Among the notes found in Chekhov's archive, the following passage can be found:

This note dates back to the late 1880s or early 1890s, when Chekhov worked on ‘Rasskaz neizvestnogo cheloveka’ (‘An Anonymous Story’, 1893), and the mention of a teacher from Elets does not appear here by accident. It is not just the belief in Russia as full of provincial towns. Chekhov might have had in mind the example of the philosophical work On Understanding (O ponimanii) which appeared shortly before this note (1886), the first publication by Vasilii Rozanov, who became a teacher in Elets in 1887.

This is the first similarity between these two contemporaries: a profound and simultaneous interest in the problem of understanding. In Rozanov's work, understanding is a measure of the usefulness of a branch of science or philosophy.

How did the philosopher Shestov interpret the work of the artist Chekhov? What was Chekhov's response to Shestov's philosophical work? These are the themes of the present chapter. What is at stake here is not a dialogue, but two independent episodes, linked by the cast of characters. The philosopher suggested an interpretation of the artist, while the artist used motifs from the philosopher's book. The former episode is exposed to everybody, but requires interpretation. The latter has been hitherto unexamined, and here is discussed for the first time. Such a symbiosis perhaps is telling of the character of the relationship between philosophy and art. As we shall see, Shestov's and Chekhov's turning to each other is no accident: they were united by a deeplyrooted desire to understand the world and life.

During his own lifetime, Lev Shestov (1866–1938) became one of the brightest stars on the world philosophical stage. This fact is much better known than the significance he had for the history of the Russian Silver Age. Only one historian of Russian culture, Avril Pyman (in her history of Russian Symbolism) would seem to have granted Shestov his due place. In general, his significance for Russian literature of the first half of the twentieth century, and especially for the Silver Age, otherwise remains ignored. And yet because Shestov's books constitute a substantial part of the intellectual context of that epoch, not taking into account his thought would leave many important texts unread.

‘Nothing in the twentieth century could foreshadow the emergence of a poet like Brodsky’ is perhaps the strangest statement by the great Czeslaw Milosz. Instead, everything in the twentieth century could be seen as having foreshadowed Brodsky's coming. It was inevitable as a most natural existential and linguistic response to the alienating absurdity and sophisticated cruelty of that century. By the same token, everything in the nineteenth century Russia could be seen as having foreshadowed the coming of Anton Chekhov. He was, if you like, a historical necessity. In the disenchanted generation, suspended between ‘extreme materialism and most passionate idealistic strivings of the spirit’, at the time when populism and utilitarianism, although on their last legs, still dominated both life and art, someone who could walk the border without taking sides, who could ‘rise above’ and find a different route, was desperately needed. As Chekhov himself said about the traveller Przhevalskii: ‘In our ill age, when European societies are swamped with laziness, boredom and faithlessness, when in a strange combination a dislike for life coexists with a fear of death, […] we need devotees like we need the sun’. Chekhov was one of these devotees.

Chekhov took an interest in Merezhkovskii after the latter wrote an extensive article on the writer in the November 1888 issue of The Northern Herald (Severnyi Vestnik). In his letter to Suvorin of 3 November, Chekhov, providing a detailed analysis of the article (unprecedented in Chekhov's letters), expressed a series of problems he had with the author. The main one was a disagreement on the point that problems of creativity cannot be reduced to the laws of nature:

There were other charges too – that Merezhkovskii finds ‘failures’ amongst Chekhov's heroes, and thus follows the well-trodden path: ‘It's time to abandon failures, superfluous people and to invent something of one's own’.

However, Chekhov assessed the article on the whole – indeed one of the best in the early Chekhoviana – as ‘quite a pleasant thing’.

Chekhov also liked the author himself. ‘Twice the poet Merezhkovskii visited me’, Chekhov wrote to Suvorin on 5 January 1891; ‘he is a very clever person’.

Compared to such Russian classics as Pushkin, Tolstoi and Dostoevskii who are perceived not only as great writers but as thinkers and philosophers, Chekhov appears to be strangely ‘unphilosophical’. This perception is partially shaped by Chekhov himself. At times he appears to be distinctly militant in his attack on philosophers and philosophizing and in his attempt to dissociate himself from every ideological and philosophical movement of his time. This refusal to choose sides and adhere to an ideology is why Chekhov stands out as a lonely figure in the context of Russian culture. Reacting against Tolstoi's ‘Afterword to the Kreutzer Sonata’ (‘Posleslovie k “Kreitserovoi sonate”’, 1891), Chekhov writes to Suvorin (8 September 1891):

Contemporaneity and Competition. General Aspects of Chekhov's Reception by Rozanov

Anton Chekhov had been dead for almost 12 years, when Vasilii Rozanov, reading the last volume of the writer's correspondence, wrote in the margin of a letter from Chekhov one of his famous thumbnail sketches. This miniature in prose lays bare his sorrow about the missed opportunity for a relationship with a great contemporary artist:

[…] What would have been the result of a friendship with Chekhov? He clearly called me (in the letter), beckoned me.

