Creativity out of nothing and polyphony-2: Chekhov’s philosophical anthropology through the prism of ideas of Lev Shestov and Leonid Heifetz

Philosophy

Abstract

Lev Shestov’s essay Creativity Out of Nothing is relevant as an anthropological experience: the philosopher considers how creative self-realization is possible that each time points out the absence of the grounds for creation. Creation appears as a form of reflection on the primary situation of art for art’s sake: Chekhov’s social pathos only becomes radical when it returns to this primordial setting. This is why Shestov reads Chekhov in two ways: on the one hand, from the viewpoint of existential philosophy, where the very situation of being ejected into the world proves to be the primary motive and condition for creative work, the horizon of all conventions; on the other hand, from the perspective of irony, where the very preconditions of creation are defamiliarized. Shestov’s method allows us to introduce the term polyphony-2 for Chekhov’s work in order to distinguish it from Dostoevsky’s polyphony-1. In his TV film version of The Cherry Orchard (1976), Leonid Heifetz attempted to reunite the existential situation and irony, but within a performative effort aiming to show the transition from the ideals of the Soviet intelligentsia of the 1960s to the disappointments of the 1970s. The penetration of the Russian into the Soviet in film based on Chekhov is the permeation of discursivity into performativity: Heifetz sees Chekhov not as a creator of ambiguous dialogues, but as a master of discursive statements. Thereby, he continues Lev Shestov, but abandons his supra-historical paradoxalism, creating a kind of cult of the history of the past. Such an analysis of Chekhov’s legacy through a double prism allows us to clarify both the peculiarities of passéisme, the cult of the noble past, among Soviet intellectuals and the performative potential of Chekhov’s entire oeuvre (including not only his dramatic works), which may be in demand today.