Online Lecture of the #SPBUArts Cycle "Love and Antipathy to Chekhov"

The lecture series will discuss the work of great Russian musicians, writers, architects and artists whose fate is inextricably linked with the history of St Petersburg University, founded in 1724 by decree of Peter the Great.

The first meeting will be dedicated to Anton Chekhov, a world—famous writer with a doctor's education. The lecture will be presented by Andrey Stepanov, Doctor of Philology and Professor of the Department of History of Russian Literature of St Petersburg University.

Interpreteur and novelist Andrey Dmitrievich Stepanov is the author of more than 200 scientific articles, two novels, a monograph "Communication problems in Chekhov" and a collection of short stories "Fairy tales are not about people". The professor translated numerous artistic and scientific texts from English into Russian. Andrey Stepanov has taught as a guest lecturer at universities in the Republic of Korea, China, Belgium, Great Britain, USA, Finland and Germany. He is a finalist of the "New Literature" award (2009) and a laureate of the Nikolay Gogol Prize (2011).

The lecture "Love and Antipathy for Chekhov" will give a brief history of the formation of the writer's reputation during his lifetime and in the first decade after his death. Together we will analyze the phenomenon of "antipathy" for Chekhov by such poets of the Silver Age as Innokenty Annensky, Marina Tsvetaeva, Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam, as well as the difficult attitude of Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Brodsky to Anton Chekhov. In conclusion, the author will touch upon the question of the reasons for the popularity of Chekhov's plays and stories among people of various cultures, from Japan to Great Britain and from Finland to Equatorial Africa. The meeting will be held online in Russian with simultaneous translation into Spanish.

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