I did not answer his very kind letter. This was even repellent. Why did I not reply?

Fate.

I felt that he was significant. And I did not like to come close to significant people.

‘Shestovizing’ Chekhov: Facts, Conjecture and Existential Philosophy

Objectivity pertains to eternity; however, extreme subjectivity defines living beings. As in one of Bidstrup's caricatures, a new hat that has been sat on and crumpled provokes laughter in a sanguine person, and moves a melancholic person to tears. The same blow sounds sharp on glass and muffled on wood, and upon hearing the sound one is able to guess the nature of the material that absorbed the shock. In exactly the same indirect manner, the outside world manifests itself more expressively through indirect rather than direct speech. From this perspective, Lev Shestov's essay on Chekhov, bearing the intriguing title, ‘Creation from Nothing’, is in my view primarily (although not exclusively) a testimony to Shestov himself.

The principal idea of Shestov's essay, which provocatively conceals his more authentic insights into Chekhov's work, is delivered in the opening pages, in Shestov's laconic style: ‘Chekhov was the poet of hopelessness. Stubbornly, despondently, monotonously for almost 25 years, over the whole course of his literary production, Chekhov did only one thing: in one way or another he killed human hope. In my opinion, this is the essence of his creative activity'. Throughout his essay, Shestov circles like a vulture gathering strength over the theme of hopelessness.

Apart from numerous references in other places, Rozanov devoted five essays to Chekhov. In his first essay, written not long before Chekhov's death in 1904, Rozanov, while considering Russia's fate, gives a historic-cultural reading of The Cherry Orchard. In this, Chekhov's last play, Rozanov sees a reflection of the crisis among the Russian people, of not being able to set targets and aspirations in their personal lives: ‘Do you not understand, for what purpose serve love, thoughts, home life, morals, money – for all these people? You cannot take these things with you.’ This crisis leads to the passivity and lack of will in Chekhov's heroes: ‘Lopakhin also saves money, reads Buckle just like Epikhodov (an excellent character, especially upon the stage), Liubov Andreevna is attached to her Parisian gigolo, and Trofimov studies at the university. Each of them is not defined by his role. On stage, however, the figure of the student Trofimov is sympathetic, although idle and passive. He is unable to finish his course, and at the end cannot even find his own boots (which Varia eventually finds for him).’ This crisis of values is witnessed not only in the passive, but in the more active characters: ‘The only aspiration anyone shows is when Lopakhin tries to get hold of money: but it is totally incomprehensible why he needs it: money for money's sake?

Few ideas have engaged the thought of philosophers for so great a length of time and occupied a momentous place in its history as the idea of human rights and human moral obligations. Much has been written on almost every aspect of these two ideas, so, in a sense, this book, which addresses questions concerning the concepts of human rights and human obligations, the relations between them, the conflicts which arise when there are flagrant violations of each and the impact each has on decisions and actions undertaken (individually or collectively) in real life situations, cannot claim to be discussing things that have not been discussed before. However, philosophical enterprise being what it is, there is always room for another ‘point of view’ and that is justification enough. A different point of view brings to light new and distinct perspectives which may help provide a better understanding of morally perplexing problems. Many papers in this volume are an attempt to deal with the question of human rights and obligations in an Indian context, and herein lies its claim to novelty, its raison d 'etre.

Philosophical problems have this die-hard quality about them that they remain the same at the core; only the context in which they are presented provides a distinct perspective to them. The different context demands a review, revisiting and rehearsing of existing solutions to suit its present needs.

Sir Winston S. Churchill wrote no memoirs on his post-war administration (1951–5) and as regards UK diplomatic contribution to a peaceful end to the warfare in Indo-China in 1954, the role of Prime Minister Churchill has tended to be historiographically more obscure than that of Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. Churchill's enthusiasm for détente during his post-war prime ministership has been considered to date from the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953 and be confined mainly to Europe. The preceding Labour government had recognized the Communist regime in China, but little attention has been paid to the Asiatic dimension of Churchill's détente policy and his overall world view in that connection.

