FROM THE HISTORY OF SOVIET CHEKHOVIAN STUDIES OF THE 1920s - 1940s: ON TWO EDITIONS OF “THE PORTRAIT OF CHEKHOV’S CREATIVENESS” BY A. B. DERMAN

In the history of Russian chekhovian studies the works by A. B. Derman appear in two points of view that are not equally relevant today. Though Derman repeats the official interpretations of Chekhov'slegacy (for example in his critical biographical essay “A. P. Chekhov” (1939) and “Moscow in the life and work of A. P. Chekhov” (1948) and other newspaper and magazine articles, he is also the author of a curious hypothesis, with the help of which he tried to explain the dominants of Chekhov's poetics, as well as to give an exhaustive psychologicalportrait of the writer. Curious hypothesis was formulated in his monograph “The portrait of Chekhov's creativeness” and partly in its subsequently added alterations. The hypothesis lies in the idea of “disharmony”of Chekhov's character: the primacy of the rational part over the emotional one. In Derman's opinion.