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Reference:
Kondrasheva E.V.
The concept of "love" in the artistic world of V. Tokareva: the specifics of the embodiment, varieties and connection with the conceptual sphere of A. P. Chekhov
// Litera.
2023. № 8.
P. 27-37.
DOI: 10.25136/2409-8698.2023.8.43741 EDN: ULXLLB URL: https://en.nbpublish.com/library_read_article.php?id=43741
The concept of "love" in the artistic world of V. Tokareva: the specifics of the embodiment, varieties and connection with the conceptual sphere of A. P. Chekhov
Kondrasheva Ekaterina Vladimirovna
ORCID: 0000-0002-9990-3351
Senior Lecturer, Department of Journalism, Pacific State University
680035, Russia, Khabarovskii krai, g. Khabarovsk, ul. Tikhookeanskaya, 136
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000555@pnu.edu.ru
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Other publications by this author
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DOI: 10.25136/2409-8698.2023.8.43741
EDN: ULXLLB
Received:
09-08-2023
Published:
17-08-2023
Abstract:
The purpose of the study is to analyze the concept of LOVE as a macro concept of the artistic world of V. Tokareva, which includes many layers and varieties, which contributes to a deeper penetration into the artistic conceptual sphere of the writer, helps to understand the internal laws by which the characters of the work live and act. The research is based on the material of the writer's stories published in different years. The research methodology is based on a component analysis of the text, conceptual and functional methods, there are elements of comparative and descriptive methods. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the fact that the author for the first time attempts to analyze the artistic concept of LOVE in the works of V. Tokareva from the point of view of its content and varieties, and also traces the continuity with the conceptual sphere of A. P. Chekhov at the level of this concept. The results showed that the concept of LOVE is explored by the writer not only at different levels of human relationships, but also at the level of love for creativity. The concept of LOVE organically combines the individual author's perception with the ideas of the predecessor author. The practical significance lies in the fact that the research materials can be used in the practice of university teaching of special courses devoted to the problem of the functioning of artistic concepts in the works of Russian authors of the second half of the XX – first quarter of the XXI centuries, as well as in conducting seminars on the history of Russian literature. The relevance of the research is determined by the interest of modern literary criticism to the artistic concept, as well as the fact that the work of V. Tokareva from the point of view of the content of the artistic concept of LOVE has been studied incompletely and requires further development.
Keywords:
Victoria Tokareva, A. Chekhov, artistic concept, concept LOVE, figurative content, artistic concept sphere, the specifics of the incarnation, succession links, concept formation, the connection of creativity
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Introduction Many stories and novellas by Victoria Tokareva are devoted to love in its various manifestations. This is love between a man and a woman, love for mother, for relatives and family, love for material things and for creativity. The concept of LOVE in the works of V. Tokareva dominates and serves as a way to comprehend the true essence of a person [5; 9]. This concept also plays an important role in the artistic conceptosphere of A. P. Chekhov [3], whose work had a significant impact on the formation of V. Tokareva's writing preferences. V. G. Zusman wrote that when analyzing the artistic concept, "literary criticism gets the opportunity to include the figurative fabric of a work in a nationwide associative-verbal network" [4, pp. 3-17]. It is the concepts that correlate "with the units of artistic thinking – images" [13, p. 744], and this allows us to get closer to understanding the artistic conceptual sphere created by the writer in his works. It is noteworthy that the formation of the artistic conceptual sphere is influenced by the work of predecessors, since the writer, being at the same time a reader, passes the works of other authors through his aesthetic and everyday experience. V. Tokareva was no exception, having become acquainted in her youth with the work of A. P. Chekhov, which later became a reference point for her in search of new forms of reflection, first of Soviet, and then of modern Russian reality. The writer herself has repeatedly spoken about her closeness to Chekhov [17, p. 247], that she not only continues to "learn