Seeing Chekhov: Life and Art (review)

Seeing Chekhov is perhaps the most unique and engaging biographical work on Anton Chekhov to come out in the last decade, as Michael C. Finke provides a fascinating explication of the relationship between Chekhov and his writings. Citing from a plethora of primary sources, previous biographies, and Chekhov's own works, Finke examines how the writer saw himself in relation to his art, as well as how he wanted his audiences to encounter it. Finke focuses specifically upon the ocular, looking into both literal and metaphorical ways in which Chekhov viewed the world, thereby contributing a number of unique observations on an individual whose life and works have already received much scrutiny. He provides such insights within an extremely accessible and useful text, consisting of both biography and literary criticism, which is likely to be of interest to devotees of Chekhov. His intriguing, but limited, observations concerning Chekhov's plays and their productions will appeal to most theatre scholars, and Finke is able to infuse new life into even oft-repeated anecdotes from this storied history.

Finke's book is divided into four chapters. The first chapter, "To Be Seen or Not to Be Seen," chronicles what the author calls Chekhov's "autobiographophobia" and details his efforts to avoid the personal scrutiny that came with his writings, particularly when they became plays in production. In this, the strongest chapter of the collection, the reader is treated to a noteworthy review of Chekhov's reactions to the first St. Petersburg production of The Seagull, an artistic failure that forever colored his attitudes towards the theatre. Finke convincingly argues that, from this point on, the theatre was "mortally dangerous" (20) to Chekhov. He also shows that Chekhov's primary concern after this episode was not actually the theatre itself, but "the place where he was" (21) in relation to the productions of his own work: "All evidence suggests that he feared not so much the staging of his play and the possibility of its failure but the staging of the play where he was—as though he feared becoming part of the spectacle himself" (21; emphasis in original). Finke validates this assertion with copious research concerning Chekhov's similar reactions to his other plays, even the successes, before going on to demonstrate how this desire to distance himself from the audience continues throughout his prose. The chapter ends with Finke's psychoanalytic reading of the short story "The Sea," which was the first story where Chekhov's actual name appeared as a byline at the author's request. Finke's reading successfully demonstrates Chekhov's inner turmoil in matters of self-assertion, adding to his hypothesis about the writer's tortured attitude towards the reception of his work.

In chapter 2, "Looking the Part," Finke explores a plethora of Chekhov's nondramatic works to find strategies of hiding and seeking among the "professional identities" he creates in his stories. The one complaint here is in the almost complete lack of reference to these professional identities when they inhabit his plays.

Chapter 3, "Self and Other through the Lens of Science," is about Chekhov's interaction with various popular notions about seeing, particularly those relevant to Chekhov's work in medicine. Finke specifically examines how Chekhov's familiarity with Darwin's work influenced his attitudes towards perception. Both chapters center upon analyses of Chekhov's prose fiction, though lack of familiarity with these texts is not an obstacle to understanding Finke's argument. Finke's third chapter closes with a depressingly short analysis of The Cherry Orchard that primarily focuses on its affinities with Émile Zola's Dr. Pascal. While this clearly fits within Finke's thesis, the lack of close attention to one of Chekhov's most important works is unfortunate.

Chapter 4, "Erotic and Mythic Visions," is an entirely speculative departure from the previous chapters, with Finke fully inhabiting the role of analyst to look at Chekhov's dreams, as well as further literary examples, to make discoveries...