Staging Existence

Anton Chekhov is justly famous as an author and a playwright, with his work continuing to appear on stages around the world more than a century after his death. However, he is rarely studied for his intellectual and philosophical theories. His disinterest in developing a unified ideain vogue for Russian intellectuals of his timeand his aversion to the maximalism characteristic of contemporary Russian culture and society set him apart from his fellow writers. As a result, Chekhovs contribution to intellectual and philosophical discourse was obscured both by his contemporaries and by subsequent scholars. Svetlana Evdokimova tackles this gap in Chekhov scholarship, examining the profound connections between his unstated philosophy and his artistic production. Arguing that Chekhovs four major plays (The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, The Seagull, and Uncle Vanya) constitute a kind of cycle, Staging Existence offers a major reappraisal of this critical playwright in Russian intellectual history. Evdokimovas deep, careful research into Chekhovs engagement with contemporary philosophy provides insight into both Chekhovs oeuvre and the writer himself.