A. P. CHEKHOV'S SHORT STORY "THE WILLOW": DIFFUSION OF CULTURAL CODES

The story of A. P. Chekhov was written by Easter 1883. However, it is named after the main "character" of the pre-temple holiday - Pussy willow Sunday. This circumstance sheds light on the symbolism of the story: traditional-cultural and Easter elements, folk and book traditions intertwine here. These cultural codes do not exist without each other, and every writer who speaks Russian perceives them as an organic unity. The image of faith in the story has folklore and Christian connotations. Diffusion of cultural codes determines the hybridization of genre strategy of the story. It's an Easter story. It has the main signs of the genre: confinement to the holiday, didacticism, the spiritual rebirth of the hero, etc. However, Chekhov destroys reader's expectation of an Easter miracle, since a bloody crime becomes an extraordinary, astonishing phenomenon, and the criminal`s repentance leads him to suicide. The image of such a repentant sinner, "wrongful" in terms of the Easter story, includes elements of the genres of oral folk literature in the story`s structure: ballads (innocent victim, murder, suicide, motif of a tree at the crime scene, etc.) and legends (moral and ethical message, transformation and repentance of the hero, etc.).