Čechov e la critica dell'emigrazione

Chekhov and the emigration criticism At the end of the 1920s and particularly in 1929 on the 25th anniversary of Chekhov's death, magazines and periodicals dedicated to emigration issues published several articles on Chekhov as a writer and on his literary works. Such interest grew in the following twenty years, resulting in more detailed essays such as Serdce smjatennoe (1934) by M. Kurdjumov (pen name of Marija Aleksandrovna Kallash), some essays by Bicilli, the unfinished work O Chekhove (1955) by Bunin and Chekhov. Literaturnaja Biografija (1954), a literary biography on Chekhov's production written by Zajchev. This article analyses the above-mentioned works in order to identify the reasons that drove both exiled writers and critics to choose Chekhov as a very significant point of reference. There are three key points that resulted from the analysis of these works: 1) Chekhov's works are not just proof of a Russia that no longer exists, they also provoke a reflection on timeless existential issues, inspiring a renewal in his readers' existence; 2) the author's analysis of humankind, free from social, political or religious schemes, is an implicit confirmation of the necessity to come back to a non-ideologically-oriented literature; 3) the importance given to the word is the truly innovative characteristic of Chekhov's writing. These key points actually confirm that emigration critics looked to Chekhov not to express their ideological positions, as with Tolstoy and other "classical" authors, but rather to compare aesthetic choices.