SOURCE: Winner, Thomas. “The Searching Stories II: ‘The Black Monk.’” In Chekhov and His Prose, pp. 113–22. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1966.

In the following essay, Winner attempts to connect Chekhov's later works, such as “The Black Monk,” with the earlier “searching stories” in terms of their philosophical leanings.

In 1894 Chekhov completed “The Black Monk” on which he had worked during the summer of 1893, the fourth, and last, of the series of philosophical stories begun in 1889 with “A Dreary Story.” While in Chekhov's later works philosophical questions are no longer posed so directly as they are in the searching stories, we do not find a complete break between these and later works. Philosophical themes after this period are increasingly integrated into the psychological and dramatic action of the story, but the beginning of this trend can be observed within the philosophical stories themselves. Philosophical problems maintain more independence...