from Chekhov's writing skills", but also divides people "into her own and others'. Those who love Chekhov are mine" [15, p. 249]. Continuing the thought of V. G. Zusman, we can say that V. Tokareva in her work connects to Chekhov's associative-verbal network of concepts and interprets it in her own way. In the works of V. Tokareva, elements of an internal creative dialogue with A. Chekhov are frequent. She constantly enters into a discussion with the writer, refers to his works or to the facts of his biography. The definition of Yu. S. Stepanov is noteworthy: "A concept is a clot of culture in a person's consciousness; something in the form of which culture enters the mental world of a person. And, on the other hand, a concept is something by which a person – an ordinary, ordinary person, not a "creator of cultural values" – enters culture himself, and in some cases influences it" [12, p. 43]. In this context, it is interesting to compare the images of artistic thinking of authors separated by a century, in terms of establishing a range of creative connections and continuity. In the course of the study, it is assumed that the following tasks will be solved: - analysis of the specifics of the embodiment and figurative content of the multidimensional concept of LOVE in V. Tokareva's prose; - determination of continuity and understanding of the creative connection with the conceptual sphere of A. P. Chekhov. The theoretical basis of the research consists of the works of N. V. Volodina devoted to the concept in the system of cognitive literary studies [1]; T. B. Zaitseva T. B.'s research on the concept of LOVE in the works of A. P. Chekhov [3]; works on the theory and analysis of the artistic concept undertaken by V. G. Zusman V. G. [4], Yu. S. Stepanov [12], V. A. Maslova [7], I. A. Tarasova [13], Ya. A. Samorukova [10]; T. N. Markova's monograph devoted to the construction and meaning of modern prose [6]; V. E. Khalizev's works on literary theory [20]; M. V. Selemeneva's research [11], N. N. Tertychnoy [14], Zhang Shaoping [23], O. V. Shestykh [24] on various aspects of V. Tokareva's creativity. The concept of LOVE and Chekhov's motives in the work of V. Tokareva In V. Tokareva's prose, one can find many references to the texts of A. P. Chekhov. This phenomenon was noticed at different levels in their works by researchers D. D. Zhirkov, M. V. Gulyaeva [2], O. V. Shestykh [24], T. B. Zaitseva [10], Zhang Shaoping [23]. It should be noted that small genres are widely represented in the works of both writers. According to T. N. Markova, "small genres express the need of modern prose for effective and mobile mastering of the critical, changing reality in the most appropriate forms – dynamic, uninhibited and at the same time capacious and economical" [6, p. 13]. A. P. Chekhov and V. Tokareva in small prose reflect everyday life a person. In Chekhov's works, the hero is an ordinary person, whose "life consists of small everyday things" [14, p. 161]. The subject of the image is everyday events in their simplicity, presented to the reader without pathos and moralizing. The hero of V. Tokareva is also a "little man", only modern to us; most often it is a resident of a megalopolis in which "romantic dreams and petty deeds, freedom and formalism, wisdom and infantilism get along" [11]. Chekhov's man bizarrely combines a variety of traits – pettiness and generosity, ordinariness and individuality. Tokareva's man is very similar to Chekhov's hero, with only one clarification that this is most often a woman and her individuality is expressed through emotions, through the vicissitudes of love.
The interaction of Chekhov's motives and the artistic conceptosphere of V. Tokareva goes on as a constant internal dialogue, references to the work of the classic are found in quotations, allusions, motional reminiscences, direct mentions, for example, in the essay "My Chekhov", in the stories "Pink Roses", "Masha and Felix", "It is possible and impossible", "The Strangeness of love", "Crossroads", "Own truth", interview "By the way"). The internal dialogue, even a direct appeal to the classics of Russian literature, continues in the titles of works (for example, the story "Anton, put on your shoes") [2]. In the story "Masha and Felix", the heroine says that "Chekhov's simplicity" is important in creativity [19, p. 152]. In our study, the problem of continuity is analyzed in the system of the artist's attitude to the world through his artistic conceptosphere and the concept of LOVE, since "the artistic concept must first be considered as a unit of individual consciousness" [10, p. 84]. It is artistic concepts, "preserving their dominant meaning in the work of a particular writer <...>, that actualize <...