The collection is comprised of twelve scholarly essays written by leading Chekhov specialists from around the world.  Each essay analyses an interpretation of Chekhov by one of three prominent Russian thinkers of the Silver Age of Russian culture – Vasilii Rozanov, Dmitrii Merezhkovskii and Lev Shestov. This volume is particularly valuable in that its main focus is placed on the perception of Chekhov’s art by those who existed on the border between literary criticism and philosophy. This is complemented by a literary critique of their accounts, and therefore remains faithful to Chekhov’s poetics.

The collection thus examines the hitherto under-researched relationship between the origins and the results of the cultural phase that we now refer to as the Silver Age, and focuses specifically on the complex connections between Chekhov’s legacy and the Russian culture of that period. Through its stress on the philosophical perception of Chekhov, this book offers a thematically consistent and systematic revelation of new dimensions to Chekhov’s creative heritage. The essays are supplemented by biographical accounts of Rozanov, Merezhkovskii and Shestov.

Olga Tabachnikova holds a PhD in Mathematics and a PhD in Russian Literature and Philosophy. She is now a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Russian Department of the University of Bristol.

Acknowledgments; Introduction; Three Brief Biographies; I. Vasilii Rozanov; Rozanov on Chekhov: ‘Overcoming Literature’ and Extending Horizons; Kind and Quiet: Chekhov in the Perceptions of Vasilii Rozanov; Contemporaneity, Competition and Combat: Facts and Fiction about Everybody and Passiveness, Orientalism and Anaesthesia in Rozanov’s View on Chekhov; ‘Tree of Life’ and ‘Dead Waters’: Why Was Rozanov Afraid of Chekhov?; II. Dmitrii Merezhkovskii; Chekhov and Merezhkovskii: Two Types of Artistic-Philosophical Consciousness; Negating His Own Negation: Merezhkovskii’s Understanding of Chekhov’s Role in Russian Culture; An Illuminating Misinterpretation? On Merezhkovskii’s Literary Criticism of Chekhov; Can Merezhkovskii See the Spirit in the Prose of Flesh?; III. Lev Shestov; Lev Shestov on Chekhov; Between Tragedy and Aesthetics: Shestov’s Reading of Chekhov – A Gaze Directed Within; Shestov – Chekhov, Chekhov – Shestov; Philosophy’s Enemies: Chekhov and Shestov; Notes on Contributors