Written in 1893, Anton Chekhov's short story "The Black Monk" is one of the writer's most powerful and revealing works. It reflects the deep philosophy of the author, as well as the feelings of worry and anxiety that, according to the memoirs of his contemporaries, haunted Anton Chekhov in that period. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The author himself described his work as follows: "This is a medical history, a historical Morbi" (Carter). Indeed, Chekhov draws attention to the kind of illness his hero Kovrin suffers from; this disease is megalomania, a disease from which many nineteenth-century Russians suffered. Apparently, the main theme of the story is to show how a person's life could be broken by this sizzling passion and all the artistic means used are strengthening the understanding of the topic. Chekhov is one of the greatest masters of the written word and sensory detail in Russian literature. But in this work he showed himself as a great master of painting, for color, because every mention of color in this story is loaded with meaning. The action of the narrative is connected with a garden, which in itself should speak of the variety of colors. At the beginning of the story we actually read: “Kovrin had never seen such a wealth of flowers anywhere as at Pesotsky” (Chekhov). But, strangely enough, Chekhov does not describe any of these "various colors" and indicates a clear distinction: "all possible shades, from sparkling white to sooty black" (Chekhov). By emphasizing these unusual colors for the garden, Chekhov shows their symbolic meaning. The symbolism of the colors black and white dates back to ballads. Perhaps this is what Chekhov meant when he wrote that Kovrin "found in some book" a legend or "heard it somewhere." And indeed the legend that struck Kovrin has the character of a ballad about the monk who because of his sins had to wander the universe forever, and always at night, when the pale moon appears in the sky. It is the combination of a monk's black appearance and the pale moon or dawn or the combination of black robes and white face ("pale face, terribly pale!" - as described by the author) that explicitly directs the reader to the connection with a traditional romantic ballad. And what do these colors mean in a ballad? White: the color of youth, life and goodness. Black is always a symbol of death. If you delve deeper into the contrast between black and white, you see that it goes back to the Bible, or, more precisely, to the Apocalypse. In "The Black Monk" the date of appearance of the Black Monk is specified exactly: a thousand years ago. In the Apocalypse the thousand years are the time of the devil's imprisonment. It is quite possible that the black monk is a devil, one whose presence goes beyond the earth for a thousand years (the universe in the romantic tradition is often identified with the abyss). Chekhov thus opens another aspect of color symbolism: the white color symbolizes God's chosen one. A man worthy of wearing white clothes is a sinless, blameless man. At the beginning of the story Kovrin calms down: "I will not do harm; therefore there is nothing wrong in my hallucinations", but the monk who comes to visit him is dressed in black. White appears only one more time in the story, at the end. Kovrin breaks Tania's letter and throws the fragments on the ground, but they turn white and give him no respite. The simplest solution would be to connect the symbolism of white in this episode with the image of Tanya, but such an interpretation would not be entirely accurate. Kovrin collects the fragments of the letter and throws them out the window, but the