> additional, 'hidden' meanings within them that characterize the author's individuality" [1]. Of course, each concept has individual features that are formed "under the influence of personal characteristics – education, upbringing, individual experience, psychophysiological characteristics [7, p. 45]. It is all the more interesting to trace the evolution of the artistic concept of LOVE, its content in the work of a modern writer. For Chekhov, love is in some way an idealistic feeling, it shows what a person should be like. But this feeling cannot exist in marriage, because in marriage a person is not free, bound. In A. P. Chekhov's story "Volodya the Big and Volodya the little", the heroine soon after marriage becomes clear that "she does not love her husband and cannot love, that everything is nonsense and stupidity. <...> If she could have assumed when she came out that it was so hard, creepy and ugly, then she would not have agreed for any good in the world" [22, p. 220]. Many other Chekhov's heroes are also unhappy in marriage. In the story "Ariadne", the hero talks about love and marriage like this: "When we are young, we poetize and idolize those with whom we fall in love; love and happiness are synonymous with us. In Russia, marriage is not despised for love, sensuality is ridiculous and disgusting, and the most successful are those novels and stories in which women are beautiful, poetic and sublime, and if a Russian person has long admired the Raphael Madonna or is concerned about female emancipation, then, I assure you, there is nothing put on. But the trouble is this. As soon as we get married or get together with a woman, some two or three years pass, as we already feel disappointed, deceived; we get together with others, and again disappointment, again horror, and in the end we are convinced that women are deceitful, petty, vain, unfair, undeveloped, cruel - in a word, not only not higher, but even immeasurably lower than us men. And we, dissatisfied, deceived, have no choice but to grumble and casually talk about what we were so cruelly deceived about" [21, p. 108]. In his works, A. P. Chekhov "questions the established form of marriage as outdated and often binding a person with a relationship of emptiness and unfreedom" [3, p. 709]. Researcher T. B. Zaitseva believes that "love in the life of Chekhov's heroes often remains in the sphere of ideas, carefully avoids reality. The concept of LOVE is revealed in the writer's work primarily as love-memory" [ibid., p. 705]. The researcher distinguishes Chekhov, in addition to love-memories, love-repetition, love-deed. And emphasizes that the concept of LOVE is one of the significant concepts of Chekhov's artistic world [ibid., p. 709]. The modern writer V. Tokareva continues to consider this problem, dissecting love not only in family ties, but also in all manifestations of this feeling. The modern writer is interested in the variants of the feeling of love: from the mundane to the spiritually uplifted, from the feeling of love between husband and wife in marriage to the feeling of chance encounters. The concept of LOVE and its additional conceptual formations in V. Tokareva's prose The concept of LOVE is also a macro concept in the artistic conceptosphere of V. Tokareva, the love of her heroes soars above life or is immersed in reality, in everyday life, undergoes various tests; sometimes the heroes lose it, and sometimes overcome all difficulties and find it again. In her work, V. Tokareva develops and fills this concept with additional meanings in her own way: this is love-necessity, love-trial, love-hate. Women in V. Tokareva's prose coexist in two worlds – material and sensual, and the second is often more important. More important than career, personal ambitions, success. In the story "The Dog System", love is a necessary condition of life: "I know that without you I am nothing. Ash-Two. Exhale. And with you, I'm a water molecule. Water is a liquid mineral. So I'm turning from an imperceptible gas into a mineral?". If there is no love, then there is no life: "Life succeeds if LOVE succeeds," and without it "it is empty and black, like in space" [16, pp. 176-180]. The narration in the story is conducted on behalf of the diegetic narrator, which further engages the reader in what is happening. Sometimes feelings turn out to be more important than anything else, not only for women, but also for male heroes; this usually happens at the end of life, when summing up, when a person lost love without passing the test of loyalty: "Ruslan could not live without a baby. He was waiting for his life to end and for a ferryman in a black raincoat to ferry him across the Summer. And on the other side, a baby will be waiting for him. They'll hug and cry. And they will never part again. NEVER" [18, p. 17].
