BRIGHT BLUR, BLINDING LIGHT, BLANK PAGE: THE EPISTEMICALLY SKEPTICAL EPIPHANIES OF CHEKHOV

The literary epiphanies in the short stories of Anton Chekhov that are most intense, mysterious and rich in implication are enigmas. They are epistemic puzzles, combining cloudiness with clarity in a way that reflects back the seer's own intense perplexity. For every seeming indication of Cartesian Clarity and distinctness in a Chekhovian epiphany there is a counterbalancing intimation of blurriness and haze. Doubtful of any claims of the epiphanic imagination to attain transcendent truths, Chekhov keeps enough distance and balance to present the clear-and-cloudy moment, in all its guises, as ever inviolate, baffling, triumphant in its impenetrable mystery of blanc-ness. Here, Bidney identifies, illustrates, and interprets a structural pattern in the literary epiphanies of Chekhov, using the investigative method systematized in Bidney (1997, 1-21 and passim).