Love and Loneliness in the artistic world of the late A.P. Chekhov

Abstract

Love and loneliness constitute significant and interconnected motifs in the artistic world of late A.P. Chekhov, functioning as means of exploring human psychology, emotional intimacy, moral choice, and inner alienation. In The Lady with the Dog, About Love, Three Years, and Ariadne, love does not simply oppose loneliness but may reveal or intensify characters’ awareness of their inner isolation through psychologism, subtext, artistic detail, chronotope, dialogue, and open-ended composition. Although previous studies have addressed Chekhov’s psychologism, narrative organization, artistic detail, dialogic structures, and chronotope, the interconnected functioning of love and loneliness across these works requires integrated examination. This study examines the relationship between the motifs of love and loneliness in Chekhov’s late prose using motif-based, semantic, poetic, and narratological approaches. The analysis identifies four principal functions of love: revealing loneliness, intensifying emotional isolation, creating unrealized choice, and enabling moral transformation. Love therefore does not necessarily eliminate loneliness but frequently exposes the discrepancy between characters’ external lives and inner emotional needs. The study considers love and loneliness as interconnected components of a unified artistic system rather than as separate or simply opposing motifs. The findings contribute to understanding Chekhov’s psychological realism and poetics by demonstrating how intimate relationships reveal problems of communication, personal choice, self-determination, and the possibility of genuine human intimacy.