Love is something alive that lives life together with a person and dies in agony. And, dying, sometimes turns from "love-love" into "love-hate". Love is compared to a fetus, "which no longer fits in the womb and suffocates, but it is still not allowed to be born" [16, pp. 187-190]. Love as the mythological thread of Ariadne leads a person through life. If you do not hold, do not stand the test of love, betray or refuse it, then fate can make up for the loss with money: "The law of compensation worked. Fate took you away, and gave you money for it. Paid" [ibid., p. 192]. Material adds comfort, but does not give joy to life, because all the other loves that happen in life are not serious: "Someone always loves me, but no one torments me anymore. Or rather, like this: I don't suffer. And I don't linger for a long time on one love. I turn to the next one" [ibid., p. 194]. However, people who have experienced love break up only on "some external, superficial level. And the internal connection has not been interrupted, in depth we are inseparable" [ibid., p. 196]. Love in Tokareva's artistic conceptosphere is tangible, filled with sounds, bodily sensations, passions; it is far from ideal, but it allows this feeling, no matter what, to help find support, overcome the fear of loneliness and death, give meaning to life, lifts above the material world, while not tearing away from it. Tokareva, speaking about love, is next to her heroes: she, like an omniscient creator, pronounces the laws of life, generalizes and sums up. Love is tragic because it is not eternal. This is the second law of life, the first is the finiteness of life itself: "Love always flows somewhere. This is tragedy number two. The transience of life and the flow of love" [16, p. 225]. There is also a "two-sided ideal, purified love" [16, p. 227], but this is more often not from the world of relationships between men and women. It's about a man's love for a dog, a horse, a creature that gives his love unconditionally, without demanding anything in return. We meet such love, for example, in the story "Shot", where the heroine cannot betray an old, decommissioned horse and adjusts her life to her interests: "She got old, she was decommissioned. I took it for myself. Do not send a loved one to sausage" [18, p. 61]. It is found in the stories of V. Tokareva and the description of the love for his work, for creativity. When a person creates, these vital laws (the transience of love and the finiteness of life) as if they fade into the background, time spares such a person: "I realized: a talented person does not happen to be old. She's not old. He's just been living for a long time" [16, p. 239]; "talented people <...> are not old people. They're more like big kids. Talent is a reflection of childhood in a person" [18, p. 59]. And such love remains with a person forever, it is not subject to corrosion by time: "Sometimes I have particularly good periods, and then I get up from the table and walk with a detached face, happily devastated, as after love. But this love does not go to another object. This is my advantage" [16, p. 241].However, there is a difference between the attitude of a man and a woman: "A man in his work is guided by God. And a woman looks like a man. A woman ascends to God through a man, through love. But, as a rule, the object of love does not correspond to the ideal. And then the woman suffers and writes about it" [ibid., p. 241]. Because to love is the eternal destiny of a woman, since "the instinct of procreation is love, the instinct of preserving offspring is love of children. The instinct of self–preservation is the fear of death. And that's all, in essence" [19, p. 47]. Love in the writer's artistic conceptosphere is not ideal, it takes a person through great trials, requires sacrifices and service, but it gives a person, albeit temporarily, protection from metaphysical "drafts", makes him better, and the world around him is cleaner and closer to God: "love dresses a person, plants flower beds on his head. And hatred strips naked, and a person becomes serial, ordinary, in the general row and even in the tail of the human row" [19, p. 70]. In love, the heroes of V. Tokareva, like, perhaps, the heroes of A.P. Chekhov, "are closest to God. When a person loves, he is in resonance with God" [19, p. 41]. B. E. Khalizev wrote that the concept of "tradition" should be understood as "initiative and creative <...> inheritance of cultural <...> experience, which involves the completion of values that make up the heritage of society, people, humanity." <...> An organically assimilated tradition <...> becomes a kind of guideline for individuals and their groups, <...> a kind of spiritual and practical strategy" [20, pp. 363-364]. We observe the same in the works of V. Tokareva. She keenly looks at the world and summarizes everything that happens to a modern person, including in the sphere of feelings, in a simple form, calling things by their proper names and not moralizing. F. Murtazayeva notes: "V. Tokareva is characterized by such style features as irony, aphorism, the simplest plot development, simplicity of syntactic constructions and penetration into the inner world of the hero" [8, p. 98]. And this "completion of values" in the artistic concept of LOVE, as well as other features of V. Tokareva's prose, bring her works closer to the work of A. P. Chekhov. Conclusion Summing up, it should be noted that the artistic concept of LOVE in the conceptual sphere of V. Tokareva has been developing and filling with new images and meanings over the long creative path of the writer. When analyzing the artistic concept of LOVE, we identified additional conceptual formations: love-necessity, love-trial, love-hate, ideal love, love-creation. Love fills the life of the heroes with new colors, reveals their true essence, serves as a kind of guide in the world of life's trials; the power of love lies in its elusiveness and transience, in the need for selflessness and lack of selfishness.