British policy towards Indo-China is addressed in this study in relation to its global connections enunciated by Churchill, while out of office, as the ‘three circles’, according to which the United Kingdom was geopolitically seen as bridging North America and the European continent as well as having ties with commonwealth and imperial positions.

This postmodern essay is tinged with remnants of a modern nostalgic hankering to examine whether an attempt to see how things hang together can still succeed. In this self-reflexive journey multiple narratives encrusted with the formal structure of essay writing have been replaced with an attempt at genre splicing. There is a deliberate suspension of judgement and no claim to transcendence. However, this postmodern character in certain places gives way to the modern seeking of patterns of explanation.

In the second half of the twentieth century philosophical discussions were marked by intense debates, involving Russell, Strawson, Searle, Wittgenstein, Kripke, Swinburne, Brody and many others, on the question of identity. The principle questions were: What is identity? Who is a person? What is the epistemic logical status of identity statements? And the responses, with reference to Cartesian, Kantian and Rawlsian theoretical frameworks, range from some philosophers saying that to be a person is to be a body to some maintaining that to be a person is to be a mind with others held that it is a combination of the two. Some argued that a person is a stream of consciousness and some more formally maintained only that to be a person is to be a bearer of M and P predicates. Some other philosophers have argued that a person is an animal with self-awareness and memory, endowed with the capacity to use language.

The emergence of the Internet as a popular means of creation and dispersal of intellectual goods has caused ripples of dissent among experts in intellectual property rights. The quarrel is between those who think that the Internet upholds the right to information and those who see it as a representative of the right to profit from intellectual goods. Those who value the Internet for its potential to encourage a free flow of information across geographical and political boundaries recognise the right to information as a basic human right. Those who value the Internet only for its commercial potential violate that right and impede the free flow of information across the Net. Information is power. The right to information must, therefore, be recognised as a basic human right and must be respected in order to make sure that individuals across the world stand at an equal footing. With this in view, we give moral support to those who uphold the free flow of information across the Internet and voice our protest against those who have only profit-making in mind, heedless of the needs and rights of many.

Information technology has progressed in leaps and bounds in the past few decades. Not only have IT-related advances been fast, the public has been quick to adopt them in real life. But just as in other technological spheres, the growing use of computers, predominantly the Internet, has given rise to a fresh set of moral issues.

Until the first quarter of the twentieth century it looked obvious that mankind would continue to exist for all time to come. Development of nuclear weapons compelled man to get worried about the possibility of extinction of the human race. Increase in the population, resulting in environmental pollution and accompanied by limited resources, has been the major cause of the worries human are faced today. Naturally in this context, the question arises whether the present generation has an obligation to future generations so that our sacrifice could ensure the continued existence of the human race, preventing it from future extinction. People have started pondering over this question since there are events that could threaten human survival. Since the existence of future generations in many ways depend on what we do now, the question whether or not we should try to prevent the extinction of mankind is an important issue, not only of pure academic interest but with direct consequences on many contemporary problems as well.

The central question in this discourse seems to be whether we, as the present generation, have any moral obligation and to what extent we have the duty, if we have any duty at all, to the future generation, so that it would be morally incumbent for us to make sacrifices now to bring happy people in the world or to avoid them from being brought to the world.

Bulgarian literature has not been a great attention arrester in the West, least of all in the English-speaking world. In this paper I wish to offer two short case studies of the appropriation of Bulgarian writers in England and Germany, embedded in a broader survey of the relevant contexts and trends. Chronologically, my focus is on the first half of the twentieth century, a time when Bulgaria's contacts with the West did not face the impediments that were so typical of the time after 1944. The first part of this paper centres on Pencho Slaveĭkov; the second, and longer part, concentrates on Iordan Iovkov. Particularly in Iovkov's case, I will be concerned to examine the ideological parameters of this appropriation, revealing a picture of enhanced German interest in Iovkov from a perspective and in a political direction he could not have predicted. Finally, I draw some conclusions that pertain to the topic of this book.

A look at the bibliography of the translations of Bulgarian literature abroad compiled by Veselin Traĭkov – still the most valuable research tool, but published, unfortunately, in a print run of onl y 710 copies – yields a common pattern of appropriation in the early stages. The first translations would invariably be those of folklore material. This is true of translations into Slavonic languages (the earliest one being a 1823 translation of a Bulgarian folksong into Czech), as well as translations into English, French and German.