Chekhov

Boris Zaitsev, a prominent writer of the Russian Diaspora, was personally acquainted with the hero of this book—Anton Chekhov. More than that, Chekhov “blessed” the beginning of Zaitsev’s literary career. This fact, as well as Zaitsev’s love for Chekhov as a writer, gave this book a wonderful personal touch. It’s called a “literary biography,” because Zaitsev interweaves purely biographical episodes with analysis of Chekhov’s work. Besides the JZL-style and literary-critical task, Zaitsev also solves the “philosophical” one: he argues with two popular at the time concepts—Soviet, according to which Chekhov appears almost as a socialist realist, and émigré (Shestov, Adamovich), where Chekhov is understood as a “cruel talent,” an artist of emptiness and absurdity. Zaitsev, however, sees Chekhov at least as a singer of humanism, love for one’s neighbor, a seeker of meaning; at most, as a writer permeated by the evangelical light—light that grows ever brighter toward the end of Chekhov’s career.