Mikhal Oklot surveys the hazards of imposing philosophical readings on Chekhov while also probing his engagement with specific philosophical traditions – Stoicism, Cynicism, materialism – and the distinct resonance of his moral perspective with such figures as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and especially Schopenhauer as a key interlocutor and influence.

Unanswered Letter

‘Of Anton Chekhov [Vasilii Rozanov] once said: ‘Chekhov?–nothing particular in him. He looked at life, and what he saw he wrote down. A very fine writer, people got to like him, and began to like him. But he is a cold one, and there's nothing particular in him. I understand his success but don't enjoy it.’ On another occasion, in 1897, Rozanov dryly remarked: ‘I do not like Merezhkovskii, Chekhov …Nietzsche.’ In 1914 in the article ‘Anton Chekhov’, Rozanov does not simply dismiss Chekhov; instead, he is rather disturbed by the phenomenon of this ‘genius of mediocrity',’ as he calls him. We can even see in the author of The Dark Countenance some traces of sympathy toward Chekhov, as the author of ‘Peasant Women’ (Baby)–the story that Rozanov interpreted in the spirit of his own polemics with Christianity and reflections on Russian women and family: ‘Peasant Women’ should be included in its entirety in ‘The History of the Russian Family’, in ‘The History of Russian Life’ [byt], in ‘The History of the Russian Woman’, postulates Rozanov. Finally, in his literary ‘embryos’ from 1916 known under the working title The Last Leaves (one of the unrealized sequels to Solitaria), Rozanov lists Chekhov together with two other ‘significant’ writers whom he greatly admired, Konstantin Leont'v and Lev Tolstoy, under the rubric of unrealized friendships: