An Illuminating Misinterpretation? On Merezhkovskii's Literary Criticism of Chekhov

Abstract

The Literary Critic Mirrored by His Subject It is one of the well known premises of hermeneutics that interpreting a piece of art not only illuminates the subject of interpretation, but also sheds light on its interpreter. In regard to A. P. Chekhov, this phenomenon is often so strongly pronounced that, given Russian literary criticism at the turn of the nineteenth century, A. D. Stepanov even declares Chekhov's work to be a ‘mirror of literary criticism’. Stepanov's observation also proves appropriate for the present collection of essays. The volume shows Chekhov through the eyes of Russian thinkers and portrays these Russian thinkers through the mirror of their literary criticism. A special place in these reflections of Chekhov is held by Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, who in his essays repeatedly discussed Chekhov and his literary work between 1888 and 1914, and whose opinion on Chekhov changed profoundly through this period. The shifting of Merezhkovskii's judgement on Chekhov, – from his early appreciation of Chekhov's literary talent to his later polemics against Chekhov's alleged religious nihilism, do not depend so much on a development of Chekhov's art. From early on, Chekov's literary work shows a relatively constant philosophy of life and poetics. Merezhkovskii's literary criticism of Chekhov should rather be seen as a mirror that reflects Merezhkovskii's own spiritual development. Nevertheless, his criticism remains open to both sides, illuminating the subject of criticism as well as the critic – even where Merezhkovskii obviously misinterprets Chekhov.