Fin de Siècle

Abstract

Though Chekhov died just before the full-blown fin-de-siècle mood burst forth in Russia around the time of the first revolution in 1905, Mark Steinberg locates Chekhov within a first-wave fin de siècle following the regicide of Alexander II, and depicts Chekhov’s own searching agnostic temperament as symptomatic of this cultural moment, with its heightened anxieties concerning the ailments of modernity and its renewed interest in the concept of personality (or lichnost’) as an antidote.