With all the originality of the writer's work, the influence of A. P. Chekhov's creativity is definitely felt not only in the creation of images, in the composition features of Tokarev's stories and novellas, but also in the filling of the concept of LOVE. However, a modern writer has filled this artistic concept with relevant content and new conceptual formations. We see prospects for further research in a more careful study of the connection of V. Tokareva's creativity with the legacy of A. P. Chekhov at the level of other artistic concepts, namely HOME, FAMILY, LIFE, CREATIVITY. Such comparisons of artistic concepts in order to identify the features of the content and continuation of the artistic tradition contribute to the actualization of the study of the problem-thematic originality of the writer's heritage, identify the features of the individual style manner, contribute to a more attentive and in-depth coverage of various aspects of the works.
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First Peer Review
Peer reviewers' evaluations remain confidential and are not disclosed to the public. Only external reviews, authorized for publication by the article's author(s), are made public. Typically, these final reviews are conducted after the manuscript's revision. Adhering to our double-blind review policy, the reviewer's identity is kept confidential.
The list of publisher reviewers can be found here.
The author of the article "The concept of LOVE in the artistic conceptosphere by V. Tokareva (based on the material of the collections of prose "It is possible and impossible", "This is the best of the worlds", "It's a pity for Bastards too")" addresses a topic that can be called "eternal" in literary criticism. It is revealed in different aspects on different literary material. This work examines the "concept of LOVE" in the work of V. Tokareva, which is due to the desire to "get closer to understanding the artistic conceptual sphere created by the writer in his works." Moreover, the task is complicated by the fact that one of the key concepts in V. Tokareva's work is considered in the context of the artistic world of A.P. Chekhov. As the author of the article notes, "V. Tokareva connects to Chekhov's associative-verbal network of concepts in her work and interprets it in her own way." It should be noted right away that the work provides a fairly complete range of meanings and associations, which is associated with the concept of LOVE in the writer's stories, it is shown that it "develops and is filled with new images and meanings throughout the writer's long creative path." Along with the traditional ones, the work identifies such types of this feeling as "love is a necessity, love is a test, love is hate, ideal love, love is creation." The analysis also focuses on the specifics of the female perception of this feeling. Thus, in general, the main task has been solved, and the conclusions are convincing. However, when reading the article, a number of questions arise. First of all, the choice of sources of the literary material that formed the empirical basis of the study is unclear. It was necessary to explain why these collections, and not earlier editions or, in general, the work of Victoria Tokareva, became the material for research. Secondly, the title does not fully reflect the content of the article. The author formulates one of the tasks as follows: "determining the continuity and understanding of the creative connection with the conceptual sphere of A. P. Chekhov," and then consistently correlates the small prose of V.Tokareva with the work of A.P. Chekhov. But the title of the article does not reflect this part of the study in any way. Moreover, the references to Chekhov are understandable, but in the way it is presented in the work, they are perceived as redundant material. In general, the article is written interestingly, it consistently maintains a scientific style. However, the citation boundary is unclear in the following fragment: "V. G. Zusman wrote that when analyzing the artistic concept, "literary criticism gets the opportunity to include the figurative fabric of a work in a nationwide associative-verbal network" [4, pp. 3-17]. It is the concepts that correlate with the units of artistic thinking – images" [13, p. 744]". There are quotation marks in the second sentence that end the quotation, but they are not there where the quotation begins. There are stylistically unsuccessful turns. In particular, in the sentence "The concept of LOVE in the works of V. Tokareva dominates [5; 9] and serves as a kind of "procrustean bed" that allows us to understand the true essence of man, "it would be better to do without the winged expression, since it inaccurately expresses thought. In the abstract, it is necessary to correct the agreement in the first sentence: "... the artistic world of V. Tokareva, which includes ..." Thus, the article can be published after revision.
Second Peer Review
Peer reviewers' evaluations remain confidential and are not disclosed to the public. Only external reviews, authorized for publication by the article's author(s), are made public. Typically, these final reviews are conducted after the manuscript's revision. Adhering to our double-blind review policy, the reviewer's identity is kept confidential.
The list of publisher reviewers can be found here.
