Boris Dralyuk whom I respect immensely (I had a chance to talk to him once or twice and was left with a thoroughly great impression) was right, describing Chekhov as a grounded and fearless anti-humanist, following the release of a new biography, “Freedom from Violence and Lies“ (2021), by Michael C. Finke.

Whatever one makes of Chekhov’s stance on artistic freedom, of his chafing at being pigeonholed, Finke does a marvellous job of threading the theme through the man’s life and work. From his early use of pseudonyms to his refusal to cry at the funeral of his older brother Nikolai – a talented painter who had failed to conquer his personal and hereditary demons – the Chekhov that emerges from these pages is a paragon of “hard-won dignity and self-assurance”, which find expression, not altogether paradoxically, in a self-restraint bordering on self-effacement. A writer-physician with a stiff upper lip, he led a life filled with good works and produced an enormously influential body of writing devoid of one-sided judgement – stories and plays, in which, Finke writes (quoting from Chekhov’s letter of 1886 to another older brother, Alexander), the “inner worlds of characters should ‘be understandable from the actions of the heroes’, and an effect-for-the-cause, metonymic principle” prevails. “Who’s interested in knowing my life and your life, my thoughts and your thoughts?”, Chekhov asked Alexander in 1889. “Give the people people, not yourself.” ©