FROM TOLSTOY'S RELIGIOUS MEANING OF LIFE TO CHEKHOV'S MELANCHOLIA

Anton Chekhov's A Boring Story is compared with Leon Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich in order to elucidate the forms of meaning crisis that appear in the late nineteenth century. While Tolstoy's story foreshadows the reconstruction of a kind of religious meaning (humanity governed by the principles of brotherhood and non-violent resistance to evil regarded as the kingdom of God among us), Chekhov would accept Wittgenstein's dictum "To believe in a God means to see that life has a meaning", even though he does not think there is any god to believe in. Finally, which morality can result from such denial is discussed and V. Grossman's Life and Fate is used to answer