The subject of the profile research of the reviewed article is the concept of "love" in the art world of Victoria Tokareva. It can be noted that this vector of study is not so new, however, the paper attempts to establish a connection between Tokareva's texts and the conceptual sphere of A. P. Chekhov, which gives reason to evaluate this material as innovative. The work is quite interesting and original; the author strives to combine the so-called theoretical link and the actual practical one, in principle, it succeeds well. The theoretical basis of the research consists of the works of N. V. Volodina devoted to the concept in the system of cognitive literary criticism; T. B. Zaitseva T. B.'s research on the concept of LOVE in the work of A. P. Chekhov; works on the theory and analysis of the artistic concept undertaken by V. G. Zusman V. G., Yu. S. Stepanov, V. A. Maslova, I. A. Tarasova, Ya. A. Samorukova; a monograph by T. N. Markova devoted to the construction and meaning of modern prose; V. E. Khalizev's works on literary theory; research by M. V. Selemeneva, N. N. Tertychna, Zhang Shaoping, O. V. Shestykh on various aspects of V. Tokareva's work. The systematization of the data is done well, which allows the author to form his own view / point of view on the subject. Comparative factors are maintained throughout the entire essay. For example, this is manifested in the following fragments: "in Chekhov's works, the hero is an ordinary person, whose "life consists of small everyday things." The subject of the image is everyday events in their simplicity, presented to the reader without pathos and moralizing. The hero of V. Tokareva is also a "little man", only modern to us; most often he is a resident of a megalopolis in which "romantic dreams and petty deeds, freedom and formalism, wisdom and infantilism get along", or "love in the artistic conceptual sphere of the writer is imperfect, it takes a person through great trials, requires sacrifice and service, but it gives a person, albeit temporarily, protection from metaphysical "drafts", makes him better, and the world around him cleaner and closer to God: "love dresses a person, plants flower beds on his head. And hatred strips naked, and a person becomes serial, ordinary, in the general row and even in the tail of the human row." In love, the heroes of V. Tokareva, like, perhaps, the heroes of A.P. Chekhov, "are closest to God. When a person loves, he is in resonance with God," etc. The style of the work is oriented towards the scientific type itself, the terminological series is used taking into account semantics, no serious discrepancies have been revealed. Citations in the course of the analysis are given appropriately, objectively: "B. E. Khalizev wrote that the concept of "tradition" should be understood as "initiative and creative <...> cultural inheritance <...> an experience that presupposes the completion of the values that make up the heritage of society, the people, and humanity." <...> An organically learned tradition <...> it becomes a kind of reference point for individuals and their groups, <...> a kind of spiritual and practical strategy." We observe the same in the work of V. Tokareva. She keenly looks at the world and summarizes everything that happens to a modern person, including in the sphere of feelings, in a simple form, calling things by their proper names and not moralizing. F. Murtazayeva notes: "V. Tokareva is characterized by such style features as irony, aphorism, the simplest plot development, simplicity of syntactic constructions and penetration into the inner world of the hero." And this "completion of values" in the artistic concept of LOVE, as well as other features of V. Tokareva's prose, bring her works closer to the work of A. P. Chekhov." In general, it can be stated that the work has a completed form, the research topic has been disclosed, the goal has been achieved; the methodology of this work nevertheless tends to a comparative type format. The basic requirements of the publication have been taken into account; the text does not need serious editing. In the final block, the author notes that "the artistic concept of LOVE in the conceptual sphere of V. Tokareva has been developing and filling with new images and meanings over the long creative path of the writer. When analyzing the artistic concept of LOVE, we identified additional conceptual formations: love is a necessity, love is a test, love is hate, ideal love, love is creation. Love fills the life of the characters with new colors, shows their true essence, serves as a kind of guide in the world of life trials; the power of love is in its elusiveness and transience, in the need for dedication and lack of selfishness", "for all the originality of the writer's work, the influence of A. P. Chekhov's work is definitely felt not only in the creation of images, in the features of the Tokarevsky composition short stories and novels, but also in the content of the concept of LOVE. However, a modern writer has filled this artistic concept with relevant content and new conceptual formations." Therefore, the conclusions are focused on the main block of work. The material can be useful in studying the work of Victoria Tokareva, the history of Russian literature. I think that the reviewed article "The concept of "love" in the artistic world of V. Tokareva: the specifics of embodiment, figurative content and connection with the conceptual sphere of A. P. Chekhov" can be recommended for publication in the journal "Litera" of the publishing house "Nota Bene".
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