“Lamentation of Joseph” in the plot and the semantic structure of short stories “The Grief” by Anton Chekhov and “The Anxiety” by Vassily Nikiforov-Volgin

The paper studies the influence of “The Lamentation of Joseph”, the folklore poem of an ecclesiastic genre, on the plot and the semantics of short stories “The Grief” by Anton Chekhov and “The Anxiety” by Vassily Nikiforov-Volgin. In Chekhov’s short story, the first line of the Lamentation is cited in the epigraph, thus setting the emotional tonality and the overall theme of the story. Also, this line reveals several biblical images and motifs: Joseph and Jonah, father and son. In response to the lamentation of Joseph-the-son, the main poem presents the answer to it and the wailing of Jonah-the-father. This dialogue, verbal and nonverbal, between the son and the father turns out to be real, albeit at a metaphorical level. In the short story by Nikiforov-Volgin, the poems from “The Lamentation of Joseph (Yosef)” are presented as a favorite song of Avvakum, an Old Believer killed by his son. Father Sergiy, an Orthodox priest, remembers the diseased and recites pieces from the ecclesiastic poem. Also, the paper reveals the semantic parallels between the stories of the two authors. “The Grief” shows the personal fathers sorrow for his son while “The Anxiety” presents the mourning over lost Russia as an immense tragedy that can destroy the whole world. The short stories of the 19-20th centuries can be regarded within the framework of cause-andeffect links: breaking with the past, the ability to kill a loved one, the hopelessness and the premonition of a catastrophe to come are the logical result of spiritual segregation, loneliness among others and indifference to others.

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