Reviewed by: Freedom from Violence and Lies: Anton Chekhovâs Life and Writings by Michael C. Finke Carol Apollonio Finke, Michael C. Freedom from Violence and Lies: Anton Chekhovâs Life and Writings. Reaktion Books, London. 2021. 236 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. ÂŁ25.00. In this essential, gripping book, Michael Finke combines biography and criticism with rare sensitivity and authority within a slight, action-packed 200 pages. Donald Rayfieldâs classic 1997 biography, which drew on previously unavailable archival sources to offer readers a fresh, fully human Chekhov, will remain on the scholarâs bookshelf. Finkeâs book shows why Chekhovâs life â as a writer, doctor and public figure â matters. Drawing upon new sources â notably the volumes in the second series of the LetopisÌ zhizni i tvorchestva A. P. Chekhova (2000â16) â and offering fresh readings of the epistolary and memoir literature, he tells the story of a man embedded in the social and intellectual culture of his time, and a writer whose works remain relevant in contexts unimaginable during his lifetime. Finke tells of Chekhovâs medical study and practice, his active social life, and his pathway to fame through the literary institutions of his time. Chekhov long cherished the goal of a scholarly career, which both prevented him from wholly committing himself to fiction during the 1880s and informed his distinctive treatment of narrative point of view as he became a literary master in the 1890s. Finke introduces Chekhovâs three planned dissertation projects â a history of sexual dominance; a history of doctoring in Russia; and the one that was realized, though did not lead to a doctoral degree: his famous research work, Sakhalin Island (pp. 25â26), the medical â Finke emphasizes â study where, [End Page 362] and only where, Chekhov âpresented himself as the hero of his own narrativeâ (p. 85). Despite the writerâs resistance to âbeing seenâ in his works, psychology is âthe ground floorâ (p. 75). Charactersâ utterances function lyrically and musically, âpointing to larger hidden complexesâ (p. 12). As early as the 1883 âThe Death of a Clerkâ, plot projects inwards â into the mind (or belly) of one individual, rather than emerging from the actions, reactions and interactions among characters (pp. 39â40). Troubled father-son relationships or absent fathers figure prominently from the early (disputed) play, Fatherlessness, to the late drama (p. 30). In works such as âStory of an Unknown Manâ and âMy Lifeâ, âthe main character is the son of a dominant father; his life choices involve submissiveness, humiliation and painâ (p. 155). Finke demonstrates that for Chekhov ideology is secondary to psychology, even in stories which have attracted attention as âanti-Tolstoyanâ narratives (p. 156). Finke reads Chekhovâs 1998 âLittle Trilogyâ as a set of case studies presenting developmental stages a la Freud âfrom which remaining fixations may lie at the core of psychopathologyâ (p. 148). The cycle traces a path of decreasing distance between storyteller and subject (neighbour, brother, self): the âman in the caseâ suffers from a castration complex and obsessional neurosis; the âGooseberriesâ protagonist manifests pathological narcissism; and the narrator of âAbout Loveâ has fallen into an Oedipal trap (p. 148). Chekhovâs attitude toward Jews evolves throughout his lifetime. Finke offers a nuanced treatment of the theme in life and works â though not, interestingly, in the pages devoted to Chekhovâs friend, the painter Isaac Levitan. Jewish women are prominent in Chekhovâs life, including as sexual partners. Chekhovâs unsavoury, eroticized portrait of a Jewish woman in the 1886 story âMireâ was published, not coincidentally, in the antisemitic Alexei Suvorinâs New Times. Finkeâs chronicle introduces welcome subtlety into the story of Chekhovâs ten-year friendship with Suvorin, addressing the complex forces at work for the young writer whose refusal to take political stands earned him the enmity of the liberal literary establishment, and who for some time depended on the wealthy publisherâs financial support â including for his research trip to Sakhalin in 1890, which Finke analyses as a âmedical geographyâ. Chekhovâs famous support of Alfred Dreyfus in 1897, Finke shows, was only one of the factors at work as their paths diverged. As Finke...