Anton Chekhov (1898) by Osip Braz (Wikipedia); right: Bell tower in a Russian Orthodox church (Brett Johnson/Unsplash.com)
Before he became a literary master, Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) sang (like a “little convict”) in the church choir that his father conducted. Punctually the acolyte assisted at the altar, arose early for matins, and ascended the belfry to toll the bells. But for whom? “And what of it?” he asked, recalling from a distance that pious childhood, “it seems to me rather gloomy. Now I have no religion.” Chekhov’s agnostic detachment from dogmas is evident in the doctor’s prescribed aesthetic: if some artists strive to answer great enquiries and others endeavor to form questions correctly, “only the latter is required of an author.”