, and comes to a conclusion, that both of them are exploring a fatal gap between Real and Symbolic, when the world comes out to be a realm of discrepancies to sign systems. However, while Chekhov continues to live in such a world, Sorokin destroys it along with its contradictions, reaching simplicity, wholeness and self-identity.