Acknowledgments; Introduction; Three Brief Biographies; I. Vasilii Rozanov; Rozanov on Chekhov: 'Overcoming Literature' and Extending Horizons; Kind and Quiet: Chekhov in the Perceptions of Vasilii Rozanov; Contemporaneity, Competition and Combat: Facts and Fiction about Everybody and Passiveness, Orientalism and Anaesthesia in Rozanov's View on Chekhov; 'Tree of Life' and 'Dead Waters': Why Was Rozanov Afraid of Chekhov?; II. Dmitrii Merezhkovskii; Chekhov and Merezhkovskii: Two Types of Artistic-Philosophical Consciousness; Negating His Own Negation: Merezhkovskii's Understanding of Chekhov's Role in Russian Culture; An Illuminating Misinterpretation? On Merezhkovskii's Literary Criticism of Chekhov; Can Merezhkovskii See the Spirit in the Prose of Flesh?; III. Lev Shestov; Lev Shestov on Chekhov; Between Tragedy and Aesthetics: Shestov's Reading of Chekhov ? A Gaze Directed Within; Shestov ? Chekhov, Chekhov ? Shestov; Philosophy's Enemies: Chekhov and Shestov; Notes on Contributors

The collection is comprised of twelve scholarly essays written by leading Chekhov specialists from around the world, each analysing an interpretation of Chekhov by one of three Russian thinkers of the Silver Age of Russian culture - Vasilii Rozanov, Dmitrii Merezhkovskii and Lev Shestov. It thus examines the hitherto under-researched relationship between the origins and the results of the cultural phase that came to be known as the Silver Age, and focuses specifically on the complex connections betweens Chekhov's legacy and the Russian culture of that period.