Faith and art …

 … God, Literature, and Anton Chekhov. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

In Chekhov Becomes Chekhov, Bob Blaisdell offers a defense for what he calls “the open-endedness” of Chekhov’s stories. “Chekhov won’t comfort us with an answer that isn’t there,” he writes. He then quotes Chekhov, in a letter to Suvorin, noting that “the time has come for writers, especially those who are artists, to admit that in this world one cannot make anything out, just as Socrates once admitted it, just as Voltaire admitted it…. And if an artist in whom the crowd has faith decides to declare that he understands nothing of what he sees—this in itself constitutes a considerable clarity in the realm of thought, and a great leap forward.”